 Okay, we're recording. Okay, so good afternoon. I would like to call the finance committee meeting for November. It seems to be November. I've got the looking at the wrong thing at this point. March 21st. 2023 to order 3pm. And pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 is amended. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so I assume, or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time, why technological means. I also want to announce for everybody that this is being, this meeting is being recorded for both audio and video purposes. So I need to make that announcement with that. I'm going to recognize each of the members of the committee and let, so that they can respond to let me know that they heard me. And we can hear them. So we'll go alphabetically by last name and start with Anna. Hi everybody. I'm present. I'm sorry. Linda, you. I didn't hear my name present. I'm sorry. Bob. Present. Matt. Present. Bernie. Here. Kathy. Here. And Alicia. Here. Okay. Well, so everybody is present. Just do a very. Quick. Agenda review and. The one item that has been removed from the agenda as published. Was. Counselor compensation family care health insurance. Is there a health council stipend request. At the request of the cosponsors. It was postponed because. One of the cosponsors was unable to be here and we were worried about time squeeze on today's meeting. And for those reasons. Agreed to put this off. And as I will announce later, but we'll say it right now, just for the public, because they don't stick around for the entire meeting. That we were going to put it off to. First Tuesday. April, I think that's April 4th. And so with that said, the next things are public comment. And then we want to get into the. Major discussion of the day, which will probably will be. The follow up on last night's council meeting. To talk about the. Appropriation and died authorization for the. School project. And then later in the meeting. We'll have a brief report. For those who are interested in updating. Any update that Sean has some of the 24 budget projections. In a report on the. Ways and means hearing that was held. On March 13. That. I think we're at. And. Paul was probably there virtually glued to his computer screen at the time. Anyway. So that's where we are. Is there any member of the public. Who wishes to make comment on any matter. That is pertinent to the work of the committee, not necessarily on today's agenda. Anything that you think that the finance committee. Should know about if you'd like to be recognized for public comment. Please raise your hand. I notice we have one caller. And. From a telephone. I believe that it is star nine to. Indicate that you'd like to be recognized. So I give it a moment just to see. There's any request for public comment. Seeing the request for. Public comment then. Since we're. Then we're on to. The item number three. And I think that we're starting off Sean with. You are going to present. Information to put together to respond to questions. That were posed last night and. So let me turn it over to you. Sure. Thank you, Andy. I'm going to share. All right. So the first few slides are just recapping. Where we left off in terms of the modeling. So. Back in October. We brought forward four models. That we reviewed with the finance committee. And there were some sort of baseline. Constant information. That was true of all the different models. And then we did some different things. Looking at different levels of reserve usage. We looked at different levels of debt. How much money set aside for capital and things like that to, to look at what model might be the most viable. So we looked at for the baseline model. Allocated 10% of the tax levy for capital. It used roughly $12 million of reserves. And this is over a period of time. And it set aside. Three and a half million per year for other capital needs. And then we looked at, we looked at, we looked at, we looked at, we looked at how much money is being conscious of, you know, that there's a need to continue to invest in roads and other projects on an annual basis. The second model we looked at was one where we use very little reserves. So it tried to finance all the projects. Using the amount we set aside for capital each year. So when I say finance all the projects, not including the school, but the city. So try to finance the library of the fire station and the DPW without having to use reserves in any particular year. The third option was to try use our capital stabilization fund to build it up to a level where we could pay for the fire station outright and not have to borrow for it. And then option four was the same thing, but instead of the fire station, it was the Jones library project. And then option four models we looked at in October. And then we got into more detail, but this was sort of the summary side that we looked at. We evaluated each of those models. Looking at some criteria. So the first criterion was urgency. And that was based on when the last project would be completed. So the four building projects that we are talking about, when would the last one be completed? And so you can see in model one, model two, it would be in the 2030s, meaning that it kind of stretched out the timing for completing all four projects. Model three and model four were in the 2020s, the second half of the 2020s. So again, this is all planning based on lots of assumptions over, we're not going to say the specific year could be done, but this is the timeframe that we'd be talking about. The next criteria was impact on bond rating. So whenever we take on more debt that impacts our bond rating, when we use our reserves, that impacts our bond rating. And so we looked at the different models. If it did both, then that would have a greater impact on our bond rating. If it did one of the other, it would have sort of a medium or neutral impact on our bond rating. So that was one criteria. The next was overall costs. So we looked at the cost of those projects, including financing costs. So if there was, if we borrowed for all three, they would have higher costs because we'd be paying interest for those projects as well. And this is cost to the town. And then other capital funding, how much is set aside for other, again, through joint capital planning committee and our capital budget, how much is set aside usage of reserves and then flexibility. And so by flexibility, you know, we assumed if we use all of our reserves, then that would be low flexibility. If we maintain some level of reserves, that would give us a little bit more flexibility. So the two, the two models at the end where we basically use all of our reserves, that's why those sort of scored low. So that was our discussion. It wasn't meant to say there was one particular plan that was, you know, perfect and would be the best going forward, but it did, I think kind of guide the discussion. And that led us to start leaning towards model number three. And then this last, this last one from the October presentation, try to just give some context to the tradeoffs between using reserves and using debt. So when you use a lot of reserves, for example, you're going to have lower overall costs because you're not financing those projects. You might be able to complete the projects more quickly. You might have more funding for other capital needs. Because again, you're pulling from reserves instead of what's set aside for capital each year. But on the con side, you're going to have less flexibility because you don't have those reserves anymore. Going down over here to the debt side, if you use a lot of debt. Again, you're going to have more flexibility to respond to emergencies because you're maintaining reserves. And again, you can complete projects more quickly because you're, you're borrowing to complete those projects, but you're going to have higher overall costs because of the interest rates. You're going to have less funding for other capital needs because the payments on that debt come from our capital allocation. And so that might lead to having to have a higher capital allocation. So the ideal world would be to be in this first quadrant, but that's just not realistic. You know, low reserve use and low debt use. It's just not realistic given the, the challenge we're trying to tackle. So most likely we're going to be either in this upper left quadrant or this lower right hand quadrant. We don't want to be high debt, high reserve use. That's what we want to stay away from. That's kind of the worst of both. So that brings us, I think, to last night and some of the questions that were asked. And so I wanted to go through some of these a little bit. So this first one was how has the town built its reserves over time? You know, I want to give a lot of credit to current town manager, previous town managers, you know, Sonya, obviously, and others. It's really been through careful budgeting and through strong management of expenditures because that's the, the two sides of the equation that contribute to our reserves are when our revenues come in better than what we budget and when we don't spend our full operating budget on the expense side. So the chart below gives you a snapshot going back to 2010 of what our budget was that year. How much did we contribute to reserves from the revenue, revenue side of the equation and how much did we contribute to reserves from the expenditure side of the equation? So it varies significantly from year to year. The two most recent years, 2022 and 2021, were big years and we think they're a little, we want to count on those years going forward. These two are really driven by the pandemic and, you know, the town being conservative and projecting impacts from the pandemic on our general fund revenues, state aid and local revenues. We were very cautious in those two years budgeting. And fortunately, the pandemic, it did impact the town significantly, but it was mostly in the enterprise fund side of our, of our operation with our water and sewer rates. It didn't have the state as significant an impact on our general fund side. And thankfully that's because state aid was kept level throughout the entire pandemic. So, but if you go back in time, you'll see different levels, different levels of contributions to our reserves from each of those years. So the average, if you include the pandemic years, we put about $2 million per year, $2.1 million per year into reserves. If you don't include the, those two pandemic years, 2022 and 2021, then it's about 1.7 million. So again, somewhere between one and a half, $2 million per year seems reasonable. But again, it's on average and in any particular year, there could be nothing, right? If we had a down year, there could be no contribution. Can you talk about the 2019? Yeah, 2019 also was a little bit of an anomaly because that was the year that, so the town bailed out the health insurance trust fund. When we had some struggles with insurance, when we had some high claims, the town put some money into the health insurance trust fund to keep it solvent. And then there was a surcharge issued on our premiums that all the employees pay. And the, the money that was put into the health insurance trust fund was then repaid back to the, to the town. So that 2019 year includes that repayment back to the town, which again, that year is a little bit of an anomaly. Any questions on sort of the history of how reserves have been built? Or what contributes to reserves? Lynn. So are we saying. Yeah, I mean, are we saying that we started building our reserves in 2010? No, I mean, I just, you only went back to 2010. So if you add up the sum of all these, these reserves, it's more than what we actually have in reserves because the other thing we do is we look at, if there's any needs that have to come out of our reserve. So we've put money towards roads. We've put money towards other capital projects. So if you add all these up, you'd say, well, we should have that much in reserves, but we've spent also from these end of year surpluses. Okay. And I'm assuming later you're going to get to how much we have in each of the reserve accounts and so forth. So that's it. Thank you. Kathy. And in terms of our, when we're looking at a budget, so we're looking at the FY 24 budget now. The, the revenue surplus is, we received more than we'd originally put. In our, on our revenue line. As we're, what have been the sources of that because I, the actual property tax is pretty predictable. Is that the fluctuation in. Either new growth or state aid or. Yeah. So it varies again from year to year. The, if you want to go back and look, if you look at the fourth quarter report that's on the accounting web page from different fiscal years, it will explain for that particular year, but some areas that have contributed in the past, new growth, as you described, if the development comes in again, greater than our estimate. Again, new growth is what we call an elastic revenue, which means it can be great one year and then be very little. The next year really depends on what's going out, going on out there and the, you know, in terms of development. Other areas that have come in higher. You know, recently we saw building permits coming really high again, tied to development. So when those building permits are taken out and going through the process, we collect those fees. So when you have large developments like we've had in the last few years, you can have really large fees associated that are sort of, they're great and they help contribute to, you know, what you see here, but they're not necessarily things we can say, we're going to get that every single year because again, there's only so much you. The reason I'm asking for that is, as I understand that public entities, we need to conservatively budget because we can't. Certain accounts we certainly. We can't be wrong during the year. We can't just deficit spend. So, but it looks like there's a jump, a pretty substantial jump up starting in 2019, with the exception of 2020 on revenue being. Above what we thought. And then the same, the flip side is expenditures, not being as high as we predicted. And some of that is. I think unfilled positions. Some other pieces. So I just, what I'm looking for is trying to get you to. Is there a normal year or all years. Interestingly different from all the other years, because you're, you're seeing a sudden, as you said, without the pandemic years, you know, we were in the put a million a million and a half in, in the 2% range, which is a margin that we're operating on. And suddenly it's much higher. So the other thing I just want to say is during those pandemic years, we were so tight on operating budgets. You know, we really were like, we were trying to avoid layoffs and. And some things we just didn't do. That's the other thing about those two years. Things were closed. And so there were some things we didn't need to spend because they weren't happening. You know, because things weren't open. You know, the schools were, were remote. A lot of our services were remote. So on the expense side in those years, that's one of the reasons why that's higher is because either we didn't have to necessarily spend the same way we had in prior years. Or we, they were spending related to COVID where we could get use FEMA or cares or one of the federal grants that was specific to the pandemic. Again, so that's why when we look at 2021 and 2022. Again, those were positive in terms of helping us build these reserves, which obviously we need for these projects coming up. But I would obviously not count on that as the norm going forward. Yeah. And Paul already spoke to 2019. All right, Bob, those, that was my question. Just trying to look at, you know, they're clearly isn't a norm year here. If you include those last four years. It's all yours, Bob. I'm, I'm finished. You're muted. There you go. Sorry about that. I just wanted Sean, if you kind of alluded to this, but especially 2021 and 2022, we had a lot of federal grants and that did replace some of our lost revenue. And if you could give us a rough order of magnitude of when we see 4.8 and 4.6 million surpluses, how much of that would be due to the federal reimbursements? Yeah, so, so we couldn't, we couldn't supplant with those federal reimbursements, but I would say our expenses changed because of the pandemic. So like, for example, with CARES, we had parking enforcement officers who instead of enforcing parking, because nobody came downtown, we were able to divert them to be ambassadors, basically COVID ambassadors and help spread health protocols. So when we did things like that, we were allowed to charge things like that to CARES, because if you, there was a category where if you diverted a budgeted use to something that was substantially different from what it was originally intended for, they allowed that. So there were some things like that, that allowed us to produce some of these savings. But a lot of these savings are just on the revenue side. You know, we, we anticipated there would be state aid cuts in some of those first early years that were not, we anticipated there would be bigger, a bigger impact on our local receipts. And there was some impact on our local receipts, but not as significant as we anticipated. So a lot of that, those two years were revenue side. And on the expense side, I would say it's just a little, because there were things that were closed down and we didn't have to, we didn't have to, you know, a lot of the extra things that we do during the year, when billions are open, all those things were not happening during the pandemic. Okay, thanks. Alicia, you're muted still. Did she drop off? So I'll keep going. Alicia had her hand up when she comes back. We can go back to her. Any other questions on reserves? Okay. So Andy did a great job last night of going through this, but I just wanted to reiterate. So are all reserves the same and really sorry to interrupt. Andy, can we pause for a moment in case Alicia is having a connectivity issue? Okay. We'll put this down in case. None. I had a question on the second, the earlier slides where you were talking about the four models. What is the vision for. Using reserves for the library. For $20 million worth because. If we currently have a balance of under 10. In the capital stabilization fund. It's a project that's coming fairly quickly. What were you envisioning? Yeah, so you have to go back and look at those models. So it wasn't using all of it for the library because again, we've set our commitment for the library at 15.9. So it was using. A certain amount for the library and then other reserves for certain years. So it was just looking at a different way to do it. To cover certain years when the debt got high to help with the. Our capital budget. So I can send the link out so you can go back and look at the charts because that shows better how the reserves are applied each year. But it was just looking at a different way to do it because that project is coming up. Yeah. Just looking at one chart. It's certainly I couldn't. Yeah, but you're right. It's not as viable because we would have had a ramp up reserves quicker. For that one to be viable. Trying to reconnect. She's having connectivity problems. So just while we're waiting for her to come back in, Sean, I do remember the discussion. But one of the things I noted, you know, we, as we're starting to look. In the other hat I wear on the joint capital planning committee, when we're looking forward to DPW starting. Starting to appear. We're in deficit world starting in FY26, 27, and we don't have a line say reserves, you know, draw down on reserves. And, you know, at some point. You know, to the extent something feels more real, I think we need to start showing that and the decision that. You know, you know, you know, you know, if the fire would be all cash as opposed to debt. At least come back and visit it because it's, it's hard to be looking at the other capital side. And seeing one and a half million dollar deficits and think of, we're not touching reserves, you know, like, where's that money going to come from? You know, so just trying to, trying to. I know that's not. The school is the only thing I want to move forward on, right? Is that taking a minute to get this out of the draw on. Are we talking about the distant future? Are we talking about, you know, within the next couple of years kind of future. So, but Alicia is back. So I don't want to take her time. So. Call on her. Yeah. Can we please just confirm that she can hear us. So, Alicia, can you hear us and if so, we really just we're talking about a few other things and sort of held the conversation waiting for you to come back is the subject was the pattern for how we built reserves and you had your hand up when you when we lost you so if you can. If you hear this then go ahead and jump right in with your question. Yes, can you all hear me. Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. I was just wondering, like on average, how much do we use from the reserves any given year on things other than like these capital projects. Yeah, so that's a good question. So we don't. We don't have any planned usage from reserves in any given year I think we look at what our needs are every fall is sort of the process that we've set up. So the fall is when we certify our free cash and that's when we make any adjustments or any shifting around of our reserves. And so the one thing we set up a few a little over a year ago was the reparations trust fund. So that's one use of these reserves is the commitment to transfer into the reparation stabilization fund and amount that equals our cannabis taxes, provided that we meet some other criteria as well. So that's been one use. We've done some one, I think two off cycle contributions to roads that were both in the million dollar range. And I think the last thing that we did was the contribution to the, the fields at the regional school. We don't plan things, but if there's needs that have popped up or priorities that have been highlighted, then we, we consider them in the fall. When the bridge collapsed, you drew on reserve. Yeah, station road bridge. Alicia, do you have your hands up you have another. Yeah, so just to confirm we don't plan to use reserves for anything other than these building projects on a regular basis. Right now we try to keep our reserves for sort of the economic downturns emergency expenditures and then with the new with our two new funds we have the reparations fund and the capital stabilization fund so the capital stabilization is the one that is planned to be spent. Thank you. And I have one other question. Have we revisited this model since we received the updated estimates of the elementary school building project because the presentation was from October 2022, which was before we had the actual price of the elementary school building. Yeah, I think we've, yeah, we've been looking at the impact that was for a debt exclusion and we've updated the modeling or the impacts of the exclusion to reflect the higher price, but it hasn't changed our assumption that we would use a debt exclusion for the school. Bernie. And just an observation that it's really difficult to make planned expenditures from reserves because the source of the reserves are so variable and if you look at that third. You can see that there's not a lot of consistency there that goes up and down it's more like a sine wave than than anything else we happen to hit two years with some fairly robust federal funding that wasn't was way more than we expected and we're sort of, we're sort of paying for some of that now because that figured, at least some, some of the inflation we're experiencing. And it's just very difficult to do with reserves and then we always have these things that known in the trade is the black swan events, which is, you know, things like the bridge on bridge on station road or a sharp downturn in the economy. And that would be very care, you know, my experience with this over for other communities is that it's very, very difficult to do planned expenditures out of reserves. And that's sometimes difficult for bargaining units to understand. I've been in contract negotiations where people point to the reserve and say, Oh look, we have all those money. But it's, it's one time money, it does there's no guarantee that it's going to reappear once you use it. And it does use if it does impact your body. So this is my observations on it. Thank you. So I'll get back to this slide. So again going through what we have for reserves or for types of reserves. And there was a question on this last night, why do we have 5% why do we have 10%. Precash our policies to maintain 5% of the operating budget. Again, this is the source that's really intended for emergency expenditures, because the, the threshold for appropriating from free cash is a majority vote so it's a little bit lower threshold that can be done quicker. Then we have our general stabilization fund, which our policies to maintain at 10% of the operating budget. This is more for budget support, especially if we anticipate an economic downturn or if we're starting to see an economic downturn and reductions in state aid. This would be the source we would look to. And the percentages here again are intentional to equal 15% because that's the threshold that helps us achieve the highest score for our budgetary flexibility with our bond rating. So we don't really want to go below that 15% because then we're not going to be able to hit that high, that high point for the scoring. And this is one of the one people when the bond rating agencies come and do their analysis they sit down the interview they look at your debt they look at your long term liabilities they look at your budgeting both, you know, yearly performance but then your reserves. And you get different scores for all these things and they all contribute to your overall score. And the reserves have always been one of the things that have contributed to our positive score our low debt has been one of the things that has contributed to our positive score. The debt we knew was temporary because it was we're kind of reducing our debt and anticipation of these building projects. But this is one area where we'd like to maintain the best score possible so that we can try to keep that double a plus rating and, you know, ultimately our goal is to get triple a rating at some point. Does dropping below 15% change the rating or what is the percentage which by which you drop below it and it changed the double a rating. So it's all up to the credit rating agencies but the 15% is the threshold for the highest score. So it would be, you know, it's their process and their calculation which ultimately produces your rating. But we know that this 15% benchmark is how we get the highest score for budgetary flexibility. So is that within a range or it's solely at 15 exactly. So it's, it's sort of like a matrix so there's, there's different steps that get you different fact points basically so 15% is the highest that helps get you the highest amount of points for that category. So 15% I don't remember exactly what the threshold is but there's some between two percentages that will get you a different level, and so on and if you're below a certain point it starts to work. You know, it starts to be more of a negative against you. So 15 is the highest. Andy. Sorry, Alicia did you follow up sorry. Yes. I'm sorry and well I just had one other question that I was like a follow up to my question earlier. Was that have we ever looked at a model that didn't assume a full debt exclusion for the elementary school building project. No, I think our, that's been one of our underlying assumptions. Really as long as I can recall that we would exclude the debt for the school project for the school project. And so as long as we have been building the reserves and anticipating a full debt exclusion to that would increase the tax rate for residents we have not been searching for avenues to offset that impact. So our goal has been how do we complete all four projects and the school, the cost of the school, essentially is the same amount as the other three projects combined. So the assumption has always been in the school that that one would be debt excluded, and the other three would be funded within our capital allocation. Thank you. Andy. So just follow up on the loose last point and then get to the other thing I was going to say this before building plan as Sean just described it really has existed for some period of time it was the plan that was in existence when we were still a town meeting form of government and we're considering the last school building project. And it was a debt exclusion that was passed at that time, just because of town meeting decision not to go forward with project and authorized the borrowing of the funds. It, you know, it didn't happen but that was the plan back then, and it has remained fairly stable over this entire period of time. I think the things that have changed because costs have gone up so much is that we've gotten into having to do more spacing of the projects as far as the time and when they'd be done and looking carefully at the building so we anticipate building. The other thing I was just going to mention is getting back to the general stabilization fund. This base gets back to that post 2008 period, which was really 2009 2010. What was happening was that property tax remains fairly stable because it's a set amount. What was really hurting our revenues most significantly was that the state relies more heavily on income tax, and when we went into a serious recession, the income tax revenue fell substantially, and we not only were facing cuts in state aid accounts, both unrestricted government might have been at that point, still referred to by its whole name or in chapter 70 but in any event, those were caught, not just for the year ahead. In one year where there was recisions of money that happened during the year so we were sitting there operating in a year where we had built a budget assuming that we would be getting revenue and the state was in such a crisis that they had to go through a process and at that point in time with having made commitments already, the existence of a stabilization fund was really important and I would be very strongly against dipping into that 10% because it's a, you know, we hope it doesn't happen again, but if it were to happen again, we would really need to do it. Bernie was probably up in some other community at that point. So that's my comment. It just points out some of the instability in our revenues because you can't guarantee that the state aid is going to be there. If things go south and in terms of the Commonwealth's finances, the governor has the ability to hold back and we've on one occasion faced either a shortfall or a rescission and in state aid we don't get a guaranteed lump sum all at once it comes in and drips quarterly drips. You know, we have to, there is an amazing amount of uncertainty in municipal financing, even though we're dependent on a wealth tax and that wealth being property and either real or personal and personal. Well, there's too many other variables there in terms of our other, our dependency or 30 plus percent income or dependency we are, we have a state aid or other forms of revenue so this could be a pretty drastic swing and how our money appears over the course of the year. Yeah, let me just add to that I wasn't with the town, per se, was actually on a town committee. And I know at that point we had to halt any discussion about building a fire station or DPW. On the other hand, I was running an organization that enormous amounts of state and federal grants, and we would get notices at six months into the year that our grant was being ended right then and there. And basically, that just meant that led to layoffs. You had no other option but to lay people off. And what I'm hearing people saying is that we were able to weather that period through Amherst government. Because we had some reserves. And otherwise we would not have weathered it we would have laid people off and not provided the services that residents expect. So the other two reserves now that the two newest ones we have our reparation stabilization fund and as I said, the policy there is if the town is in good fiscal condition or you know a good good fiscal standing is looking okay, we will contribute an amount equal to the cannabis taxes received in that particular year. So I think we've done this a couple times now. And again, this would be considered again in the fall. And then the fourth one is the new capital stabilization fund and essentially the policy for this one is once you know once we satisfy the requirements of the first three, we would put any remaining balance into this fund, provided there's no other appropriations for specific capital projects. So what is the town's plan for reserves. So again based on those those models that we looked at. Again, we were leaning towards the fire station option. Because it gives us a clear path forward for the fire station in terms of how to finance it. We're about halfway there, as it is in terms of the goal of what we were trying to raise. We have a location now that we feel like is a viable location. And it helps reduce overall cost of the town because it's just one less borrowing. Not only is the cost of construction gone up again I think we all know interest rates have gone up and that, in some ways has made an even bigger impact. When we were looking at, you know, interest rates in the one to 2% range a year and a half ago now we're looking at interest interest rates in the high 34% range. And it seems like things keep steadily rising so being able to not borrow from one of the projects reduces the cost quite a bit. So what happens if reserves are used to reduce the school debt so what we were discussing last night. So, again, operating under the assumption that we were going to use the capital stabilization fund for the fire station. If we use those reserves, then that would delay the fire station. Unless there's a plan to replenish them, you know in a certain number of years that gets us back on track. Again, as we already talked about contributions to reserves are unpredictable and vary from one year to the next. We have other commitments that even if we do have an end of year surplus we have other policy commitments that we have to meet first again free cash at 5% general stabilization and 10% and our reparation funding. And those percentages tend to grow a little bit every year so that you know their function of the budget so as our budget grows a little bit each year the amount that we have to maintain in those reserve funds also grows a little bit each year as well. You know, right now I think we all kind of have seen some of the economic forecasts going out. Sometimes things look more gloomy than others sometimes it sounds like it's going to be okay. But I would say, generally it's uncertain at this point what the next couple fiscal years looks like from an economic standpoint. I will say that you know any allocations that exceed the balance in the capital stabilization fund you know we feel will negatively influence the town's bond rating and create additional risks like not having those reserves if something were to happen some sort of economic downturn would happen if there was an emergency expenditure. We would be concerned with that. Andy. On the top of that page. You might want to add one more which is that something I mentioned last night that delaying the building of the fire station, which is by the nature of delay increase the cost of building the fire station. Yeah, it also runs the serious and almost given risk that we're going to have to put more repair money into both the fire station and DPW. So how much should be allocated. Obviously this is the question for the council and the town manager to ultimately decide. We don't recommend again allocating any amount that exceeds what we have in the capital stabilization fund. I feel the best path forward is the one that addresses all four buildings, or has a plan to address all four buildings. And again the school building project moving forward is critical to the other building projects because if that project school project doesn't move forward, the funding available for those other projects is in question. So, you know, lots to consider here. And again, even other capital needs of the school project doesn't move forward that calls into question what we can allocate towards things like roads and sidewalks. Because we will have to dip into our capital budget that we currently put towards roads and sidewalks. We will have to look to that capital budget to make repairs to the school and to the other three buildings. So, it is a, I get why it's a complicated decision. Thank you questions or was one additional slide and this was in response to Anna your question last night. You'd asked for different property values and what the impact of using reserves to reduce the debt would be for those property values so how much would it reduce the annual impact. You know what I'm, I think I'm missing one column that I need to add before this is probably super helpful but I will do that and repost it. But for a property that's at 250,000, it would, using $1 million of reserves would reduce the impact by $5 for the average single family home that we've already looked at it's the $9. $650,000 and it'd be $13 and so on so we've scaled it up for a few different levels. As you go out you can see the different impacts again it grows. It doesn't grow exactly by the factor of, you know, it's not five times the use of 1 million because there's some rounding that's in this 1 million. So for example the 250,000 it's $5 say $5 per year reduction at $1 million of reserve use it's $23 $23 of savings per year at $5 million of reserve use, and it would be $48 of savings per year at $10 million of reserve use because it's there's a little bit of rounding factor then. And the column I have to add is to give you the, the annual impact for that property value. We've looked at it for the average single family home it was the 478, but I have to give it to you for those other values so you can see what it's coming off of Kathy. If I extrapolate still more I'm going to make a comment and tell me whether this observation is wrong or or too simplistic. If I took a 10 or $20 million multi unit apartment building. I would get more relief than would the low income, the lower on the lower end of the housing spectrum the 250 is one of the things I'm seeing here and it's, it's because of the way it interacts with the assessed value. So that's just a general comment on this because we've been saying $9 for 1 million but it's $9 only at the average so it's higher for. Yeah, so in terms of the dollar amount it's more for remember the impact for them is also greater. So it's all proportional to the. Again that column that's missing would help but the annual impact for property value, value that $1 million is going to be greater than that $470 per year that we looked at. So, so it's relative to the, the increase that they're going to see from the debt exclusion. Yeah, it's like putting, I did get that so then the second question I had is. Let's come up in a discussion earlier today. We give some exemptions for various categories of people seniors disabled and a few others. Do we have within what the state allow law allows us to do do we have any flexibility in the amount, not necessarily the category but the amount. I have to check with the assessor on that I don't want to give you bad information so let me check with the assess I think it's, I think it's prescribed what we have available but I want to double check before, I say definitively. So you want to know if the amount that can be exempt or reduced from the property tax bill. If there's latitude to go higher than our current limits. That's the way. So within the categories that we know are the allowable categories is is their ability to go higher and to that that that is my question. I think the end again, I think the answers no but I will confirm that because we already have gone higher than sort of the, the, we voted we opted to double the exemption amount. Several years ago, Andy probably remembers when that happened, but I don't know if we can go above that amount that we've already voted as a higher threshold I will confirm. So it was just, and then my other question is, you can also say you'll get back to us is if I am living in an affordable unit and section eight housing or some of these where we've set up where your income has to be look below a threshold relative to poverty and the landlord increase my rent, or is the rent basically stabilized because it's a share of my income. So that's the question on that one. Okay. I don't know how it interacts you know I, I knew one young woman and as her income went up the amount of rent she had to pay went up but when her income went down her rent went down, you know so it was relative to a share of her income. So, so are the people in affordable housing units apartments whether they're in a whole building of them or in the, like up here in the mill district where we've got some deeply affordable units. So that's my question. Okay. I always feel very smart when Kathy and I have similar questions not going to lie. So, I think, and when I feel less smart is when I'm about to ask my not sure if it's totally exactly what she asked her not so I think one of the things Kathy was talking about with exemptions oh shoot, lost my note. All right. So I think one of my questions is about the support programs that we have for folks who are struggling to pay their rent. And some of those are through exemptions but I think if we saw increased demand and if we intentionally put in effort into into communicating what our programs are for rent support and the like, and we saw increased usage beyond what we had allocated to those programs. Do we have in your opinion and I mean I know the answer is yes but in your opinion is there a mechanism for increased support for those funds so that we could meet potential increased demand. So that's, that's my first question. And the reason for that is when I look at the oh sorry Sean you can. I'm sorry if I so are you talking about exemptions or, or so you said rent so we don't have programs specifically for renters. We have an ARPA funded program right now for renters I distinguish. Yeah, we do have an ARPA funded program for renters that's helped a lot of renters. And we have started discussing extending that program because it's almost the funds have almost been exhausted and that's helped a lot of people. So, I think we're leaning towards extending that and increasing the allocation towards that but that is an ARPA funded program specifically. Great. But there is the potential to continue it. Yeah, I think we have to follow up with the time manager after to get the final green light but that was what we were thinking. That would be great. I think that especially as we look at at something like a debt exclusion having a program that we know will continue for folks impacted by by this because I think what's. Thank you I know I asked for this chart it is incredibly helpful and yes I'd love to see the final column as well. Once you get it in there. And what's interesting for me is it's proportionate impact right and so we aren't able to skew this to lessen only the amount for folks who are in, you know who's who's assessed property value is lower, even though that would be great. I think the what's missing and this is not no fault of yours Sean because this is the unknown is how landlords would take that increased property. Excuse me that the increased amount they have to pay and impact the rent of their tenants with it right so I think that's an unknown for us we can't predict behavior in that way. And so, I think for me what I'd like to see is a commitment to continuing programs that would support renters. Even for situations outside of just this because we can't necessarily control how much or how little landlords will increase rent and use of reserves isn't necessarily I guess I would want it to see kind of backwards proportionate and so that it would benefit folks on lower assessed property, lower assessed properties more, but that's not how the formula works so I'll pause there. Thank you. Yeah, and the one thing I'll say is. So American Rescue Plan acts they have to be spent by December 31 of 2026. So that's the downside is that there's a time limit on using those ARPA funds. Maybe there's ways to advocate for that time to be extended out farther. It would require federal action for that to happen. But under the current rules, the, the last date we could expend these funds would be December 31 of 2026. So that's my follow up if that's okay. If that continued, which I'm assuming it would come in under the budget for fiscal year 24. And then, if we approved it but if we ran through it quickly if we saw intense demand. Could that be a potential use of reserves or free cash to fund a program like that, so that it doesn't run out. Yeah, no, no, we're allowed to do it because it's ARPA funds. So it's, it's not something we can do from our taxpayer funds or from our local funds. It's something that's specifically allowed from ARPA funds. But you're saying that we could continue it or recreate it under our own funds possibly. No, I think we've looked at this in the past and it's been deemed that it's not an allowable use of government funds for these types of programs. Okay. See, see community preservation act funds. You know, I don't know about CPA funds, potentially the other source to look at would be possibly CDBG. I think CDBG would be an appropriate level. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's giving me something to think about. Thank you. Alicia. Thank you, Sean. So I understand and I appreciate the amount of time that has gone into the funding plan and expectations for all of the capital projects. However, it's still very frustrating for me that in all of that time there has been no plan. I would like to see how to help residents who will be the most vulnerable to these decisions that we are making here. And so I would like to see the conversation shift like as it has for the last like two comments but I think we spend a deal of time talking about possibilities. And I would like to you know shift the conversation I think that was the intention of my ask for taking 10 million from the reserves is to figure out how we can offset the impact. That is a better way to offset the impact, like to the same degree, please let that be known. But from looking at it, in my opinion, this is the best way to offset the impact to taxpayers and again that was what I was hoping for feedback from and feedback. Feedback in terms of how we can assist our residents and not feedback in terms of this is never going to work because we didn't plan for this. Also, it's frustrating to me that we can make a lot of statements saying we are unsure like we are unsure how much we use from from the reserves on on a regular basis. But we can say that we are sure that the fire station would be delayed if we use that money and I don't think that's something that we actually know for sure. So I would respect that because of the model that we have that we have. But again, a lot of the things about the model are unknown or to be determined and the reason why we're saying we're so cautious about this is because we don't know what's going to happen. So I would prefer if we talk about it as if we don't know what's going to happen. And not as if it's for sure going to delay the building of the fire station because we've looked at certain models like not a full debt exclusion for the elementary school. And I think that of course if we're following the models that we have that then there will not be enough money or we might need to delay the fire station but my request at the council meeting last night was, can we come up with a new plan that does both. And making those calls might be inaccurate at this point to make them definitively like that. And then I also just wanted to speak and sorry because I have to go after this so I'm going to do like a whole blurb here. I also wanted to speak a little bit to housing questions because correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I'm the only renter here on this panel. I probably am the only person who has had section eight before. And so I can actually answer all of those questions for you. And section eight works in a really interesting way. It's not really just that you pay a percentage of your rent towards whatever your rent or a percentage of your income towards whatever your rent is. There's actually guidelines as to how much money you're allowed to spend, based off of how many people live in your household. Well I have three children, but two of my children are of the same sex and so they would be required to share a bedroom under section eight and I would be allowed to only pursue a three bedroom apartment and that is it I am not allowed to pursue anything higher, even if it fits in my, my budget range. Also, they give you a certain amount of money to spend so for a three bedroom and Amherst, I am only allowed to go up to $1800. So if rent does increase, you have to move. You cannot say oh I'll pay the extra it's actually against the rules of section eight to pay the extra. So you actually have to move if your rent is increased and you are not allowed to go above 30% of your income off of the market rent price that they are allowing you to pay for a certain amount of bedrooms and that price changes for every bedroom so for like a one bedroom you have to pay $1800. And if you realized what's happening in Amherst with rents going up, this is why a lot of people with section eight can no longer live in Amherst, because it's very difficult to find a three bedroom for $1800. It's very difficult to find a one bedroom for $1200. And so these people cannot even live here. And that's the point I've been trying to make this entire time is that these decisions that we are making are literally pushing low income people out of this town. And for people who are not on section eight but rent, I think it's kind of silly to say that like we don't know what landlords will do, because I think, I mean, for me, anyhow, and the history of what I've seen and what I've experienced right landlords always increase your rent when they get unexpected fees because you are living in the property, not them and why would they want to pay for something that you are using my rent goes up all the time when my landlord incurs extra fees of any kind. And so I would actually expect and plan for this to increase rents and the mortgage payments and the tax payments. So I would expect all of these things to increase and so I would hope that we would plan for these things ahead of time. Also, in regards to the rental fund, I do agree with on a suggestion of trying to see if there's a way we can create a fund or an assistance fund or something to help offset the payments. However, there are a lot of restrictions. And this is something I have talked with Paul about on the funds that are available for renters. First of all, the funds that are available through ARPA for COVID relief are only available to residents who are already behind on their rent. So you cannot say I'm not going to make my rent next month I need more money. You literally have to miss your rent payment, get a notice to quit, have the eviction process start, and then you can get your rent paid so essentially we are not helping people maintain landlord tenant relationships. And so I have a number of issues with these things and again, I think there should have been substantially more planning going into how we will help renters but I think part of the problem again is representation and that there aren't a lot of renters on the counselor on the finance committee or in places where we're making decisions because for people to be able to sit up here and say you know $45 less hey that's enough for me is a privilege for some people that is not enough for some people, any $5 in addition to what they're paying now will set them off and they cannot do it $5 over what you pay for section eight could cause you to have to move out of that apartment because it is no longer in the guidelines $2 and 50 So I think we need to change again the way that we're framing and thinking about this and I think it's really difficult to be talking about and thinking about this with people who aren't affected by what I'm trying to do here. I think it would benefit us greatly to have more of those people be a part of this conversation more people who have section eight and live in Amherst, more people who are renters and who are low income, because maybe we can ask them, would it be helpful if there was an additional $45 off a year and I can almost guarantee you that they would all say yes. The conversation is a bit frustrating for me, and I would like to simply focus on, you know, if the 10 million isn't going to work which, again, in my opinion I still think we could do and come up with a plan, and maybe we don't have a plan right now to replenish the reserves but maybe we come up with a plan to do so because we need to help our residents. And I think that those are things we should be talking about and thinking about and that again the conversation should shift to how are we going to help our residents, because we already have a plan for the town. One thing I'll just say, when we've done this in the past, if anybody wants us to model any assumptions related to the projects or the timing of the projects or how much we allocate towards the projects. I'm happy to do that and to report on, you know, to provide that data. We've done that in the past we've looked at what if we, you know, do a project in this year or if we push it out what if we only spend this much. So we can do all that. I think that this is a big challenge and we've been looking at it for multiple years. And that's how we've gone to the point that we're at is that there's, especially with the cost going up and interest rates going up. If the goal is still to complete all four building projects. There's only so many ways you can do it. But again, if anybody has any assumptions they want us to meet a model happy to do that. Bernie. Going back in time, which I'm doing a lot today. When we started these discussions, we started these discussions with how do we manage for overrides. In overtime it's been worked down to how do we manage one overwrite. It's been a considerable movement in that direction to try to try to minimize the impact on taxpayers. Period, because nobody likes to pay. Nobody likes to pay high taxes. I've never in all my time in either human services or in local government has had anybody come into my office and say I want to pay board. And it doesn't happen. And, you know, I understand full well. The, the impact small increases can have on on families budgets or for 30 years with folks with all kinds of disabilities who were living on SSI. You know, we have, we've managed, I think, to try and work this down to the point where it's the most affordable that we can come up with. And if there are other ways we need to offset this without jeopardizing the other projects because the other projects are necessary and everyone benefits from those other projects. And I like the fact that I've got a, you know, a highly trained fire department and EMTs, paramedics that can respond in three, four minutes to the fire down the street. I want to make sure that that continues. I like the fact that we've got a DPW that knows how to manage things and could do more if they had more resources and I like that. And I'm not trying kids in the school systems and I'm on a fixed income. I'd like to be able to have them benefit from a new school before they age out, which is, you know, we've we've we've wasted five years and over $30 million, because of some bad decisions that were made and I'm, you know, and I'm not willing to see any of those bad decisions be made that will throw those other projects into jeopardy, because the prospect of the average single family unit saving what amounts to 23 cents a day. If we lower their their the taxes on this by $85. So let's look at how we can continue to help folks who genuinely need the assistance and we need to know who these folks are. I've not seen a good description of what the extent of need is. And we need to discover that we need to move on. I don't know if we'll ever get around to the discussion of how much money we want to put up. I probably was I present. If I were present for that meeting where the decision was made to add $5 million in reserves I probably would have argued against that. I certainly don't want to see us making another mistake by turning the school down on the impact of that is going to be horrible. Do I want to see us put $10 million of reserves in there. No, I want to see us move forward finally finally move forward with the fire station it's been talked about for what, two decades. We have we're fortunate that ocean doesn't come in and walk through our highway department garage. We need to fix that. And if we, we spend too much, you know those are going to have impacts to, and people will have to pay for those two. So, I understand and I feel deeply about the challenge that we have but I, I also heard a lot of talk about how people are going to move out of Amherst because the taxes are too high. I dare say, nobody's going to move out of taxes out of Amherst for 23 cents a day. That's that's my response to it all. And hopefully we will before too much longer get around to talking about the question of what are we going to go back to the council with in terms of recommendation. Paul you're muted. I see you talking. I assume it's tossing. Yes, thank you. Yeah, so, so we spent a lot of time on developing a plan. And then when the interest rates went up and construction costs, you know went back and came up with a different multiple options back in October and settled on a plan. I think a lot of our energy went into that. And I think what Alicia is bringing up is really important because we aren't talking about that piece of it in terms of what else can we do as in dedicating some brainpower to thinking, you know, what can the town to words limited because of the anti aid amendment that prevents us from doing certain things but addressing the affordability issue is something. You know, and I'm talking about individual not looking at global solutions with addition, you know, because I think taking more money, it just, it gets spread out over people who can easily afford 23 cents a day or whatever it is. But targeting people to help them stay in their homes and I totally the frustration of the way the ARPA programs have to be set up that you have to miss a payment is just beyond repair. It's ridiculous, but it's what it is and but we, I think, thinking creatively we have a few years before this debt starts to hit. Maybe there's some special legislation or something we get through to provide a source or CBG, CBG, I think it's really legitimate point that we can spend some effort on and if other people have ideas that we can bring that we can model as Sean said we'd love to look at those. I really want to. It needs to be a motion but to basically charge the town manager or ask the town manager to in fact, look at all of those possibilities and beyond, and to discuss this with our state legislators, because it sounds to me like part of this maybe kind of level funding. I mean, we just, we now have a supplemental budget before the government are coming to before the governor to continue the school meal program. There's got to be ways in which the state should step up to the plate as well on this. And I think what that what we learned during ARPA is during COVID and now, and with the ARPA funds is it's really exposed to some of these kinds of very heavy duty costs. I also just have to say at the same time. Using more reserves now raises the total project costs of the whole thing. There's no way we can take this, borrow this money now use this money now, and down the road, not spend more money to try to accomplish what we need to get done. We might lower costs in fact it'll increase them. And as much as there are unknowns and we all in our lives deal with unknowns. The whole plan is based on minimizing the total cost. And that's how we reduce the impact on everybody. I have other concerns about the use of our reserves, and people have heard too much from me lately about the issue of roads and sidewalks. But this is not. This is a plan that has been out there for a while. We show very appropriately has raised an issue that we have only minimally dealt with in ways that we have legally been able to in our town, and we have been assisted more recently by ARPA funds for it. And so I want to make sure we actually address, are there ways to explore statewide or in our town for how we can help our residents that are more impacted by this. Then, you know, we had anticipated in the past, but I do not see the use of reserves as a way to do that. I want to see that done in other ways. So let me ask one question just to. Is there anybody and don't feel embarrassed if you're the one, if you're the only one but does anybody who doesn't know what the anti aid amendment is that Paul is referring to. Because I'm going to not go into this. Andy, I always think it's useful for everybody here and people in our audience to just quickly review what it says. Well, do you want to explain it? Do you want me to give it a try? I do not and neither I guess for Andy, I'll do it. We can send out the word and Andy if it's helpful, we can send a link to the exact wording. Basically, it's a provision that's in the state constitution that prohibits the use of public funds or essentially allocation to private purposes. So we can't, can't do a charitable type of gift to an individual with public funds because of the anti aid amendment. There's a whole history about why that exists. Actually, there are similar provisions and others in other states Massachusetts is not the only state to have to do with state funds being used for originally religious purposes, religious grants but it's more probably stated than that and there's a, you know, our KP law is pretty good about advising on where you cross the line on or can't cross the line. So we say on the anti aid amendment, but it really does limit us in doing things like in Amherst, we had a program for a while where we were allocating money every year through, I think it was the health department to give out grants to people in emergency situations to help with their individual circumstances whatever the emergency need was. And we had to terminate that program because of the anti aid amendment. Yeah, but I want to augment this by saying, however, with certain monies CDBG CPA, we can give money to other nonprofit organizations that in turn help individuals. And I just want to reiterate we do right. I think we can look at other, maybe more more targeted programs but I just want to highlight the town does invest heavily in affordable housing, both through the Community Preservation Act and ARPA million We've invested a lot in sheltering through CPA and also through ARPA. I think the, you know, the charge we're hearing is are there other things we can do but we have invested heavily in in those support programs. So, and I think that the other thing, Bernie, you were making reference to the fact that you weren't here last meeting when we voted on the $5 million. I think that there was an athlete can speak to this if you want her to, but there was, there was confidence within the committee that money could come back because it was because of the availability of federal money that was becoming available to help with energy programs that we would be funding with that portion and that it would return and I think it was that confidence level of knowing that the money would come back that made us more comfortable though it is It is what it is. Like, you know, it's been how you phrase it. And Kathy, if you have anything you want to add or I think otherwise. No, I understand I understand how the, from looking back minutes and listening to subsequent discussion understand the committee made its, its decision and I'm not at this point arguing against that I think folks did it. The way they, you know, use the best information you have to make a decision. And it's, you know, but the, the idea that the $5 million will be coming back to the reserve fund gets lost in this discussion. We start saying, well, can we spend 10 million or can we spend 15 million or we got $20 million in reserves let's dispose of it. I think that's, that's where the danger lies in, in attributing reserves to the project. And I think we need to spend more time stressing that this money will come back. I think we also need to make note of the fact that this bond will be callable. So that at some point in the future should the finance God smile upon us I forget which God is responsible for municipal finance. We could, you know, call the bonded and, and borrow the money back again at a lower borrow the remainder at a lower rate and reduce everybody's costs. So it's not that we, you know, we're unfeeling and just moving forward like a steamroller on this we're trying to be pretty strategic about how decisions get made. And my concern is I evidence of voice and the other are actually in the previous meeting listening to our audit and open reports is that we've been successful because we've been disciplined. And I'm reluctant to see that discipline weekend. It's tough, but we've been successful because we've been disciplined. Thanks. Okay. I think that what Bernie has said was, was the understanding that we had in the anybody disagrees they should speak up but otherwise I think that we're in situation now where we need to make a decision. Essentially, whether we're going to amend our recommendation, or whether we're, we're comfortable with the recommendation we made with the additional information we've received. I'm going to call attention to the fact that the council has now scheduled an extra meeting on the 27. And wonder if the finance committee wants to wait until after that meeting to make its recommendation. Yeah, I mean along those same lines, I was going to just see if maybe today, we just see if there's any additional information needed. And, and then, you know, if there is we can bring that back at that meeting and then the vote would happen at that meeting. So, I was going to see if there's any additional questions that were not addressed. In addition to the one that Alicia. Yeah, so those are, those are on the list already. What can we do to increase exemptions or is there any flexibility around exemptions. You know, looking at other ways, other ways to support taxpayers through CDBG and some other sources would be two things we have our list currently. And I think making sure we have a full list of the existing exemptions and programs that we do have. We do. And just because since we have this forum, there is a debt exclusion page that's been set up on the town website. If you go under. If you go under your government. There's something called debt exclusion 2023. And there's an FAQ there. And one of the questions is has the list of those programs and brings you to the assessors webpage that has more complete information on each each program available. Yeah, I just maybe it would be helpful for the next town council meeting to see whether there's anywhere else in the budget we could squeeze out some money. You know, for example, in during the pandemic we reduced our OPED payments by, I don't know, 250,000 or something like that. It's not a lot of money, but it might, it might make a difference. It might give us a little bit more flexibility in terms of, you know, ways to mitigate the impacts on those members of the community who are going to have a hard time. Just, just a thought. Yeah, I don't know. I think it did sounds I guess that the amount of savings and property tax that would come with that amount of money is really not great and the amount of impact it would have on us going forward with our OPED plan. After last week's meeting. It makes it challenging question with that particular example whether there's anything else that's significant enough. I think that we have to remember that an override we're talking about multi year not single year, but the appropriation is single year. Is there anything you have to cash Kathy. I agree with what you just said but I think it's worth visiting Bob's idea in the context of operating budgets which are so tight. I thought the very good news on OPEB is we're actually approaching funding it at a what they said is quite a rapid clip. So I think it's worth at least having it on an agenda not for now, you know, not in this context. So this is the discussion because it was brought up with whether we could do anything to lower the amount that needs to be borrowed. Two cautions. Don't do anything to hurt our bond rating, because that'll just cost us money in the end and OPEB is one of those items. And the other thing is, while we sit here and we review the budget. I think we need to also make sure that it's the managers the town managers budget to propose. I think that's a good point and that's just a general statement that I think we all have to recognize is that if we have additional things that we would like to see changed in the budget for the coming year. We don't have that authority at this point. The only thing we can do is make a recommendation. And that's where we recommend Paul. Yeah, just to note that our, our mission has been from day one and it's been in the goals is to get a financing plan to build all four projects. And to put that together and presented to the council and I think, you know, Sean especially has been really creative at adjusting given the want realities that we're all facing to still keep them on track. In fact, we've had to make some serious compromises in terms of tapping seriously into our capital to get the fire station moving and also to extend out the projects over time. And I think that that was something where really it pains us to do that but it's the only way to make this financially feasible so our focus has been how do we make it financially feasible, and I'm welcoming the feedback. And that's what the charge was from the council is like, how do we do these four projects and I'm hearing tonight, or today is, you know, and let's factor in the impact on the renters and taxpayers and is there a way to mitigate that in some way shape or form for the people who are most affected by it. And that's something that we will. And that won't happen overnight because there's not a lot of easy solutions if someone anybody has any more welcoming that but we'll begin to what's already available, potentially could happen. So the question suggestion was made that we at least give consideration to whether we want to have one additional unplanned meeting after the Council discussion on at the new meeting on Monday. And so we'll be talking to the April 3 vote. And so we would be talking about our usual Tuesday time and if so is doing available, or I could ask the other way around is anyone not available. Yeah, I'll just point out that the third I think was also planned to be a finance committee meeting as well right the third was going to be the forum. Yes. Okay. I know it would be a joint committee meeting. The only thing we don't have is the opportunity to talk about what happened in the Council discussion. It was one of those unfortunate things I raised the point, but we wanted to do this make this decision. Prior to the exclusion vote, who really needed to go ahead and get a vote commitment made by April 3 and therefore doing a spacing between the April 3 meeting and the forum and the vote was just not really something we could figure out how to do. Yeah, and I really feel very strongly that we've scheduled meeting for Monday, we promised that there will be public comment, which is essence almost like having a public forum. We can't call it that. So, at least, I think the finance committee should meet on the 28th, having heard from both the council in this discussion, after the presentation like we had today with the additional information, and also the heard from the public. And then I feel more comfortable with us voting. And it's a single agenda item, nothing to be added. Since the special meeting, is it does anybody object to going ahead and doing that. If there's no objection that I think we'll just treat it as a decision I don't think we need to vote on it. There's unless somebody's asking for about anybody would like to make it a make it a motion. So that there's a vote on it. And if I don't see any hands go up I'm just going to make the decision that we will go ahead and schedule. Try and keep it brief by making it clear this is a one agenda item meeting. Okay, that's where we are. And Sean you're going to try and investigate with all that one issue. In particular that we talked about whether there are any things that could be identified that could help individuals in need. I mean, if we go forward with the level of spending it at this point there's been no suggestion at today's meeting that we do anything to amend our recommendation from the last meeting to fair summary. Okay, so that's where we are. So we did have on the agenda. Do you have anything on updating the 24 projections do you have anything new Sean or Yeah, I mean I can I don't know if we ever looked at the projection sheet I did put it in the packet kind of late but if you want me to go through that I can. To the email I sent where the guidance was increased to 3% for operating budgets for a point 24. And we have scheduled a budget coordinating group meeting for Friday, March, March 30, March 31, I think at 2 p.m. or something like that. So share anything or questions I mean we're happy to do whatever's. Again, I've got it's in the packet. Sort of the updated projection sheet. Just. Let's leave it. Let's go through the same question is there anybody requests it because we'll spend the time if there's a single person who request to have it put on the screen so they can look at it and ask questions right now. So if anyone wants to do that, either just speak up or raise their hand. I'm sorry to do it but could we do it, could we look at it just for a moment. Thank you. Yeah, so. So blue is FY 24. The primary changes are the state aid section so we updated the state aid section with the governor's budget. I think I gave an update last time that chapter 70 we're really seeing almost, you know, almost a zero increase, which is, this is based on $30 per pupil so very small increase in chapter 70 for education. Aga is that a 2% increase. Still below what we would like to see given what inflation is out there. For expenses. So, but we have put in the governor's budget and the one kind of bright spot I'll say we're not happy with the overall formula but the one area where there was a sort of funding increase that was significant was the state owned bland where that was increased 10% again still vastly below what we believe is the fair, the fair allocation for Amherst and we'll continue to work on that with our legislators but that was the one funding area that went up for us significantly. Local receipts we also made a few adjustments. We increase interest investment income a little bit more looking at the interest rates that we're getting and interest rates are up for our savings accounts and our CDs so we've, we've updated that a little bit. I can't remember where cannabis was the first time but cannabis, I believe we updated because the, the recreation tax is continuing to decline in terms of again what we get from recreational sales from cannabis. The numbers are significantly down. So we're, we adjusted that figure as well. So that when updating those two things, it allowed us to do a 3% increase for operating budgets. So this has been adjusted. Most everything else has stayed roughly the same I've updated the capital section a little bit with what we found out at four town meeting. In terms of our regional assessment and we've looked at our debt schedule again to make sure everything was lined up but the overall amount allocated to capital is the same. And the Hampshire County pension assessment we got some updated numbers there so that's been updated. So we're more or less zero with the 3% increase and we'll continue to update this table. The one thing I think most people probably heard is. So the library has voted their budget, the library trustees have voted their budget they voted the 2.2 2,000,000 213,530. The schools have voted their budget they voted number higher than this, which is part of the BCG meeting on Friday, or it's next Friday right about this Friday. The regional schools, I do not believe voted their budget might be tonight. I'll have to double check it. That's the exact date. So, so there's a little bit of work to do through the budget coordinating group to make sure we have a plan going forward. And that's the update. Can you sort of that additional half a percent can you say what's the total additional money that comes in and how they can divide it up between the three entities. Yeah, so I'll do the math. Hold on, I can get this. So I think it's about. I'll double check my math make sure afterwards what's about $350,000 that it takes to do every half percentage point. So again with the state aid and the Hampshire County number going down our pension assessment number going down, we're able to increase that. And it's applied to each. It's based on the prior year's budget so it's a proportional increase based on the prior year's budget so if we were at two and a half percent to start. Again, it would just be changing that to 3%. And so, between 50 and 60% or so goes to the schools between split between elementary schools and the regional schools, or actually just like at the operating budget it's a bigger percentage but if you look at the overall budget. Somewhere in that range. Anna. Yeah, so I think Paul knows where I'm trying to go with this when I still haven't quite sorted it out in my head. So one of the things that I was, I've been trying to wrap my head around is what it might look like for if the council amended the financial guidelines that we had passed to have that that amount where each operating budget went up by 3% to instead have that go fully to one department. For example, the schools and what the impact of that would be both on the other departments but also on the on the school so you're saying that it's a 350 K. Difference total, right, or is that per half percent per half percent. Okay, so, so what is the total. So for example, if it all went to one place if it all went to the schools. This is just me thinking you're faster at math than I am. If it all went to the schools what would the potential increase be for the schools. Yeah. The other operating budgets at two and a half as they originally were asked to be. And the additional state aid went to this to the schools. To one particular district or spread evenly between. I mean spread evenly I'm playing in hypothetical. So I'll have to double check this math. Let me just do one second. So, roughly, if it was all given to the schools and the town and the library state at two and a half percent. The schools would be looking at increases. In the 3.3 percent range 3.2 to 3.3 percent range against a little bit doing it on the fly here it's not perfect but it would be north of 3% for each of them. Okay, and it would be 300. I think the exact number was about $370,000 is that half percent so that's how much more it would be for the schools. And so is that something that the budget coordinating group would discuss at all. So yeah we're going to have to that's what that's the point of that meeting because of they voted higher share than what was in the projection, we don't know what the regional schools are going to vote yet. But that is the objective of that conversation yet. But ultimately it would be the most the council could do if we wanted to was if we voted to would be to update the financial guidelines because obviously Paul is the ultimate kind of decider of that percentage allocation. Right. I think the first thing you would do is update the guidelines if that was the direction there's again there's some. State laws around what how the approval process works between the town manager and the town council and education is one of the one of the areas where the town council has a little bit more power control than than other areas. Yeah, to be to be very specific about it, since it's come up before the process, you know, the council gives guidelines and but the decision is made by the town manager. The town manager doesn't have to follow the guidelines, though we appreciated the fact that he does pay close attention to them. In the end, if once he issues a budget for each of the segments of the town, which are the municipal departments within the municipal budget and then in the larger blocks for schools and library. The council schools is kind of a world on itself because it's entirely different budget process. The council and approve it. Council can decrease it but the council can't increase except for schools. And if there's a request from a school committee. And it has two thirds of the council. And the council can increase it. But like the request that came last year. Yes. So that that's basically what the process is. It is going to be up to the BCG to talk about it. I think that we recognize several things one is this is Sean just reported and I didn't know this until he said it. The council has already voted the full amount at 3% as their budget. So, it would be asking them then to give less than they've now assumed that they had into budgeted for a prior to seeing their budget. So that's the library portion. And, you know, Paul, Sean chooses to talk about it or not, but we know that inflation was greater than two and a half percent, which is what the problem is all along that we're dealing with and you know that applies very much to all of our municipal departments. Sean, you I thought you had said that the library had voted within the two and a half percent. No, they voted the 3% and then the school and the schools voted over the three and that's okay thank you. I just want to be really clear about so when we can go from two and a half to 3%. And we've all all the parties, you know, school library, all get 3%. So what what you're saying is like let's take the two and a half to 3% from the town in the library and give that to the school so schools already are getting a majority of the funds the additional half percent they're getting that we go on top of that so it's that difference. It's not the 300,000 that we're talking about for a half. Okay. Yeah, and I think that all those emails that we got was too which was stimulated by a Facebook country by one individual, but in any event, I think it was just tolling it up by the 343 or something like that. But because they kept coming up with the same amount. And it was the total. Correct me if I'm wrong, we can vote an increase to the schools but we can't tell them how to spend it. Okay. And the other piece that I just want to bring into this conversation. We're not, it's not June 30. We don't have final state budget. And if we change the guidelines. What is that in how does that impact if there are increases in other areas for example, if our plea to put in more money for roads comes through. Are we going to say, Oh no, we're going to give that to the schools because we've changed our guidelines. It's, it's a messy. It creates a messy situation. And that may be on a why you're still struggling with how to the language for it because it. The money comes into different pots. And that creates a different conversation each time. And I gave your hand up and then I was going to actually use this opportunity to talk a little bit about the ways and means hearing is it all fits together at this point. And then we can get to minutes and be done on it. Quick. Yeah, I'm not actually that confused about what I'm what I'm thinking here. It's more of just making sure that I'm respecting the BCG process. I think that the, the question Lynn, your point I think stands regardless of where their percentage increases go. So I don't, I don't actually see that as the most relevant thing in this instance because I think that if we come in facing a deficit, we're going to have to answer the questions about roads, regardless. And so, I mean, I think that that'll be, that'll be a challenge if things come in differently than we anticipate and hopefully that's a non issue. Anyway, thanks. Andy, can I quickly follow up. Yeah. You know, BCG will be on Friday. I do think if this committee, you know, if there's support from this committee to, to honor's request, we would want to know that soon. We're starting to, I mean, we're in the middle of the budget process or maybe nearing the, the latter stages of the budget process in terms of developing the budget. And if the guy, you know, I wouldn't want the guidelines to change, for example, the last week of April, because we would have everything together and then have to, you know, kind of go back to, in some ways, where one so I think that that is a discussion that this committee is interested in having we would want to have it sooner rather than later so that Paul and I can a we can, you know, explain the needs of the town and in our view on it but also just so we we know what that guy that guidance is. And I don't know if you want to say anything. What happened at the Ways and Means hearing which was a joint meeting of the House Senate Ways and Means Committee and it was on two subjects that was the one in Amherst. They do different subjects at different locations and the one of UMass was on education funding and municipal so it was just the two that actually are major discussion points right now. And MMA suggested numbers that they were going to request. And, essentially, Lynn and providing the testimony on behalf of the town was supporting the same numbers but giving the local piece for it so I don't know Lynn, do you want to say anything. I think Mike and Andy said my goal was to kind of provide some context for when people were talking about schools or municipal money to give some examples within Amherst that illustrated the needs. And I still have the testimony on my goal, though I haven't gotten to it is to get it into a final format of a memo and bring it back to the Council but that time is not allowed. And it was reported in a newspaper was pretty much reported the way it was. And we started out with, I mean I had input from Paul, Anna, Andy, and I think those were the major inputs going in and Kathy, I'm sorry, and I started out by talking about the fact that we voted in Amherst at almost a fair share and ended by saying then we won our fair share. But I also spoke specifically to both chapter 70 chapter 90 special ed, etc. It was a very long day. There were seven panels. It started at 11 o'clock. Amherst was in panel five. And we went up around 430 I think are for 445. So they were going to go on and Joe Hummerford was the co chair for this particular hearing and just did an amazing job, as we all expected her to do. And then I testified today at the transportation. Western Mass Rail Commission hearing. Right. And had the opportunity to bring that draft of her testimony to the Council, and they voted it last night. So did you have anything you want to say about that. No, it went really well. I said my piece and the chairman of the commission actually asked me to follow up and send it to him because he wanted to reference it. And so I think that was great. And then a couple folks came up after to thank us for a thorough. They don't, they weren't saying it in a condescending way, but a thorough piece of input. So I think that I'm grateful to the council for passing it and gosh, it'd be great to get some trains. So we'll see how that works. I think there's one other thing that I'll report quickly on in this train. Get to minutes and draw the meeting to close. Yeah, we were getting close to the hearing I started doing some calculations in the sharing with Lin as I was doing so about this fact that $30 per student was resulting in a half percent increase for the town. And I started looking at it and I started pulling a few other towns I didn't do much I pulled our region out. I think, well, North Hampton for sure. North Hampton also got $30 student but it ended up that they got a 10% increase. So I was trying to figure out why that was and there was in the came down to actually probably a series of factors that had to do with why that works out that way. And the chapter 70 formula is so complex that was being used prior to the Student Opportunity Act and even since the Student Opportunity Act that it weighs various factors so that not all communities would get equal dollars per student. And so that there was an unequal list there and it was obvious that when you do $30 per student that the lower you are in your per student ratio going in, I think the higher your percentage increases. And then the other factor, and I got this from talking with Sandy Cooler, because he's the town manager now in Arlington, in Arlington is a community that is having phenomenal growth in the student population. So they ended up because their student population is increasing, actually doing, you know, on the higher end. So it's one of these real peculiarities that, you know, we ended up being on the low end, because of all of this, you know, all of those factors tended to work against us and it's actually an issue that I already have talked with the lobbyist about and because we had lunch on the day of the hearing and I was discussing with her and may try and bring up at the fiscal policy committee meeting next, which is on Tuesday to see if we can do, and I'm going to try and get a sense from the fiscal policy committee as to what they think their chances are on getting any significant increases in either of our major categories in a fashion that will be helpful to us. MMA has already put in, you know, its request which is to increase the $30 per student to $100 per student. And I don't think that for this year that MMA can amend its request. But there's something in this formula that still just doesn't strike me as being right, given the investigation I had done prior to the hearing weekend. So, is there any other questions that anyone has. I'm going to schedule the meeting for next week I have looked at four sets of minutes that there were the first four that I had available from the dates that were listed in our agenda. So, in general, let's see that November 22 and December 15. I have no recommended changes in the ones that are November 29. They were very minor changes. One of the things that I would recommend the biggest one on under budget guidelines is, there was a statement that was put in by the minitaker for that meeting. That was amazing. Where you put in the members began by discussing the sections in the draft regarding the Crest Department including adding a sentence or two regarding how Crest will be addressed and evaluated moving forward. Funding Crest from reductions to the police department. I look back at our, my notes and I don't think we said that. And the third one is the financial relationship between the Crest and the police department, which I think is what we were talking about. So I would recommend removing that second bullet and that's the most consequential piece and in any of this. The repetition of two documents were listed in a row that were the same document. And the other one was just an extra character that got thrown in. So it's really just Scrivener. So, if people are comfortable with doing it, then I think that the motion would be to accept the minutes of November 22 and December 15 2022. As presented and approve the minutes of November 29 in December 2022 as amended. Seconded. So moved. Second, whatever. Okay, so this motion has been made and seconded on those four sets of minutes. I guess we'll just go through a vote and then be ready to adjourn. Anna. I'm staying as I was not there and have not watched the meetings. Lynn. Hi, Bob. Support. Matt. Support. Bernie support. Yes. I'm yes, and I think Alicia had to leave. She's no longer with the meeting so she's absent so that it's free in favor. One absent one abstention. And three. Resident members none other members in support. So, with that. I guess that. I don't have any other business so I was going to anticipate it if I don't see any requests and I don't see any hands going up of requests so I will send out. With the theme notice about a meeting for next Tuesday on with one agenda item. And we'll see you all. We are together against the council meeting. On Monday, which is close to just both the finance committee meeting and council meeting as it was last night. So with that, we're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.