 Okay, we're recording. Yeah, I'm going to call the finance committee meeting of Friday. June 16, 2023 order at 1.30pm. And thank you. And Alicia has joined us just in time so that as I go through the roll call, I think everybody we're expecting for this meeting is now here. So let me go through and just make sure that everybody. Can hear me and. We can hear them. So start with Anna. Present. Lynn. Present. I'm here. Bernie is absent. So the minutes should indicate that he's unable to attend. Kathy. Yes, here. And obviously I'm here and so Alicia. Here. Hey, so thank you for all. For being so prompt and. I think the way we wanted to do, and we've already told Holly, this is that we're going to do the third quarter report. A little bit later in the meeting so that we can get to. I was going to do public comment, but I don't think there's any public comment at this point. So. It'll allow us to go straight to the question of. House for compensation. And that discussion and. So. I guess that we should just launch into it. If there are people who show up later, I will ask for. If there's public comment again. We'll not just close out public comment because nobody's here now. I really want to make sure that if there's anybody who's commenting on the agenda item we're talking about today that they have an opportunity to do so. So having said that. After our last meeting. I did a summary of where we were and Linda's going to put it on the screen. It's in the packet. And. What I tried to do was to. Summarize the points where I think that we had agreement from the first discussion. And then. If the second group is things that I felt that. We needed to discuss for this meeting. So what I wanted to do as a start was to. Go back to the last meeting and see if there is agreement. With the summary points that I have put forward, which are the top list. One through six. And I'm not going to read them, but I'm going to take a moment just to make sure that everybody. Has an opportunity to read them even though they have been in the packet and are in the packet. So that. Hopefully had a chance to look at it think about it already. And then what I'm going to ask is. For anybody who has a question or concern about. A summary point or how it's stated to raise your hands and they'll start with Kathy since she's already done so. I can't hear you. Sorry. Am I. Can you not hear me? Am I okay? It's a little bit. But we can hear you. So just. You can't hear me. We can. Yes. Go ahead. Okay. I totally agree with one through six. My question just is looking down. I think the one through five, the fifth in that list seems to be at odds with number six. That we're just going to focus on council. So that's, it's a question. I'm totally in agreement with six, the one through six, the agreements from the first meeting. Okay. Duly noted and. Actually that was written early and. As you'll see in a little bit. Lynn has been working on. Some motions. To help the discussion along and to let us do this is series of motions. So. We should have. The. The motions have been. Including discussion of. Other type topics. So. If there's a, is there anybody who has concerns about. What. We decide that that's a fair summary one through six of the first meeting. Let's stick with that for a moment. Lynn, did you have a motion on that? Or do you want to just. No, I don't, I want to make sure we go through the discussion and then we have motions that go to the council. Okay. Okay. So as far as. The number five. The only thing I'd say about it, Kathy, is that it says whether to include. I believe was the wording. And therefore it's a committee decision. That's. It's just something that has to be discussed today. And if the answer is. No. Then the answer is no, and then we won't include. Any committee observations. About those issues. Is that fair? Yeah, no, it's just for. Let's get on with this. I was just pointing out that four and five and to be discussed seemed to be at odds with six. So when we get to it, Lynn, we can clean it up. I don't. The other thing is. One of the other co-sponsor Alicia is one co-sponsor of the original proposal. The other co-sponsor is now in the attendee list is counselor. Miller. And is there any objection to. Bring a counselor Miller into the meeting. No, I think we definitely should bring her in. I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do that. I can't do that. And that can you. Hey, Michelle. Hi. Hey, everyone. So you. We heard you. So we know you can hear us. So we're set on that. And. I don't think we have a. Foreign problem with council. So that would be the only reason that would have been a hesitation. I don't think we would have been able to do that. I think we would have been able to do that. I think we would have been able to go back to the. Work back to the questions that are at hand. I think that the first one. I don't have to get it out. You want to put it up for a second again, Lynn. And. We should just start with the conversation where we had before. Which is the amount of increased to propose because I think what we had said was. You know, I don't think we would have been able to do that. I think we would have had councilor compensation. And not the others. So we want to get on to councilor compensation. And. I know that several of you have been thinking about this question. We did have a discussion at the last meeting. About the amount to propose. And the other thing that. I don't know if it's new. We don't need it now. But you haven't been giving some thought about. Spreadsheet that would help illustrate amounts, the effective amounts as we. As we talk about them, but I will start with Kathy. Okay. I'll start out just so we don't have dead silence on what Lynn showed us last week. I think it was last week. We had received the same 3%. That's been negotiated. And I think she did it over four years, but if you did it over five or saying the sixth is about to start. It gets to. In the neighborhood of $1,000 more of a stipend. And I would be comfortable with that amount. But I think it's a little bit of a problem. There are multiple reasons. And just to summarize them a little bit from last week. We are in a really tight budget situation. There was a long negotiation with the unions to reach. Yes. We turned down. We didn't go for the $85,000 extra that the school committee. We were just getting a little bit of a bit of a break. We were talking about is counselors loading ourselves. And just to point out a thousand would be a 20% increase. It's, it's pretty substantial. I'd be willing to go a bit higher than that. But I would start there. And it's for those reasons the both optics of it. And when you talk about going all the way to 10. It's equivalent. To a teacher. It's equivalent to some of our. in terms of people. So I'll speak to that first. And then secondly, I don't think we should pay chairs of committees more. I think it's is appropriate to pay the council more, the council president more, the charter set the extra two and a half, 2.5,000, 2,500. I'm not sure we need to hold 2,500, but I'm comfortable with that. We've started with that. But I don't think we should start paying chairs more. I want to make sure people are comfortable rotating through his chairs. It's an opportunity to learn. So I'm just addressing your first two points with a starting point. Knowing what the original proposal was, I'm clearly starting lower at the, and Lynn, I just took your spreadsheet out another 3%. You didn't get all the way to 1,000 of an increase. You were near there. I love stone. Hey, Alicia. Yeah, thank you, Andy. So a couple of my thoughts, I feel like I still have to hear what other people say in terms of paying the chair more because I do hear Kathy's point there. And I do also think that like a substantial increase overall may accommodate those things, but I absolutely do not think that's a small increase that was just shown on the screen is anywhere close to enough for one to eliminate paying chairs more and for two just a general overall based salary for counselors. And I did want to point out that it's actually not similar at all to what teachers get paid. It's actually similar to what other elected officials and other counselors get paid in other towns. So if you go back to the memo that Michelle and I submitted with the motion, it shows what other towns in this area pay their counselors. And Northampton is at the 10K now with what they're looking at to increase. And we are significantly lower than any other town in this area. So I think that our starting rate is already really low. I'd be interested in looking at the 3% increase once we already bump it up. But from where we're at right now, it doesn't make much sense since we're such so significantly lower than any other counselors in this area. Okay. Just second, I'm going to tell you Michelle, but what you're looking at is the original proposal. And as you circle through the proposal, you see the amounts from other communities that were listed. This is directly from the proposal from Alicia and Michelle that started the discussion. So I'd like to leave it on the screen for the moment, Michelle. Yeah, I think while I understand Kathy's logic, I think that it was the Charter Commission actually that sort of started the base salary off too low as compared to other communities as we see here. And so I'm not looking at it as going up from the 5,000 that we have now in increments like Kathy is, I'm looking at it as, I think it started off too low. I don't want to call it a mistake by the Charter, but I don't think that the number that was chosen, and maybe there are reasons why it was chosen, but I don't think that number was the right number to begin with. So in my mind, I feel like we need to at least come on par with the other communities. And I don't, I understand the argument or the concern about us paying ourselves, or that concern. I think I heard Kathy just say that, but I don't see that, I understand a process is needed and I like what Northampton did, but I don't see in this case given that this isn't going to impact us, it's going to impact the next council. I think that we can look at it as sort of a revision of what the Charter did initially and say, okay, we're cleaning this up a bit. That wasn't really the right number at the time. And now we're making a revision to that. And then any other processes or steps we put in place that go beyond that, I think can be looked at separately. That's my thoughts right now. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I just want to co-sign on what Michelle said. This is, Kathy, I agree that a external group that would study this and go through a process to make a recommendation like Northampton just went through would be the ideal system. And now we know and we should change the process for next time. However, this proposal exists within our current process and I don't think that we should penalize this proposal just because we didn't realize that this process was flawed beforehand. So I think that we should do both in terms of following this established process for this proposal and changing it for the next time. I think both of those things would be appropriate, but I do not think it's fair nor right to say we're not going to do this just because we didn't like the rules that we set. That's it. Thanks, Andy. Yeah, Alicia, your hand is still on her. Yeah, sorry. I just wanted to come back because that was something that I had forgotten to say during my comment as well is that I also agree that changing the process might be a good thing to talk about, but that would be something like I would like to talk about the proposal first and then changing the process, which I would also be in agreement with doing, setting up something similar to what Northampton did for future review and for going forward after the proposal. Yeah, I have some thoughts and comments about the process piece, but I'm going to save those for the very reason that you said at the beginning. I guess I'm a little bit uncomfortable with doubling right now because struggling with our budget as we just did and knowing what the difficulties existed with the negotiations of some of the collective bargaining agreements in the school, but there are also collective bargaining agreements in the town that are unsettled that it seems particularly awkward at best and in addition to awkward, there's a question of the political consequence. And I look at one last thing and I'm going to ask for Lynn to come back to spreadsheets later, but the other problem that I have is that I want to keep an eye on the total amount that we're talking about when we get towards the end of the discussion and look at it in context because there are a lot of things that we know that our departments needed and wanted in order to more effectively serve the community that couldn't be done because of what's here. And we've had a lot of concern about goals that have been discussed within the council, including some of the recommendations regarding the community safety working group and that we were having financial questions about how to fit everything within the budget. And so it's question then of how are all of those goals or the ECAC staff that people who are advocates of the energy and climate action goals feel that we need in order to really meet the goals that are there, which is another high priority as well as some of the housing goals. And I am going to be a little bit uncertain about jumping into an increase where the council puts itself above any of those other goals. And so I think that that's what my hesitation has been about going too high. On the other hand, I certainly would feel that we need to make some substantial additional amount that is beyond just the 3% as if we had had 3% all along. So those are my thoughts. I'm not going to share them again because I'm going to try and focus on getting this group moving together. Matt, you've been spoke about it. Well, I just want to say I agree with the need to do this increase. I think, I think everybody agrees that we need a neutral process to give full recommendations, including a process for annual amount. And I think that's the most important thing is that that's an outcome in the next few weeks is that there's a process in place so that this is going to be a long drawn out discussion. And I also understand that there's a need to do just sort of a cost of living adjustment based on where the current numbers stand. And I appreciate Kathy coming in and setting an initial number for the discussion. And I think I don't know that the number that I'm going to finally support is the most full correction necessary. I think I'd rather let the independent process bring us to the full correction. I think I would like to do something that is substantive that makes a difference. So I think a thousand is low for where we are and where the need is. To Annie's point just now, I was hoping we would see, and maybe this is drafted somewhere, but I was hoping we would see sort of impact projections for different amounts across the 13 counselors, school committee and others. Without that, I think even without that, we know that we need to make an adjustment and I will support one. But I think in terms of the full correction, if it's true that the original charter commission was wrong or wrong for today, shall we say, I think that full correction, the full amount should be recommended by the neutral party and not something that we try to figure out sort of on the fly as a group here. So I guess my feeling is that, I like Kathy's starting point and I certainly would like to go higher but I probably wouldn't encourage us to go with a full 200% like Andy said. Hannah? Thanks, yeah, I'm really unchallenged a little bit by the narrative that, and I know it's true, I'm not denying that it's true, but the narrative that we're trying to double our salary, when you've got a low salary one, well, first I'm gonna back up because one, again, it's not our salary. If we choose to run again, then that's that. And if we win, then that's that. But I think that for me, this is the dollar amount that we're adding and the dollar amount that it would get to is what's more relevant versus the framing of it as a doubling, because this is not something that we're gonna try to keep doubling, right? The proposers of this brought forward an addition to bring it to $10,000. And I think to frame it, like we're trying to continuously double our salary is a little bit not aligned with what the goal is here. The goal is to improve access to make it so that someone could do this job and take time away from their other job or could continue to have childcare or to, I think there was an example in the last council where one of the counselors said, I don't have time to cook dinner on meeting nights. And so I have to order food and like that costs more than cooking. So I think that there've been calls for this for a while now, but I want us to just make sure that we're putting it in perspective of, we're asking to add 5,000 per person, not necessarily to keep doubling, doubling, doubling. So I know it's nuance and I know it might be seem trivial, but I do think there's a difference here, especially when we're putting this in comparison to our other town projects. Thanks. So I think Michelle wants to give something to add, at least two. Yeah, I think that it is important for us to step back from ourselves when we're looking at this and think about if we were that commission and we were thinking about the town council and we weren't thinking about our individual standing as a counselor and we looked at this comparison chart. I mean, it's very, very clear and looking at this chart that we're way off base. We're not even really close to what the rest of the community is surrounding us. And many of these communities are increasing and looking to increase. So my thinking right now, because it seems like we're maybe not in agreement on a number is, we want to pass this through the council and we want to find a number that will have a positive vote when it comes to the full council. And so I'm encouraging us to come to some compromise that we feel would get us across the finish line. And again, thinking about it as if we were the commission studying this for the council. How might we look at this in particular again when we just look at this chart? And Anna spoke to the access issues and Alicia spoke to the access issues and those and our goals are DEI goals, but like really just what's here in front of us is in my mind enough to say, and I have to disagree with Matt on, even though I don't like to, but I have to in that we don't want to make a full correction right now or let the process make the full correction. I don't think that sends the right message. I mean, this will be publicized. It will be a political, has some political charge to it, I guess. And I think we need to actually make the correction now and then let the process play out going forward. So I think kind of coming halfway and not making the full correction in my mind isn't the right way. Andy, I can't put my hand up, but Alicia just put her hand up. Well, Alicia, do you want to go up for Lynn? If that's okay, Lynn. I just quickly wanted to add a little bit to what Michelle was saying because in my opinion, the 10 isn't even the full correction, right? Because we're looking at Northampton who's looking to increase to possibly 16 and like maybe our full correction is 12, maybe it's 15. I think 10 is just a substantial increase. I wouldn't even call it the full correction, to be honest. And also just going off of Michelle's comment about putting yourself in shoes because this is about diversifying the council and eliminating barriers to access and participation. I also encourage you to put yourself in the shoes of like a low income person looking to run for council, a single parent looking to run for council, somebody who has to also support their entire family on one income who is looking to run for council and be an active participant and an active part of the town. Like those are the people who I'm trying to accommodate with this initiative and trying to make it more inclusive. And so that our government can be more represented, like more adequately represents the people who live in our community. And so I think it is really important to take those things into consideration that people literally who are interested in running for council and who have the skills that could benefit our town the experiences that could benefit our town literally cannot because they cannot sustain all of these commitments with the lack of compensation for the time commitments and the work commitments that come along with running for and serving on the council. So I would also encourage you all to very deeply take that into consideration because again, I think the nuance here is that nobody here is low income. Nobody here is a single parent. Nobody here is a part of those groups that I am talking about. So I can understand that you all may not need or understand but there are people who need and who will run if this is available. So Lynn is next. Yes. So I'd like to weigh in and then I'd like to share a chart where we can look at the impact of various levels because for me, that's one of the issues. Another one of the issues for me is that the town manager in the budget we have already approved has added in $5,000 as a quote starting place. And as you'll see in motions that I tried to develop before the meeting, I refer to this as a pilot. I suggest that we look at that for on a quarterly basis and maybe even, that means we might add to it at some point with a supplemental because to me, one of the expenses for many people that Lisha is referring to is in fact family care, whether it be children or an older parent or a disabled child or whatever the case may be. So with that, unless people are interested in continuing to look at the memo, I'd like to ask the chair permission to put up the chart. Go ahead. I know I had it, hold on. There it is, okay. So this is the chart we looked at the other day where we did the 3%, okay? Right there, that's the 3%. Then this one is what Kathy just suggested. That's the $1,000. This is one where we can plug and play. And this is the one where I took the full 5,000. Now, the reason you see no additional dollars where the president is is because the amount they would get additional is in the salary of counselors. There's no additional amount to the stipend for the president. So what I'm suggesting is if there's other suggestions, I can plug them in here and we can look at impact. Because again, I feel impact is important and I feel the fact that we have the family care line item as the beginning of a pool of money for that purpose makes a difference to me as to whether we do something less than 10 million, I mean, 10,000, excuse me, 10 million, right? 10,000 or not. So that's where I am. Kathy has her hand up. Yeah, Kathy, go ahead. Lynn, I think that short is very helpful. One of the things on the other chart we just saw is, and I'm just putting information out rather than a suggestion. The charter started out with a $2,500 bump for the president. The table we just saw very few do that much. There was a pretty big range and a few went up as much as 2,000. So what Lynn has done is just, there's not an additional amount that the president's already at something and then it goes up. So that's a piece. We can decide whether we want that differential. One other, I did look at one other town. I don't know, I didn't do the original survey. Greenfield is lower than what we see the other towns at and Northampton is an outlier. So I don't think it's important not to pick an outlier. The last piece is that we have 13 counselors and I think the original intent of the charter played with that large number because a lot of people who wanted to keep town meeting were really concerned it got back going to a small number of people. So the compromise to try to win over some of the votes was five districts with two each plus three at large. That's a relatively large council and the reason when Northampton has nine just for comparison. So everything we do has a bigger impact because we have a large council. And I don't believe we can change that until we go through a charter review. I'm not even sure the mid 10 year charter review can change the number of counselors. It cannot. It cannot. So we, I shouldn't say we're stuck with, we have 13. So every time we take a number it gets multiplied times 13 people and Sean showed us the impact of five. I mean, it's pretty easy to figure out what the impact is by doing, is it one, two, something in between, not all the way. So I am concerned about the total increase. I do think we can and should strongly recommend a way of looking at this going forward. So this is not the only time we visit this. And I, I'd like Northamptons. I'm not sure we need a standing committee, which is what they have. I think we could do an ad hoc committee or we could go to percentages. And so I see the increase we're talking about now is a step forward, not necessarily an ending place. And I would like to hear that come back. So those are all just pieces of information. Cause what most of Lynn's chart is to say, if we just keep assuming president is always $2,500 more than wherever the counselors are. So it's, I'm not even saying that there should be a decrease in that. But if we're looking at the comparisons, I have no idea where the charter commission came up with the 2,500. I was hoping, I think they were thinking that the first multiple years of the council were going to be a bear. And the president would have an extraordinary amount of time just to help get us organized. And that certainly has been true. I'm, I'm finished. Lisha, Lisha, did you have something? Michelle? Hi there. Sure. I can, I can jump in until Lisha's back. Yeah, cause I think we lost her actually. Does look that way. Yeah. No, no, she's, she's here. Okay. I was just going to ask, and I'm sorry if I missed something previously, but her the charter, isn't it true that we have to make any compensation decisions by that July date? I'm not sure what Kathy, what you're referring to in terms of continuing to look at it and increase it. How would that be possible? What others are saying, Michelle, is that we could make an increase now. Yes. And we need to do that now. We could also recommend a process. And once the new council is seated, it's up to a certain amount. This could be again, not wait another five years or another six years before we make another, they could come up with a way of going. So what I'm saying is if we got to say, we went up like $2,000. Now we could in another 18 months, look at another increment without the council itself making that decision or with a recommendation from an ad hoc committee that said, you know, have it increase at the same rate as the union contracts once we reach such and such a level. So I'm saying we can do something now and it's not the last time. It wouldn't be the last time to do anything for the next council, for the public. Okay. Thanks for clarifying that. Yep. So I guess that I'm still at that place where I was that it seems like when we go to adding $65,000 of cost plus whatever employee taxation that town is reliable for that it's added to that, it is going to have a substantial impact on our ability to add even one additional position for any of the things that I mentioned previously. I have been toying with a lot with the question as to whether something in between is more consistent with the bulk of the other towns that were on that chart, not trying to get the outliers higher low, including our $5,000 current as being low, or among the low. But not feeling that competing to get to the high end is something that feels comfortable for me to do. And I do hear the rest of you. And I realize that it's a difficult decision they're all struggling with. The question is, is there a number that we can recommend to the council because we know that the council is gonna have this discussion on its own. So we're sort of in some ways going to preview and inform the discussion, but we're not gonna be the final, or should we be? So I guess that's where I am is that I don't feel that there's a need to take us to go to the highest, just for the sake of our matching the highest for lots of different reasons that I've stated already. But I do feel like something more than a minimum is also desirable. I really am looking myself or something in the middle, but ultimately this is gonna be a group decision. So just to keep moving it around because I'm gonna go with Bob and then Alicia, Bob. Yeah, is there a reason that we have to come up with a final number now since the council is gonna debate this? I mean, it really seems to me that this is really a council decision and not a finance committee decision. And so I would be comfortable saying we should, we agree that the stipend should be increased. We think the increase should be between X and Y and let the council make a final decision on that because I don't see how our number is going to limit the council in any way in terms of the council's decision. And since we're sort of torn between this, I think it might actually be helpful to the council to see that we're not, we may not be able to agree on a number. So that's my thought. Alicia. Thank you, Andy. So I actually agree with Bob, but that was not what I was going to say, but I just wanted to offer that that I wouldn't be opposed to just saying this is what our discussion was and leaving it to the full council. But I just also wanted to say I'm not sure why we're saying Northampton is an outlier because it's not, it was not the lowest nor was it the highest on the grid. It was the next step up above what our current one is. There's a 6,000, but if you look at the population for those towns, that was another factor that we considered. So the towns that have smaller stipends have a significantly smaller population in their town. So Northampton really is not an outlier at all. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm doing to put that up again, Lynn, because I think that there was an $8,000 in there. It was East Hampton, I believe. Yes, East Hampton and Pitts fields were lower, but again, they have much smaller population sizes. I'm not sure that that's true actually on either one. Let's look. Yeah, East Hampton is 16, which is about like half, a little less than half. Pittsfield is larger. Yeah, and if you look at Aguam in Northampton, they're both also close-ish. They're still lower than our population type, but their stipends are higher. So I'm just saying I don't see why we're calling Northampton an outlier because it's literally not. It's an outlier to where they're going, Alicia, or what it was recommended. We don't know what Northampton is gonna do. Just so everybody realizes that Northampton's council, I think this is on their agenda for next week on Thursday. Council hasn't had the discussion yet. Lynn has her hand up. Lynn, your hand's up. I actually would prefer that the council make a motion and I'd like to propose an option. I mean, that the finance committee make a motion and I'd like to propose an option. Michelle has her hand up though. Yes. You're making a motion. Okay. That we increase the stipend by 2,500 and we reduce the president's stipend by 500. So this would become 500. And so this is a minus 500. Actually, it's a minus 2,500, $2,250. And here it's a minus five. Okay. Is there a second? I'm gonna actually, I'm gonna go ahead and second because I just want to make sure that has happened in council meetings when Lynn was seconded just to get things on the table for discussion. Lynn, can I just clarify? So the president's increment would be 2,000 instead of 2,500? Yes. Okay. So this is what counselors would make when they get the full amount. This is what the president would make when they get the full amount. Right here. In the additional compensation, just on a, it's on basis, it's 3,25. So the total impact on our budget for the first year, in FY24, which we would be asking the town manager to provide a supplemental budget for would be for 16,000 and in FY25, it would be 32,000. Michelle has her hand up. If you wanna speak to your motion before or shall I go ahead and recognize? I've been trying to listen to what people have been saying and I'm trying to find a compromise that in my mind fits with not having significant impact, fits with the fact that supposedly we're a mature council and the job of being president shouldn't be as heavy a lift. And I'm also trying to come to and also take into consideration that we have an additional pilot amount of money in the budget already of 5,000 per family care. So that anyone counselor at this point might need that. And that means that their compensation covering family care and other things would be up to 12,500 if one counselor took all 5,000 of it. Michelle. Understanding that I'm not a member of the finance committee. I was heading in the direction that Bob suggested in thinking that a motion that would essentially say to the council, we've had this discussion and we think that some number between 7510,000 is reasonable and we want the council to figure out what that number is. Because I guess my concern is if we come out of or if the finance committee comes out of here with a split vote, how does that impact the discussion at the council level? How does, if a motion is passed here, does that motion then be the motion that comes to the table at council? And then, if people wanna change it, they have to amend it. And all that's fine. That's part of what we do. But I was just thinking through the various pathways that this might come. If it comes out with the unanimous vote, how is that different than if it comes out as a split vote? And I was thinking very much along the same lines as Bob. I guess the one advantage, and you've kind of touched on it now, just a minute, I'm gonna ask for Matt, whose hands have been up and down a couple of times. I think Kathy, there is an advantage to having a starting point, the discussion, because otherwise we're gonna end up at a council meeting with uncertainty as to what the starting point is for the discussion. In some ways, that is one advantage to having a number come out of this committee recommendation as it makes it easy to then justify it and to make it the motion that starts the discussion. So, but anyway, Matt. Thanks, Andy. And I think also to that point, this is a matter that has a financial impact on the town. And I think it's our responsibility to look at the financial impact. And I think there's a really, really complicated political frame to this in terms of council making this recommendation versus a neutral party like in Northampton or other places that's beyond the scope of finance. I don't think that's our job to look at that. But I do think that it's our job to look at financial impact, even if we look at multiple potential motions and their impacts, I still think we should take a position on that and make a recommendation to the council specific to a number or a couple of numbers. And with that being said, I think the fact that we've had other elected bodies other than council in this discussion already, we do need to look at the full impact of other committees as well as town council if we're talking about raising statements. Kathy? I like, well, if the motion's been made in seconded and I'd like to vote on it, I think split votes are very often helpful. I don't think it's helpful to have everything come out of committees as unanimous or at the other way I could call it as a punt that because we couldn't agree where we're throwing it up higher. I think this is reasonable for multiple reasons. It's a substantial increase from where we are now. There is, Lynn had another part to what she was talking about where we put, the current budget has $5,000 in it for family support and talking about having another part of a motion be we wanna review that and see how it has worked for the first quarter for the first half a year. So we can really see whether that should be increased to make it possible for people to have higher caregivers. So I think this is a good starting point. I also think it minimizes in terms of the arguments on why we might have a split vote and wanna go here rather than just jump up. It minimizes the FY24 impact by quite a bit by not going all the way up. And I think we should have, when I said we should have, I wanna vote on this. I also wanna vote on the family support motion and I wanna make it clear to the council that we think there should be a process. So this, we don't wait another five years that we wanna have something set up to say what can we do that we wanna revisit this? So this isn't the only time we're looking at it. It's the only time we're looking at FY24 but that we wanna come back to it. So I would like to take a vote on this. I think it's important that we don't just leave the discussion wide open for 13 people. Well, Lucia. Thank you, Andy. I have a couple of thoughts. One, I don't know if I agree that a split vote is more helpful because we can also submit like the memo with the summary that explains our conversation which I think would be equally as helpful just understanding that we've talked about these numbers and this is our frame because we also do have a pretty clear frame. Like if no one's willing to go above a $5,000 increase anyways we're recommending between zero and $5,000 increase essentially. So I don't think it leaves it wide open for the council to do whatever but also even if we send a $5,000 increase and the council wants to give more they can do that. So I don't think it's necessarily an issue to have no conclusion at the end of this meeting and to send what our discussion has been and what we've talked about because I think there's a lot of great points here that the council will want to know about that we send that over to the council. So that's one of my thoughts. And my other thought is about the childcare and I think thinking about it like an addition to the stipend is the wrong way to think about it because it's not like where they would have the 7,000 plus the 5,000 because they would have to use money to pay for childcare first in order to be reimbursed. And so that's the issue and I'm not gonna fight that issue right now but that's the issue I have with reimbursement is that assumes that people already have the money to pay for the childcare upfront. And so I would rather you just give every counselor an extra 5,000 to pay for the childcare upfront than to say you need to find a way to pay for it first and then we will reimburse it because we're gonna give you a smaller stipend. That's actually still not helpful, not as inclusive and is not gonna diversify the council in the way that I intended with this motion. So I am not going to be in favor of this but I also do really appreciate Lin's listening and trying to find a compromise because I do see why you would think of this as a compromise but again, as somebody who is low income and has a family and has all of these things, I can tell you right now it is not going to be enough of an impact for families like me to be able to run for council. Thank you. Yes, I have one observation in which you're welcome to respond to Alicia because this is a conversation but for all of the counselors which obviously is a self included who don't have family care responsibilities presently the increase in compensation is irrelevant to the question of assisting in any increase or any ability to access the childcare to get reimbursement assuming it's totally on a reimbursement basis so why does it, you know, why would that be the most helpful way to use the dollars? It's like, you know, it's not gonna, it's not giving me the money isn't gonna help you meet that initial threshold. Kathy? I'd like to call the question to take a vote on the motion on the floor. There's been somebody's called the question. Is there anybody who wants to speak? Otherwise, there's no need to take a vote on that otherwise I'm going to take a vote on calling the question. Seeing no other, let's go off. Second. Second. Okay, now there's a motion that's been made and seconded on calling the question. So we will treat it as a motion and it is one that we vote on immediately. So we'll start one down from the first and this one, Lynn? Hi. Question. Bob? Bob, I'll support this. Support calling the question. Matt? This is on calling the question. I understand. I don't support calling the question because I do think we should establish whether we're making additional recommendations beyond only councilor compensation before we act on this. Bernie's absent. Kathy? Yes. Hava, yes. Alicia? No. And Anna? I. So, let's see how we do this now. May have to wait for yes on calling the question, which it was in one, no. And. You needed two thirds and you have a. So we have about two thirds. So therefore we have called the question. So the motion on the floor is Lynn's motion. To. Increase the debt. And for counselors by 2,500. And decrease the president by $500. That is the motion. Increase the increments by 20. Yes. Increment. Thank you. For the. Clarification point. I'm. Support. Matt. Support. Bernie, of course, is absent. Kathy. Yes. I will vote yes. Alicia. Lisa with us. Lisa voted no. Anna. Yes, but I believe it should be higher and plan on advocating such at the council. And Lynn. I. So it's. Four to one. Two resident members in support. So. We do have an amount that we're putting forward. We had the note. On a standard. The obvious. So. I need to repeat that in the side part of the motion. So Lynn, back to you. You had additional. Motions. Is there a next motion that you think is appropriate in order? Yeah. Let me just. I want to just for the moment shows the motions that are in here. I'm going to stop sharing the screen. I'm going to. Share draft motions. So I, the. First one. The second one is what I've just done. And that's the way the motion for the council would need to read. And then of course that can be amended. Okay. So. I'm sorry to put that up first only because it makes it very. Strange to having not voted on the exact wording. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I think Andy it's close enough. You know. Why don't we do it this way. If anybody from the committee of jacks. And please say so. Otherwise we will treat the motion. To be that in accordance with charter section 2.4 to adopt and increase the. Increases the amount that we just voted and. The conversation is 7500 decreased present by 500 that's all. So it's entirely consistent with what we just voted. The other thing that is a necessary part of this. I think that would be a necessary part of any motion, which is to. We're also requested time manager just submit a supplemental budget. To meet the increase. In accordance with the section 5.6 of the charter, which is budget amendments. So it's an effect. Exactly the same motion. So if there's no objection. We will make that the wording of the motion. Yeah, I would just take the 50% out of that. I don't think it's necessary. And I think. As other people have said, it could be viewed as prejudicial. I agree. Okay. So again, if there is no objection. We will make that the wording of the motion. Since the numbers are exactly the same. And it just spells out the process a little bit more clearly. Okay. Lynn back to you. So I'd like to make a next motion and that is the finance committee recommends the town council view the inclusion of the family care item in the town budget for FY 24 as a pilot program beginning July 1st, 2023. And for the finance committee to review use of family care reimbursements on a quarterly basis. Second of the motion. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Shane seconds. And I also have a comment. Okay. You want to speak to the motion first, or do you want to let. Yeah, if you speak first, Lynn, you made the motion. I'm just trying to set up a situation where we don't just leave it in the budget. And then don't follow through. I want to see what happens to it. And it may be that we need to increase it during the year or the next year. But I also want to be very clear. I personally do not want to know who is receiving these additional funds. I think that's personal and I don't believe that's the business of the council. Yeah. Yeah, my only comment. I'm fine with the wording of this. I think it's possible, but Paul and Sean would have to tell us if it's possible. I think it's possible that one other place I worked, which was not a government, it was private. If you knew you were going to need. Help with childcare or help with transportation. They did in advance that you drew on. So you wouldn't be with Alicia described as pay first and then go later. So I'd like. Or if that's possible. So we would, we'd have to set up a process to be able to do that. So I don't want to put it in the form of emotion. I'm saying it verbally because I have no idea. How complicated or simple it might be to do something like that. I totally agree with that. If Holly's here, she might be able to answer that question better, but I don't believe we can do that. Yeah. I think we usually have to pay bills after services rendered or after we've received a product that we're paying for. Yeah. Just a way and what Athena said, we don't prepay. We don't, I'm trying to think of, if there's any mechanisms like that, that we have a place and I can't think of any, Holly, are you aware of anything? No, Mass General Law is pretty specific on prepayments being disallowed except like for subscription type things. That was helpful. Quick feedback. Thank you all very much. So much for private sector can do it. And as I said, it was only one place where I work that knew it was a problem for some people and it wasn't for all employees. Yeah. And I think that the, and I'm assuming I just want to clarify that, but is, is that by having regular quarterly reviews that it, if the money is being spent at a faster rate, then it would work for the amount that was budgeted to be annualized that it would allow then for supplemental budget request. Some other mechanism. I'm just wondering if we have a transfer within. Lisa. Thank you. My question is similar to Kathy's in that I'm wondering more about process. So I support this motion. I'm just wondering if we have a process or parameters that indicate. Things like what activities are reimbursable. Like is it just being on a literal meeting or is it reimbursable to be meeting with constituents is it reimbursable to be doing writing motions and having somebody watch your kids. So like what activities are covered or to like be going to community events or going to council readings of proclamations like what things are covered under the reimbursement and is there like a limit because I think I've said this before, but we have $5,000 stipends and I have overspent my stipends paying for childcare. Like I've come out of pocket over that. So I'm wondering if we have a limit to how much each councilor could access from the fund. And if we don't, who would determine those things. I can speak to that a little bit in our policy here. I think for this first year for the pilot. I think our expectation was it would be for meetings. And in terms of the limit, it would be up to the amount that's budgeted. So I don't, we weren't. Sort of allocating it on a per council counselor basis. It would sort of be first come, first serve and it would be for public meetings. And what would be the. Possibility that if we did a quarterly review and we found that the amount being claimed is. Only take part of the year. What would be the process that you might be able to consider to supplement the amount. Do you mean increase the amount or expand the scope of what it. Increase the amount. For. Yeah. Increase the amount that's available. The thing about a quarterly is that. If it turns out that. The amount is expended after three or six months. What is the mechanism, if any. To make it a year on program. I think we would look at a couple of things we would ultimately be up to the town manager. To look at the budget that we have, if there's a dish, if there's funds that have been freed up somewhere else, we might be able to shift it over. If there's not. We would discontinue the program at that point. Again, so we're treating this as a pilot so that we can make it a year on program. And then we can make adjustments to this first year and then make adjustments to it for the following year. So again, depending on how it goes the first year, there might be some ability to shift some things around, especially if there's savings within the council's budget itself. But we won't know that until. Till we go through it. Alicia. Thank you, Sean. That's very helpful. I'm just wondering if you could maybe write up those parameters. For example, like how we think the funds will be used. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, we can do that. And we can also, you know, we can kind of give our thoughts on the mechanism by which the whole process will work. So that's kind of clear in terms of the, you know, I've heard, I think one of the goals for this was to make the reimbursement mechanism as straightforward as possible. So we can try to put that to paper as well. So you had put forward, I believe. Lynn, this is a motion. Seconded by Kathy. So is there any further discussion on the motion? That's who you waving your hand or you around your mouse or you. No, no, I was just literally the only way I can see if anyone raised their hand is to click a button. No, I wasn't raising. Okay. I don't see any, anybody's hands up. So we have a motion that's been made seconded. We've had discussion. I see no further discussion. Having been requested. And so I'll start with Matt. Yeah, I support this. Bernie is absent Kathy. Yes. I mean, yes. Alicia. Yeah. Hi. Lynn. Hi. And. My support. So we have this is unanimous five zero. With support from. Two recent members. And. Another motion here. Yes. The finance committee recommends the, to the, that the town, to the town council that they make no changes in health insurance coverage for elected officials. Change. It is motion that's been made and seconded a discussion to start as do you and I. Is the maker of the motion when you're entitled to go first. Just this was the consensus of the discussion last time. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. Okay. Yeah. Anything else? Nope. Anybody else who want to raise any questions. So. This is about. Insurance. The last one. Just to taking notes. Okay. So. Kathy. Yes. I'm a yes. Alicia. I. I'm a yes. Yes. I'm a yes. And then I. Support. And Matt support. So it's unanimous with. And it's sort of. Two members who are recent members flood resident number absent. Are there further motions. would like to raise two other issues. And since they were in the packet, I'll just show them. Okay. One of the things that's interesting in the charter, frankly, is a little murky on this. And that is how we would give school committee members compensation. My initial thought was they now receive $3,000 a year would be to raise it to four and to raise the compensation for the chair from four to five. In addition to that, the charter is completely silent on reimbursing the trustees of the Jones Library. And so I'm not, I don't feel as strongly about that, although I'm hoping that a future commission or whatever will address that. But I do really feel that we should be looking at the following motion. And let me just put it as a motion and then we can decide whether we're going to go forward. The finance committee recommends the town council in accordance with charter section 4.1 D to adopt increase for the school committee members compensation in the amount of $1,000 for a total annual compensation of $4,000 for school committee members and $5,000 for the school committee chair. Effective January 2nd, 2024, and to request the town manager submit a supplemental budget appropriation to meet an increase in accordance with charter section 5.6. Serious second. Having not heard a second on the motion has not been seconded. And I can't go forward at this time. I do want to make one comment, however, as to why I didn't second it. And that is that 4.1 D is an entirely different process than section 4.2 under which we're working for the finance or for the council increase. The requirement in that is that there's a process that says that it is a budget issue and not subject to the time limitations. And therefore, a motion can be made at a later point and it can be considered as a budget amendment, which is actually what this section provides. So I think that it's important to understand that there is a difference between how the charter treats process for council and how the charter treats the process for all other elected officials. That was why I put the sections that are relevant to the budget up from the charter into the packet. It's one of those last minute ads so that if we don't end up discussing it further right now, you know that you can very easily find the sections that relate to all compensation matters on a single page. And that was to sort of assist you in going through this. But this is a different process and it is not time driven in the way that council compensation is. Kathy? And Andy, I think by budget amendment, you mean supplemental appropriation, right? Yes, you're right. Supplemental appropriation. I guess I was amending budget, but you're right. Proper term is supplemental appropriation. Kathy has her hand up. Yeah. Andy, I agree with what you just said and I don't know whether we just also voted on the library, but I think we're raising two completely different issues here and they're different from each other and they're different than the what was put before us. And I don't think that's appropriate. It certainly wasn't on an agenda. The library is a private entity. It's not even a town government, although we elect them. So I just think it's a whole different issue and now is not the time to be raising this. So that was just my comment about it. I think we should stay to what's before us. What I'm going to say is not intended to is a point of disagreement, but the charter is very clear that these are elected officials and that the council can or that there is a process for any elected official to be compensated. And when you start looking at those sections that I referred to, in the transition portion of the Charter, the Charter Commission put in an amount, an initial amount for school committee did not put in an initial amount for library trustees. But I think as you look at those charter sections, it's clear that it is an elected office and therefore one that is encompassed, it was intended to be encompassed. My point was just this is not on today's agenda. We're under the gun to get something back. It's a different issue. I completely agree. They're elected officials, but I think it opens up a very different conversation. So I would prefer it just be removed from someone wants to bring it later. That's fine with me, but the councilor compensation that Elisha and Michelle brought was because it could only happen within a certain time span. So that's my concern with both of these. And we've just been talking for two and a half hours. So I think we should do what was on the agenda. Yeah. The school committee one, there was a motion and there was not a second of the motion so that it died on failure second of the motion. And so I think that we have taken care of all of the issues. Anything else, Kathy? There are some in color and Elisha. No, no, I'll take my hand out. Sorry. Elisha? And I know Kathy just said this, but I just wanted to confirm that there is not a time constraint on the erasing of Ivan's first school committee. The school committee, in the end, it would have to be that essentially we would request a supplemental budget and it would be up to the time manager to decide to honor that request by including a supplemental budget, making a supplemental budget request, but it's not time limited. It could happen at any time. And for the library trustees, that would need to come in as part of the regular budget. It couldn't be a supplemental budget because the compensation hasn't been set for the library trustees yet. So, no, there's anything else, Elisha? I'll call on that and then we can move forward. Just really quickly, because I don't know if I'm just still confused or if that didn't exactly answer my question, but maybe a better way to ask it would be, is there still time, if we don't discuss this today, to discuss this again and have it go on effect for the next term for school committee and library trustees? I think the answer that you just got from Athena does answer is that it's not too late for school committee. It is too late for library trustees. Library trustees would have to wait. And it's complicated because the way that one section that is relevant to this is covered, there's two different things. One is setting an additional amount and the other is amending the amount. Because there's an amount already for the school committee, it can be amended. Because there's no amount for the library trustees, it cannot be amended. There's nothing to increase or decrease. So, library trustees would have to wait until the next year's budget anyway. Sean, do you have anything to add on that? I was just going to try to add to Alicia's question the 18-month requirement that it happened within 18 months and it kicks in the following term. That wording seems to apply specifically to town counselors. When you look at the charter, it references town counselors specifically and that same language doesn't appear in the school committee section. So, hopefully that answers that. Matt? Yeah, thanks, Andy. I guess I will say that I'm a little disappointed that we're at this position right now. I think everybody here, including Alicia and Michelle, who did all the research initially, agrees that a non-biased sort of independent review of stipends around the region would be the most appropriate way to set an increase and determine a rate for increase. And I was persuaded, I still am persuaded, that there is an urgency in doing an increase now to help to start to equalize compensation and stipends for counselors. And I certainly don't agree that school committee and others were not on the agenda for this. I mean, this draft motion was posted and it was discussed at length at the previous meeting. I thought personally, I thought that the inclusion of at least school committee, if not trustees as well, would help ameliorate some of the potential claims that this is not a completely appropriate recommendation for the sitting group to make is to increase their own stipends. But so I suppose setting aside another elected body stipend while taking emergency action on the council's own stipend, in my mind is not an appropriate way to approach this. And again, as a finance committee, it's why I didn't want to call the question quite so quickly earlier is because I think we need to look, our job is to look at the fiscal impact of all these things. And we didn't even take the time to look at the fiscal impact of Lynn's proposal for school committee. So I have to say that this is, this is kind of surprising to me. I didn't think that this group would move in this direction. And of course, you know, I will, I'm only a resident member and I'm not going to, I don't have any recourse, but I will say that, that, you know, this is a disappointment. Andy. Yes. So I just want to make sure, and at least has asked these questions tonight, just want to make sure I've heard them the same way. The issue of raising school committee stipends for the upcoming term could still happen after July 2. But it would have to happen through a budget supplemental. That's what I've heard. However, compensation for the Jones Library trustees could not happen in the same way because they don't already receive a stipend. Am I correct in both of those statements? Yes. Okay. So for the purposes of this meeting, then I'm going to suggest we take this off the table. And at some point in the near future, it might be brought back to the council and referred to the finance committee. Alicia. So I'm in agreement with Lynn's suggestion. I would just hope that we might be able to bring this back at like our next meeting or the soonest meeting, because I think in the same way that it would be important for people who are looking to run for council to know, I think it would be the same for school committee. And so I know that we're coming up close to like election time and pulling papers. And so I would like to have that discussion sooner rather than later. Andy, if unless other people have comments, I have one other final motion and it's the one I've highlighted. When you read it and explain it and then just second to it. So the finance committee recommends that the town council send a letter to the 2024 Charter Commission supporting changes in sections 2.4 and 4.1 D regarding council school committee and Jones Library trustee compensation and consider a method for implementing future based stipends and increases for elected officials in the town of Amherst. That's my motion. If it's seconded, I'll then speak to it. I'll second Walker. So in FY24, in fact, even before FY24, I will be bringing to the council a draft charge for a 2024 Charter Commission review review committee. That review committee is appointed by the council. It is required by the charter in every year ending in four that there be a charter review. And this would be one of probably several suggestions and or issues that this council or the next council may want to bring to the attention of the charter review committee. And my reason for wanting to put this up now is so we don't lose sight of it. Yeah, I'm going to speak to it from the sake of information purposes. We've had a lot of discussion about Northampton having a commission that has looked and being required to do that every 10 years. And what I learned subsequently is that that was not an initial provision that Northampton had that when they also have a part of their charter that requires that there be a charter review every 10 years during the last charter review process. The question arose and the proposal from that group that that commissioner or whatever they called it Northampton was to recommend that there be this at least once every 10 year compensation review process that was what this whole thing in Northampton is about. But it arose out of the equivalent of our 2024 process in the last and it was about 10 years ago. Kathy? I'm completely for this and I think it's been written in a way that says consider a method of which there are many. And I just I think Andy said at the beginning I'm going to I need to leave the meeting before it's over so I don't know how much discussion we're going to have on this but I would be voting for it. If there's any other discussion is if not let's go ahead and vote. I don't know if you'd want a few minutes with quarterly report if possible. See Kathy? I'm sure you're yes. I will vote yes. Alicia? Alicia? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Anna? I. Lynn? I. Matt? Support. And Bob? Support. And Bernie is absent. So it is unanimous five to zero with two resident members and support one resident member absent. I can't think of anything else that we need to do in compensation question at this meeting. Lynn, did you have any other motions? Nope. Having no other motions. I thank you. This has been a very difficult discussion. I will try by early next week to have a draft because of our committee report because I want to make sure that all of you have an opportunity to comment on this report. This is not going to be an easy one and I therefore really value input and will endeavor to make sure that this one is on time to get meaningful input from the committee. We have two other things that we need to do. One is to have the third quarter report and the other is about scheduling of meetings. I don't know how we can do this very quickly on the scheduling of meetings. Alicia, if I understood what you said last time we met that you're still, for daytime meetings, Friday is the only day that's available in the otherwise after 5.30. Did I understand that correctly? That is correct. I don't know if it particularly matters because I know Mondays we usually have council meetings, but I do get out at three on Mondays. A 3.30 on a Monday would also be an option. Okay. Matt, you had expressed to the prior meeting reservation about 5.30 meetings. Is that still your concern? About avoiding standing 5.30 meetings? Yes. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's dinner time for everybody, I think. Andy, you know, 3.30 of the Funyuns Committee didn't happen on the same Monday as the council and we would work to not back us up. Yeah, I hate being the problem here. I work until either 4.30 or 5. And so it's pretty tough for me to flex that schedule to do 3.30 meetings. So it may be a couple of weeks before I can make that happen to clear that time. I can try. I just got a name that it's pretty tough when technically my work day goes until 4.30 or 5. I can try to make it work. I may need a little bit of adjustment time. I've got steps on my schedule for Mondays until for the next couple of while. So I got to adjust that. Okay. Just for the record, I don't expect that we're going to be meeting more than once a month for the next months. And that takes us through until we receive the initial information about projections for FY 25. And we start having to think about the next budget guidelines. Sean, is there anything you have to add? No. In terms of other reasons we'd have to meet between now and then? Yes. No, I mean, we usually do the fourth quarter report in the fall. You know, there may be some things that will pop up from the council that would go to the finance committee, but nothing that's on my radar right now. Yeah, we do have some outstanding referrals, but nothing major. Anna, is there anything more? Because otherwise, you just let me know and we'll come back to the committee by email if need be, since we can do that for this purpose. So just to confirm what you'd like me to do, you'd like me to look at my calendar for 3.30 on non-council Mondays? Realizing we're talking about once a month until the end of the year. I'd also like to point out that many of those Mondays are legal holidays that our staff don't work. Yeah, so it may not work. So Friday may be our only viable time. So I have a question of Kathy. How often is the school building committee meeting on Friday morning? We are meeting only once a month, and we just did that schedule in July and August, and that's an 8.30. It didn't even go until 10 this morning. We had a meeting this morning, the next one is, Alicia was there, I think it's July 14th, and then the August one is whatever is a month later, if it's August 16th, whatever it is, but we only have once a month. So there wouldn't be a conflict for a morning Friday meeting, other than we have several people who work here. And could you do the other Fridays? Alicia, can you do the other Fridays? And how about you, Matt? Just gonna say what time? Friday in the morning. Yeah, potentially. Maybe we could pull for that, Andy. Anna has her hand up, though. Yeah, I can do Fridays through the end of August, but then once again, I have that job thing. I think I just want to name that whatever we do pick, I would very strongly like to request and go to bat for keeping that consistent. I had cleared all of my Tuesdays for this meeting, and so I just got a name that it's pretty frustrating to have to consistently change around my work schedule for these meetings when I was told they were Tuesday afternoons after council meetings. And so I just, whatever we pick, I really need us to stick to it because I'm already pushing my luck here, and it's really, it's too hard to keep changing them up and keep needing to move things at my job. I don't know about Fridays after August, because again, like I need to prioritize the job that helps me pay my bills. So I just got a name that this is a little frustrating. And I know that none of you are intentionally creating frustration. I just, I wanted to make sure that people are clear that every time we change it, it's very hard. Thank you. No, that's helpful. Thank you. I appreciate the clarification. Sean, I think we have done as much as we can do and can go on to having you and Holly present the third quarter report. I don't know. I think that Kathy may have to duck out quietly at some point. I'll go quietly, but also just saying it was a great report and I don't think I had any major questions. So I will miss your talking about it. I was glad to see it's basically, I think, a fairly good news report on the third quarter, but I won't steal your thunder, Holly. So enjoy your weekend, everyone. I am leaving. Thanks. Hi, Kathy. So Sean, I'll turn it over to Holly Drake, our comptroller, who will walk us through sort of the highlights of the third quarter report. And then we can go over any questions you have. And so I just realized that the third quarter report hasn't been posted to the website yet, but I will make sure that happens today before I leave because we always make sure it is out there. Oh, it is. It is in the packet, Holly. Always on the packet, right? I used to put it on our website as well for everything in the public listening to be able to see it. Is it helpful to everyone if I share the screen or do you just want to listen? If everyone has in front of them, I don't have to share it, but. No, that's up to you. So, you know, I just wanted to say that sharing is always useful. Then we don't have to be looking at two screens. Okay, then I will share. It's okay, Holly, if I share and I'll just kind of follow the scroll. Okay. Yep. So, you know, I just want to say, you know, in general, things are looking tight, but they are they are looking good. On the revenue side, we are doing well. We will exceed our revenue budget estimates by year end. Just a few of the good reasons for that as the investment income between the rates we've been getting on CDs and the monthly bank account interest rate that has increased dramatically over the last couple of years and we're doing well there. Can I just say on that point for a second, and Holly, you can add to this too. We haven't seen interest rates, interest rate revenue like this. I mean, when I started in 2010, I'd look back at history at this investment income at the region. And I was always envious of how much they used to bring in. Because we never got anything like that since 2010. And the numbers that you'll see this year, especially when we're done completely, significantly up. And we have increased the FY 24 budget, hopefully we'll continue to increase it. But this is the silver lining to interest rates going up. Some of our savings accounts are in the four or 5% range. And it comes at a time when we have a lot of money as well. We have lots of grants. We have the American Rescue Plan Act. Stabilization funds high. Stabilization funds high. So all that money earns interest. And so we apportion it based on the fund. So some goes to the general fund, some goes and BLC money we aren't interested on that stays with the library project. So it all gets apportioned out. But I'll say this is probably one of the key highlights is how well investment income is doing. And yeah, go stop there. Yeah, absolutely. I went from putting having to figure out how to put in 0.2 and 0.1% to going back up to twos and threes and four percents. It's great. So then other departmental income is doing well mostly due to certificate of occupancy fees and police outside details, as you all see as you drive around, there's a lot of road construction going on. And that creates more revenue for the towns in those police outside details that they are working on nonstop. Licenses and permits is up and above the average that it should be at this time of year around 75% due to building permits and rental registrations mostly. And then the other thing is in the miscellaneous non recurring buckets, the opioid settlement monies were not budgeted. So that just gets added in. And then as well as the cannabis money, which we have not been budgeting at this point. So those things are just add to the higher percentage rates right now. And on that one, Holly, just for everyone to know. So we are going to get opioid settlement payments for the next 20 to 25 years. We, the state attorney general negotiated settlements with several large pharmaceutical companies and sort of on behalf of all the cities and towns. And so there's a schedule we know exactly how much we'll get. Unfortunately, when they did this, they didn't pass the legislation that allows us to earmark it or set it aside in a way that's helpful. So unfortunately, this is going to kind of be like the impact fees with cannabis where we will receive it, it will fall to free cash, and then we will have to track it and appropriate it for eligible uses. There is some legislation and something we're looking at where maybe we can do something similar to what we just did with the cannabis impact fees, where we can get it out of free cash right away and put it into a special fund. Because a, we don't want to lose track of how much we have because we have the strings attached to how we spend this money. But we also don't want to inflate our reserves and make it, you know, make us think we have more there than we really have. So this year, I think we're going to get somewhere north of 100,000 because this year was the combination of a few years. But going forward, it's thinking the $20,000 to $30,000 range per year and our health department, police department, EMS, they're all working on the best way to allocate these funds. But it has to be for opioid remediation and to deal with the impacts. So then on the expense side, it's been a bit of a tough year, increases in costs, supply chain issues, inflation, utilities, especially electricity have hurt many of our departments, especially with the larger buildings, the enterprise funds, water and sewer are hurting this year because of increases in electricity costs mostly and just inflation in general. So many departments are probably going to end the year over budget, but there is savings to other places that will be able to cover those departments that are over budget, you know, due to some vacancies that we've had in certain departments and the closeout of the health claims trust fund this year paid for a half a month of our premiums on health insurance. So there'll be some savings in the general fund due to some unspent insurance premiums. So I mean, all in all, everything will be able to be covered. It's going to be tight, but it'll be able to be covered. But you will notice when the fourth quarter report comes out and final numbers come in that some departments have gone over. Many departments will have salary savings that will cover some of their overages in the operating budget side. We are making and have made some adjustments to the FY24 budget, especially for utilities in those departments that operate large buildings to try to offset some of that in future years. And then the other thing that I did want to mention on the report as well is that here it looks like snow and ice has been over spent for the year. But that is was due to the fact that we had a very large incumbrance. We at the beginning of the season put in a purchase order for what we think will be enough salt to cover for the entire year. And then when the winter season is over, we'll liquidate that. So snow and ice is actually, I think currently got about $35,000 available remaining. So they are not over spent at year end. It was a fairly mild winter. Thank God that could have hurt us as well. But we were lucky there. And, you know, again, with the enterprise funds, water and sewer are going to be pretty close. Their revenues are on track. They're hopefully going to make it. They're very close to meeting their revenue budgets, but their expenses are going to be even closer. And we are keeping track of that. We have a few, what do I want to say? We have a few strategies, strategies right now to try and combat what's happening with them. And I think that in the end, we will certainly make it work. And I guess that's all. Unless folks have questions, Sean or I can certainly help you. I will add that to the accounting webpage here in just a few minutes. Andy, Bob has his hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to, it's more a comment than anything and maybe you could holly, you could elaborate on this a little bit. But the encumbrances are not necessarily going to be fully expensed in this fiscal year. Is that correct? So what we typically are doing this time of year is we're going through the encumbrances and things that are not going to be spent in this fiscal year will get closed out. So this is the time of year where a lot of the purchase orders will get closed out. So if, you know, and I, and it's kind of hard to explain, but if you put in a purchase order for $10,000 and you only ended up spending nine and there's still $1,000 left, it will show that that has been spent in these types of reports. But what we'll do at year end is we'll go through those purchase orders and we'll close them out. But then we also will be putting in purchase orders for any bills that will be coming in in the next couple of weeks so that we can hold those monies to set the, set it aside for next year. So the encumbrances will definitely go up and down throughout the fiscal year, but they will be for things, they have to be for things that were purchased within this fiscal year. And if they haven't been purchased within this fiscal year, that will be closed out or they'll get closed out in a subsequent year and then they go back in a subsequent year. And there's a couple different types of encumbrances. So some encumbrances are for things we know exactly what the price will be. We do the purchase order, it's exactly matched up and those are typically spent out. Some like the Snow and Ice or what we call sort of blanket purchase order. So they're things we anticipate spending. We want to reserve the money. So we don't give the appearance that there's a bunch of money there. If we anticipate we're going to spend it, but then if we have a more mild winter like we did this year, then we can liquidate some of those. So that's that's the case with the Snow and Ice one, but in most cases that the encumbrances are for specific invoices or purchases that it'll be spent completely. Okay. Thank you. John, did we receive any written questions? Yeah, we addressed some of them. Bob sent some good questions in. He asked about the the encumbrance issue, the Snow and Ice issue. He asked about a few departments that were trending higher. I can quickly go over some of those. So one of the departments trending higher was information services, 87%. And that one, the major driver there is that we pay for all our software at the beginning of the year. So that's sort of pre front loaded in terms of expenses. Registrations again, this one might finish slightly over budget. It's higher. This is related to the census. And when we send out confirmation cards and so on, we don't anticipate a lot of more expenses this year, but it could be slightly over. Some of the facilities, so Bangs Community Center trending higher. We are seeing some of our facility areas higher because of utilities as Holly mentioned. Here it's one of the things that's impacting this is we hired, we fill the custodial position. The Mary's old position was finally filled. But that position has been working out the Bangs Community Center. But the funding for is in the town hall, but there's just an operational decision that it would be at the at the Bangs Community Center for now. So there's actually some savings that we'll see in the town hall budget that will offset some of the expense in the Bangs Community Center. But again, facility accounts in general were watching closely because of the utility impacts. Question about the childcare facility, same sort of thing trending higher. This one had some unusual equipment maintenance and building maintenance higher this year than in past years. So again, it might finish slightly over, but not significantly. And it's a relatively small account overall. General funds or general services is trending higher at 88%. There's a couple expenses there that are higher this year that we anticipate will drop in future years related to some projects. So one is our telephone project where we've swapped out our sort of landline phones and we've gone with digital phones, which are less expensive annually. But we're still sort of in but we're still sort of in that transition point where we're getting off of Verizon because we need to make sure that every single safety line, emergency line is, we know exactly what it's for before we can completely cut it. So that one we expect this coming year will actually start to see a savings. And then the other one is the fiber network. We should be able to switch over to that fiber network any day now. I don't want to steal Sean Hannon's thunder. But once we will be able to switch over to that fiber optic network, we'll start saving some costs there as well with Comcast. I think that there's a couple more veterans, veterans. So that one's front loaded as well. We pay the assessment to the veterans group veteran system that we're in with Northampton and some other smaller communities. We pay that the beginning of the year. But the other piece there is we are starting to see an uptick in benefit payments to veterans. It was on the trending down for many years and now it's starting to turn back up. And this is one that we have increased FY 24 budget because we saw that trend coming. And then the other last one, I believe is outdoor pool operations is higher. The pool operations sort of the expenses come in two waves, pool operations. First one in the summer and early fall where the majority of the costs are to pay for lifeguards and supplies for the pool. We will see a little bit in June as the pool opens up, but this one should be close to budget. It might be slightly over, but it should be close. And I think that's it. And if there's any other apartments, anybody has questions on? I guess the questions that I had is one on the sewer enterprise fund. Are we in a position where we're now needing to second, second just whether we made the right decision about the rate that we established for the year ahead? And we have enough reserves in that account to have any approaches. Do you mean should it, do you think we wish it was higher? Yeah. I think we'll be okay. Again, some of the issues are, we think we'll start to mitigate themselves in the coming year. Again, electricity is sort of peaked and they're starting to trend back down, but we sort of saw an unusually high electricity this past winter. And so that piece will certainly help in the coming year. The sludge removal, again, that's one that's specific to sewer, that was peaked again recently when gasoline got really expensive. That's also come back down. So it always is sort of at the mercy of what's going on with gasoline and natural gas and how that impacts electricity and sludge removal. Those are sort of the two big variables for this fund. But no, I think when we did the budget for next year, we projected conservatively, we put increases in for sludge, we put increases in for electricity, and the rate that we proposed supported those increases. So we're okay with the rate at this time. And I guess I had one more question. Let's see if anybody else has any. Is it too early to make any estimates about the amount of additional money that might be left over in pre-cash at the end of the year when we sign out of pre-cash or is that... Holly, I think you calculated that number today, right? Yeah, don't wait too early. Yeah, it's too early. Again, we should be fine on the revenue side. Expense side might not be as large as in past years. And so, yeah, we don't really want to put a number out there until we get a little bit more... Again, the process that Holly described is really critical to where we end, which is closing out existing purchase orders that department heads don't anticipate they're going to spend and putting in the end of year ones for the final month to make sure everything's in. And so Holly and her staff right now are going through all the submissions that came in from department heads for their end of year expenses. They will enter them in. They're doing that now. And once those are entered in, then Holly and I can go in and see where every department's going to finish. We have to look at the enterprise funds and how they interrelate with the general fund. And so I would say probably a month from now will have a good sense. Again, if there were any red flags or warning signs, we would let you know now. But probably a month from now will have a much better sense of roughly what that will look like. We have more payroll to process this year as well. So although we have good estimates on what that's going to be, we need to make sure we get that last payroll processed as well so we can have better numbers. And the other component that comes into our savings too is the schools. And so they have the same process as us where they have to close out their budget, figure out where their expenses are at, and then whatever the elementary schools have left over also comes back to us. People have more. I just want to compliment Holly and Sean on bringing us this great report. I think Holly's first kind of flight without Sonia. But I know Sean's working with her closely and you're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're just trying to carry on the legacy that Sonia has established. And if we make a mistake, she'll be the first one to call us and tell us that we made a mistake. So don't worry about it. But yeah, no, we appreciate that. Are there other questions? Hey, so I can't think of anything else we never did have anybody to go back to public comment on. And there's still nobody. So the menace can show we thought about it. And I don't think that we have anything else to do today. Do we have any minutes we need to approve? Oh, yes, thank you. Actually, that's a good point. Thank you. Thank you. In the packet, there was an amended February 7th minutes that actually the amendments were pretty insubstantial. They were really type of typographical type of errors. There was no substantive. I did look at the minutes for April 3rd and May 16, which are the other two that are listed. I have no suggestions whatsoever for amendments to either of those minutes. So I don't know if anybody else has any corrections that they would like to make on any of those three minutes. And if not, the motion I would be making is to approve the February 7, 2023 minutes as amended and the April 3 in May 16, 2023 minutes as presented. Second. Second. Take on up. Thank you. Okay, so motion on minutes has been made and seconded. Any further discussion or further amendments that people have for the minutes? If not, then I think Kathy has now left us so that she's now absent. I'm a yes, Alicia. I am a yes, and I also have to leave now, but I'm voting yes. Thank you. Okay, well, we're just about to adjourn too. Thank you very much, Alicia. Anna? Aye. Lynn? Aye. And Bob? Support. Matt? Support. And Bernie's absent. So it is a four yes, one member now absent of the voting members, two resident members in support and one resident member absent. So if there's any other business that was unanticipated that anybody else has, I have none. So I will declare the meeting adjourned. And thank you. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy the long weekend. Bye. Bye.