 Okay let's bring the meeting to order. Welcome back everybody. It's a little bit earlier than we used to we're used to starting our finance committee meetings but a special town meeting scheduled for January 28th will do that to us. So the first thing I'd like to do is introduce our two new members. Gian Russel is right here. She lives and will represent Precinct 4 and so in a minute I'll go everybody can go around and introduce themselves. They'll be a test later. Okay and representing Precinct 12 and living there is Darrell Harmer right over here. I want to welcome you and why don't we just go around the table. First name? Christine Dechler and I represent Precinct 19. Dick Fanning, Precinct 15. Mary Margaret Frankelman, Precinct 5. Dan McKenna, Precinct 21. Dean Carter, Precinct 20. John Wall, Precinct 7. Allen Jones, Precinct 14. Brian Beck, Precinct 9. Brooklyn Bluebody, Precinct 18. Thomas Cacobau, Precinct 11. Pete Howard, Precinct 10. Charlie Foskett, Precinct 8. Okay and now Tosti we've been talking over the last couple weeks. So last night at a meeting of the Finance Committee Appointing Authority, Jean Ann and Darrell were appointed along with the rest of you whose appointments came up at that particular time. So I want to welcome you all and hope you have a chance to get to know each other as we go through the sessions on that. Now I have my fancy-dancy contact list that I've updated but what I'd like to do now is pass this around as we go through it. Please check your address, phone number, emails, all that type of stuff and if it's okay just check it and if it's not okay please correct it. Okay, long-term planning so you get to see this about two months, about a month and a half ahead. So with that, our town manager, Adam Chaplain is here. Adam? So they've asked me to stand behind this microphone so they can capture me for the millions viewing at home. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, my name is Adam Chaplain, town manager. So what I'm going to do is run through the current state of the town's long-range fiscal projection. It starts with the current fiscal year, FY16 in the far left side of the sheet and projects year over year all the way through FY 2022 to the far right side of the sheet. The top third of the sheet contains revenue and then sort of the middle part are appropriations or expenses and then the bottom third outlines reserve balances and then caveats and then projected enrollment growth from the schools which is an important driver of some of the numbers that I'll talk about within the the appropriations and actually the revenue section of the plan. So to start, I'll go line by line and feel free to ask questions as I go if something I'm saying doesn't make sense. So starting with FY16, we are just about to set the tax rate. So there's a few times in the year where the actual fiscal year can can shift a little bit. There's at town meeting a number is locked in as the FY16 budget and then when the tax rate is set we shift that to FY16 recap because there's a few numbers that can change the actual amount of the tax levy is altered and the tax rate is set based on exactly what is raised. Local receipts can be changed and then the overlay reserve which shows up at expenses can be changed. So what I'm going to walk through here is soon to be submitted to the Department of Revenue for finalization as part of the tax recap process. So starting across the top line you see state aid. Those are the cumulative sums of money that we receive from the state primarily in Chapter 70 which is education funding and unrestricted general government aid which is exactly what it's called just used to be called additional assistance but it's funds the town can use at its discretion. What we project there across year over year is a 1% increase in the unrestricted general government aid and then for Chapter 70 the education formula we looked retrospectively at how Chapter 70 had increased as enrollment had increased over the past several years and we found that Chapter 70 on average was increasing about $1,500 for every new student. So based on the enrollment projections that are carried on the bottom of the sheet we project that Chapter 70 will go up by that amount per student. There's some other smaller local aid accounts veterans benefits, charter school reimbursement, school lunch, library offset aid. We don't inflate those we keep those flat as their formula driven and aren't necessarily funding decisions driven by the governor or the legislature. So you can see based on based on the enrollment there's some fluctuation in the percentage change across year to year but again that goes up and down as you can see the enrollment numbers go higher or lower. Below that is school construction aid. Those are the funds we receive from what had been known as the SBAB, the School Building Assistance Bureau. It's now the MSBA. That's both the prior organization and the current organization is the state organization that assists cities and towns in constructing schools. So the former program they would provide a city or town funds as the debt service related to a project is being paid. The current form is they give you the money as you're spending it. So you only actually borrow as a city or town your share and they pay their share in real time reducing borrowing costs. But what we have here is related to projects that were performed under the old program. So you can see we have an amount we're receiving a flat amount in FY 16, 17 goes down in 18 as reimbursements for the Audison School roll off then goes down again in 19 and is level from FY 19, 20 and 21. And then 21 is actually the last year that we receive any of those what I'll call old SBAB payments. Now there's corresponding reductions in debt service that go along with this. So as those revenues go away, the expenses associated with them go away or are reduced correspondingly. Moving down from that, we have local receipts. Local receipts is basically all of the fees and other non property tax revenues that the town collects. The main number in local receipts is motor vehicle excise tax. It's almost half of the local receipts figure. The rest is licenses and permits, building inspections, rental, rental proceeds that we receive from the various properties that the town rents out, hotel, motel excise tax, meals tax, and other associated fees that we collect. Historically in the past, we had been inflating that number as a projection at $50,000 a year. Last year we made the decision to bump that increment up to a projected increase year over year of $75,000. And that's still fairly reasonable and conservative given historical collections. Below that, we have free cash or sort of the undesignated or unreserved fund balance that the Department of Revenue certifies at the end of every year. The town's historical policy has been to use 50% of free cash after it's been certified in the next fiscal year as an operating revenue. So in FY 16, we used half of the total cash that was put in the reserve balance, no longer represented on this sheet. If you go down to the bottom of the sheet, you can see the top line of the reserve balance carries a free cash number. The number in FY 16 is what was just recently certified of $9 million. So if you carry up to FY 17, you can see that we're taking 50% of that figure as an operating revenue. Going forward, what the Long Range Planning Committee decided to do last year was to take the reserve-certified free cash and use that as our projected free cash along the bottom. So you can see that, again, along the bottom of the reserve balances of what we're projecting for free cash. And then 50% of that is projected as a revenue year over year. So free cash, I'll quickly touch on, is certified at $9 million this year. Our prior estimates had been that free cash would be certified somewhere in the six and a half to $7 million range. However, last year, when the treasurer went out to borrow funds in relation to the capital plan, he received or the deal he negotiated had the town receiving bond premiums, which is actually cash that comes into the town. That had been being held in an account for future sort of deliberation by town meeting. However, this year, when the Department of Revenue and our new comptroller put their heads together, looking at those funds, interpreted basically the law on that differently than what the prior comptroller had and recommended rolling that into free cash. That's why the number for free cash is just about $2 million higher than what we expected it would be. Below that, in terms of revenue is the overlay reserve. That's money that the Board of Assessors declares surplus that they no longer need to deal with abatements filed by tax payers. In FY 16, they declared $350,000 surplus. In FY 17 and beyond, we project that they'll declare at least $200,000 surplus. But on an annual basis, we ask them to go through outstanding abatements and overlay balances and determine what might be available. So we'll go through that exact process this year and update that as they provide more information as the budget process goes forward. Property tax, as you can obviously see, is the lion's share of the town's revenue. In FY 16, that's the number that will actually appear and what is raised as part of the tax rate in the recap process. And what's included in there is the base levy, debt exclusions pertaining to past school projects. We budget $450,000 in new growth. And also included in the levy is $5,593,112 in what's called an MWRA debt shift where money related to MWRA debt service, which could be put on to the water sewer bill, is actually raised as part of the tax rate. That was a decision the town made probably more than a decade ago to provide some relief to rate payers in the water sewer enterprise fund. So those are sort of the key parts in the actual tax levy. On a year over year basis, what you see is a 2.5% increase as allowable, that $450,000 new growth that I mentioned, as well as those other components. In FY 16, though we budgeted $450,000 for new growth, actual new growth was just over $1.3 million. A great deal of that was from tear down rebuilds and condos of properties in town, as well as growth in personal property in town. So we've also looked at a retrospective 10 year average for new growth. If we look at that and can you back out new growth that was attributable to both the Sims project, as well as the Brigham's project, because those are projects of scale that we won't see on a recurring basis given our density and how built out we are. Our 10 year average for new growth is about $730,000. So we continue at the long range planning level to have discussions about whether or not we should be adjusting that new growth figure up to more closely resemble what the 10 year average has been. So the next line is reserved for utilizing the override stabilization fund as a revenue. You can see an FY 16 and 17 that is not projected to be necessary. However, starting an FY 18 and beyond, you start to see projected drawdowns or withdrawals from the override stabilization fund. So I guess I'll pause there for anybody if it's okay with you, Mr. Chairman. Any questions on the CPA revenues? Is the CPA revenue in here somewhere? So yeah, the CPA revenue is actually raised. No, no, I'm sorry. It is a surcharge that is not demonstrated as part of the property tax being raised. We try to focus this analysis on the general fund and balancing the general fund. So we could add it in and we would put a balancing offset for expenditures in the bottom. I see you have an explanation at the bottom. Thank you. Okay, anybody else? Reserve balances, the decision is projected at 50% of kind balance. No, you know, it's funny that it appears as though that is what it is, but that's actually the 10 year retrospective average of certified free cash. It's funny that it's close to half, but that's not actually what the math is. Peter? And could you say again what the the bond related income is? So when the Treasury goes out to borrow, and working with our bond council and financial advisor, there's the ability to basically for paying a higher rate, receive a bond premium. That bond premium comes in as revenue to the town. That revenue by the current interpretation of the DOR is supposed to come into the town and then be released back into the general fund sort of as a reimbursement to the general fund. So those were received when the Treasury went out to borrow last year, they were sat in an account at the end of FY 15. We've now closed them out to go into the to the general fund, thereby increasing our free cash balance. The reason you get it is that interest rates are so low these days, when the underwriters are bidding for the town's bonds, they don't want to bid. So the coupon is really low down around one, two or 3%. Because five years from now they'll have difficulty selling those. They'd rather put the coupon, in other words, the actual interest rate on the bond up around four or five or even 6%, and then give you a whole bunch of money that brings the effective interest rate for the whole bond issue down. So the reason we're getting these everybody's getting these big premiums now is because the interest rates are so low. Once the interest rates start to return to sort of a more normal level, then the premiums are usually much, much lower, tie breakers practically. Thank you. All right. Okay, any other questions on the on the revenue side? Appropriations, fun, fun side. So we start with the school department budget. So back starting in FY 12, the first year of the override that was approved in FY 11, the general agreement in structure was that general education costs would be allowed to grow by 3.5% a year. Special education costs would be allowed to grow by 7% a year. And then town expenses would be allowed or town operating expenses would be allowed to grow by 3.5% a year. Since 2012 since FY 2012, a number of things have happened. First, so you'll you'll see general education costs, special education costs. Below that, you'll see kindergarten fee offset. So back, I believe it was actually in a special town meeting in 2000. Was that 2012? I think it was 2012 effective fiscal year 2013, I believe. The school department had performed an analysis and learned that by the elimination of the kindergarten fee that was being charged by the school department, we would receive an equal, if not greater amount back in Chapter 78 from the state. So as part of that, we had to fund what they expected to collect in fees. And then they would get the revenue back from Chapter 70. And that is exactly what happened. But in their projections for kindergarten fees, they never projected to increase kindergarten fees. So we've carried that as a flat sort of base number every year in their budget. Moving on from that, two years ago, again, the town acknowledged that with really what had been unexpected enrollment growth in the district, that there needed to be some adjustments to the operating budgets for to recognize the growing enrollment in the schools. So what was agreed upon was that the enrollment as of October 1st, say, this year, whatever the increase was, we would use that number multiplied by 25% of the per pupil costs as approved by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education at the state level. And that would be what we'd call the growth factor. So to see the mechanics of it, if you look at FY 17, you see growth factor is $274,785. That's actually, if you go down to the bottom of the sheet, that's the projected annual growth in students at 84 multiplied by the actual, what am I looking at here, 25% of the actual FY 14 DSE per pupil costs, which is the total per pupils, $13,085. This is right at the bottom of the sheet. So the amount we multiplied by is $3,271.25. So that's how the growth factor has been calculated and is calculated going forward. Every year as DSE updates per pupil expenditures, we update the calculation. So what we do mathematically in terms of how this formula works. So in FY 16, you can see the growth factor was $530,000. So in FY 17, that goes into the base of the general education budget. And that number is then inflated by the percentage increase. And then there's a new growth factor and then every year going forward that same, that same process happens. So going further last year, again, the Long Range Planning Committee was looking at ways of further extending the life of this financial plan, or extending how long we would not need to look at considering an operating override. So last year, we decided that for FY 16, town budgets would only grow at three and a quarter percent as opposed to three and a half percent. School budgets would stay at three and a half percent and spend would stay at seven percent. But for FY 17, school growth would go down to three and a quarter percent for general education and stay at seven for special ed and town growth would go down to three percent. And then for 18 and beyond, general ed would be at three percent and the town would be at three percent for growth. And that's what's represented here in this plan. So any any questions on that? So I guess it's more of a comment and just more of a thought for the presentation on long term planning is I don't know why on the growth factor line, we roll it in to the next year base instead of just making it a cumulative line. And the reason I bring this up is, and you were there a couple times where, you know, the reality of what goes on in the school budget is we've got all these buckets, we've got three and a quarter for general ed, the seven percent for special ed, we've got the growth factor, and then we've got the indirect line, right? Health insurance goes up six percent a year, seven percent, that doesn't go to the school budget, goes to health insurance, pension costs go to the pension line, capital goes to the capital line. And I can't tell you how many meetings I've sat in, or I've heard that the town cuts the school budget, and I've heard that the town's done nothing, nothing to address this growth factor with money. And I sit here and I pull out the old spreadsheet, so I think, well, we've put in like about two million bucks for new growth. But when you look at this sheet, the sheet leads you to believe that we haven't, because after the initial year, it rolls it up top. So it gives people this false sense, you know, that, you know, whoever the town is, right, I don't care if they're, I don't have to blame you, us, the select and whatever, but it gives this false sense that no money has gone to this growth problem. And you were there when I think someone actually went to the extreme of saying that with all this growth, I can't believe we cut the school budget. So I don't understand how, like, what is it projected, like, I'm just going to hold five, five and a half percent annual growth and your budget's a cut. And that's where I guess, from a presentation perspective, I think it's, it's frustrating, right? And then I think there's, there's another issue, I think when you get, you know, the McKibben report has the school enrollment numbers going up and up and up to, let's say, 2020. And then it turns and starts to go down and down and down and down, right? So I think when we get to 2020, with all these numbers that have been rolled into the base, if you have, if it comes to a point like sometimes where money has to come out of the growth factor, because it goes both ways, right? If you're declining enrollment, the agreement is it's going to go down. Well, all that money that's gone in, which probably is at that point four or five million additional incremental dollars, will now be viewed as never having gone. And the big bad finance committee is cutting, you know, this budget. And so I guess my, my one comment on the long range planning side is the separate, the rolling in effect, I think starts to lead to a false narrative that doesn't exist. And it, you know, that's just my two cents on it. So I, I get that. And I, I'll, I'll say, I actually fully agree with what you're saying. The presentation, the reason we roll it in is because I don't think there's a good argument to not inflate the growth factor in the following year by the percentage increase. I agree. So we, I could see a set, like adding a new line accomplishes what you're talking about. So sort of a cumulative growth factor that's inflated at the 3% growth, and then a new growth factor. So it shows both an accumulation and a new allocation every year. Yeah. Or just something down at the bottom that just says cumulative dollars. Yeah, that's another way to do it as an inflation. That way I can, I feel like, you know, I feel like I don't have to go pull out old binders and start figuring out what the total number is to, you know, ward that off. It gets lost in the 40 million dollar appropriation. I agree. Thank you. Okay, Paul. This FY 2016 number is about a predicted annual growth of 169. So is that, that's actual growth? Yeah, I'm, yes, that's actual growth. And 84 is actually actual growth, too. The sheet from February 4th of 2015, and that's exactly the number that was projected on the sheets. I'll chop that up to forever desperate attempts to get this all to fit on one page and not utilizing the lines, but that's the fair point. Good to move on. All right. So moving down from the schools, immediately following the next budget, you see Minuteman, also school related, our assessment for Minuteman based on just about 150 students attending Minuteman was just over four million dollars. In FY 17, they have sent us preliminary numbers, so we plugged the preliminary numbers in. Based on 120 students being our enrollment for FY 17, you can see Minuteman projected appropriation for FY 17 actually goes down by almost half a million dollars. Historically, what we've done is inflate that figure by three and a half percent a year. If you look historically, it's gone up and down by amounts far outside of that three and a half percent figure, but it's strictly enrollment driven. It's hard to pinpoint what the enrollment to the vocation school will be. So for budget planning purposes, we've for some time just used that percentage growth number for a planning, really planning tool. Moving down from there, you can see the town budget. We have first broken out by personnel costs and then expenses. We didn't have a line below that, which are costs that are attributable to the enterprise funds that are provided by General Fund or town operating departments, but really are geared towards the enterprise funds. So we see enterprise fund offsets that result in a net town budget. And you can see across the line, the net town budget is capped at 3 percent a year. Immediately below that is the five point five million dollar MWRA debt shift that I referenced under the revenue section of the plan. This is where it is actually carried as an expense as an offset to us raising that money and then transferred to the enterprise fund. Below that, we have the capital budget, which is broken down into exempt debt service money that was or debt service that was approved as part of a debt exclusion, non exempt debt service. That's debt service that's supported by the tax levy or within the underneath the confines of the prop two and a half tax levy, direct cash capital appropriations and then offsets and carry forwards, both from prior year capital carry forward and offsets from off general fund accounts that can support capital expenditures like our antenna fund, which can go towards recreation and our ambulance fund, which can go towards ambulance and another related expenses. So what we see is a total capital number. Capital number is not formulaically increased year over year. It's actually governed by needing to be within five percent of operating revenues and that's what governs capital. So what we have here for capital is what was contained in the capital planning committee report the town meeting last year with an addition of FY 2022 taking from the actual debt service sheets, but having that not been updated by capital planning yet. The upcoming weeks, there may be some updates to capital in dealing with the impact of those bond premiums on the actual cost of debt service. So I didn't provide any of those numbers here tonight. We have a lot. I want to get through the town meeting. So why don't you take the rest up and just do a brief summary and then we can move on. So there's more to come in the capital budget. Below that we have pensions that had been six percent as part of the original plan through the good work of Mr. Foskett working with the retirement board last year. We agreed to drop that percentage increase year over year to five and a half percent. Insurance that line on contains predominantly employees health insurance but also unemployment insurance and liability insurance and workers compensation insurance. What we do there is we increase the number by five and a quarter percent which is what the GIC the state's insurance plan has increased historically over the past seven years. And we are members of the GIC and we inflate at that percentage. But we also do a calculation of how many new teachers we think would be hired as a result of new students coming into the district. And we put on an estimated amount of new plans. So that's why you see a varying percentage increase numbers year to year for insurance. Below that is state assessments. That is what comes to us from the state. They give us money at the top and then they take some back as part of expenses. It's three point one million dollars. We inflated it two and a half percent a year. Almost the entirety of that is our MBTA assessment about two point eight million of that three point one goes to the MBTA. Below that is offset aid. That's also money we receive from the state but then directly have to expend for a particular cause. In this case it's library aid so we offset it here and you can see where we carry it. Below that is the overlay reserve. That's money that's put aside for the board of assessors to handle tax abatements as filed by tax payers. You can see this year as part of the tax recap process. We've pretty substantially increased that number. The planning protocol is that we have funded as we started in seventeen six six and then in a revaluation year we bump it up to eight six six eight and so on and so forth. Below that we have fixed costs reserve fund and elections. Last year the reserve fund was funded at one point two million dollars. The balance was for elections. Not the number four but going towards elections. From here on out you can see we have projected one million dollars for the reserve fund and then based on the number of elections projected to occur in each year based on state election years and non-state election years the number attributable to elections goes up and goes up and down. Below that a line called other court judgments deficit Sims. Two big numbers in there are the exact amount of debt service that is attributable to the town's prior purchase of the Sims property. So we raise we receive tax revenue from that property but then we have to set aside what we owe in the debt service. So that exact amount which is just about six hundred and seventy thousand dollars gets raised there. There's also five hundred thousand dollars in that line set aside for snow and ice deficits. And then there's a hundred thousand dollars set aside for potential court judgments that happen after the budget process and need to be raised on the tax rate each year. Below that warrant articles those are miscellaneous warrant articles that are approved by town meeting. The lion share of that number is what the town puts towards its open or retiree health care liability. And then the final line is the override stabilization fund. You can see in F. Y. 16 and 17 we still project to be making deposits into the override stabilization fund. But then going back up to the top you can see that in F. Y. 18 we begin to withdraw. So if you follow along the bottom the third line reserve balances is the override stabilization fund. You can see it reaches peak in F. Y. 17. And then as the drawdown begins you can see the balance starts to diminish leading up to F. Y. 20. 21 where we would we would project to fall short of fully balancing the budget in that year by just about four hundred thousand dollars carrying that forward with the accumulated deficit over the years. A projected deficit of just over eleven million dollars in F. Y. 20. 22. OK are there any questions for the manager. I'm sure I'll absorb this. OK Charlie. So. In fiscal year twenty one. Yes. The contribution from the override stabilization fund is. 9 million eighty five thousand. Right. In the revenue. You know what. That actually would be balanced there. I don't understand. Yeah because you have an additional one point four million I didn't carry that over. So that would wipe that out. And it would reduce the next year to. They get 10 million. Thank you. It's all right. OK. What I'd like to do now is go through the warrant. And so I think. It'll be interesting to see how long this takes a town meeting. I think a lot of it will just depend on the recommendations that are made. What I'd like to do first is to article six seven and eight. Those deal with Minuteman. Now there's been people that have been working very hard on this issue. Over the last. Six months. And so none harder than. Select and done. So then if you'd like to come up here and. Use the microphone there's three articles here. If you could briefly go through each. And explain what you have. Sure. Good evening everyone. Happy to be here. Happy to see everyone in the bigger faces. All in new. So I can only claim that I was up at 6 a.m. Whereas Charlie was up in what time zone. Exactly. And so there has been a lot of progress on this in the last two months. But I definitely would also say it's only because of the product of the work that happened before. So I'll work on the task force in starting 2010. And then Charlie's work on the task force in 2012. Those both got us to a draft in 2014. And what I'm working with is the draft that they created. So I'm I'm standing here in some way the only reason that we're like trying to close the last few inches is because they moved everybody so much closer to begin with. So first up is was the Wayland one. Is that correct on those. Is that the first or the third. All right. So let me I'm not going to necessarily going to tackle these in order. First up. Wayland wants out. Wayland voted under the old regional agreement to leave. The and under the old regional agreement that goes to the school committee the minimum school committee who is obligated to pass it along. They have passed it along and requires unanimous consent for Wayland to leave under the old regional agreement. Lexington has already said that they can't. So our vote is effectively moved. But at the same time the school committee has explicitly asked us to take to make sure that we keep the vote. And I think we should take that opportunity and take the vote. And I believe and I strongly recommend that we also deny their being able to leave because it is part of our strategy to get an overall new regional agreement is that if we let people out one by one they don't have a lot of incentive to stick with us and get what we really need over the finish line which is this new regional agreement. So if anybody I guess I probably want to take any questions on that one if it's appropriate first. But I think this one's kind of a slam dunk. We should just say no. We should say kindly. We should say with all the respect we want to let you out. But we're going to let you out in the way that's appropriate not in this particular way. Okay. So this is basically a fairly straight vote. If we say no one is recommended by Mr. Don I'll ask you to write a comment. I'll be happy to do so. Okay. Any questions on it. Okay. All right. Next up let's talk about the regional agreement. So things on this have been moving very quickly and the terms of have been. So I would say so. Yep. I think it'd be helpful since since it's really started moving back in 2010 I think a third of the people sitting here. We're going to use to sit here. All right. Okay. So I look at it as not pleased with the current regional agreement because the regional agreement gives us only one vote out of 16 despite the fact that we send a third of the students and that has led to some governance problems which have led before my time but under Alice Chairman and Alice told me the story is about when this committee chose to fight the Minuteman school budget and had to go on tours of all the other town meetings to try to get them to fight it and since it's two and so it's the budget requires a majority vote on the school committee which means you could have you know 10 or 15% of the students generating a majority on that board. Then it takes two thirds of the towns which means 11 towns have to say yes. And so for us to persuade Minuteman to do something we wanted we had to either win at the school committee level or win at the town meeting level given that was very, very difficult and we didn't often get what we want. This was later in the mid 2000s Paul Schlichman was on the board and Arlington had contested the way that the assessments were being calculated and Minuteman didn't want to listen to us and we ended up simply not paying them for a while and then in the end we won and we got but this was all part of the governance and us not having the vote that we should. Did I fairly characterize that? That's good. Okay. So we have so as a finance committee and as Board of Selectment and as a town meeting we have taken repeated votes that say any capital expenditure will be fought by Arlington. Arlington will not agree to any capital expenditure until we have a new regional agreement. And the reason we can do that is because capital expenditures under the old current slash old regional agreement require unanimous consent. So it is the place in all of this where we have had leverage where we never used to have leverage before. So we've been saying so more recent history is Minuteman came with a capital expense to do the plans for this new school that they're looking for. And we and Belmont gave Minuteman a very hard time and finally negotiated a set of conditions by which we would pay the capital for those plans. And one of the things that we said that they have to do is really, really work on this regional agreement because we're not going to get a vote took. We're not going to get a positive capital vote from Arlington until we have the new regional agreement. And so Al worked on a group in 2010 and 11 Charlie worked on a group on 2012 and 2013 in 2014 the Minuteman school committee put forward a draft regional agreement which the finance committee recommended, the select one recommended in town meeting approved. Ten of the 16 towns approved that draft regional agreement. Wayland voted no and five towns chose not to act. The reasons for those no's in actions are varied but I would say that one of the things you can definitely say is that Minuteman occupied gets a lot of mindshare in Arlington because it's so much money for us and it's such a big deal for us and it really is a part of our community whereas for a lot of these other towns that send one to five students it's 20,000, 30,000. It's one of those items in the warrant article that everybody just says yes and nothing actually happens. And so we were ready to talk about the regional agreement before a lot of other people were and I think that's part of why these six towns didn't get to yes previously. So that was 2014, 10, 5, 1. In 2015 there was a renewed attempt to get those six towns over the finish line. Didn't really go anywhere none of the towns actually, none of the towns changed their vote. Wayland said no again. I'm pretty sure and the other five towns again passed. This summer the Minuteman school committee said you know we've tried this twice we're not trying again. We're giving up on this regional agreement we're just going forward with the building. Which of course we're fairly depressing I think for people here in Arlington because without a regional agreement we have to fight the school and there's going to be no progress and it's just going to be ugly. What happened and I'm not going to get the exact timeline of this right but some in Boxborough who's one of the towns that didn't vote, one of their select minutes guy named Vince Animoroso, Altosti's cousin. And Vince was very frustrated with all of this himself and he managed to get himself appointed to the Minuteman school committee which I think really it gave him a lot of education about what the actual problems were and it gave him renewed insight into why the regional agreement was important. And so he asked the school committee for effectively a little bit more time to work on a new regional agreement and he put forward something that I'm going to call the Boxborough Protocol. And on October 30th, 16 select men from 16 towns, I think it was like 14 and a town administrator and one missing or something like that. On October 30th we met in Weston, then we met again on December 2nd and then we're meeting again tomorrow. And those 16, that group was 16, so on October 30th in particular after that meeting we put together a group of the, I called it the 6 plus 1. It's the 6 towns that said, didn't say yes, plus 1 which is Arlington on the other side. And we worked with each one of them trying to say, okay what is it that's going to get you to yes. And for a number of them, in particular Boxborough and Wayland, they did not feel that the previous agreement gave them adequate assurance that they were going to be able to leave. So this thing called the Boxborough Protocol is that during this month of December any town that is considering leaving Minuteman takes a vote at the Board of Select and Level and saying we are considering leaving Minuteman. They communicate that information to Minuteman. And then Minuteman is putting forward this regional agreement that I'm talking about here, which I'm kind of like there's a little bit of chicken and egg in this conversation. And as a part of that vote, we are being asked to explicitly let anybody who is considering leaving to leave. So for instance, Wayland is the most clear cut example because they have taken three votes to leave and they are taking another one. Wayland has raised its hand and said we wish to be considered to leave Minuteman. And so they are going to call a special town meeting to approve this regional agreement and they are going to take at least two and probably three votes. The first vote is to leave Minuteman officially again. I mean that's a repetitive vote for them but this time it's under this, they will adopt the regional agreement and they'll probably also have to vote on the debt related to the new school depending upon but I'm going to get to that one in a minute. Whereas Arlington, as a board, we on a week ago Monday, 10 days ago, we voted very explicitly that we were not considering leaving Minuteman. And that's actually kind of important because if Arlington chose to try to leave Minuteman the whole deal falls apart because no one knows what anything is going to happen. So Arlington will not be listed on those potential towns that are talking about leaving. So that's the Boxborough protocol. And so this group kept, so these select, so these select women and these subgroups in a series of meetings have been churning through different ways to get these six towns that didn't say yes to yes and that is the phrase I keep using over and over, trying to get people to yes. Without losing anybody else. And one of the terms that you may have read about in the paper most recently that I think we would have lost some people is Lincoln is definitely the most, at this point, the most difficult town to get to yes. And as part of simply getting them to yes is they feel like they need to be compensated for being a close community because the new building will be in their town. And so part of it was including a payment to Lincoln within the regional agreement. And there are a number of towns notably Concord and Lexington who are not comfortable with that. So what I'm about to talk to you about is doesn't include that. So I think that's been like a lot of history lesson and now I'm just going to talk about the actual meat of what's actually going to be, I believe, before you. I guess I'll give you a little bit more history. So last night the Minuteman School Committee met and they considered this draft regional agreement. Did you forward all those documents out? Do they have those drafts or no? If not we can forward them along. Okay. So Minuteman looked at the school committee, looked at a bunch and then they chose last, since the selectmen are meeting tomorrow and by the selectmen I mean the 16 towns selectmen, they chose to defer until after that meeting to see they, the ostensible reason is they don't want to tie the hands with the 16 selectmen. So they chose to defer until after that meeting to see they, the ostensible reason is they don't want to tie the hands with the 16 selectmen. And so my goal is to go into this meeting tomorrow and get 16 towns to say yes, this is a plan that we can all support. Minuteman will then meet again on Monday, they've already called the special Minuteman School Committee meeting. And on Monday they will approve this regional agreement and put it forward to the towns, which will be what is on our warrant on January 25th. So as I, the current draft looks like this. The 2014 draft agreement is the base document of the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the draft agreement is the for debt, ways to do so by attempting to leave the district. Excuse me. So that's like the absolute possible, short as possible, summary of the 2014 draft. There's a lot more in that. So base document, we're talking about voting on the base, the 2014 is a base. The exit provisions for towns that desire to leave, that's the box borough protocol that I just described to you, it includes a phrase that any town that withdraws is explicitly exempted from any debt that's occurred after December 10th, 2015, which is to say, the Waylands and others of the world who wish to leave the town, leave the regional agreement are not responsible for the debt if we choose to build a new school. This one is not going to be popular at this table, it is the elimination of the five people minimum in the capital assessment formula and reduces it to one person in the capital assessment formula. Arlington has been and continues to be an advocate for that particular piece because it will help to to discourage some of the smaller towns from, it makes them, I shouldn't say discourage, it requires them to pay for a seat at the table. I was willing to go along with this change grudgingly because I believe that it will help get Lincoln over the finish line in particular. They will also help Weston and Dover, which frankly is less of a concern for me, but it is true that that will be an effect of it. The capital assessment still includes that every town must pay a one, like a one percent minimum, which when we're sending 400 students from the district is approximately four student minimum, but it is, there is no mistaking that this is a concession and the amount of money that Arlington would benefit from under this new regional agreement. So the next term, it includes a declaration that nonmember communities shall pay assessments including capital fee equivalent to the average per pupil assessment as a member. So one of the things that has been frustrating to us in Arlington and even more to people in Belmont is that out of district students end up paying less than in district students mostly because, partly because of state legislature and partly because of DESI and partly because of policy. DESI has said that they're putting forward a new regulation that says that any out of district student or sorry, Minuteman can negotiate with sending towns and those sending and negotiate the capital fee. So for instance, one example would be Waltham. Waltham sends a large number of students to Minuteman. Should Minuteman build a new school and incur a bunch of capital, Minuteman will be free to negotiate with Waltham and say hey Waltham, you can send your students, here's the tuition rate and here's the capital rate and that will help us defray hopefully the cost of paying for this, because the mismatch in the size of the school. But this particular phrase says that the Minuteman school committee must enforce the capital provisions up to the limits of the law unless there is a two thirds vote of the school committee to back off. So this was driven very strongly by Belmont because Belmont is concerned that the Minuteman school committee is essentially going to cave to these out of district towns and this gives Belmont a really strong opportunity to block that because it's a two thirds of the weighted vote. Belmont is a very high sending town and so Belmont plus Arlington effect would be one that could block this. It's not perfect because it's within the limits of state law and state law itself is too permissive but in my mind that's the best language we could get without a legislative remedy. It also removes the requirement that the host community be a member of the district and this is basically just a play to let Lincoln leave if they really want to. Lincoln has said they don't want to leave because if they do then they lose effectively all control over this large piece of land which is in and so they feel like they're compelled to stay simply because the school will be in their property. But this would say that Lincoln could leave if they want and the school could still exist in Lincoln. So what we're going to be looking at on January 25th is a vote to support this new regional agreement which will permit a number of towns to leave. The current list of people who are declarants are Wayland, Boxborough, Sudbury, Carlisle is going to be on it. I feel like I'm forgetting there's one more. Dover and Weston might also add themselves to the list. The only one there that I'm actually particularly concerned about is Sudbury. They're the ones who are closest to being a real size but they're not that big. Belmont, Lancaster, Lexington, Arlington, I'm sorry, Needham, those are all towns that are clearly going to stay, Concord's going to stay. So we're going to be able to support a new regional agreement that permits these towns that are relatively small out and that support agreement that is imperfect but it's definitely one that I can say and stand here and say we should do this deal. It puts us in such a better position than we would be otherwise. I think we should separate it from the bond discussion which I think we should have next but even should the bond discussion succeed or fail, we are in a better position with this new regional agreement and I would look forward to your support at this meeting or a future one. These towns that drop out, will they be able to send their kids back to school? They will. A bunch of them for instance are like, so for instance Sudbury in particular, their geographic location means that they are sitting at the junction of three different like it's Assabit and Minuteman and I forget what the third one is so I don't think that they'll have full send back but yes they absolutely will be able to. What's the percentage of the students of the communities that want to withdraw? I haven't done that math yet, I don't remember off the top of my head. It's definitely Sudbury's the biggest one. Yeah, Adam says less than ten. Okay, yeah, something like that. And the Westin's won, Dover's won? Yeah, Westin's won, Dover's won. Yeah, of those Sudbury's the biggest, like I think they're like 18, I haven't looked at that in the chart recently enough to speak to that. I think at least part of the motivation to change regional grievance is to reduce the barriers for some of the non-member towns to join in and help. Has there been any communication with them or market research to confirm that they like the direction? So there absolutely has been and these efforts have gone from through the school, you know, like Ed Bacool and the superintendent attempting conversations. They've been things like Adam talking to mayors in the district, they've been at the legislative level trying to have those conversations. They've been through the mass school building authority and I would say that they have a conversation with Charlie Lyons, you know, saying like, okay, who can you talk to and who can you, you know, help us do. There has been nothing substantive successful on any of them and some of them have been actively negative about it. I will say that there have been the most small positive hints that Watertown has said, like they're looking at us shrinking Minuteman from a larger size to a smaller size and some of the Watertown parents are like, oh wow, is my kid going to get squeezed out of Minuteman? What should we do about it? But I would say any fruits on that are still far away. I would totally defend the statement that this regional agreement is a requirement to us ever getting success in that regard, but success is not close. Okay, Dean? Ash? John? It seems to me that the only reason that a town would want to join because it costs them more when they're outside. Is it? Is there any more to it than that? Like, why would it? I'm sorry. The only reason that they would be enthused to join would be that it costs them more if they're not within the... There's two other minor reasons, or at least some effective reasons. If you have enough of your students who go to a school you want to have some element of control and if you're sending 30 or 50 or 60 students to a school where you just have absolutely no control over what happens there, on some level that's frustrating and you can't steer what the programs are going to be, you can't ensure the quality, you can't manage parents' concerns, things like that. The second reason is simply to guarantee capacity. I'm not a believer necessarily in some Minuteman's projections, but if some of their projections sort of come true, then the sending towns are going to be taking up a bigger piece of a smaller school in places like Watertown and Waltham and Medford are going to be looking for somewhere else to put their kids. I'm not exactly holding my breath for that, but that would be a positive. Of course, I don't think Watertown has its own program. I believe it, right. So, Watertown sends all of its kids to Minuteman who want to go. They can't expand a program they already have, it doesn't exist. So, if they're going to get squeezed out, they might have an incentive to join. Okay, so are there any other questions on the regional agreement? Okay, so hopefully in the next week, a lot of this will come to a head. And as soon as it does, if you could send copies of the latest and greatest, we're going to have another meeting in mid-January. Maybe the third week in January, because a lot of this stuff simply we don't know yet. Both on our own school programs and on this. So, the reason I stand and add them here is everybody can get up to speed and think of all the questions. So, once we do have a FINCOM meeting later in January, we're going to have to put the report together and get it out to town meeting, because town meeting meets on January 25th. So, anything we get from Dan, I will shoot that right out to you so you can see. And he has been working, doing Yeoman's work, and I'd like to thank him publicly for all the work he's done over the last few months. I appreciate it. One more question? Sure. What is the status of the plans for the new school? So, I haven't talked about the bond already yet. So, they have plans. They're going to be approved by the school building authority. The schematic design that's submitted is going to be approved. The superintendent and is ready to vote and put the bonding out. And so, last night, his plan going into the meeting was to approve the regional agreement draft and approve, and have the, I mean, the school committee approve the bonding of the new building at 144.5 million. He has interestingly agreed that the bond is contingent upon the regional agreement, which for us is, to me, a very significant victory, because it means that we need to get the 16 yeses on the regional agreement before the bond vote becomes active. And so, I was at the school committee meeting yesterday, our representative was there yesterday, and we had some last minute conversations, and our plan at the time was to vote yes on the regional agreement. I just to complete the story, because I think this is, people will know about this, and it will be important. The link, the element of paying Lincoln for the host community has been taken out of the regional agreement, but it is trying, it is being done currently as a side agreement between Minuteman and Lincoln. So, there are actually three votes yesterday that the school committee was looking to take. One, Ed wanted the school committee to take. One was a side agreement with Lincoln Approval. Two was regional agreement. Three was to put the bond of 144.5 million forward. And so, he wants everybody at the special town meetings, and so part of what the select men did at these various meetings in Weston is that we have all agreed to call special town meetings, which for Arlington, of course, was easy, because we were already calling it for Stratton. And so, but all the other towns so far, I mean, have agreed that they're going to call it special, and Ed's goal would be that they vote both the regional agreement and the bond. So, Sue and I agreed that we were going to support Lincoln's side agreement. We're going to support the regional agreement, and we're going to ask to not support the bond agreement yet, because, and I believe that I really, I very much value this body's input on this element of it, that we would be faced with approving or disapproving a million and a half annual payment on a January 29th meeting without a clear way of how we'd pay for it. And so, I'm trying, so I continue my job one. The thing I'm trying most is to get the regional agreement over the finish line. And the thing that I'm doing after that is I'm saying, you know, let's not talk about the building quite yet. Let's put that vote off. Let's delay it a little bit. The downside of that is that Minuteman believes that the costs will increase, and that the, you know, the amount of school that you can get for 144 and a half million will go down if they delay by two months, four months, six months. And the drop dead date is June 30th or July 30th. I can't remember which. Okay, so this Article 6 would be for our approval or disapproval under the old agreement, or does it really matter? No, it really matters. So, right. So imagine, so the school, it depends upon what the Minuteman School Committee does on Monday and on any subsequent meeting. But at any meeting, the Minuteman School Committee could say, we seek to bond $144.5 million and all new towns, you have 60 days to reply. And if they don't get 16 towns to say yes, or if they were down to 12 towns, you know, 12 towns to say yes, one could certainly imagine that Ed is going to push forward to do the ballot option. Are people familiar enough with that? Or should I talk about that? I should explain. Okay. There are two ways for Minuteman to get this debt approved. One is through unanimous consent of each of the town meetings. And the second way is that Minuteman can call a district-wide ballot. And they get to set the date. The polls are only open for eight hours. And it's simply one man, one vote yes or no on whether or not to bond the building. And so the superintendent has said that he and other members of the School Committee have said that if they don't get the number of yeses they need from town meeting, that they will put it forward to this regional ballot. And it's an interesting question whether or not they're actually going to get enough votes on school committees to do that. My personal estimation is that they will. And so I won't be too surprised if we have a Minuteman regional ballot at some point this spring. And the question of that while the time we get there is whether or not I'm going to be supporting it or not. And whether or not I'm going to be supporting it or not is really dependent upon, first of all, whether or not we have regional agreement, full stop. And whether or not we as a town come to agreement on whether or not we can pay for it and how we would do that. Which would probably need a debt execution. Which would probably need a debt execution. Because we're talking a million and a half to two million dollars of annual debt service. So it's a lot of money. On the vote. Which vote? The bond vote? Yeah, bond vote. How do they count that? Each town overall. Overall. So what do they take for a number then? How do they get the number? It's a simple majority. Across 16. So we would open our polls exactly like we would for a local election or anything except with the unusual caveat that it's only for eight hours. Because this is specified by state. And they count the number of registered voters. No, not the number of registered voters, the number of people who actually cast votes. So it's a turnout game if nothing else. So we, so violence and fields passionately about minimum. We're going to have to run a serious turnout machine to make sure that we get what we want. I get you. Okay, Charlie. Dan, when, when will the regional agreement be in place or not in place? I don't believe that the new regional agreement will actually kick in until the December following the July. So I believe it would be 12 months from now, but I'd want to double check that. Because if there isn't the regional agreement, the clause that says that the town votes against the capital expenditure. And it gets passed anyway. The votes against it at the town meeting level and in the referendum. It doesn't have to pay the way out of paint. I don't think that that will apply because we'll still be under the old rules. And the old or the new. Okay. I thought the language was that if a community voted to get out and was not allowed out, but the debt went forward, it wouldn't be subject to pay. Still has to vote no. No, but I don't think, I think, I think they're the key part is you also have to vote to withdraw. Yeah, yeah, not just what against it. Charlie, I haven't inquired to be sure, but I don't think that that applies to this case because we haven't gotten to that new regional agreement yet. Okay, Brian. Okay. So the bond is going to be for a hundred and forty-four million? I don't know. Forty-four and a half. There's a 30% reimbursement, is that correct? So, just so you know, I am laser focused on the regional agreement and there's all this building stuff on the side. So I'm going to give you my building stuff on the side, not complete answer. I'm going to give you the best that I can, but please consult documents for better answers. It's a 44% reimbursement on the reimbursable costs. Right. And I haven't seen an explicit breakdown of which parts are reimbursable and which parts aren't. So I don't know what the total reimbursement rate. It's roughly a third last I heard. Okay. The business can be, I'm just writing the numbers and it's going to be very significant. Oh yeah, it's a big chunk. Yeah. Allen? Yeah. I'm just going to give you an answer for your peripheral vision. Assuming that the regional agreement where the visions go through, is there a consensus that it's the right building, the right size? In other words, the building itself supported? So, definitely I would not describe it as a full raging consensus that it is the right size. The thing that settled a lot of the debate related to the size is a memo that came from the Mass School Building Authority in July, May, sometime this summer. And what they said explicitly is something that they hadn't ever said before, which is they will fund a vocational school with fewer than 600 students. And so at that point, so right now it's 628. And so I think my personal argument on this went, so if we want the state's money, the difference between 600 and 628 does not matter. And I can definitely see an argument that the size of the school should be 400 or 350 or something like that. But if we're doing that, we're doing it without the state's money. And I also haven't been able to, that's not a choice that I get to actually make. So there is not a strong consensus on the 628. I will say that one of the things that does happen with this new regional agreement is that it becomes a district of the willing, which is I think a really positive development. That a lot of these very negative and very naysayers are not productive aspects of the district go away. And I think that some of the conversations will become easier when there's fewer on the table. This sounds like there may still be a discussion about building on some merits of what you're still writing down. I absolutely think that that conversation absolutely should happen. And I encourage the capital planning committee and the finance committee and everybody else to have that conversation. And just to offset that, so we're all in the same page, we're linking back to the earlier discussion. I understand that the discussion on the building is you have, you know, you have members, children, children of school who are from member districts and children of school who are from member districts. And some of the members of the school committee want to build a school that would fit all of them. And some of them effectively just want to throw the non-member kids out and say, we're going to have a 400-kid school, which is why we were talking earlier about what's the benefit of membership. If there are certain people there on the school committee that do not think Watertown's kids should go at all, that do not think Walter's kids should go at all. And that's where the issue becomes the membership non-membership, which is they could find themselves out. And like you say, and you think you should put it backwards, suddenly he has other options. Watertown doesn't. I mean, they have bought Belmont, Boston, and Newton. So it would be much more difficult for them to go somewhere else. You're absolutely right. The people who are advocating for the smaller schools, say the 400-person school, I think the thing that really took the win out of their sales was the state saying, we're not going to pay for that under any circumstances. And I think that that really, I mean, who knows, maybe this is all going to fail and maybe that's where we're going to be talking about in a year or two anyway. But he did take it out of the current debate from my perspective. Paul? Just a nitty-gritty question. The eight-hour election between two of us, doesn't have to be eight hours consecutive or four hours in the morning or four hours in the evening? I actually, I really, I did go and I read the statute on this one. And I don't believe it would permit you to do two. There's a world where they would sit, like there's a timeline that they put up a month ago or something like that on the screen that had the minimum ballot on April 2, which is also our election. And like exactly, that becomes kind of horrifying at that point. At that point I think we go to court and we do things like we ask them to hold open, you know, have the ballot be open for the full hours that we're open because otherwise it's just untenable. But let's just hope that none of that comes to pass. Okay, so you can see we have a lot of issues revolving around Minuteman and I think we'll need discussion. That's why I wanted to get it going now and then we'll hopefully finish it up. It sounds to me like now, though, we could take a vote. You would recommend that we take a vote on not denying the election vote? I would, yes. And if you saw fit the Colovoto vote on the region, I mean, I am pushing the regional agreement now. And if we could, if I could get you to say Colovoto not too, I will. I'm not asking about a bond. Okay, are there any other questions? Dean? Why is article 7 a vote in the Finance Committee? The regional agreement? Well, it's a draw. Constance Mormon? I'm sorry, I didn't... Why is that our vote? Draw, well, it's a draw. Well, it's... We've been involved in this sort of right from the beginning and two of our people have been involved in the committees they created it. You know, is it an appropriation? No, but I think we should. Okay, I mean, we should take a stand on it. Charlie? I move no action on article 7. Okay, so motion has been made for no action on article 7, which is to deny Wayland the ability to withdraw under the old rules. Is there a second? Second. Okay, is there any discussion on that? Okay, all those in favor of no action on article 7 on Wayland, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed. Okay, all those in favor of no action on Wayland, please raise your hand. 17, opposed? Okay, so that motion carries. And on the regional agreement, this would be to basically approve the regional agreement, as you played out. Yeah, though, as I realized, since you don't actually have the language in front of you, it's probably, I'm probably pushing too hard. Charlie? Well, I think I'd like to make a motion to support the regional agreement as Dan has described it. I have to say that the first of all, I think Dan did a yeoman job in explaining this complex process here in, you know, 20 minute extemporaneous discourse, which I highly applaud. But it pales in comparison to the effort that he's put in to get this regional agreement in place with these towns over the last 60 or 90 days. And from my view, the only substance of change in the regional agreement, I mean the protocol in letting some towns out and so forth are somewhat peripheral. The singular change is going to have one student instead of a five student minimum on the capital allocation process or formula. And, you know, I think in exchange for all of the benefits that we would get, and we've already voted for this regional agreement in the past and town meeting has voted for it. So I think all the benefits that we would get from this regional agreement with the revision that Dan has proposed, I think outweigh the negatives on the capital allocation formula. So I would hardly support his proposal on that and I move favorable action on article eight. We have a second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay, Alan? I guess I'd like to ask Dan's opinion about the benefits of voting tonight versus voting in mid-June. We haven't actually read it or anything. So one of the things that I said to the Board of Selections meeting when we talked about this 10 days ago was that during the discussion at the Selections meeting, I got a varying degree of feedback of Dan, you're working really hard on this and you've been keeping us pretty well updated. And for that reason, we're going to support this but anything you say that isn't crazy. And I really appreciated that but it also has given me a lot of leverage when I talk to these other 16 towns because I can say I've got to vote at the Finance Committee, I've got to vote at the Board of Selections, I've got to vote at the Town Meeting, I am speaking for the town. And there are a lot of people at that table who don't have the same solid foundation. And so in so far as that I feel like I really am representing this body's opinion and these other body's opinions, it really gives me strength at that negotiating table. So this is a defining vote but it's a good vote of confidence? Right, I can go to the Selections tomorrow and I can say last night I was at the Arlington Finance Committee meeting, I laid it all out and they are in favor of this regional agreement. And we've already passed it two years ago, 99% of it on that. Because we haven't read it. Yeah, I know. We're going to be meeting on this again. And if some people want to take a new vote, that'd be fine. But right now I'd encourage you to vote favorable to help support Dan and the town in getting these things done. So any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor of the favorable action supporting the proposed regional agreement, will you say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Thank you for your support. We've got a unanimous vote. And we'll save the school construction until later. Okay, thanks Dan, thank you very much. Okay, now let's work, let's see what we're doing here time-wise. Thank you Mr. Chairman. So the committee should have a memo before it in regards to collective bargaining and AFSCME, the AFSCME union. So very quickly at town meeting we had agreements with all six bargaining units with only one relating to be ratified by the actual bargaining unit which was AFSCME. So at town meeting in the spring there was funding put in place for all six bargaining units including AFSCME. But the funding for AFSCME was subject to them ratifying it by a deadline of May 20. They did not ratify that agreement. So we went back to the bargaining table with them and came to an agreement in September. The terms, the financial terms of that agreement are outlined in the memo. Cost of living increase of 2% for FY16, FY17 and FY18. And an adjustment to their snow and ice incentive. The adjustment really is that employees, predominantly DPW would start with a snow and ice incentive and would lose it as they missed snow and ice events. Now they actually will earn a snow and ice incentive as they report to snow and ice events. So you can see the FY16 cost, 17, 18 and then total cost on the second page as well as a draft vote with the bottom line that I would ask the committee to recommend be appropriated at the special town meeting. It is appropriate to note that the amount of money that was set aside for AFSCME as part of the prior bargaining agreement in the spring was approximately $166,000 for FY16. This agreement totals just about $144,000. Okay. The one thing that bothers me a bit is that all the other unions have agreed to bi-weekly payroll. This one does not have it. So I guess why was that the case and how will you move forward now with bi-weekly payroll with the other unions? So very briefly, the prior bargaining agreement that had been before the committee in the town meeting in the spring did have the AFSCME bargaining unit moving to bi-weekly payroll. Though I'm not in the minds of those who voted on it. My understanding is that the primary reason they voted down that agreement was the presence of bi-weekly. So it is not contained in this agreement. There's also less financial, a smaller financial package included in the agreement that's before you. We're working on rolling out bi-weekly pay for the remainder of the bargaining units, as all have been agreed to sometime over the course of the next year. And I would, I'd like to hold out that for the next round of negotiations that there would not be an agreement without bi-weekly pay for AFSCME. Okay, any questions? Alan? Are there any other differences between this and the May proposal? So in the May proposal, there had been a one-time payment. There had been a longevity adjustment and a one-time payment to go to bi-weekly. So that longevity adjustment is gone. The one-time payment clearly is gone and the Snow and Ice incentive is included. The Snow and Ice change? Yes. Will the Snow and Ice changes cost any additional funds? So frankly, you know, it's a tough one to put a guaranteed number on. There's already a Snow and Ice incentive in place. So there may be no net cost. There may be a net savings. There may be a net cost. So I have plunked in here what I think would be a worst-case scenario for increased cost. Brian? No, I just have to answer my question, please. Okay, other questions? Dick? Yeah. What is this Snow and Ice incentive? How do you work that and what is it? So the way what happened in this agreement and the way it used to be was every employee who reported the Snow and Ice events started with a Snow and Ice incentive of $500. Everybody was allowed to miss one Snow and Ice event and not be penalized. But then if you missed a second, your incentive goes to $400. If you missed a third, your incentive goes to $300 and so on and so forth. What we saw happen last year when we had 29 Snow and Ice events, not everybody gets called in for every event. But a lot of the big truck drivers that both Sand and Plough, they do come in for every event. So we had employees who worked, let's say, eight events who got their $500 because they didn't miss any. They got called for eight and they showed up for eight. We had some other employees who worked 27 of the 29 or let's say 26 of the 29 and they got $300 because they couldn't make three. When you really look at it, that seems to be a bit of a perverse disincentive or not necessarily commensurate with the effort put forth. So we swapped it or switched it to be you earn it. Now it's for every four that you show up to $100 incentive. Next four, $100, so on and so forth. Paul? No, it's two. That's accurate. In a lot of ways. Okay, are there any other questions on the collective bargaining agreement? Okay, do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. I would like if nobody has any objections, it disturbs me a bit, you know, that everybody else is going to move to bi-weekly payroll and this one won't. And there was an incentive there. So I'd like to add a comment where people can take a look at or maybe just speak before a town meeting that, you know, this will be a factor in how we look at the next one for this union, which of course won't be in a couple of years, but on that. Okay, any other discussion? All those in favor of accepting the collective bargaining agreement as presented? Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, now the big one. Schools. Okay, now we've got three school articles. Two, three, and four. Now two of them deal with the stratum. So article two deals with the modular classrooms. This looks like, well, we haven't decided how we're going to pay for it, whether it's borrowing or cash. Are you making a recommendation on that score, or will you be? It takes borrowing in the capital plan as it currently exists. Okay, it's already in the capital plan? It actually was in the capital plan last year. So first of all, we have a capital planning committee meeting tomorrow night. And so this is one of the items that have to be addressed. But let me just give you a 30,000 foot view here. So the plan it was proposed last year for the Stratton School was that the renovation of the school itself directly would cost somewhat more than $10 million. And in addition, there would be approximately, I think it was a million plus, about maybe 1.1 million for the rental of modular classrooms to house students in during the renovation process. And then this, at our last capital planning meeting, Adam presented a report from the Permanent Town Building Committee that the cost of the project was actually going to go up by about $890,000. This is market costs, you know, materials, labor, et cetera, in the estimate of the architects. And in the course of discussions, the Permanent Town Building Committee has been making certain changes to reduce the scope of the project a little bit in order to constrain some of those increased costs. But the net after those reductions is on the order of $890,000. So this first Article II is to fund the modular classrooms because they have to be purchased and ordered and purchased early in order for them to arrive and be installed in time for the September school year. If we waited to this annual town meeting, they wouldn't get done in time so that the whole project would slip out of year. Because you can't really act on an annual town meeting expenditure until after July 1 when the Department of Revenue or somebody has to approve all of the financial articles in the town meeting. So the second Article is also, you know, we're not really able to give you a number today or exactly how we think we're going to pay for this. I mean, we have a plan to pay for it. But to actually put it down into specific dollars and cents we're not exactly at that point yet. But it is timely since we have this town meeting and since the members of the Stratton community have been waiting for 16 years since the rebuild authorization in 2000 to get this project completed to review and vote the entire amount for the Stratton renovation at this town meeting. And that way the project could go forward and that's the reason for the second article there. Now was there any money appropriated in the capital plan last year? We did appropriate money for the plans for the Stratton school last year and in the capital budget we gave a pro forma financing plan for the Stratton which included some money from the non-exempt capital budget some revenue from the sale of the newly found and owned town property at the disabled American Veterans Building on Mass Avenue and some funds from the rebuild debt exclusion of 2000. And the amount of those funds and how that actually would pass is still under review by the town manager, the capital planning committee and the town comptroller. Okay so when do you think you would have numbers for us for article 2 and 3? Sometime in say mid-January? So I can... Okay. So bids for the modular classrooms the temporary space will be opened on January 8th So they'll be vetted for that week but we'll have numbers as of January 8th or they're around. You'll then have 90% construction design estimates for article 3 for the actual construction project Sometime I think we're going to get those on January 18th So we're coming in very close to the actual town meeting and though historically we've only asked the capital planning committee and finance committee in town meeting to approve actual bid amounts in this case in order to kick off the construction as soon as kids vacate the building at the end of June we want to award based on the 90% construction... Is it the 18th? Yeah is that a Monday? It's the King Day So it's Monday now It's the 19th Because the town meeting is the 25th I was thinking of having a finance committee meeting on the 13th that's the prior Wednesday Chris is there anything illegal about us meeting on the Martin Luther King holiday? I don't know if people are going to be away I don't know if it's illegal The buildings are closed but... Yeah Okay so I think we'll have to look at this We'll have the bids for the modules and the 90% estimates by the 13th I don't know if we can vote it We might have the 90% estimates they won't be fully vetted yet So we have the architect take a look at the estimates that we also have an owner's project manager do a constructability analysis in a separate cost estimate and then have them come together to come to a consolidated number You know what I can push and see if we can have a figure Okay Because I was thinking of meeting the 13th If we meet the 20th That's getting pretty close to town meeting Granted it's not a real big thing to put together We could probably figure out a way to mail it on the 21st So people can have it by the 22nd and 23rd I don't know if that would be exactly all the town meeting members but it might be the best we can do If people could keep the 13th of January open and the 20th Those are two Wednesdays So 113 and 120 And we'll see We'll get as much information to you as we can Okay, are there any questions? Now my understanding is that instead of spreading the modules around the town All the modules for the strap will be at the strap That's correct Okay, Dick Will you own those or lease? They'll be leased for one year Lease Tom, that was your question Any other questions from what you've got now? Dick? What about the Thompson? She said she's going to need a couple down there Is that involved in this at all? It's not involved though We have an open question out to the architect to see whether or not extending the lease Getting two extra on there How we can work that in as part of the next discussion for enrollment issues Okay So any information we get on this We'll just email to you as soon as we have it And please keep those two dates open Okay, are there any other questions on two or three? So once the modules, they'll all be set up up there with the strap And then the other is the renovation The actual building construction and renovation Okay, the last one Obviously the best for the last Is Is the capital budget school capacity expansion There's been a task force I guess you'd want Put together Led by our very able town manager And consist of two selectmen Two or three school committee Myself as chair of the finance committee Charlie Fosker as chair of the capital budget committee John Cole as chair of the permanent town building committee And we've been looking at all the numbers And there's been a lot of numbers You know starting in 2013 The enrollment started to go up more steadily Before that it would go up It would go down a little bit It was sort of going sideways But starting in 2013 The enrollment seemed to steadily increase The school committee Hired Individual to do a projection The school department has always had projections But they're based upon If what happens in the future Is the same thing that happens now So it's just a straight mathematical projection It hasn't gone into Examining who's moving into town Who's moving out of town Things like that So they hired the individual To do an analysis And I think that came up with the That over the next ten years We would have an increase in the school enrollment Of a thousand So we started on that basis Unfortunately or fortunately Depending upon how you look at it The very first year after the projection was made Instead of going up 184 students As it was projected in the study It went up 84 students So it was automatically 100 below projections So the question we don't know is Is that Is October 1, 2015 Is that where it's going to be? Is it going to go down? Or is that just a blip That's going to go back up again? We just don't know And so the group has been meeting twice now Throwing out everything You've probably seen it in the advocate And on the list and such All the different alternatives put forth The Thompson is sort of This is an East Arlington problem That's where the growth seems to be coming And if you wander around East Arlington You'll see house after house being torn down And a little single family being torn down And big duplex is going up So it is East Arlington problem They've gotten to the point now Where the Hardy has two classrooms available Next year they will be full The Thompson basically has no classrooms available And if you look at One of the things to look at Is one of the studies These are really sort of helpful Because they give you You know, the classrooms The number of classrooms and the amount each And I think these are really very helpful But for example, if you take a look at Thompson The fifth grade, which is going to be moving on To the oddison, is only two But you look down into the kindergarten and first grade And those are four So if this goes ahead as projected We Two classes move out Four classes move in You know, we're down two classes And so, you know, what are the alternatives? How do you house those? Well, they only, they have one I sort of did a tour of the Thompson today With Adam and With the superintendent and the principal The only school that the classroom They really have available is the art room So, you know, you do art on wheels That takes care of one What do you do with the other 25 kids? Well, maybe they can balance them out With the Hardy and There's certain circumstances So for example If you look at Let's take first grade At the Hardy and the Thompson You've got eight classes there If you make those into seven classes It boosts the enrollment of each to like 23 But now you save a classroom So, you know, they're looking into You know, shifting kids back and forth Between the Hardy and the Thompson To save a classroom So these are all the different things That are being suggested Now in addition to that You have the oddison Is getting very full And so You probably saw it One proposal was to build a fifth and sixth grade School on the woods Above the oddison Which would be intriguing Another is that To move the eighth grade class Into the high school And we're going to be hearing very soon About the high school Whether MSBA is going to approve it or not So there's various things being looked at You know, my sort of goal Is not to spend a lot of money until we see How this enrollment is going So those are the things being discussed now And this article was put as a placeholder If the task force is able to come up With a couple of specifics So for example, if two more demountables Were put at the Thompson This could be the appropriation of money To fund those two demountables So we have the two classes at the Thompson And at least for a year You know, they can keep the arbor and have the two classes But then you get to another year Do we build permanent demountables at the Thompson Do we put an addition at the Thompson Those all take longer than the temporary So I don't know, that's sort of A little bit of an overview And I know Charlie was there I know Peter was there Dean was there Dick was there So Adam, do you want to start with you Do you want to add anything? Can you add anything to the issues? I think you know what I think about So anyway, that's why that's there Any of the people who are there Want to add anything? Try to just sort of give an overview Dick? I want to ask a question I've been hearing that To take and move A class into the Gibbs To take and bring that up to Code, it's going to be $20 million What did that figure come from Or is it true or what? So that's simply the architect That the school department hired To do a feasibility study So the whole issue Not a feasibility study Just really a report on possibilities It's a square footage Take an industry standard for Square footage and do the multiplication There's no plan behind that Because it's operating now It must be partially up to code Yeah, I don't think the question is Up to code, it's up to standard It's up to the old code It would be the old code It should be grandfather I went through it with Adam today Because one of the issues One of the questions that came up Actually Diane Mahan raised it first And I sort of jumped in on it Was maybe we could use the Gibbs Like two or three classrooms in the Gibbs Plus a gym for a satellite I don't know for those who've been around here forever They had some satellite campuses Back in the 70s Instead of demountables We could send the fifth grade up to the Gibbs And that's a satellite And walking through the Gibbs though We were looking at the top four Which is where all the art is And the classrooms, they're small They're not the most appealing I just don't see Plus you'd have classrooms there With private studios So you'd have, you know, individuals Walking through a school area It doesn't add to security And then we looked at a couple of classrooms down Where the girls' gym used to be The girls' locker room used to be And it's too small It has a folding door across it But each side would be Four or 500 square feet It's way too small for that So it would need a lot of work I think Alan? How about the DAV? Like that Just to throw it on the table I'm certainly by the University In the summer years Yeah, we don't know Dean? So I handed out, I sent it out Today and I handed out this Four-page handout So if I could just take a minute And put it together It was a little bit helpful To try to understand it So if you use these To go to the back of page one This is the October 2009 The conference all the way to the right And if you just go down the line The 5th grade came right out of the class side The grade line was right here 42, 51, 57, 55, 47, 60 The lower class was 5th grade Or 42 The high class was kindergarten 63 And we're all in that sort of 50-something range So if you go to the front of the first page That's the enrollment report As of today It's the same report, same measurement So we started from the back You're ready to say so Alright We were just in that, let's say 50-something range of your conference Right up to that same grade line The first year, good for the 59, 49 But then we get there 81, 73, 81, 82 And so I think that does a great job of articulating What the problem is in some of these schools Primarily when you do the same analysis You see that the Thompson and the Hardy Have the biggest challenge And so what I think this helps people What I think it helps people understand is You just to assume for a moment That Each incoming Thompson grade Is between, let's say 80 and 88 kits And I use that because that would give you 20 to 22 Right? With 22 not being all that great But clearly not the 26 They put my kid in last year's darling That would That would mean each year We have a shortage of classrooms At Thompson, right? So as Al said Two kids leave Two classrooms leave fifth grade And by the way It's unreasonably large That 30 kids to class So two Two classrooms leave But then you're placed by four By four So right now Let me back one sec Right now they're about minus one Because they had to fifth As Al said The only one room yard room But they had to put 60 kids in two rooms So right now they're already Minus one in a room You could say, right? So next year They go to minus two Because they replace 60 kids, two rooms with 80 kids, four rooms The following year They replace another large class of Two With a class of four again So now they go from You know, minus two to minus four And so That's sort of the The gist of the issue And then I guess you could jump You'd be fine for a year Then two years later The second grade could now be minus five If they were placed by a class of eight And so that's where They were given a word Effectively Shows the challenge Just sort of Building up each year And also I think does Sort of lean step The challenge all around Which is You know We don't know for certain That it's minus Maybe five class you need Over the course of several years But we have to We have to start planning And getting ready To do something about it And then you kind of hope That it never jumps from You know, I say 80 to 88 Is comfort of saying Or at least it's okay If it were to jump Somewhere up to a hundred We have a whole other problem But I think those That the first page front-back Is a good job By school of explaining How this problem is Sort of building and growing Over the years And how it Is projecting out To continue to grow If you go to the third page Or to the front of the second page This is the school department's Ten-year-old history The projected enrollment They go back several years And then it's projecting Forward several years I think this does A couple things First it partly shows The history and then The projection But it also helps people Understand the issue Across the grade levels And what I mean by that Is using those same metrics Of elementary school I should have pointed out You see that the elementary schools Have really grown significantly Like they've gotten really big But the middle school Hasn't gotten really big Because the middle school Which is at 1130 right now 1130 kids right now Was at 1,065 kids Back in 2009 So it's a net growth Of about 60 children So I think that helps With a couple thoughts It sort of one Helps show that the growth Is coming from the bottom grades And pushing upward Not coming in from all angles I think we had a meeting We fed some meetings with The school department where They tell us that growth Comes in from every grade Proportionally every single year And it doesn't prove out That way when you just look At the simple numbers The elementary schools I think have grown 18% The middle schools have grown 8% There's a material gap Right now of course As these large classrooms Keep moving up through the system They're eventually going to Push their way into the middle School and make the problem Really, really bad there I think they've ever took it To sort of a breaking point Right now based on The educational model they have Which they call a I think a cluster model I mean maybe I made that up But it will continue to Break it as we get up there And then there It also shows I think Some of the challenges With the demographics Because if you just go Really across the grade level One of the things you notice On this chart is When we move from fifth grade Historically when you move From fifth grade to sixth grade Sixth grade, seventh grade You have drop offs in enrollment Because kids are going To private schools Or go on alternative education Traces when they leave elementary I think what this chart shows Is it shows how that has Historically worked But it doesn't From a demographic perspective It also creates some challenges In moving forward Because if you say Twenty-twenty-five kids a year Leave to go to private schools As Arlington's enrollment And that's let's say Ten percent of the grade As the enrollment As the big grades come through You're still going to lose Ten percent Or you're going to lose Twenty-five kids still You know in other words Let's take the jump tap From sixth to seventh Just because we're A hundred kids larger in each grade Is Belmont Hill Or BB&N Or whatever school Going to take a larger Number of kids And it's probably not So it sort of shows And helps people as they're Trying to work through that And I know I'm going to look over at Frank's I know he's going to ask me This question You will notice that This report does not Tie to the report on page one When you look at the number Of kids I believe that The school department on this Includes the kids that They send out of district So this is the enrollment Of Arlington children In some form of public Education Whereas the front page Which is the reason I put that on the front And use that more Because the kids that are Physically in a town Of Arlington building That we're using And then the last page On the back of page two Shows just The current classroom needs As of 2015, 2016 And then how many You know quote unquote Extra classrooms they have And you know their ability Or inability to move things Around And sort of going back To the Thompson as I Sort of articulated How you project out the kids Going in that situation Getting worse over time You know they said They said here and they said They have 19 classrooms to use Extra spaces, no I mean like our Al said They could try to gap it For one year With art on a cart But you know Even if you bridge it For a year Let's say we can We can do that right There's no room after that And that's what this is Trying to get to is No space beyond that So I thought that these Four pages are sort of Looking simple on the On the face But really are impactful In terms of just getting Your head around what the Issue is and sort of Mentally trying to figure out How it's going to Keep getting worse. Thank you for putting That together in your Explanation. You can see If you go to the third Page which is the You know projection Is that This was a problem Which really sort of Popped up in fiscal 2013 So before that Fiscal 7 Or 7 Down 18 Down 57 Then you had two years That had popped up a bit That was down 32 up Six down You know It was going over Then in 13 Wham And that's when The school department Came to us Looking for some extra Money Through the long term plan And we put together The growth factor And all that So we've been You know We've been trying to Provide extra money To the schools To take care of Their operating costs But now You know Now there's a classroom Shortage At least in certain Areas Mary Margaret I was just thinking That back when We built the Thompson And we put The eighth grade In the high school There were Definitely some Social and cultural Problems with Having that many Kids and that big In the high school Yeah So I'm just Causing people To think back When we did that before Yeah You know None of this is ideal I mean Whatever solution We're going to Come up with We'll have Drawbacks to it But That's a Fairly large Campus there Other thoughts Or suggestions Or comments Carol Churches School For fifth graders I don't know what that Billion looks like Now Yeah You know That's something We did In fact I think In the 70s We even used The boys and girls Club I think We did You even had Night school You even had Night school Two sessions Two sessions Yeah One kid Know anyone One of you Yeah So these are Trying The issues And I I have a feeling That You know There'll be A request for Some kind of money For some kind of A Short term Because You can't Build either Permanent Demodibles Or new classrooms By next September But you could Put for example Temporary demodibles And by then John Our kids Were Right in the middle Of that Satellite school business And As it occurred That is to say Before they went to the Satellite school We would Turn down That it would be Off the situation It turned out to be fabulous For Three or four years In the Satellite schools They had A model That's Really wonderful For what it's Worked That's just Right Where else was it Besides the boys And girls Club What's that The Satellite They had And before that I can remember When there was Portables On the Pair school My oldest son Went to Fourth grade Portables He never Step Put his foot Inside the Building The regular Building Dick The problem Using The satellites Is Parents get Really upset But The kids Take and Go right into it And The kids Any other comments Charlie It's just If I could When you study The school The history of the schools And you look back Even way back in the 20s When they built the Pair school And the Heidi school Soon after they built them They had to put Editions on them It's like History repeats itself When they Built the Stratton school Soon after they Finished the Stratton school In the late 50s They had to put And then Then it Come up And that's When they built The freshman Built the high school To house Only the ninth grade It's called The freshman Built it And then we had to Use that Built it again On the Renovation of the Auditor when we Put not only the Eighth grade In the High school We put the Seventh and Eighth grade In the high school For almost Two years So I'm just wondering What kind of Deliverable We can expect Coming out of The task force Is the goal to Come up with A Plan and a Capital budget To Do some temporary Expansion Just at the Thompson Because that's The immediate need Or is the goal to Try and come up With a comprehensive Expansion plan To be voted on At the town Media I think the goal Was both A short term And a long term I think simply because Of the time frame And this is just My guess Is that the best Will be able to Do is come up with A Short term fix Whether that's Busting or Whether it's Demountables or Whether it's Using the Art room or Whatever And then Maybe start Thinking about Long term Maybe some Planing money Or something Like that I think one Variable that Is the fact that This year's Student class is Lower by About 106 students Then it was Forecast in the Projections only Last spring. And the question I mean the Demography study Report Forecasts that There will be 369 additional Students in The elementary School system By 2020 And having A hundred student Shortfall now In that Forecast You know Can really affect Where it goes Down the stream In other words Is that a blip If all of those Students are In a Low grade They just Project their way Through If the Shortfall is All in the Fifth grade There You know They change the Outcome five years Hence that By that much And then The other The question is What actually Caused the Shortfall From the Forecast And is it Repetitive Because if it's Repetitive That also Changes the Outlook And I think You know We have to Try to Understand that Before we Start spending Millions and Millions of dollars To a solution Of the needs Including The renovation Of the high school The renovation Of Minuteman And a possible Override In a few years As you saw With the long-term plan And You know The resources Of our citizens Are not endless So You know You've got to make Priority Decisions In this So You don't Want to Rush into a Permanent Expensive fix On the other hand Okay So That's the challenge, Dave So What I would say Is As You know Both go to the task force meeting And then Work on the subcommittee That reviews the School budget Is It's It's incredibly Frustrating Experience To go to these meetings And it's frustrating In a couple of reasons You know You have this Really critical problem You have this Really critical problem At the Thompson That's A year coming And then You've got all these Other issues But on the other hand And I'm going to You know This isn't the first time I've said this I think I say this every year You have a school department That just can't get the numbers Right Okay And the reason I say that I'll just go right through it They go to the task force And they talk about the Odyssey And growing by like 100 kids Or 200 kids Over the next Two years Right In order to get that They're assuming For the first time In Arlington No attrition So you look at the numbers And you say Guys That's not the number The number is not Zero Grow But it's not The 200 kids Or whatever They keep projecting Right And then We hear a lot about That there's a crisis In all of the schools There's a crisis In every elementary school No, there's not If you take the McKibben Report Which I did And you move it out To 2019-20 And you try to figure out How many classrooms We need That there is an Urgent, urgent, urgent crisis In East Arlington And then there's Some other things You can manage Right And then we get into The personal nonsense And when I call the nonsense I hear all Over and over and over again About the problems With the gym At the Thompson School The gym doesn't work You know We're doubling up 65th graders But this is Sort of the third wave Of smoke and marriage Right Let me just try To explain it Assume you go To your certain specialists Art You have to take Things that once a week So you can take Five sections a day 25 sections a week So you can fit So if you have one classroom You've got 20 You have 20 classrooms In a building 25 sections They can all go to art In that one room The reason it doesn't work Is for P.E. Is you have to take P.E. twice a week So if you're building With 20 kids They have to take 40 sections of P.E. In one gym So you know 46 to P.E. 25 in the charts You've got to double Some up Double up some rooms And things like that I think about When we all went to school Right You divide the gym Down the middle You've got one class On one side You've got another class On another side So the way it would Really have to work At the Thompson right now Is it You know It's like 15 classes Would be alone One class In an old gym And then like 13 would have to Double up Okay So they chose to Double up the 60 kids In the fifth grade Which inflicts Maximum pain And parents are in Classroom size of 30 And really aggravates Like really Like I understand Their pain And their sympathy In doing that But that's not It's translated back Into a space issue It's not a space issue It's an allocation They could have put You know The lower grades To the doubling up Or maybe it's a teacher Issue Maybe we don't Have enough P.E. teachers To cover it But I think that's Going back Into the pile And creating more Of this mess Like we've got this Like We've got to put All these together It creates What feels like An unsolvable issue That can only be Solved if we throw A ton of money at it And so I think Where the answer Probably lies In a degree of You know you can't Manage your way out Of this problem You really don't need To spend your way out But there is Going to be a combination We might have to Manage some things better We might have to Spend some things better That sort of I think Where the challenge Is in all of this And I think it's Going to give you The budget Excluding me But that's kind of Where we're stuck Right And the last thing I would point to Is even on like How much they need For additional growth Factor I think You know the School department came Out with this Interesting chart Where they multiplied This And they divided This And they did All sorts of fancy Stuff Right But if you Just take this Chart And do what I did Without using an algorithm Or a factor Or a formula Or any of that And so we create All this chaos That I think makes it Very difficult And so that's What I take away From the process So far Instead of just Knutting it down And saying This is what we Really need And this is what We can manage And this is what We need more money for And this is how We go The process is Just sort of It's gone crazy Early on And you know You're frustrated You get to an answer Okay Are there any other Comments or Questions? Helen? I just like to Spin exactly off What Dean was just saying It is In many ways A chaotic situation In the mathematical sense In that There's a lot of uncertainty There are unpredictable Feedback loops Of you know As the schools get better Fewer people Go off the bell on hill And as they get worse More people Go off the bell on hill Things like that It's hard to predict The demographics To a great extent The private sector has You know Absorbed the idea Of variability And uncertainty And done things As simple as You know Modular offices And whatever that are Intendantly flexible You don't build You know Marble monuments Anywhere You build flexible things And move around And I think Approaching it In a situation like that Which goes back to You know Good use of modules And flexibility And dividers And whatever Plan for that uncertainty Which for now And so on and so forth I think The flexible solution Would be the best one Okay So those are the Well There is one other issue too And Adam and I Were sort of going through the Gips Seeing about space And things like that And you had these Nervous people Following us So Like that one? It's You know We need to We need to settle it You know For that For the Gips too For the tenants You know They have contracts with us They've been paying us money They've Provided a lot of good services For the town And I think that's got to be Taking care of One way or the other Fairly soon We have to do it By June 30 I don't think We should wait that long Okay Is there any other Can you take a look at the Elementary school With St. James That's That's That's That's That's A preschool I can't think of any Yeah Primary school Right They moved from Where they were On Little Street over to there They moved in a number of years ago Right after The Greek church Purchased that property And they That's That's That school being used Oh, it's Oh yeah, it's full Oh, it's a school I like Heights Heights Those are Yeah, there's a lot of kids In this town Got to know where they came from And we have all those The after school kids In the Gips And that's giving us revenue And the balloons Are Can't Pass Okay Is there any Is there any further discussion Any other questions So what I'll do Is The minute I get So what I'll do is, the minute I get the updates from Dan, I'll email those to you. We just got updates from the McKinnon report. I just got to wait this afternoon. I'll email those to you, probably as soon as I get home. Please save the 13th and the 20th for finance committee meetings. So that's a plenty of time to actually vote and discuss these. And as soon as capital budget and the manager's office get solid things on their parts, we'll shoot those right out to you. Okay, there's no further discussion? Oh, Troy. Yeah, I just wanted to note that one of our members has resigned. And we ought to give him a sense of our appreciation for his work. Think about Len. Oh, yes. Yep, Len, after spending how many years with his children? Two. Two years is off to greater things on that. So, Len, thank you for your good work. We appreciate it. That's instead of a raise. Okay, media adjourn.