 And we're recording Andy, so you can go ahead and begin. Okay, well thank you and good afternoon everybody it's two o'clock. And it's November 23 and this is a meeting of the finance committee which I am now calling the order. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 this meeting will be conducted wire remote means members the public who wish to access the meeting may do so. I zoom or telephone, no in person attendance of members the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. I'm going to begin by just checking in with each member of the committee to make sure that you can hear me and be heard. And then we will go on to the agenda and see if we want to talk about the agenda change the order. After, but let's start with the first part so Pat d'Angelo's present. And Lynn Grusser present Bob Hegner. Here. Matt Halloway, all right. Present Bernie Kubiak present. Dorothy Pam. I'm here. I'm present I'm having to answer the doorbell and pay somebody who did some some work for me I'll be right back. Okay. Shane here. Okay, so, and I'm here so that makes all of us. And Athena. Are you the minute taker today or is we are we getting bill back today. No bills on vacation so I'll stick with you today. I'm going to try and make this as expeditious as possible. I guess I need to check or have somebody check to see if we have anybody in the audience at this point. It does not appear so so there's no reason to call for public comment. What I think our main order of business and what I would propose to start with first is the council guidelines draft and then. Two items that we placed on the agenda. Afterwards, just in case we wanted to have further discussion about them. Not put them down as performance shell the maintenance fund and the ARPA fund proposal. Sean can talk about the status of each as we get to it. I'm going to go ahead and plug in a little bit too. Yeah, it's for later. Okay. And the last thing that I was going to just tell you and then we'll come back to it later is when we get to next meetings. One issue that I'm going to bring up under next meetings just to advise you about as our next meet is one of our next meeting agenda items. But it's can't be discussed today and any significance because it wasn't posted. So, since we have no public comment, we'll get on to the most important task of the day, which is the council budget. The budget guidelines. Yes, but before that Andy, are we not going to look at the reorganization issues. The reorganization. Reorganization proposals. Yes. We didn't post that into the agenda and actually Sean and I talked about that. Why email earlier in the day to try and figure that out. And because it didn't come up. This was where we sort of came to. I'll just go ahead and finish out the thought now rather than post for later since Lynn raised it and what she's talking about is that the town managers proposed as you know and it's referenced in the. We talked about a little bit last week but didn't really get into the depth of it which is the creation of two new departments. Chris and what is the DEI. And the question in the way it was referred from the council. As it was referred to committees principally referred to town services and operations TSO or time services and outreach, which is TSO. I wish I'm that's my other committee must have a serve on two committees and that's my other committee. And the other committee was referred to us for only the question of financial impact. The way we had, it was discussed at the council meeting. I'm not sure it's part of the motion but certainly it's part of the discussion was this that we would report to TSO and then TSO would do a single report for the entire process. TSO has scheduled a public forum. It's scheduled for December 9. And we think that it's actually a part of the charter requirement that it's required to be a public, there has to be a public forum. And so that that was referred off to the committee, the TSO committee. The TSO is asking that we have any financial impact statement available by December 9 and so that it can be available for the public forum. So, if we don't meet again till December 7, it would be it would be a December 7. And so that's the kind of, if there is, if we decided it's better to have another meeting earlier, which will come to at the end of this discussion when we see where we are with the guidelines, then we can I will have two choices, but that's kind of summarized that Linda said anything else you want to add. I know you answered my question on that one. Andy, would it be okay if either during or after this meeting I send the reorg plans out to everybody if they don't have them and ask if they could send questions to me and copy you and then that way I can. I can make sure when we do discuss it that we address whatever questions are on the front end. I think that makes sense. Thank you, Sean. Yep. So any other preliminary questions. If not. So, the guidelines. I just want to add a little bit of a snag, and it's just the way things went. Originally, I had hoped that I would be able to work very closely with Kathy and Bob on a draft, but it turned out that after the scene and I looked at the open meeting, we agreed that it was under the open meeting law a subcommittee. And as a subcommittee it would have required that we have posted meetings and discussion be a posted meeting, which ran into a couple of problems one was is that as you've gathered it. This turned out to be a lot more of a project than I anticipated and with a lot going on top of it that was other counsel stuff those unrelated to finance so and the scheduling of a meeting and doing it as a meeting made it very difficult so I was not able to use that process. So, I'm the owner of and all the criticism so will be heard her old, which is fine, because you can't really throw anything at me. But what I attempted to do. And finally finished last night with the last of the drafts when it finally turned into what's now draft three, which is my markings to keep them straight as I work through them. Is I use the prior years guidelines, and then I did both substantial reorganization, as well as updating contact content, because there was a lot of sections that were kind of repetitive of each other. And I tried to narrow it down so that I could get rid of a lot of the repetition where things would be brought up and then repeated again in later sections, because we're too many sections. So that's where we, I ended up. And what I would suggest is that we do it section of the time, and just get comments and try and stick to the substantive issues that you may see in the guidelines and you made note of. If you have things that are more in the nature of scrifter or just suggestions on grammatical changes. They could be emailed to me and it would make for more interesting meeting just to stick with the major topics. So that's my proposal on how to deal with what we're going to do next. I'm going to start by saying, thank you Andy for taking a first stab at a very, very difficult item to write. It's amazing how you can pull it all together. And I also want to recognize Sean and Sonia for providing us with along with Paul, the financial indicators presentation that could be drawn upon at this early stage, as we go forward. Other than that, I just would like to just set a different tone to how we go after things. Thank you. In the last thing I will note, and I think I was in my cover email is that last year, either Sean or Sonia can't remember who provided the last two pages which became attached to and I think that in the final version. It went through Angela up in the town manager's office because she has the skills to put those kinds of things together and I so you should note that while it's kind of attached to again as a reminder, we do need to go through that process to get the right charts attached to the final document. So, any other preliminary comments. Otherwise, my suggestion is that we can start by section. I want to echo Lynn's thanks for this and Sean, and I have just as we go through sections, I have a question for people to think about so I'm not sure it's even a recommendation, but because it's a fairly long document with some ideas that are either too or noteworthy to highlight. I'm wondering if we, we've never done it before. At the very beginning of the introduction saying some things that are notable in this year's guidelines that we discussed in the committee or as follows just bullet bullet bullet to to draw people's attention. And so as we go through this below discuss these these things so it's just a thought. And so as we go through this I have some specifics that would be examples of that. So it's some of what we talked about last week. For example the multi year showing of operating. You know, a couple other things so it's not a lot but it just, it would, it would be a way of highlighting that this isn't sure read the first page and it's going to be just what the indicators where that came to us. You know, from staff, so it's something to think about as a formatting idea. That's it. So how are you proposing that as you identify those items in each section by section that you would highlight them on. This is one pad. I think that's one way of doing it you know so for example the fact that the town has received a higher percentage increase. And we endorse this for the following reasons or later we say we're going back up to 10% and we think that's important. The point about not drawing on the stabilization fund for ongoing costs. So they're just a few, you know, in terms of recommendations from the finance committee to the manager. So that's it. And so I'm not looking at a page worth of these but it may not work because there may be too many, you know, I'm not trying to add to it so I find as a reader if I'm a busy reader that helps me focus on a particular area so it's a it's a style question as we go through. Andy so if we don't have that many of them and there are only a few it might make it easier. If there are too many of them, it may be that people have to just read through sentence by sentence. Well maybe what we should do. I'm actually going to pull out a highlighter. Because I'm working off of paper copy in the old fashioned sense. It's easier than for me right now. Well, identifying as we go through the document and then we'll see what they are and how many. Because I think both. If we don't find them in the document then we got a problem because they don't exist there's nothing to cite it. The first two paragraphs are pretty much pro forma so I'm not going to assume that there was nothing in there. And if nobody's saying anything about the first two paragraphs. As I did last year I started with the overall philosophy and concerns section. Lynn. You're muted. You're still muted. I'm going to look at two screens at once and haven't perfected Athena's talent for that. I wondered under the second paragraph where we talk about the Amherst town of Amherst financial management policy and objectives adopted January 2008 and updated in 2021, whether we should say by the finance committee working with a finance director. The next thing is we haven't updated, we haven't accepted the updated policy that actually that got raised, I think by some that who raised it as a question. So we probably need to eliminate the updated for now because that's actually on the to do list of things that this committee needs to either finish up or pass on to the next. Council and just so you know, as you all recall we talked about it I think that's September 29 meeting and went through it section by section and Sean was going to see if there were any final edits that he wanted to tell us about. And then we allow us to just finish it up and the, I was going to ask whether we wanted to do that at our next meeting or whether we wanted to put it on our list of tasks for the next committee. Let me just reflect on that for one moment and just say, that's where I brought this up because I don't remember us voting and I know it didn't come to the council. So, and the word policy to me says it has to come to the council. Part of me says, I would just assume mop up this kind of stuff before the new council is brought on. But therefore, and having said that. You know everybody's already screaming about agendas. But if we can do this and put it on the agenda for the sixth and then vote on it on the 13th that would work. Um, just as because we didn't put the big issue of transfer memo on to the next on to this agenda because we wanted to get through the side of it really has to be a next meeting discussion. And my memory is that other than Sean making sure we've got the wording right. We, we all agreed on the substantive changes so I think it's, I don't think it's going to require a lot of time in the finance committee to get to what I would call ready for the council to see it. If Sean had Sean and Sonya had the time, you know, to put their blessings on it. Yeah, I mean we can send. I've got to review a final clean version of Paul but then we could set it out ahead of time so people could read it and come to the first meeting with comments. What date were you thinking Lynn, or did you throw out there. I would prefer to have it on the December 6. Council agenda council agenda. Because it's going to need to be probably on both this the first time. Anybody seen it, if people are willing to vote on it on the sixth that'd be fabulous. So have to have a second reading it has to go to the 13th. So I think when we discussed this last time. I thought we were headed down the path that we weren't. It wasn't something that was going to be voted or adopted by the council that they were really sort of the town managers. So in terms of government they are the town managers procedures and that this process was more about sort of getting the finance committee's guidance and blessing of them but not necessarily adopting them. But that's something we should circle back with a town manager to see if he feels the same way. And in that case, all it would need is a financial finance committee report attached the document and it can be an information piece. There are different committees of the council who have quote policies. I call them guidelines because the word policies to me suggests adopted at a higher level. Right. And, but they have different operating mechanisms under which they work. Okay. I'll follow up a Paul and I'll send that out to you all and I don't I mean if we so if we shoot for the six that we won't have unless we meet again. Unless we schedule another meeting for next week. We won't have time to review it at this body. Are we already scheduled for the 30th. Now that was. Discuss the end of the next meetings. It is difficult and I sort of hate to go here because it's again, you're getting into the substance we're hoping to avoid. But, you know, the policy issues such as the amount that we want to accumulate free cash is 5%, and above 5% goes to into stabilization funds and the goal is to have total reserves between five and 15%. And, you know, what, what is that a council policy kind of question or is it a town manager management kind of question so that the prior version. You know, when I was a teenager and then the younger in a different lifetime with said with the then finance committee. You know, we just put it all together in one document. So I don't know how we want to handle that. Dorothy you have your hand up. We were talking about overall philosophy and concerns 23. So I put my hand up as it takes a while, but my questions are paragraphs five, six, seven and eight. Down to the end of that section. And the repetition of the words evaluate evaluate assess. And so my questions are and also enhance efficiency and effectiveness. Either we say we're going to do it, or we do it. And if we do it. That first question is, where is the additional staff because we've talked about this, but obviously it must be hard work to do. Enhancing efficiency and effectiveness sounds like something that's been getting us in trouble, piling more work on staff on top of their regular duties, maybe increasing staff quitting. Staff reduction. I mean, you know, I live for years in New York City during the budget crisis. This was all we ever did. I don't think we're there yet, but I just want to know how real is this, and how's it going to be done. Really. That's it. So what you pick out. You said you named some paragraphs five, six, seven. Pick out one sentence that is an example for us. And then let's focus on that for a second. If you're, if you are muted. So if you're trying to report to us. Sorry. paragraph six. However, with the second sentence, however, we should continually seek improvements to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. We also need to evaluate those services, the need for them, the town's capacity support them and their consistency with community values, as well as sustainability and social justice equity goals adopted by the town council. And here I do have to second what Lynn said. That's a really good sentence. Okay. But, you know, that's, they say how we live for a long time, and it generally means more with no raises and or hiring new people. And I know we have a problem of a lot of work. And everybody talks about, you know, the lean and mean way of doing things that led to a lot of people losing jobs. And you do cut down on that. So I just, I just want to know, do we, are we really going to do this and how are we going to do it and keep our staff. And actually find out something that can, that we can do. This is what people say they're going to do, but to do it is hard. Very hard. Yeah, let me just point out and then continue to get thoughts and maybe Sean and Sonia will respond to this too. This is actually a paragraph I think that was copied from prior years and not changed much. Because we sort of felt that continual assessment of operations was something that we thought just management should do so we've just sort of been there but I've not sure thought that we went back and look to see what was done is sort of just putting it out there. Yeah, Andy I'll just quickly add to that. I think the messaging is good. I don't think I mean when I look at this I don't necessarily view this as reducing staff but I think it's sort of reevaluating processes that maybe we haven't kind of thought through in a while and think about if there's more efficient ways to do it. I don't think we can use technology all the time as staff like whether it's using technology or, or just kind of rebuilding processes to be more efficient, and with the primary goal to give us more time to take on the other things that the council and the town manager want us to do so I think it. I'm not at these point, but I don't look at it that way I look at it more as, how do we just try to use technology and other things to be more efficient so that we can have more time for higher priority initiatives. Thank you. I think it's an effective sort of, as Sean said kind of just setting the foundation of the document so I think it's effective but I agree with Dorothy that, you know, since this is a year or kind of talking about transitioning from an existing body of services into, hopefully, you know, covering some of those costs, the crests and equity costs out of existing programs that maybe that sentence that Dorothy read could say something on lines of, you know, we also need to evaluate those services as capacity and their consistency with community values, as well as transitioning into addition, you know, transitioning into additional departments and services pursuant to the social justice equity goals adopted by the council something to indicate the transitional nature of things because I think that that is sort of the challenge of this document. And one of the big challenges is incorporating those two new departments. Can work on that. This one, what I'm going to do this time is, I feel like there's a particular individual like in this case Matt has raised a question. I'm not going to try and create any subcommittee, but I will consult individual members of the committee to make sure I got the wording that they were thinking or with their help on getting the wording. Now, so let me give you a take on efficiency. When the crest program first started being talked about. Okay, they wanted to have their own call center, which would be directly duplicative of the one that we already have at the police station that takes care of fire and EMS. And so they actually went and visited the existing call center. And, lo and behold, they decided it actually could handle what they want. I think as we go forward, we may find that there are other efficiencies with the crest program or any other program, based on some of those kinds of explorations and based on what we learn as we evaluate the effectiveness of these programs and the financial feasibility. So, for example, in other local towns that have already tried to come up with an alternative or complimentary response mechanism to police. They basically have hired people with that are not uniformed, but part of the police department. And right now, the way we are funding crests will be as a standalone unit, because that's the way they have proposed that it be so I think we have to be open to efficiencies. And my example of the call center is an example of where those efficiencies actually have already been realized. One, one quick thing and so you'll kill me if I don't say it as, and maybe this is for Matt when he's writing the sentence to consider is that also to acknowledge that there's sort of a growing workload for a lot of staff to think about whether it be changing laws or new programs, new permit types you know the things are just constantly growing they're never shrinking. And so we, so we do want to be more efficient but a lot of times that's just sort of soaked up with all the new things that have come up, whether it be cannabis or all the all the new programs you can think of that have popped up in the last five years. I'm going to build on that by saying, all we keep hearing about is fire and EMS, we're down five police. We're down in any number of other departments. People are not feeling good about their jobs, because they're just overworked. And yet, last night, when I brought up the idea with comprehensive staff study and salary study. It was like, I was speaking with fork tongues. Yeah, I, I don't know how we address this other than a few sentences but that's my sense Lynn also on the overworked. And Sonia will know more about whatever happened with within their department with a procurement officer who had been terrific for years and I think we have been burning people out, because we have a lot of extra meetings are going to an extra responsibilities beyond an already demanding job so I don't know how we get a good assessment of that. One of our successes of going through covert is how tight our budgets have been able to be, but we are seeing, we are seeing the impact of it. You know, as in my other life as more of an economist economist, someone said there's only so many efficiencies you can get with an orchestra. So it's, it's people. And, you know, it's there are a certain number of them need to do certain kinds of things. So it is, you know, where we can we should, but trying to get some sense, either of are we too many meetings too many duplicated meetings those kinds of things we can address, but day to day jobs that have tasks that have to be done is more difficult. So I think, looking for that and that's why this when we get to look at the reorganization plan. I think we need to, when possible think of teams. Not everything can be separate groups doing somewhat similar things on in health and safety. So that that's a different discussion but we should avoid it if we can avoid it. It just, if we want staff to have the ability to brainstorm and to consider different efficiencies and new ways of doing things. And we really have to be explicit about that and give them the time to do it. I mean there's a lot of stuff going on, and all too often any kind of reasonable discussion about future work or planning or new efficiencies gets overcome by events. I think that's been my experience in human services, as with the Commonwealth, been my experiences managing three communities. So I think we need to be. I'm frankly concerned that we are overworked. I think we're likely to see the turnover and new hires has been part of that positions just sort of disappearing I think has been part of that. And so there's some some real concern here and it's not that we have people who are making, we have very very competent people. We have very good staff. And they're being stretched to them. So let's see I'll step up my soapbox now. Yeah, actually the ties to the last comment and so it's a question of whether it should be explicitly called out. One was expressed as need time to do it. The other was overworked. Kind of tie together a little bit. And maybe that needs to be incorporated into this thought to Dorothy. I'll just say my experience of being one of the people who returned in person to ACC. First of all, most didn't want to. They reduced our class size. We did not increase it. Okay, so I now the class size went from 32 to 15. And we're working very, very hard and doing what we're doing. We also discovered that technology was not our savior. That yes, there's some classes that are taught well remotely online, but that most students needed and wanted in person teaching. So I am kind of skeptical about technology as being the savior in terms of efficiency. I know that you've done a lot of great things with technology in town. I think we need people and we need more inspection staff. We need more people. And I would love it if we had more young hires so that there's a little depth in the field, because some of the people that have turned over had. It was normal retirement made they decided this was a good time to retire. Okay, because of all the things that was going on, but many of them had been, I think we had a lot of 30 year people and even more that retired. I really want to see more people and young people coming in and working for the town I don't know how we're going to do it, but they will come in at lower salaries. So that's one positive. So belonging with financial budget guidelines. Either they're in the goals or both. I'm going to build on one more thing. The issue of salaries and who do we compete with. And when we look at the people that left, at least two left one for another town for 50,000 more one for the other another public sector job for 50,000 more. Others have gone to the private sector so my suggestion is we don't longer we don't longer just compete with other towns. We compete with the private sector for our engineers. And we need to look at the salary issues as based on who do we compete with. And that is a financial issue. So, when you do a comprehensive look at staffing and efficiency, you have to also add into it. How do we who do we compete with and what are our salaries need to be. Okay, let's see if we can try and beef up this string of thoughts that we have here and go on to another section unless somebody is less thought about than you've just been on about philosophy. Budget philosophy burning you're trying to put my hand down and unmute myself at the same time it doesn't work. In the paragraph that begins we support the creation of community responders for equity safety services, which will reduce the demand on the police department over time, I would just modify that sentence and say it may reduce the demand for police staffing. We're going to end up with a smaller leaner, Amherst PD once we implement a community responder program. So it may. And I'm happy to see that the budget, at least for the community responder piece that was in the committee's reports essentially been tossed out. And it was, there was some serious errors in there and some, some other mistakes, some mistakes. So just, I would just soften that a little bit to say it may reduce, because we don't know until we get the leaps data and we actually put something in place, we ain't going to know. Yeah, no, it's a point that we sort of say it elsewhere but it's good to call it out in that sentence. Thank you. Anything else. Otherwise, go into the revenue projection section. If there's any comments there. So my, my comment is for the, the last paragraph of this revenue section so if folks want to speak to things that come earlier I can, I can wait Andy Dorothy. Give your hand up and I get circled back Dorothy. And our revenue projections have been actually quite conservative, which I like the opposite of a more political response, which always pretends it's going to be better than it is. So I just wanted to check with Sean and Sonia. Is this in your tradition of being rather conservative about your predictions. I would say it's consistent with how we've done things in the past, I would, I would push back a little bit that we're overly conservative at Sony and I looked at the last 1012 years of revenue surpluses expense surpluses. And on both the revenue side, and the expense side we're generally about 99% of what we, our target was. You know we have somewhere between a 1% and a one and a half percent margin of error. When you add those together, both the revenue surplus and the savings on the expense side you get to two or 3% but both individually revenues and expenses were pretty close about 99% each year so I feel like that's a pretty healthy target and where we want to stay in that range. I can't imagine what we would do to sharpen it up beyond 99% without being overly optimistic. And as Sonia will tell you she's been here longer than I every year is different. There's not like a year where it's the same thing consistently coming in under budget or revenues coming in over it changes year to year so I think we are conservative but I would say when you look at the data, you know the last few years being a little bit of anomaly because of COVID, but the years before that pretty consistently around 99% on both expenses and revenues. Yeah, somewhere in this power in this section. I actually, I associated it with the third paragraph I guess I felt like we need to say something about inflation or the threat of inflation, eating up our gains. I know on Saturday at the four towns meeting Andy we mentioned that, and we've all seen some pretty concerning inflation stuff going on right now. Good point. Matt we're circling back to you. Well I have the ARPA presentation in the back of my mind when I look at this, and especially sort of the stimulation stimulate revitalize some of those efforts that you know Sean and Paul and their team are, are trying to continue with ARPA and especially the economic empowerment work. And I just think this, you know, the analysis is good and definitely reflects a lot of what we've heard from, you know from them. And I would, I would, I guess encourage maybe us to consider if we want to, you know, further encourage these efforts towards right revitalization stimulation of the of the downtown economy around. One, one question I had that I forgot to ask previously was, you know that that 16% increase in local receipts I mean, you know how does that compare to our neighbors how does that compare to the broader economic forecast you know and. I guess maybe just, I was just thinking something to sort of goose the, you know, goose the energy around revitalization and to indicate our support for that work or or or not I mean, I guess that's more of a question than a flat statement but I just thought that might be an area to target that work. Yeah, I agree with, I agree with Matt I think adding something about economic development and and maybe even noting that position since it was proposed and we plan to move forward with it makes sense. The 16.2%, I don't know how our neighbors are in that range I will say this is not the normal increase for local receipts this is because we cut it during the pandemic and so this is, I think communities are probably going to have a little bit of an uneven path back to where they were pre pandemic. But for us this is a much larger increase than normal. And then I did have a comment on the same section I just wanted to quickly say there's the sentence about projected FY 23 revenue from local receipts being less than the amount received and FY 21. I just wanted to note the reason why that is because in FY 21. There are a number of sort of one time revenues that we receive that are not things we can budget for every year. We're at that level or higher. Looking forward but there were some things around some supplemental tax revenue that is not an every year thing. And then the other thing that's an FY 21 that we just haven't budgeted yet and this is another thing that this committee may want to discuss is cannabis impact fees. So in FY 21 there's about $200,000 of cannabis impact fees FY 23 we haven't budgeted it yet it's something that we need more conversation about what we can use those funds for what we want to use those funds for because they're they're limited and their and their use. So would you suggest we eliminate that pieces as yet we know that projected FY 23 revenue from your two sexually less than received in 21 just knock that out entirely. Yeah, either knock it out or explain why I just don't want people to think that we're budgeting less than we received an FY 21 without a reason for it. So, okay. So I'm looking, I don't see any other hands up right now. Just finished writing trying to write neatly enough so that can remember what I wrote later I'll live. Yeah, I don't want to get into it, like we did last night but at some point. We certainly need to resolve the relationship of BCG. And who is the relationship to who do they recommend to, and how that fits with what we do and the town council. So, we get into that. At some point in here. I might keep an eye on that because that probably belongs in the later section towards the end. I don't think it blogs and revenue or expenditures is a particular anything else otherwise something to go into expenditures. And what I guess obviously it needs to be renumbered I realize that because three is repeated twice but it chooses and expenses for operations and expenses for capital like three successive sections. So if you're, if anybody wants to criticize that or comment on that, they should do so as we go along otherwise. Also just jump into the first. First of the number three currently number three. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a question on the second paragraph talking about the size of the stabilization fun. And, you know, the sense of supporting the major capital expenses. The last time I looked at the model that we have was a year or two ago and the size of the stabilization fund has changed the cost probably changed. Sean, do we have an update on terms of like, is that model still kind of more or less good the way it is or do we have to update it and be a little more refined about, you know, what we have in terms of stabilization fund, what the costs are likely to be going forward. Good question. I think our reserve situation hasn't changed all that much it's gotten better but it was good to begin with so I don't think that's noticeably different. I don't think interest rates have changed all that much I think the next big update will be when we have schematic designs for DPW and fire. And we see what those figures are and what we can get forward and if there's going to be any shifting of numbers there. I think that's probably the really big next step for us, which hopefully we'll have in the next year or so. Thanks. I'm just unmuting. I, I have a question on the organization on this starting. We know one of the issues in from the indicator meeting is the operating budgets, starting with the four major buildings doesn't feel to me quite right on expenditures I understand why it's here. Because it makes the case that we can't, it makes a strong case that we can't just dip into the stabilization fund we've built it up. So, and then we, that's capital. So this section is all to me is capital, then we do operating, then we do capital later, you know the way it's set up right now so on page. I don't know if you can find the page but Roman numeral four is expenses for capital that the two threes. So I didn't know whether anyone else has that reaction to it, and I don't have a big suggestion, it might be one way of handling that might be to have that first statement just be we have built up a stabilization fund, because we know we've got some draws on it that we're going to have in the future, we discussed this more later under capital, and then move it, but get quickly to operating budgets, otherwise, it looks to me that we're more that there's a priority around the building projects as opposed to the operating budgets. You know, and two years ago we had to do, we had to cut this expenditure to protect the operating budget so it's, it's just a comment. I don't really have specific words within this that I would change. It's more, I'm not sure it's located in the right place, and I would just do something quick. So we could get to the controversial point. You know that, and that I'll stop. I think I think I was clear but maybe not, you know that we want to move to 10%, we want to protect the thing, but we're now we're going to go on to operate and we're going to talk more about capital later. So, we don't put so much emphasis on the buildings. I'll just say the one more thing when Sean gave us the plan that allowed for in. We asked for a plan and they gave us a plan. And the first thing I saw is extremely tight operating budgets for a number of years, and we've just talked about the consequence of really tight operating budgets is what's happening underneath them to people. And so operating budgets that go back to two and a half percent increase with health insurance going up pensions going up step increases and cola things. Don't. They're still very tight. I'll just say that that's a tight budget. So I just. Yeah, that was just the balance. Yeah. Kathy, that was before we added Crescer or additional EMS staff to. That's what before we said, Oh, and while we're doing it, let's add 10 or 11 more people to the budget and grab some funds that short term, help us get over that but it's not clear to me where that leaves us in 2026. So then you're saying, well, big buildings, yes, schematic design and stuff, but I think we're on a collision torch course on some of these that we will have to make some hard decisions and I'm not sure we come down. So all of this was to say I didn't want to leave just with four buildings as if that's a done deal we fix that one. And now we're getting on top rating. That's it. Yeah, of course when you're trying to do that. I mean, it's a separate expenditure section to talk about sort of the big picture issues of expenditures before getting into the specifics and operations. I mean, it's kind of where it comes from. And I guess the other thing I'll notice that certainly jump into respond to this and not trying to be defensive at all with what I wrote the decision to start building up reserves and pay down old capital. I don't like to Sandy pool or in anticipation of the four building projects. So it was kind of in a policy in place for a while because it took a while to build those reserves to the level of they are. Obviously done for a purpose and if you then change the purpose to say okay, we're going to use the reserves to fund the press program. Then it sort of disrupts this assumption but then made when building them up. Yeah, I didn't mean if that's what I said came across that why didn't mean that Andy I meant a shorter section to say we built up reserves for particular reason, we're moving to 10% and for a longer discussion on capital C below so that we could get. So that's all I, I wasn't. I think those are good decisions and we should stand by them. I just I just found it. There's capital in almost a full page then a little while later we get to capital again, the kind of other capital. So it's, if it doesn't bother anyone else, I'm fine with the way it's organized. Try something better. As you know, well, actually been playing around with where to put the bulk of the capital and they're trying to make sure that I get the bulk of the capital and the capital, because I think we had the problem prior years to Matt. I think it's an organizational note or idea that kind of, I don't know if it builds on Kathy or is just sort of inspired by what she's maybe. But I hear her to be saying but but on page five towards the bottom. There's a paragraph that starts the council recognizes the revenues insufficient to meet these needs which you know it kind of speaks to that to that same point and I think if there were going to be any guidance in terms of compromises to be made on this very you know ambitious agenda slash sort of, you know, two new departments for major projects and all that. I think that that that would be the place where you know your final I mean I think your final sentences is really strong and the we recognize making progress on multiple fronts the requirements will not be achieved in a single year you know I think I'm not necessarily saying pluck that out and put it at the front of the section but but I do think that that sort of pragmatic realistic messaging should live towards the front, just given how ambitious this overall scope of work is. So I'm looking for that sense that you were referring to that. Some page five or. Yeah, just you have expenses for capital on the bottom of page five, and then three paragraphs up from that the council recognizes the revenues institution. I think that higher is what you're thinking. I might I might move that higher if you're going to do it reorganization the way that I think you know Kathy's kind of suggesting. And yeah, I mean I think that that may be one of the central points of this, and this whole document is, you know that we're not going to accomplish all all these goals in a year and that you know to what you do you turn over to the town managers team, you know some of these decisions versus what is the council want to guide on in terms of, you know, tough, tough decisions. Yeah, I wanted to talk a little bit about it's the first full paragraph on page five it's the one just above what what Matt was talking about. I mean we hear we were we recommend that the, the manager, you know, consider a multi year projection of operating budgets for the town. I, I, I have a sensor of my, my concern is, it's not just the town we have to worry about over the next three or four years I think it's every aspect of the budget it's the, the library and the debt service. It's the schools elementary schools and it's a regional schools and we have a big transition in the elementary schools into the middle school building, and all that's going to cost money. I think, maybe this is the time that we, even though the school budget isn't quite our purview, but maybe we make the recommendation that the town really sit down and do a multi year budget, at least over the next two or three years. So we've, we don't wind up falling off a cliff somewhere. And I recognize this is extra work, you know, per the, the conversation we had before, but I'm very concerned that we're, we're going to wind up falling off a cliff somewhere because we haven't really thought through, well how are we going to pay for all these various things. What's it going to look like, when we put it all together. Andy can I just respond to that real quickly. Yeah. So we do multi year budgeting. We did a five year budget that's in the budget document itself. I think what you're looking for Bob is a more detailed breakdown of within like the town operating budget and within the school budget. And so those are things we're working on now I mean we do them but just July, June, late June when the council voted to, to staff, I think 10, 10 people for the community responder program. And so, you know, these are things that we plan on doing or we're doing now and we plan on sharing with the, this committee at some point in the future is those detailed, those projections of the next few years that look at our budgets and I think, I don't think we're going to fall off a cliff I think we have strong reserves we have strong communication and planning. I do agree that it's going to require tough decisions I think that was always something we were going to have to do when we're adding significant, significant staff to a budget that we already sort of max out that it's going to require difficult decision making so I do agree with difficult decisions I don't think we're going to hit a cliff again we we look forward we're not going to drop surprises on people. And our budgetary flexibility is one of the things that's the strength of our town so, but exact Bob I think I agree, we can't necessarily tell the region what to do but I know they have the tools to do it. And they just need to update them and plug them away, plug the information to them so that might be something BCG wants to look at. Again when that group comes together with representatives from the different parties. Dorothy. That's a good clarification. Well, from the pre the viewpoint of precinct 10. What this is is a juggernaut of obligations and pressures that are going to be financed by increasing the density and housing in the downtown residential neighborhoods. And you saw in the last election, what the will of the people is on that. I just see saying well we have to have the money we have to do this we have to do that we have to allow this backing, forcing us to make decisions we might not want to make, but being under financial duress saying we've got to have revenue growth and this seems to be the way to get it. So, I see this from the point of view of the people in my part of the town. This is threatening. This is, this is, it's tight and we have promises that somehow will become more efficient, but yet we're increasing our services in order to reach goals that we've agreed on. But it's like part of the discussion last night about the solar moratorium it part for a while there it was just on, can we afford to do anything that might engender a lawsuit. I mean that's not the way to make a decision, you know, but when you get worried about money when budgets get tight. Sometimes that's how you do make a decision. So we didn't last night. So, I mean, is is the savior going to be marijuana receipts. But somehow I just see a position that's very very tight, very very tight and I'm not sure how it's going to be accomplished. So, I'm concerned. I'll probably round that out. Cannabis revenues are already the tax revenues are already budgeted for in the budget so we don't expect a huge increase in that revenue area. Thank you. That's something that is not really on our agenda at the moment but you know that's clearly an expectation that has been thrown out there by the African heritage group. I'm kind of not sure exactly which section we're on, but I'm still on page five. Yep. The paragraph that before I started editing starts on page four. And I'm not sure this is the place to bring it in, but at no time during the process of the schools, talking about how they were being unfairly treated, because they were only being given the 2.5%. Have we brought up the fact that in the town's ARPA money, unless we're changing this, we're planning to subsidize capital improvements to the middle school, and operating to the middle school. And I think it, this should be brought out here. And I think it should be calculated X amount of money over how many years, which results in a percent what percentage of increase to their budget. And just adding to what Lynn said real quick, Andy, you might also want to know in this section. The schools also get money from UMass now elementary schools in particular they get $160,000 or $170,000 each year from UMass as part of an agreement. The town no longer gets money directly. That's something that's a goal obviously for us moving forward but I want to use this money used to go to the town and support the overall budget now goes directly to the schools and the town doesn't benefit from the town operating budget doesn't benefit from that. And that's a recurring annual source of revenue that is relatively new for them. Kathy. I like Lynn's suggestion a lot and, and you know the, I mean she's probably going to send you an edit to do that, but it's, it's to say over how many years. And I know we're not supposed to bring in CPA funds this is the towns managers piece, but there's a big ask on the table for the playing fields for the regional school. And I mean big $800,000. So it's so, you know, just somehow bringing in, this isn't the only budget, and it doesn't address three years from now. Right. So it's that multi year thing but it does address. What is the appearance of the FY 23 there that there's more money in there. The fact, and I guess the regional, the getting ready for the sixth grade to go up to the regional that's a savings for the elementary school is that correct Sean because that would have otherwise have have to be billed to their, their budget in some way. So it'll be an increased cost to the elementary school at while both while for River and Wildwood are both in operation because I think there's, I won't have this exactly right but there may be some additional staffing. And there may be a rent payment of some sort that has to go to the region for using space. So it'll be more expensive which is part of that ARPA requests. That's what that ARPA request is for outside of capital is to cover the additional costs. So hopefully long term, once the building project is done, there'll be some savings there. But Lin's point was is that it's 10 ARPA funds not school ARPA funds, and that we should just point that out. So, okay, let's all helpful and what I was going to what I'm going to do is may call on other people to help me with paragraphs that they were talking about if I feel I need to in the end, but try as quickly as I can while it's fresh in my mind and target turkey and whatnot in my brain and slow my brain down. I try and see if I can do this and then get it around. In the next part of our process. So I will, I wrote Lin's name down, for example, next to this paragraph. Somebody who I can like call on. Any, anything else then under this section that we're on currently, which is expenses for operations. Um, I just as your as Lynn is sending you some texts for here on this, we're still seem to be on page five, but the second to last paragraph is we urge you to include ARPA funds in the projections we've we've called that out. So it will be a nice if when you give Andy words that goes with the schools, it will be a nice go with peace that you know and I'm not even sure Sean, Sean in the FY 23 the way you've talked about revenues there's not a line called ARPA. So the ARPA funds are coming in in various ways to help us out, whether it's in the capital budget and expenses we would have otherwise had. So, um, if, if there is a table or something you can give Andy it could be the appendix to this rather than beefing this up a lot just to say you know this much is going over to schools this much is going to fire EMS this much because it's not showing up in the budget we're looking at. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I can do that. I think you know you've had a problem that I hadn't writing it and because a lot of the discussion that we've been having around budget issues is interweaving grants, ARPA funds and other funds with operational funds, because the goal was, how can the town pay for this, whether it be Crest or whatever. And I think that, you know, this is ultimately a document about one thing which is the FY 23 budget, but it's sort of like we've put these pieces together because it made sense and it was really creative I think we really appreciate it. Having it happen, but when Paul proposes to the council and beginning of May is May 2, by the way, because it's first Monday. This is what the budget that I would like to see. He has to have gone through the steps of pulling back out the pieces that are in the budget that he's presenting and that's the budget that he's presenting to us is the FY 23 budget itself. All these other things supplemented but they're not part of it. I don't think we're struggling with something that he's going to be struggling with. I would guess. Yeah. You know, Andy, I think that's true but the police had a long term multiple year grant that supported that extra person that was dealing with community and violence. The police came up in the budget that we had a person and as long as they got that money, they would continue to have this so I do think we're asking that in the budget discussions. Yes, we would like this. This is going to be, you know, maybe an unusual year in our lifetime that from the federal government comes this gift. It's real money, and it's not just another $25,000 grant so I just think trying to weave it in both here but then, as you said, when Paul brings the budget back to us as part of the budget story. So people get this larger picture and also that, okay, that gets us through 2324 whatever the year is then, you know, then we're back to the normal sources of revenues. And that's actually a good point and the reason because I've been struggling with that and how they get it in there. Really, ARPA and these grants and all of the special chunk that we got from the legislature to assist us. And I think it was labeled as public health that was really around crests. That's real money, and it's helping us do something. And we want to make sure that we show how it came in. But the other thing that we're I think ought to be concerned about is what happens when it ends. There's a path forward beyond that. And I think that's where we probably have the greatest degree of concern and feeling that there hasn't been a projection when we talk about multi year. And I think that was way of putting it, but that's what it's really about. So how to, you know, have we expressed that strongly if I expressed in the draft strongly enough or do I need to beef that up somehow. We have to reread it to see today's meeting Matt. Well, I, I was, it's funny because I was asking for the. The management policies and objectives document that, you know, we started off talking about and, you know, that does call explicitly for a five year, you know, working budget annually and, you know, I mean, you might even just lift that section directly out of that draft and put it in here, you know, with, with all I it's really excellent point. I mean, both on the expenditure side in terms of this ambitious agenda and on the revenue side in terms of all these sort of uncertainties with with state and federal support so I do think calling for that I, I've certainly heard Sean, I probably heard your presentation four or five times now and I, you know, I know Sean's thinking five to 10 years out on every, on every presentation and I, I feel like that would be something that they Sean and Paul the team would would jump at I think is to provide that kind of projection because I know they're worried about that when they think about hiring people as you know as we are I mean as every everybody who's using state federal money is, you know, constantly worried about, well, I can't hire somebody on a grant unless I have a plan to keep them, you know, or, or I'm very upfront with them on day one and say look this is a grant funded position I can make a guarantee so I think I think the five year language out of the management policies document is very useful here. And I can just follow up on that real quick. So, so again we do, we do put a five year budget projection in the budget document what we don't do I think is the level of detail that some people are asking for which is like a projection for fire salaries or something you know we project out the operating budgets at two and a half percent, our revenues are pensions are okay obligations are capital. And we look to see if we're in balance and then, and then department heads have to make those decisions within their operating budgets each year. I don't think we're going to be changing the budget presentation to be that much different than where we are now but I think one thing that would be reasonable this year in particular and I assume we'll get this to you sooner than the budget document but to include a detailed section on ARPA and the transition planning related to ARPA either in the budget document or prior to the budget document. We're planning to do do that anyway so I think that would be totally reasonable. I was circling back and then I see Matt kept his hands around. You know, way back at the beginning we talked about fact that the Council wants us to talk about the creation of two new departments and what the financial implications are and get that to TSO before the public forum on the subject to the other departments. I'm not sure that we aren't really in some way hitting on the theme that we might come up with at that point because is that what we are we are going to want to say at the public forum that we're concerned about not the first year but the years out so we'll all of this is going to come back to circle on us at some point Kathy I'm sorry. You know I, this is one, when I spoke earlier about the structure, I would make this a bullet about the multi year budget. You know that you know it's ambitious. And when I said a budget Sean, it's a question I asked the library director to she said yeah we have a budget that goes up by this much I said no that I want you to tell me your staff. And then show me with step increases with health insurance and whatever, how much it will cost to maintain that staff if we don't, you know, we don't cut hours. So, you know, starting from a base and going up, and then saying, and if we only have a two and a half increase in each of these, you know, trying to give that sense of, of the box we're in, or the limits we're in. So, I'm not asking you to change your whole budgeting process, numbers work miracles if I plug in two and a half percent and I've got revenues coming in at two and a half percent it all works. But it's like what's underneath that. So I'm not asking you to do every department, but so sometimes it's called zero based budgeting where you're, you're budgeting up from what you want to, what you want to provide but I think we at least need to give everyone not just the council but residents in the town, a sense of all of this. I think that there's a smart way out of this. It's, it's the theme of tough choices. So I would just put that up as a highlight and not to back away from this because it's much nicer to bring good news. It is. That's not always our job to just do good news as you know. Two things that I thought about as you were speaking I thought that again we're circling back to prior conversations because there was also some mentioned earlier in our discussion today about inflation. And there was a discussion that Lynn brought up about employees being drawn away for higher, higher compensation and other employers whether they'd be public or private and what are the financial consequences of that but also what are we doing in future you're budgeting to recognize that. And, you know, is that a, is that a problem and then there's the last piece that I have on it which is, in my having been director of a nonprofit organization if you got too far in this direction and discussions with my board of directors that I was feeding the employees with all sorts of arguments that they could make about why they should get higher salaries. It, you know, we're fits into collective bargaining for that matter. But Kathy, it would be helpful if you started collecting the bullets that you would want at the beginning and then that would be a really good way to go Dorothy your hand is up. Okay, since we're in this mood. I'm hoping that there is some shadow planning going on. So my mind just went back to New York City, and I remembered what building projects got wrapped, ended up teaching a school after it been wrapped for three or four years they actually wrapped it up stopped had to stop all work on it. They didn't let it decay like on Spring Street. And so it became a fabulous school which is really great now. All contracts were renegotiated all salary increases were frozen. And then back later if you were a teacher and you could hang in there for, you know, 10 years you did get the money back at some point. And the schools cut down all electives. And that included science, Jim music, art. Okay. We did survive the city did survive. That's because they had, you know, a huge staff and they had a wonderful dedicated public servants. We have great public servants, but there were some little people in some corner somewhere that said, if this happens. Okay. What do we do in terms of our four capital projects, which one. I think the school is going forward now which is what I really hope. Okay, how do we do it. What can we hold. What can we negotiate. How can we how can we handle it. And so we won't be thinking about raising salaries to lure people or keep people will be talking about cutting. Okay, I just have that feeling I don't know I just have that feeling that we're coming for another moment, another part of the cycle. But there's some deep thinking going on in the processes of town hall that is playing with scenarios. That's all. This is again part of our multi your planning thing. Sean. So some of this may fall on Paul or probably a lot of this falls on Paul but but I know one thing that would be helpful. We sort of laid out all the wants, we do a good job of identifying all the wants higher salaries more firefighters sustainability, reparation funding I mean we do a really good job of laying out the wants. I feel like it would be helpful for priority discussion about what are the highest priorities I think we, and that would include existing programs I mean, we talk about these are all new things but we never talk about well, if you want to do that. We don't care about this program we don't care that much about I know those are the hard conversations. But, you know, hearing what everybody's talking about and this concern about going forward, I mean that's really the step we need to get to as a more public dialogue about what are the highest priorities for the council that can inform Paul and my planning or on the budget. There hasn't been a lot of that again I think we do a good job of identifying the needs and the issues but at some point we've got to really say all right well, this is the most important and this is the least important so we know how to allocate funds. And again, I think we need to take into account existing programs that are already here because they all increase in costs personnel is our biggest cost that goes up every year. And so sometimes the decisions between existing programming a new program. That would be my advice hearing people's concerns about the future I think it's you know we are talking about a lot of new initiatives and that can be overwhelming. And so having this a better sense of our priorities would be helpful. And I actually, I think that's why I was having so much trouble drafting this document is that I was trying to kind of get that across with facts to this council and the next council. I may not have done a very good job of it, but that's what I was trying to do. So I built up a couple comments first of all, I think you are doing that in this document and please take our comments is, you know, things we'd like to see but it's, you can't do that unless you have a good document to start with so we're doing that because we have a good document to start I want to go back to this issue of the multi year projections and add to it that for the last couple years, I believe that the council has been pretty discouraged by the fact that we don't get a little more detail in the school and Jones library budgets. And we would like to see more detail. So multi year and detail would be useful. Now that that's a double edged sword, because then you're going to have counselors. My colleagues, our colleagues who are going to say well then I think you should cut this line item and that's not our job. The fact that we are asked to approve a school budget on the basis of, you know, maybe two or three sheets of paper is pretty astounding to me. We're back, we're going to approve a municipal budget for which we get about two or three sheets of paper for a very large portion of that municipal budget. I think we need a little more detail. I want to go on to my next point, and that is somewhere in here. I started weaving it into the end of that same paragraph that I wanted to bring in the ARPA funds. I think we need to reinforce our position that we did on Saturday at the four towns meeting that we're willing to pay our share. But why should our share in essence not lead to good solid ongoing programming instead it leads to us subsidizing the fact that the other towns don't pay their share. I understand that the state formula has the sense of you know the, the richer town should pay for the poorer towns, but it's hard for me to tell you which towns are richer when you look at housing in shoots very lever and Dorothy. When the discussion of more discussion on priorities. I remember hearing from a lot of people that at some goal setting back in the day when we met with the public and around little tables and had discussions and wrote on boards and pads that there were goal setting meetings, and that the number one priority was the fire department. And does anyone remember that. And yet, so our plans are not being based on that they're being based on our difficulty in finding a site. So I think that's, that's not good. That's not good. I know when I know that you probably know the answer to this so I'm asking. I knew the answer to this. I think we're trying to do both three things I think we're trying to look at fire at EMS capacity. We're looking at their new building. And we're looking at their equipment, and all three of them in my mind are on the plate. Okay, I, we should go on but you just brought up a point about what the expectations are what we'd like to see from the library and the schools. They're budgets and when we get on to page seven and top and budget process. That's really where it probably needs to go. And so we should make sure we get back to that we get the seven but if there's no objection I would say let's go on to expenses for capital. We have our expert here too is this Kathy was both chair of the school building committee and chair of JCPC. So, but when you have your hand up. Yeah, I, I think you're trying to say this in the first paragraph, but it doesn't come out as clear and that is that our present debt is extremely low. And that's what that is part of what is that and the bond rating and the strength of our reserves is what is is allowing us to even think about these projects. Yeah, Dorothy. That is the big difference between this the dire scenarios I was repeating from New York City with that was all that happened at a high interest time. And that's one of the reasons that we are pushing forward. We are in a low of unusually really incredible low interest time. So it really, you know, makes you want to push forward as as hard as you can go, because I just can't see how this is going to stay, you know, this is unusual at least in my lifetime it's very unusual to have this low interest for this long. And again, I get back to the son you can speak to this too and that is that Woodland spoke about about our debt load being low, our, you know, trying to get our standard and course rating as high as we possibly can and our reserves has been a long part of a three part strategy to get us where we are to be able to build the buildings. Because I think Sonya's lift was trying to make it happen. I think we've been successful at making that happen over the years. But it's taken it required discipline. It did. That's why I get frustrated when we want to spend our reserves. Sorry, Sean. It's been a long time. It's difficult choices through the years but it's good that we had that through the COVID pandemic. Sonya is not happy with the 25% reserve level. She wants to push for the for the 27. I get it. I'm with her. No, I want to push for the 25 as the norm. Well, we got that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your hand up. You know, Andy, the, the beginning paragraph under capital. I think you just gave wording that would strengthen that if we added. That words. At the beginning that we've had a very successful three part strategy. To build up our ability to address capital needs. We've been moving toward a target rate of 10% a year allocated to capital. Just clearly stating that. Set you up for the other paragraphs then. You know, and the drawn down that you can do one more sentence that we are. We've been paying off. Previous debt and we've been avoiding incurring large increasing debt. So our debt service is going to be, you know, over the coming years for existing debt. So I think you can just add that paragraph. And then, then it can go on to the four major capital projects and the building up to 10%. And it will make that segue of this, this is indeed financial planning around capital. And if you need to put, when I was saying at the very beginning, you have the bond rating and some other that up at the beginning, it's not here, but you know, the bond rating helps us get. Debt at lower interest rates as well as other things, but. It's here. And I just, you think you could strengthen that three part strategy to make it clear that there's been a very deliberate, careful. Set of long-term plans, long range planning around this. It's impressive. So it's, it's worth stating. You want to include OPEB set of sites in that strategy. And it sends a very strong message to Mr. Market that we're planning. And it's important. I think that's in the, the next section at the top. There's a, we'd want to, because I were talking about Bernie, I think in a section of OPEB. It's question. Other other budget needs, but yeah. Yeah. Where it ties together is, I think that Sean, you've been at S&P. Meetings. The S&P likes the fact that we are, that we've created and continually to the best of our ability funds develop trust. And that helps protect our. Rating. Yeah. I mean, honestly, there's two areas. There's two areas of our rating that are, that could improve. OPEB is actually one area where we could improve. They like that we have a consistent contribution, but it's not as much as it would be to, or should be if we wanted to fund it within 20 to 30 years. What we've told them is, you know, our plan and this is something we'll bring back to finance committee is when the Hampshire County pension system is fully funded, that's when we will beef up our OPEB contribution to get that funded at a faster rate. But so OPEB is actually an area where I don't think we got a bad score, but we also did get a bonus or any extra points for having a fully funded program. And then the other area that we don't just don't have a lot of control over is the income levels in town because of the students and how that impacts sort of our average income and buying power in town. It kind of skews it a little bit. So, but OPEB is one area where we could, we could still grow and contribute more and get a better score. So anything else under the capital section? I just want to correct one misimpression that people have. And that is that a ladder truck. It's maybe good for maybe a three or four story building. It's not good for anything much beyond that. Why they really want one is so that they can get over top of fire and spray down on it. And we saw them do that in the South Amherst fire just about two years ago. So Andy, my comment or question is also about the ladder truck section. I don't really know anything about ladder trucks to be honest, but I did sort of jump out of me as maybe. I don't know. I think. Could this be folded into a more general set of operating? In other words, is this the document where we make the statements about ladder truck or is that. I mean, I guess it's kind of an open question because it came up in our last meeting. And I don't know. Is that, is that a typical way to treat a question like that? Or. Is that a typical way to treat a question before we have, you know, sufficient information to make, to even give guidance, I guess, my question. So I think I asked for the ladder truck to be explicitly sort of put in here because the ladder truck. It's a very large expenditure. It's one of those things that we feel like should be a shared expense among the town, but also some of the key partners in town and maybe surrounding towns. And that we're sort of constantly pursuing that additional contribution. So I think that's one of the things that we need to do. At some point, we just need to make the decision whether we're going to go forward and buy it. So I think I asked for it to be included this year to be. To raise its importance. And send that message during the budget process. Just on. Well, I guess so I'm a ladder truck. Yeah, I agree. Lynn, what you said about tall built tall and taller buildings, but the fire chief when he was with us at the budget said. We want to build four and five story buildings. We need a lot ladder truck. He said that he said they weren't any good for UMass, for the big UMass buildings, and then he made your other points. So I would just add a sentence and the notion of linkage fees. That was inserted here. I found at least one town in Massachusetts that. To address these kinds of things, big new developments were paying into a fire. We knew that there wasn't going to be any changes. But we got a big UMass fund. Because as density increased. Particularly as or his height. So it was pre-funding. It was for capital. It wasn't for operations. It was pre-funding that. So we don't have that kind of fee. But Burlington, Vermont does. And I think it's Medford. I sent it to Sean on a. One town had a whole long list. but what they were looking to do is build up their ability off of new developments. Whether we want to do that or not is a question, but it was for these kinds of expenditures which are particularly needed. And the notion of regional, I know, Shawn, we've been going down this route, but when I was googling ladder trucks, this is a constant issue for smaller towns, I mean smaller meaning population and a number of buildings because each ladder truck is really expensive. So ours gets borrowed, but it gets borrowed less because it's not functional. So people can't borrow it right now, or it's offline, but you see other towns seeking to do this. And then my last question, and this is purely a tech question, Europe has a different kind of ladder truck. It's not a full service everything truck. One has the ladder and one has the pumper wagon, Lynn, and the actual truck with the ladder is not as expensive. So I do not know whether there are things on the market in the United States. Steve Schreiber made this comment about thinner and shorter fire engines in terms of fitting in our buildings. I have no idea, but it was, is there an alternative that gives us what we need out of a ladder truck that isn't the full blown ladder truck? And that it's a question. So I am just doing it because I think when I see in Europe, part of it is the streets aren't as big as ours, the kind of things we have won't fit down an Italian and a Swiss street, but they do have ladder trucks. So they developed a way of getting up and spraying down, not on high rises. So it's a question on what's out there that might not be traditional and might be somewhat less expensive. So I don't want to put that in this document, but I think it is goes in this bundle of something that's in a million and a half plus expense item, we should be super careful to do it in the best way we can. I actually support keeping this in here, even though it's a little strange. The one that asked recently if we had the, could we order the truck without having appropriated the money? And the answer is no. So we have to appropriate the money in order to order the truck. And then once we order the truck, it'll probably be close to two years before we get it. So I think we need to go ahead and buy the damn truck. You could write that in the guidelines. That would be very direct if you wanted to put that in there. Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate a point that I made last time and that the fire chief made to us some time ago, which is the ladder truck is also important to get above a house that set that from the street. It's a lateral thing, not just a vertical thing. So my house sits probably 40 feet from the street. I sure as heck would like a ladder truck to be able to get in there and put water on top of my house if I needed it. So it's safety for everybody. It's not just for the downtown area with the higher, you know, the taller buildings. So we should add sentences, Bob and Lynn, to this, to make that point. Yep. Sure. Takes a little bit away from the linkage argument, I suppose. Dorothy? The linkage argument reminds me of something that I'm hearing from a lot of people, which is, and we've mentioned it, we have to increase fees to cover the cost of the service. So that, for example, inspection fees. There's a lot of movement. People are saying they want to have how buildings in the rental buildings inspected upon registration, not waiting for that first because many towns do that. But of course, that would mean hiring more inspectors. And that would mean the fees need to be commensurate to being able to hire that so that services pay for themselves. And I know we've kind of talked about this, but I don't think that's happened. So I think that's a very important concept that in order to provide some services, we can try to get them on a self-supporting paying as wherever possible. And that would be one and one way to do it instead of the inspection fee being for the whole property, but it would be per unit, the fee. So somebody with 40 units would pay the same fee as somebody with two units because how it is at present. People were just talking about this to me with me on Sunday. So I don't know where that would go. But I know, in fact, I think, Sean, you're the one who's supposed to be in charge of looking at all those fees and doing that. Yeah. So we did a fee comparison not long ago and part of our budget process is to send fees out to all the departments and they review them. And so we've done that the last few years. And so it is something we look at every single year. So if there's ever a specific area you want us to highlight for departments or take a closer look at, we can certainly do that. But we do send it out to departments every year and ask them to review their fees to see if they are still keeping up with their costs. Because the parking permits was one thing that has been brought up many, many times. That's coming up. You wait a couple meetings. You'll be seeing that. Okay. And the other one is the inspection fee for rental properties. If I want more, and that would mean hiring more staff, but the staff should be paid for out of the fees. I'll mention that one to the inspection department to take a closer look at. Okay. Seeing nothing, somebody else who's asking, I think, and I assume that we've got where we want to go with the capital and that other budget needs is really just a couple sentences because it's really addressed recognizing Hampshire County Retirement and OCAP. There's one that disappeared, but I didn't bother to put it up. And that is we don't have to pay for regional lockup anymore. Those who remember town meeting every year having to appropriate any for regional lockup. All of a sudden, they found other money to pay for it. So they're on a couple pounds. Which then gets us into the budget process, Lynn. This is just a pause here because I put a note. We had this whole thing when Hampshire County was finally dissolved and Sean or Sonia or Andy, didn't the state take off some money we owed and we no longer owe it? What was that? Yeah. So the pension obligation for Hampshire County used to be folded into our assessment. All of our towns would help contribute to pay for that obligation. And that portion, I believe, has now gone away. It's a small enough portion that it didn't make a noticeable impact and how much our costs went up. But it is the retirement portion for the old cog. It's now funded by the state, I believe. So we still have obligation, though. We belong for our own employees. For our own employees. Got it. But the council government employees are now out off of that system. Got it. Thank you. That's all I wanted to know. So since there isn't much to say here, in the next section to budget process, the one thing that I had noted earlier was that there was a suggestion that we say a little bit more about what we expect in the library and school budgets than is currently here. Otherwise, I don't know, Bob. I just wanted to throw this out. We talk about, in the second paragraph, the new finance committee or the new council, maybe it would be helpful to the new members of the council. And I don't know how I'm going to go with how the finance committee is going to be rejiggered at all, if at all. But it might be helpful for us to meet more frequently in January and February with the council or with members of the council that just to kind of talk about the budget, the issues, things like that, just as an educational process. Actually, I'm going to turn to Sean Sonny and Lynn, because I think that there has been discussion about orientation of new counselors. Yeah, I think if the plan is to do an orientation, I think it would make sense for finance committee to be there. If we wanted to make it a, I'm not sure if it was intended to be a public meeting or private meeting. I assume it'll be public because it'll be counselors at that point. But I don't see why finance committee members can join if they want to participate and give their their insights on the process. The one orientation that presently is scheduled is before the new council is seated and sworn in. That's on December 13th. However, it will be a public meeting. It starts at 5.30. We're trying to actually not, that meeting is so loaded that if anybody comes out of that with any sense of the budget, I'll be astounded. So I actually think that your suggestion is an excellent one. And that because when we first started with the council, we had actually had a full council orientation to every department at some level. So then the next time, so when the budget actually came up, we weren't flying blind in terms of each of the departments. And if we wanted to, the finance committee could host those discussions and make them available to all counselors, but it could be done with the idea that if the finance committee gets a little more of an orientation to what constitutes town government, and I don't just mean an organization chart, which is basically what they've seen. I think it would be useful to do that in February, probably February, and I don't think it's going to happen in January. And I don't think it would be a terrible waste of time either. The other only other thing, Andy, I actually don't remember, but I think by the time we were seated on December 3rd, the financial guidelines had already been developed. Your first statement is not correct. You had already started the budget process as a select board when we were sworn in. And then we did the old finance committee developed the guidelines, and they were truncated from what the old guidelines used to be like, but they did guidelines to start out the first process. That's my recollection. Yeah, I guess the other thing I just threw for everybody present, mostly for our resident members, is that actually we're kind of in a strange position at the end of at the beginning of January, because the three of you have continuing terms on the committee. The rest of us do not have continuing terms on the committee. And so our terms expire on January 2nd. And we're not members of the finance committee then, unless we are reappointed after the new council forms. So one of the three of you might end up being temporary chairman, who knows, but at any event it is one of the crazy things. And the other thing to note is that everybody here from the council, all five of us, ran for and were reelected so that none of us are disappearing from the council, but we don't have an appointment to the committee that extends beyond January 2nd. There is a strong push, however, to have committee appointments to the four committees made within that first week because CRC has now scheduled a hearing on January 10th. Kathy. I just want to completely endorse the scheduling and I would put it as the sentence here on process that we're recommending a meeting in February with the new council. And I found it on the inherited guidelines that we got that first year was a document that I had all sorts of yellow highlights on because there was the clearest explanation of what two and a half is and what we can do with it. And I sat at a finance committee meeting that was pre-council election where they deliberately wrote more than they would have because they were giving it as a gift to us coming in. So I think this could be part of February that at this point, hopefully we know how that works, but that's not, it's very documents if you try to find exactly how it works in the budget. So it was just a very useful thing that they gave us aside from guidelines, they gave us some basic, some budget basics in that last guideline that they handed over. So I think asking for a February meeting for this would be really good in terms of a, it's more than a primer. It's trying to give people the same sense of this is where we're getting money, where it's going, etc. Yeah, great idea. I did include, as you noted, a link to the Department of Revenue Division of Local Services primer on two and a half. I'll be shocked if anybody actually uses the link to read the damn thing, but it was a valiant attempt. Yeah, yeah, two things. I think we also need to recognize that, Andy, you may be the only person on the Finance Committee now and on the Council that has ever gone through a two and a half override, and how you do one maybe, Bernie, you probably have done it in another location, but the whole issue of how you do two and a half overrides and so forth will fall to some extent on the Finance Committee because we, the Finance Committee deals with the large capital projects, and when we get to the school, there is just about no way we can do it without a two and a half override. So we have a steep learning curve for this Council on that issue. I think Sonia was here in 2016, too, right? So her and Andy, yeah. Thanks, Sonia. I'm not going to use this as an opportunity to say don't leave us too soon. Sonia had a run, but she wishes everybody a happy Thanksgiving. She's on vacation today, so she's a symbol of what you were all talking about at the beginning of the of the meeting. So she has been for a long time. So planning for a few two years was our last section, pretty much, and to some extent, you've been in that a little bit. Yeah, I think the the discussion of the pilot is very good. I think I think we really need to focus on it. You know, I think we need to focus the manager and the Council's attention on that issue. The only thing I saw there here that I have an issue with is in the last paragraph where we talk about advocating for increases in state income tax. I don't know that it's appropriate for us to recommend or advocate for a particular type of taxation or whatever. I mean, I think we can we can advocate for greater state aid to Amherst, but I think it's up to the state, you know, the legislature and the governor to figure out how they would do that. And I don't I don't think it's appropriate for this organization or even the Council to do that. That's just my my opinion. I agree with Bob, although I probably wrote that sentence a year ago, Bob, because I was looking at how much the state's income tax had gone down on capital. And what that would have bought us in roads and schools. But the only comment I had, Andy, comes off of last night's discussion when let me find when when we're talking about the UMass Strategic Partnership. And we say it's a model last night. I think we said we want the the town manager to execute a strategic management agreement with the colleges, not just with UMass, you know, so I would write this a little bit stronger. You know, we're saying it's great that we have one, but we really need to execute it with UMass as well as the other colleges. So here it says it serves as a model with working with the other two institutions. I would just do it. And we thank UMass for giving us some gifts. So it's always nice that they did give us some money. So I'm just changing the words to a stronger word. That's it. And I agree with Bob saying, you know, should advocate for more money, more money from the state. You know, they're getting a big chunk of our for money that they still have to distribute. And they were talking about a big, a huge piece being housing money, affordable housing money and home ownership money. And it would be great if that it would help us a lot if that came or if we got some roads and bridges out of them. Yeah, so. Okay, well, actually, I just, while you're mentioning UMass up at the top of eight, I think that might be where it is, maybe it's at the bottom of another page. I also think it would be useful to recognize the chamber and the bid because of the integral nature that they have become to our economic development. And some of that has been financial in relationship, you know, grants to do small business work, etc. That's one thing. The other thing that going back to that last paragraph, I probably wouldn't be as specific, but the schools have a list of certain things that they would like to see changed in the school formula, mostly around charter schools. And the other issue is, I'm not going to get the right name, but it's something that holds us harmless for some kind of increase. Sean, you probably have the name for that. Yeah, chapter 70, hold harmless aid. Yeah. Thank you. Charter School formula is actually mentioned in the second to last paragraph in that section. Would you put bid and chamber into the conclusion section? Thank yous. Appreciation or review? You know, it's interesting. I maybe I just want to bring them in. I mean, there's been other non-profit partners that have been critical to the survival through this time. And two of them are the survival center and Amherst family outreach that we've given money to that they in turn could help buy meals for families from restaurants. And so there's been a real group effort around economic vitality issues in relationship to those two groups of non-profits. Survival center and family outreach? Family outreach, yeah. They're the ones that manage the meal program. Because I go through it, I'll see where I can fit it in, Bernie. Just a quick note that pilot programs are voluntary. So, you know, and you don't want to give people the impression, you know, we don't have them because we're not, we don't have the right legislation. But even Boston is even Boston, which is exceptional, almost everything in the Commonwealth has a voluntary program. And they they all these pilot programs all seem to have a community benefit offset. So that you're you're that recognizes some of the contributions that not not for profit tax exempts make. And in Amherst College's case, it would be all the property they leave on the tax rolls would come off of any pilot agreement as a community community benefit payment. Yeah, one thing I didn't really touch on too much is that we were approached as a council probably about a year ago by a group of cities and towns that have been pressing the legislature to create a statutory right of cities and towns to impose require pilot payments. And, you know, we did talk about a little bit at the time, but it sort of died away there, after a point, and it was being pressed by a legislator who would, how shall I say it didn't have a lot of friends across the board. And so those who we were sort of cautioned about not getting too close. But there is that legislation out there and I know that Deynequitz in Northampton was pressing really hard on that issue at one point. They keep trying. I mean, when I was managing Deerfield, that was part of an effort along with Northampton, a couple of other towns to any town sponsored for a while. Yeah, we had been working on it and, you know, the tech exempt organizations, these little places like Harvard and MIT, we're not very happy. So I think New Hampshire, I'm not to beat this in the ground, but I think New Hampshire has a system whereby certain portions of private university properties can be text. But it's been a while since I've looked at it. So if the council is willing to have that in our section on where we mentioned legislative questions. Well, you do mention on page eight, you do mention legislation permitting assessment of pilot fees, which right now the only pilot fees we're allowed to negotiate are assessed for solar projects. Matt. So this is totally stepping away from that. That's a super fascinating conversation though. So it's hard to step out of it. But I did want to just sort of indicate a small scale version of the overall theme of transition planning in terms of, you know, moving off of ARPA funds and into the general budget with the schools on the top of page five. So Andy, I'm kind of jumping back into the document for a minute because I'm just thinking about, you know, where we are in our planning process and salaries that we're carrying on, you know, ESSERS school-based recovery funds. And, you know, I think it would be helpful to the certainly the finance committee, if not the council, to understand what the school's transition planning looks like in terms of, you know, recovery funded positions, you know, two or three years out, because that's something that we're all we're all doing. And of course, you know, we're doing it, we're looking at from the overall town budget. But I think the school budget is going to have a lot of that, you know, we certainly do here. And it's worth it's worth us knowing about so we can maybe just ask for that specifically. Okay. Thank you. Lynn. Yeah, I want to go back to pilots briefly. And that is that, Sean, I can't remember in the document that you and Paul developed for Mindy and Joe, did we have pilots in that document? No, because that document was more about if there's ever funding available for our town. Yeah, for our town. And we didn't list legislative issues, but I think it is a good one that they should push for us. And my indication from talking with Mindy and Joe about pilots is that if we let them know we would like to see something like this, then they would be more inclined to jump in. So it's an option. Okay. So what I'll try and do, it's going to be hard with Thanksgiving coming up, but we do have some time. But to try and get a work on whether I just become draft for if not a tire. And then if I need to consult with individuals about sections that we've talked about today, or even send you sections or ask you to suggest language for sections, I might do that. But I will move forward as best we can to get this. I think there was a discussion that something that Lynn asked me last night during the meeting, and I wanted to just touch on it, which was our original plan had been that this would be ready for the December 6th meeting, because I was the next meeting after the 15th when we planned this. And another meeting has now been scheduled for the Council on what is November 29. And so she was asking me the question. I was thinking no, but I did want to mention it. We didn't put it on the 29th. We did not. It's not on there right now. No, it is not. Because you asked me, too, were you thinking of putting it on the 29th? On the 6th. Yeah, it's on the 6th. And that will give us the ability to, when we talk about next meetings, back and see if we need an additional actual meeting for any purposes, including to go over a final draft of this as a group, as opposed to leaving it in that big status where I'm given the responsibility. But we can't have the group process to approve it without a meeting. Otherwise, Tina will jump out of the screen and strangle me, so I wouldn't let that. So I think that we're done with this piece for now. Dorothy. Just a quick question. You said CRC was having a hearing on Monday, January 10th. Yep. They don't have meetings on Mondays. What time of day is it on? I don't know. TSO. Am I really getting it mixed up now? I have been informed by the present chair of CRC that she would prefer that we not schedule a council meeting on December, on January 10th, because that is when she is scheduling now CRC's hearing of the solar moratorium. Yes. And now I recall that because I've actually talked with Andy about that, because she and I have talked about solar moratorium for a little bit. She has to schedule it because it has to be posted fairly far in advance. So she's really scheduling for the next council. Right. And that is why the pressure is on for the appointments to committees, to the standing committees, be made immediately after the third. Matt, see your hand up. I just want to clarify, so we are not meeting on the 30th, correct? Well, that's something, something that we have to talk about in a moment when we get to next meetings. But where we're at right now, let's just go back to the agenda real quickly, and then we'll come back to it. The performance show on Common, we left it for the band shell, that there was going to be an MOU or contract developed between the bid and the town, and Sean and Gabriel are going to work on it. And I guess the question that we're going to have to, and I think it's really Sean who has to tell us this is to how quickly that can happen because if it's not going to have, you know, if it's just the holidays are going to drag it out, then it needs to go into the transfer MOU for the next next finance committee meeting. Yeah. And so again, my thought is I didn't know if we should start working on that before the TSO does their piece, and then ultimately it's approved by the council. I didn't know if we should start working on MOU before all those steps have happened first. So assuming that we wait for those things to happen before we start spending time on that, then it probably would be an issue that would carry over into the next year. Yeah, and I had looked up the date and I don't have it in front of me now and didn't TSO have a schedule on that one? Yeah, I think their hearing was on the 9th. Yeah, I don't know when that goes back to council to consider. That's correct. So it's a question of whether we want to say anything on December 9th about that issue to actually hand it up. I think you could mention that an MOU will be developed. I don't think it needs to be developed by that time because again, I don't think the ban shell is going to appear anytime super soon. But I think maybe one of the recommendations could be that the town manager execute an MOU or outline how the maintenance of the ban shell will be managed. And Paul, and Andy, that's consistent with an agenda setting discussion we had just today because it's assumed that the ban shell, this can't happen that way. I may be wrong. When the ban shell comes up on the agenda, which I thought was on the 6th, but I guess it's not, the motion is probably going to have something like requiring or asking the town manager to basically keep track of it. And to do that in a way that, and then he regularly updates the council, because there's a lot of unknowns about the ban shell like sidewalks and stuff like that. And it's, you know, this is the kind of thing that the council should not spend their time on. But we probably will want to hear about it. I'm looking at this. I'm going to tell you that I think the, yeah, the ban shell, they are not having a public hearing on the ban shell. They don't have to. I was mixing up the they are having a they are they are debating it on December 2nd. And from everything we can tell, both the design review board, the historic commission, and I think the, I always get the name wrong, disability accessibility advisory committee. Thank you. So they believe that all their reports will be available on December 2nd. They then plan to actually make their recommendation on December 2nd. So it will be on the council's schedule for December 6th. Now what I'm looking at right now is, as you were talking, I pulled up the spreadsheet that TSA chair, Evan Ross, sent to the committee, because as I said earlier, that's the other committee I'm on. And that is December 2nd. We make a recommendation to the council on both the outdoor performing arts venue, which is what he's calling it, and the town council public ways policy revisions. And the public hearing that night is actually on an entirely different issue. And that's the street relocation parking changes around Kendrick Park because of the new playground. And then we have the other thing, which was the public forum that we previously talked about. And that has to do with the addition with the two new departments. And that's on December 9th. It's the public forum on the Crescent DEI office. And that's when our committee is asked if we have any comments to offer about the financial implications, which is why I think I sent to the resident members the request from the manager, because we do need to come back to that. So just to clarify, on November 29th, Athena, you can chime in here. I don't see anything that is financial in nature, but on December 6th, there is the performance shell. There is the discussion of the budget guidelines. There's the discussion of the next round of discussion on the town manager's evaluation. And then there's the second discussion on the town manager's goals. It's also the state-of-the-town address. So if we do we need an additional finance committee meeting, because that's what we're really getting down to is item six is next meetings. We're sort of flushing out what it is we need to have next meeting in our discussions, given the amount of things that we've talked about, should we schedule the next meeting and would it then be November 30th? There is a CRCC meeting scheduled for the 30th. Oh, that's right. We try and avoid that because Dorothy does WD. So can I get and also trying to give you a little more time? Right. Oh, no, no, wait a minute. But if we're going to recommend on the shell, we have to have it to TSO by the second. We don't really have to have a recommendation there because I think that we're sort of that is that we have already in last night's meeting in the report that Kathy wrote on behalf of our committee reported that our recommendation is that an MOU or contract be negotiated between the town and bid. And there was some specifications that were included in the discussion from the last meeting that you include Kathy. And then so we really don't need to say much more about it than that because it's not going to be negotiated probably in time for us to review it and present it to anyone. That's what I was going to. That was the point I was going to make, Andy, that we Andy shared the report that we sent up, but I tried to capture our discussion about liability and some of the other issues we raised in that for what it should do. So we're not asking for the hard copy of it. We're asking for the sense of what should be in it. So I don't personally feel like we have to meet on that. And what I was going to ask on this emerging draft, if we can each send you, I took notes on USB to draft this idea of bullets. So I will do that and you can decide whether you like them or not. But I would be happy if we can all just send you or either line edits or added and that you take charge of that. I'd be happy not seeing the draft again rather than meeting this way before the council meeting. I think I trust you to honor what we send and everyone raised different issues. So if people send you the sentences and you show us a draft and we can independently not CC all it's the way we did. Lynn, way back when we did the town manager goals that way. And you just, you know, we were all agreeing on the changes. So it's just a what's the precise wording of them? I think we kind of signed off on what we want done to the document. So I think what Kathy, what you're suggesting is that if Andy took the report or you wrote this as vice chair, took the report, you just wrote and you sent the section on the shell performance shell. And on behalf of the finance committee, you sent that to Evan as the finance committee's deliberation. Okay, that takes care of that item. So then the next item that you're discussing and that is that we all send Andy our suggestions, by the way, he did send us a Word document. So if you want to track changes, you can. And I just sent them to you, Andy. So if we send them to Andy and not to anybody else, then we trust Andy to make the changes and Andy, you feel you have to send back out for individual eyes. I believe you can do that. But we cannot ever reply all. Athena? Yes. As long as you're not sharing those edits with the quorum outside of meeting, then you're good. So Andy's like, like he described earlier, can contact individual members for input on sections as long as you're not sending all of those edits to the entire committee or feedback prior to a meeting. Why my emails always say, do not reply all in big bold letters. Yeah, the other thing, I'm just saying this out loud because to see if Athena agrees is that I cannot report if everybody in the end sends me an email that says, okay, this looks great now. I cannot report that because that would constitute a vote of the committee outside of the committee meeting. And I have to take responsibility for the draft totally on my own. And I may have that knowledge, but I cannot report it. Right. Got it. So I think we're just so we're all clear that it's never going to say that it was approved by the entire committee because in fact, it was not because it would have to be at an open meeting and we're not being able to schedule one. So the other thing then, so it seems like we're not going to meet again till the 7th. The 7th is going to be comments from the council that we need to consider for revisions to the guidelines document, and then it'll go back to the council one last time. But that's what we've done in prior years. And the other issue that will definitely be on the agenda is this transfer memo where we are suggesting to the next finance committee, of which three of you definitely will be members. What it is we envision is the work assignments for the committee. And then if Sean has progress on one of any of three things, it could be all three, but financial policies and objectives, markup version of the final changes that you would like to see. And then we discuss those changes and what we do with it. So that was one of the, oh, I know we definitely have to talk about the financial implications of the two new departments. That was what I was going to say. Yeah, that has to come up. Whether there's going to be anything that Sean, you have further to tell us about ARPA. And I think that was in the ban shell MOU, if there's anything to report on that, but we're not necessarily expecting them, but if then we would hear about it. So I think what we're saying is we're not meeting on the 30th, but we are meeting on December 7th. Correct. Okay. Thanks. I'll always take an extra day. Yeah, it's Dorothy doesn't get the extra day because it's a CRC meeting. Right. That's why we can't do it. Anyway, anything else that anybody has for today's meeting, anything that not anticipated other than the fact that I should have mentioned the need for transfer remover before, but that's not been handled. I just want to echo Lynn's opening statement, Andy, and a big thank you for this. I mean, what you gave us was so much of what we talked about last time that what I thought we were doing were refinements, some expansions. So thank you for what clearly was a challenging task. Thank you. Well, thank you for saying that. I hope I didn't live up to the same standard then in the next draft, which may be tougher than you think. Okay. So with that, I guess I should declare the meeting adjourned. And thank you very much. This has been a great discussion. I really appreciate everybody's contributions. So happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you all. Thanks.