 All right, Amherst media, we're ready to go. Good evening. Tonight is our forum on the budget. Looking forward to 2021. It is November 19. And based on Governor Baker's orders of March 12. We are allowed to meet virtually. I'm going to call on each counselor by name. And please unmute and confirm that you are here. And then please make sure you mute again. So I'm going to start with Alyssa Brewer. Let's have a brewer. Let me start with Shalini Balmill. Yeah. Alyssa Brewer present. Babe. Are you ready to get started? We're here at the Angeles. Absaam. Darcy Dumont. Here. I'm using Latin. Lynn Griezmer's here. Mandi. Jo Hanity present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Yeah. Brian. President. Sine. Here. Dave Shriver. Present. And Sarah Schwartz. Present. Given that we have a quorum of the council president, I'm calling the meeting to order at 632. We are going to begin with a brief presentation. And then there'll be plenty of opportunity. For people to make public comment. Limited in time to three minutes. I also want to point out that we continue to have closed captioning. And if you're on zoom, you can do, you can go to that and you can press on closed captioning. And it will show everything that we are saying. Once in a while there are spelling errors. So just be aware of that. With that, I'm going to turn. Yes. Isn't it posted also as a finance committee meeting. Please go. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It is posted as finance committee meeting. I need to call that meeting to order too. And you've actually already confirmed the attendance of. The council members of the committee. And I think Bob Hegner is the other person who's present. So, Bob, if you could confirm your presence then. I'm here. We're good. Okay. And with that, we're going to go ahead and Sean. Is going to make a brief presentation and then we will move on. To public comment. Okay. Paul, are we going to go through this the same way we did on Monday night? Okay. So I'll start. So this is the bud, the public forum on the budget. This is a requirement of the town charter. When we first started this, we did it later in the budget process, but in consultation with the town council, we determined that was better to do the public forum on the budget. Early before the budget is actually proposed. So this is the opportunity for the public to weigh in in advance of the preparation of the budget. And so in the way public forums work is that there's a presentation, but at least 50% of the time must be devoted to listening to the public's comments. Next slide. So what we will present tonight is a look at the. Financial conditions of the town. We will identify the economic impacts of COVID-19. We'll talk about the need for capital investment because one of the ways we balanced the FY 21 budget was by deflating the amount of contributions we made to capital. We also want to recognize the impact on taxpayers for any kind of tax increase. I think we want to recognize that we did a terrific job and the council deserves a lot of credit for actually approving and implementing the FY 21 budget. Credit goes to our comptroller Sonia Aldridge and finance director son, Sean Mingano, and for making all this come. Come to a reality. There's some communities that still have not adopted their FY 21 budgets. And the state is still not adopted its FY 21 budget. So we've been working in a really time of uncertainty. I'm not going to go through every one of these points. You know, we'll talk to you about how we believe that our strong fiscal management has put the town in a position to be able to move forward on some important initiatives and projects. And it's really based on strong working relationships with the other elected officials, specifically the board of library trustees and the school committee and their leadership, their staff leadership there. Our approach historically through the town has been to take very modest, careful steps along the way to make sure that we have the revenues, adequate revenues to support any, any initiatives that we get took on. So next slide. So Paul, I'll walk through this one. So real quick before I dive into this and some of the details and I'll make this bigger. I do want to just point out that you can get more information on our budget by going to the town's website. And if you click on the government tab and there's a little budget icon that will pop up, you click the budget icon. And then you can find out more information on the FY 21 budget. There's also a place for FY 22's budget now. And so you'll see more information on the FY 22 calendar, a longer version of this presentation with more data and more slides on some financial information for the town. And also on that same page is a feedback button that you can click to submit budget feedback. So if there's anything that you remember after tonight and you want to submit it formally, that's one way you could do it is to click that submit budget feedback button and there's a little form and all that comes to the town manager and myself. So this is the revenue side of our budget. It's broken into four categories, property tax, local receipts, state aid and other financing sources. The largest portion of our revenues comes from property taxes. And the two components that really change each year are the allowable increase, which is always 2.5% and our new growth. And new growth generally comes from new developments, new construction that's going on in town. But it also comes from things as simple as home renovations and improvements that increase the value of a home. And so the variable really that's important to look at this year is the new growth number, which is a little bit up from FY 21, but lower than where we generally see it. And we adjusted that down a little bit because of the pandemic. In the local receipt section, I won't go through every line, but I'll point out a couple. So hotel, motel and meals excise, that's one that is driven by our local economy. When we go out to eat at a restaurant or stay in a hotel, that's where we get that revenue from. And so we cut that way back for FY 21, because there was so much uncertainty and we're projecting that to start to climb back and FY 22. The columns here, if you want to get a sense of where things were, you can look at that FY 20 actual and FY 20 actual is a good idea of where we were, even though the last couple of months of FY 20 were impacted by the pandemic. So that even FY 20 might be done a little bit. Another area, I'll just point out pilot. You'll see a 13% reduction in our payment and lieu of taxes category. I don't want people to think that's a loss of revenue. We had a 40 year pilot agreement with a entity that expired this past year. And so now that entity is paying regular property taxes. And so that went up into new growth. Departmental revenue, you'll see a really large increase. That's because we reduced revenues for our leisure services programming or Amherst recreation. I'm not sure if they've officially made the switch, but we reduced those programming revenues quite a bit for FY 21, because at the time we didn't know what type of services would be able to be delivered. They've been able to do some things. And we believe going into next, when this starts next July, they'll start getting back on track. And so that's where we get the money from. The special assessments. That's where our, the money we get from the colleges and universities for the PVTA. We pay a portion and UMass pays a portion and the other colleges pay a portion. And so that revenue we get from the colleges and universities to pay the assessment comes into that special assessment section. And then the last one I'll point out here is in miscellaneous. That's where we have our UMass occupancy fees. That hotel has been closed. So far this year and it appears it's going to be closed for the rest of the year. So, but we are projecting that going into FY 22, we would see that open back up and start to collect some revenue. Going into the next section, which is state aid. There's so much uncertainty around state aid that we have kept this level for now. There's a few areas that we're definitely going to find out more information in the near future. But we wanted to go slow with state aid. And so we've kept that level. We do know that the state did promise us level funding on our revenues for FY 21. However, there always could be mid-year. Reductions to state aid. That we still need to be cautious of. And then other financing sources. The two biggest ones there are ambulance fund and our enterprise fund reimbursements. So the ambulance fund generates revenue when our ambulances go out and they bill insurances and the insurance might come back in and help support EMS staffing and some other areas. And most recently, it helped support new ambulance that was approved Monday night. So, and then the other area is enterprise funds. So we have enough for enterprise funds, water, sewer, solid waste and transportation. And all of those pay an indirect charge to the general fund to represent the services that the general government provides to those enterprise funds. And that revenue comes in here. So all in all, we're projecting that our revenues are going to grow about 3% in total, which is good. But it's still, if you look at FY 20, we're still not back to FY 20 levels for revenues. On the expense side, this, we break our operating budgets down into four departments, the town, elementary schools, the Amherst Pellum regional school district and the library. And so we do have a lot of, we do have a lot of people who are in the library. And so we decided because of all the uncertainty around the pandemic to start this year with level funding. This would be the second year of level funding. If things don't improve. So that will be difficult on operating budgets. You'll see for the schools, they actually have a small reduction. That's because we, there's been a longstanding agreement with the elementary schools to adjust their, their budget each year by changes in charter and choice and so on and so forth. And so we have a lot of people who are in the library. And some of the years, they come in higher than everybody else by a little bit. And some of the years they come in lower. And this just happens to be a year where the adjustment works against them. The next section is capital. And so one of the things that Mr. Backelman mentioned earlier is that there's a high focus on capital this year. And you can see an FY 21 that we really reduce capital significantly from FY 20. And so we need to get it back up. We've got a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, we've looked at the projects. We've looked at what was deferred. And we think if we get to 8%, we can make a lot of headway and catching up on the things that we pushed off. And another positive development in capital that I'll just point out is you'll see a. Pretty large reduction in our debt service current. That's a longstanding debt obligation for roads that was, is going to be completely paid off this year. That was a huge increase in that. And so that's the, the important area. There's our pension assessment that's for all the, all four departments up above, that generally grows seven to 8% a year. And then down below and unappropriated uses. So that's where our reserve for abatement and exemptions, which is we usually use a placeholder of 1% of whatever the, the tax levy is. state aid every year, there's also a number of charges. The two largest charges in our state assessments category is charter tuition and the PVTA assessment. So again, we're keeping state aid level for now, we're also keeping the assessments level and we'll adjust those as we get more information. So right now we've got a small surplus but we know there's a lot that's gonna change over the next month or two that will update this and have more information in the future. The next couple of slides are really to share information about the pandemic. So this one in particular, focuses on the revenues that support our budget that were most affected by the pandemic. So the first one is our transportation, which is for our enterprise fund that gets its revenues from parking in town primarily. And that's the one that we're most worried about because parking really dropped off over the summer and it slowly picked back up but it's still well below where normal levels are. And so that one we'll be watching very closely. The other ones are licenses and permits, meals tax, hotel motel and UMass occupancy. And if I didn't mention before, this is a comparison of actual revenues in FY20 to actual first quarter revenues in FY20 to first quarter revenues in FY21. So it's really comparing apples to apples over the same time period. We did budget reductions for FY21. We anticipated that there would be drop offs in these revenues. And so other than transportation, all these reductions are in line with what we budgeted. Transportation is really the big unknown because we're not sure when that's gonna come all the way back. And then likewise, another area we're watching closely is our water consumption. So we have a water enterprise fund and a sewer enterprise fund. When there are fewer people in town, in particular college students and staff, the water consumption drops off quite a bit. And normally reductions in water consumption is not a bad thing, but our enterprise funds derive the revenue from consumption. And so when there's a steep drop, like there was when the university and the colleges sent all the students home, the enterprise fund has to deal with that drop in revenue. And so you can see in July, there was a pretty big difference between what type of consumption there was last year in FY20 for the first quarter and our consumption for FY21. August, it actually balanced out a little bit. And then in September, we're seeing the gaps start to grow again. So we're watching this very closely as well. There's a little bit of a lag in these numbers because some people are billed quarterly and some people are billed monthly. So we might can see that gap continue to grow a little bit. But if more students come back and things start to come back a little bit in town for the second half of the fiscal year, we would expect to see these gaps close a little bit. But we also budgeted for these reductions as well. And with that, I will turn it back to Paul. Thank you, Sean. So I wanna note that we do have very strong ratings from the standard and poor's bond rating, which is important indicator of the town's financial strength. They look at our operations. They look at the reserves. They look at the broader and economic situation as well. And that we have purposely under, for many years the town has been building up its reserves in order to take on the major capital projects that you're aware of. Next slide. So the, again, I think I don't wanna read, say everything that Sean just addressed this sort of summarizes all the things that we had said previously. We have tried to maintain a budget that gives us adaptability so we can respond to situations, especially in a COVID world. We don't know what's gonna happen after January one. Right now we've been buffeting the winds with our funds from the CARES Act after January one that those funds are not there. We don't know what's going to happen. I was just on a call today with the Lieutenant Governor and Senior Department of Revenue Officials. They're not even speculating on what will happen. And even any decision they think will be retroactive. So it's not going to help us with the funds that we have right now. So keep going, yeah. This is a quick snapshot of the needs of all three entities, library schools in town. As you can see, we're all struggling with facility needs. We're all struggling with state aid. We're all struggling with COVID-19. And each one of us has slightly different issues. There's an article in the Boston Globe today I think about declining revenues or declining school enrollments throughout the state and how the state has to start to grapple with that. And they seem to be a little bit redundant. So moving forward, we're hoping to take some strong steps in the near future on the large capital projects. We think that it's wise to, we've built up these reserves for a reason that we've been fortunate in being able to hold on to them so far. But we will be suggesting ways to use them to offset the impact of the large capital projects on taxpayers. And one of the things that we're always careful of is any new initiative. We want to make sure that there's a proven ongoing revenue source to support any new initiatives, which has always been one of the big challenges for any community when you have so many needs and have so many initiatives that you want to take on. If you don't have the revenues to support it, it's a recipe for disaster. We believe that our business fundamentals downtown should be reliable. They should snap back quicker than many other communities because we do have a strong economic base with the university and two colleges. And one of our biggest concerns, again, as Sean mentioned, is the impact on our enterprise funds, which are basically like little businesses, they have to raise the money in order to operate. So Paul, I'll walk through the calendar real quick. So this is actually, we've got a few more things accomplished since last time because this was from the financial indicators report. So that you can put a check. The resident capital request deadline also went by, so you can check that one off as well. And tonight we're here at the FY22 budget public forum. So the next big things that come out related to the budget are the budget guidelines and the finance committee has begun discussing those guidelines and they'll use the information that they hear tonight to further develop those guidelines as we go. And eventually the town council will develop, will adopt them, hopefully sometime in December is where we're targeting right now. Other items, just to note, the CPAC has a meeting going on right now. They are also discussing their recommendations that will eventually come to the council. We have a BCG meeting, which is a budget coordinating group tentatively scheduled for February. We'll see if we need that. And then I guess the last thing I'll finish with is our capital planning process really kicks into high gear when the Joint Capital Planning Committee starts, which we're tentatively scheduled to start in February. And that's a committee that reviews the capital improvement program and makes recommendations to the town manager. And then there's a number of meetings with the finance committee and the town council and the spring and later on in the spring. And with that, we will turn it over for any comments. Thank you. I think you can go ahead and take the screen down. Thanks, I appreciate that. We are now entering into the public forum period. Based on the charter, the public forum will be open for at least as long as 22 minutes, which is the time that we have already taken. So I see one hand up and it's Lydia Irons. And would you please bring Lydia into the room where she can speak for us? Hello, all, can you hear me? We can, thank you, Lydia. State your name and where you live. My name is Lydia Irons. I live on Jeffrey Lane and I've been a resident in Amherst for 11 years. I'm also a nursing student at UMass. I have two small children that I want to grow up in an equitable and just community. So I'm asking you as you look at the upcoming budget to prioritize the needs of the BIPOC residents of Amherst as that will lead for a better town for all of us. Tomorrow, I will be getting up at 4 a.m. and doing a 12-hour clinical shift in a hospital where there are more and more COVID cases every day. In my clinical rounds, I've also been placed at the UMass testing site and I was actually thinking of all of you when I was there last. As I tested hundreds of students for coronavirus and Amherstown police officer came through the testing site with the puppy that the APD now has as a comfort dog. I thought about the nearly two hours of public comment that you heard from your constituents imploring you to cut the APD budget and the presentations that were made about how above par our police officers are and how they need all of the money that they get from us. I was reminded of that and of all of you as I watched the officer with the puppy stand at the doors of the testing site having students that I had just tested for coronavirus crowd around and pat the dog. I thought about how much money the town of Amherst proposed to spend per resident in the FY21 budget cycle, $136 per resident to police, but only $3.77 per resident on public health. I also heard in this presentation that we just bought a new ambulance and according to Paul Buckleman's October 19th report, ambulance and emergency calls continue to be low this fall with calls coming in at less than half of what they normally are. And if you're choosing between cutting funds from public health, housing or other social services or the police, please cut the police's budget. Even if we are going forward with level funding model for the whole town and rearrange the departmental funds to address the systemic racism in our town, we need our budget to support our residents in this unimaginably difficult time and we need to get comfort from our town in solid and secure public health services, not from a puppy. Thank you. Lydia, thank you for your comments. Thank you for your work as an emergence as a nurse and also UMass Center. Zoe Crabtree, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Just a moment please. Hi, can you hear me now? We can, thank you. Awesome, thank you Athena for getting me on here. My name is Zoe Crabtree and I live in District 5. I attended the financial indicator presentation last week and just listened to the shortened version of it now. And I heard the presenters paint a picture of our finances as relatively stable. You saw last week's that we're trending positively over the past 10 years. And ultimately, okay, despite the hit that COVID-19 has put in tax revenue and local receipts. I heard them try and make an argument that we should hold steady and keep doing things as we've always done them. And if you're wondering how we've done things, you also just heard from Lydia that this year's budget includes approximately $136 per resident to the police department and just under $4 per resident to the Department of Public Health. What I didn't hear in the presentation last week or this evening was an assessment of how the town's financial systems contribute to systemic racism or any serious discussion of how we could change that. With the exception of Darcy's comment last week about how the council should consider ways to shift the town's budget priorities to address climate change and potential alternatives to policing. It felt as if everything was business as usual as if systemic racism didn't exist. And before you started thinking, well, it was the financial indicator presentation not really the place to be discussing racism. I want to remind everyone that the town's financial decisions have huge consequences for our community along lines of race and class. Pretending those consequences don't exist doesn't make them go away. And we can't address systemic racism as if it were a separate issue that isn't relevant in core governmental processes. It's baked in. So in order to ensure that Amherst is the equitable, just community that we all want to live in, I'm asking you to prioritize the needs of BIPOC Amherst residents and community members in the upcoming budget. I'd like you to reconsider the proposal from the Racial Equity Task Force of Amherst that requests funds for a BIPOC residents council, youth programming, a cultural center and hiring a chief diversity and equity officer. And I'd like to remind the council that this summer you voted to freeze two police officer positions through the end of January, while the town manager writes a report on alternatives to policing. What are you gonna do to those positions in January if his report says we should move forward with alternatives? Because if you do nothing, those funds become available to the police department again and you'll all have done nothing of any consequence to make our town safer for BIPOC community members. If you want to actually do something, make sure the budget guidelines for FY22 instruct the town manager to prioritize the needs of BIPOC community members. Make the guidelines say that the town should fund a BIPOC residents council and chief diversity and equity officer. Make the guidelines say that the town should fund youth programming for youth of color and a cultural center. And make the guidelines say that the town should direct funding away from the police department and towards community programs that keep everyone safe, healthy and housed. Thank you. Joey, thank you for your comments. Allegra, you'll enter the room and state your name and where you live. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. My name is Allegra Clark and I live in district two. I moved back to the area of Amherst two years ago after having a child and wanting to get out of the city of Boston. Myself, I'm a graduate of Amherst Regional High School and I wanted my children to have access to a quality public education. And I remembered an Amherst that had a progressive spirit but I think Amherst can do better and Amherst should do better. In order to ensure that Amherst is the equitable just community that I moved back to live in, I'm asking that you prioritize the needs of BIPOC Amherst residents in the upcoming budget. If you're choosing between cutting funds from social services or the police cut the police budget. Even if we go forward with level funding, we need to rearrange departmental funds to address the systemic racism in our town. I know that police are not the main thing that keeps this community safe, especially during a pandemic when access to affordable housing, sanitation, nutritious food and healthcare are paramount. We heard from Mr. Backelman in October that ambulance and emergency calls are low this fall with calls coming in at about half of where they are normally. In contrast, I viewed a social media post by the Amherst Survival Center back in May, reporting that they were serving 50% more lunches daily than they had been pre-COVID. This shows us that police isn't where we need to prioritize our funding. Meeting the basic needs of our residents is instead, again, during the FY21 budget cycle, the town of Amherst proposed to spend $136 per resident on the police with only $3.77 per resident on public health. This doesn't reflect the needs of the community and this certainly isn't wise spending on the middle of a pandemic. Please consider the proposal from the Racial Equity Task Force of Amherst that requests funds for BIPOC residents council, youth programming, a cultural center and hiring a chief diversity and equity officer. Thank you. Like we're thank you for your comments. I'm going to go ahead and call on Isoda or Tego Bustamanti first before I come back to repeat. Thank you. Isoda and where you live. Good evening, Isoda or Tego Bustamanti, 21 year resident of Amherst district five. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I just wanted to support the work of D-Fund 413 and very specifically give an example of where funds could be reallocated. We have a volunteer that some of you know, I'm not authorized to share their name publicly, we have people who are full-time workers, full-time parents who volunteer untold hours in order to help low income essential worker residents fill out the paperwork that they need to fill out in order to avoid eviction and to access services for their US citizen children. And that's an example here if we had even part-time funding for a social worker, hopefully bilingual, bicultural who could support that work, we would be able to actually save a lot of money in the long run because some of the paperwork and some of the work that could be provided by a bilingual, bicultural social worker would support family stability and help Amherst public school students receive additional supports and additional programming that they are in fact entitled to and often simply parents need help navigating. And so a small investment can actually have multiplier effects for a lot of families, a lot of children and result in savings to the district in many, many aspects of both health and wellness and academics for children who are more engaged, fed more nutritionally and who have access to other supports in health and mental health. So there are many needs, some of these are very specific and we've shared with you in the past. And so we certainly know where the funding could go and we know that it could have a long-term impact in the economic and social health of the city. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments, Esoldo. My Maida. Hello. Yes, state your name and where you live. My name is Maida Ives and I've been working at Amherst College for five years and I live in district five. And I'm just right, I wanted to firm and uplift the past three comments I just heard. I am new to the budget process but I really agree that in order to ensure Amherst is equitable just community that I also wanna live in. I'm asking you to prioritize the needs of our BIPOC Amherst residents and consider the proposals from the Racial Equity Task Force of Amherst requesting funds for BIPOC Residence Council, youth programming, a cultural center and a hiring a chief diversity and equity officer. And even this year for going forward with a level funding model for the whole town, please rearrange departmental funds to address systemic racism in the town. And if you choose between cutting funds for social services or the police, cut the police budget. Just echoing the sentiments I just heard. I have a very dear friend who's a 10 year old child who would benefit wonderfully from youth programming and a cultural center. And I'd like to see the town do what's best for him and his peers. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Zoe, you have your hand up again. Would you like to enter the room and speak again? Yes, I actually would. I don't, I didn't have my hand up on purpose but I do have something that needs to be shared. I have an anonymous testimony that was shared with me that I would like to read if that's all right. Yes. So this testimony says, I live in Amherst in the district represented by Stephen Treber and Evan Ross. My demand as a resident of this town for four years and an employee of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is the following. We need to cut APB budget by at least 50% immediately. The APD does not keep people safe. Police disproportionately target black, brown and indigenous people and disabled people putting them at risk while also draining resources from other critically important areas. I have black and brown family members, coworkers and students I teach who do not feel safe and who experienced heightened levels of stress as a result of having to change their daily routines to avoid encounters with a police force which casually carries lethal weapons. The amount of funding APD received in proportion to public health, education and social services is absurd. For example, as I hope you hear many times tonight for each resident in Amherst, the town spends $136 on the police and a miniscule $3.77 on public health and $5.99 on the senior center. This is even more absurd, stubborn and dangerous when we consider that the town council refuses to even budge on these numbers in the midst of a pandemic disproportionately impacting black, Latinx, indigenous, disabled and elderly people. As someone who has received their degree in public health, I understand there are downstream and upstream approaches to treating a disease. Upstream approaches address fundamental problems such as poverty, homelessness and poor infrastructure. Downstream approaches address issues such as quality of treatment once someone has already gotten sick. Funding more police does neither of these, rather it adds fuel to the fire. Policing further compounds racism and ableism which public experts refer to as, quote, fundamental causes of health disparities by increasing the likelihood of injury, death or arrest and at the very least increasing stress levels which have been documented as a major cause of health disparities. It does all this while draining resources for services that can address the upstream and downstream resources of the pandemic. To reiterate, cut APD by at least 50% and take a big step towards ensuring this can be a safe and healthy town for all residents. As it now stands, you are all failing and if you continue to be reckless and do not budge on this, I'll look forward to organizing with labor unions and other political coalitions in the town to help swiftly build you all out of office. Thank you. Thank you for sharing the comments with us. Are there any other people that would like to make public comment? I do wanna thank Amherst Media for also showing us the names of people who are attending on Zoom. We know that there are other people out there that are attending just by watching this on Amherst Media. Any other public comment at this time? Yes, Dr. Shabazz, please enter the room. State your name and where you live. Hello. Hello. Yes, I live in South Amherst. My name is Dr. Demetria Shabazz and thank you for having this hearing on the budget. Mainly to reiterate what folks have already said. However, one of the things that we found in our recent People's Assembly is that young people and old, that's across ages, we want a place in which folks can gather. We need a public meeting space, a community center that folks would feel comfortable. They could have some power over in terms of usage for community and cultural events. This is something that since the summer, we have been discussing, we have been asking for. It is part of the Racial Equity Task Force and I believe that cutting the police budget in order to accommodate not only a cultural space, but a ways in which we can safely have interventions in terms of mental health and any other type of wellness checks, that should be our town's priorities, the youth and taking care of folks in need in a way that is non-threatening. So again, when we're looking at priorities, the youth and taking care of folks in terms of wellness checks and mental health should be our priorities. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, Dr. Shabazz. Are there any other comments at this time? Yes, Jose Lugo, please enter the room and state your name. All right, thank you. So yes, I'm also speaking in favor of cutting the budget. We have a community here that can take care of certain aspects of our own needs. I'm speaking primarily of the underrepresented groups, marginalized groups who we have worked, tried to work in with city council and other organizations and it doesn't seem that it's systemically easy to address our needs. And so it would benefit our community to have that those funds from the police department shifted to community organization so that we can go around some of the systemic obstacles that we know exist and take care of ourselves by involving all of us. And perhaps we can involve members of the town council as well who might be interested in expanding their understanding of this group of people who are affected by some of the systemic racism that we've been experiencing over the last centuries. Thank you. Jose, before you leave, would you just remind us where you live? And I want to make sure I pronounced your name correctly. Lugo, Jose Lugo. Yeah. And I live, I believe it's in precinct two, the south end of Denver, of Denver. Speaking of my old home of Amherst. Thank you. We appreciate that. Are there any other comments at this time? Looking for final comments. Andy, would you like to go ahead and adjourn the finance committee? Yes, I adjourned finance committee at whatever time it is now, 7.15. Thank you. And before I adjourn the council, just have a safe and respectful of distance and mask thanksgiving and be well. The council meeting is adjourned. Thank you.