 All right, let me do our script and then we'll jump into business. This is Christine Deschler, chair of the Collin T. Fiance Committee. I'd like to confirm that all members and persons on the agenda are present and can hear me. When I call off your name, please respond in the affirmative. Starting with Jordan. Here. Shane. Here. Jennifer. Sorry, here. Yeah, sorry. Sophie. Here. Brian. It's Brian here. Carolyn. It's Carolyn here. I don't think Carolyn is here. Rebecca. Here. Josh. Here. Grant. Here. Charlie. It's Charlie here. Then. Charlie's not here. He's here. He's just muted. Charlie, you need to unmute. No, it isn't. Here. All right. All right. John. John Griffin is here, right? Yes. Darryl is not here. Annie's here, right? Here. Ellen Jones. Here. Toefer Hyam. Here. Peggy. Here. Altosti. Here. Dean Karman. Here. And Dave McKenna. Here. And Tara Bradley. Here. All right. This is, other than Sean and ACM, I don't see any members of the public presidents. Is that correct? I think that's correct. All right. This open meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely, consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, as extended on July 16, 2022, to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to tbradley at town.arlington.ma.us.com. For this meeting, the Finance Committee is convening by video conference via Zoom app as posted on the town's website, identifying how the public may join in comment. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating, I guess all attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folk may be able to see you in that you should take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials that have been provided, members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the chair notes otherwise. Before turning to the first item on the agenda, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquy with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Finally, each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote and the chair will only vote in instances where there is a tie. Let's start with approving the minutes of our meeting on February 6th. Has everyone had a chance to look at them? Does anyone have any revisions or corrections to make? Anything? I don't see any hands. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Right. Any further discussion, questions, comments before we vote to approve the minutes? All right. When I call your name, please say yes or no to approve the minutes. Jordan. I'm going to abstain. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Ryan. Carolyn. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Charlie. You muted. Charlie. Yes. Sorry about that. Sorry. John. Yes. Daryl's not here. Annie. Yes. Ellen Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. El Tosti. El Tosti. Yes. Dean. Yes. Dave. Yes. There are 15 yeses, one abstention. So the movements have been approved. All right. We will go now go into the meat of our meeting. We have a couple of budgets that we have not finalized or that we are revisiting. And I'd like to do those first if we can. John, do you have an update on the discrepancies in the fire department budget? Yes. I spoke with Julie Wayman this morning. And I think I resolved them. I can walk you through them quickly if that's OK. That would please do. Great. So I'll share my screen here. Give me one second. So it says host disabled. Yeah. Sorry. You can try it again. OK. Yeah. So can you see the Excel spreadsheet here? I'm moving it up and down. You guys can see that? Yes. Yes. Great. OK. So column E is the FY24 budget. That's the one that's in the budget book. Column F was what I pulled from the payroll detail. And shaded in yellow and column G were the discrepancies that I mentioned on Monday night. Over here, we resolved them. I'll start with the bigger ones first. So the 26,000 discrepancy in the EMT line relates to two different items. One is an $18,000 benefit referred to as Riding to the Rescue Benefit. And it's when the firefighters ride in ambulances, they get extra money for being involved in ambulance calls. I said, has this always been there? And they said, yes, it's always been there. So that's the $18,000 amount for the Riding to the Rescue Benefit. And then the 8516 relates to the chief's EMT stipend. So 18K plus the 8516 gets to the 26516. The 15483 up here for the school credit, that is the chief's school credit. And actually, the school credit detail, which is kind of just a separate items called school credit detail up on SharePoint, does in fact include the 15483 for the chief. So that's his school credit item. And then the smaller items, you get the 3242 on the top line, account 5100. And also the $102 down in line 5166 longevity. Those relate to, actually, I'm sorry, they're actually, the 3242, I'm rushing a little bit. The 3242, as you can see the detail over here, that's actually the chief's circulator benefit. And then also 1709 changed to the chief's salary. So a lot of it did relate to the chief's salary. She said she was going to send me over a full detail of the chief's salary, she didn't send it over, but she said that these items are all, everything that was listed here would be included in the chief's salary, other than really the riding to the rescue item. So that's it. And then the small ones down like $100 and $150 differences, there was one master mechanic who is in negotiations through the SEIU, and they haven't resolved the negotiations yet. And apparently how they account for his, they're not sure if they should account for his before the negotiations or after the negotiations. But that accounts for a small difference as well. So those are the numbers that she gave me over the phone. Everything seems to tie. I got it over the phone. The only thing I have really good documentation on is the longevity item. Everything else I just took notes on over the phone, but it did make sense. And the notes I took over the phone do tie. So is your recommendation to approve the fire department budget as printed in the town manager's budget, which is your column E, I guess? Yeah, so if you have your budget broken, exactly. I can go all the way down the column, the bottom of column E is the $8,654,593. That's the fire taxation total. So I would move to approve the fire taxation total of $8,654,593. Second. All right, so we had a discussion on Monday night about everything but except these discrepancies. So I think we've had a full debate about the rest of the budget. So right now, does anyone have any questions about the discrepancies that John looked into and just described? If so, raise your hand. Topher? Yeah, I just had one if you can scroll back up, just on the chief's salary. So like cell N, I guess N8, I guess it is. Yeah. 391. Yeah. That doesn't job with what I saw for salaries in the book. So the chief, is that like two people or like the? Yeah, yeah, great point, great point. That is actually the chief admins. So if you click back, it's the. Oh, it's every, OK. So it's Kelly, Kelly's the chief and there's a few. Administrative folks next to the master mechanic is here as well. Yeah, OK, no, that's fine. I just I saw that number and I didn't quite make sense. Yeah. Yeah, the chief would the chief space would be a 151. Jordan. Yeah, and part of me if this question is already asked last at the last meeting, but the large increase in the EMT defibrillator pay that you clarified the increase in the discrepancy and that's all the ride to the rescue. That is something that's part of the collective bargaining agreement. And I'm assuming that this projection was based upon an increased need for this, correct? Yes, yes, a partially increased need, but also partially a memorandum of understanding that was signed last June outside of the collective bargaining agreement that was that's just that did provide for a few bumps in the EMT and a couple of these other items. OK, thank you. Yeah. All right. Any more questions about John's description of the discrepancies? All right, so I have a motion to approve the fire department budget as printed. Is there a second to that? Second. Any further discussion questions? All right, we'll take a vote on the fire department budget. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Brian is still absent. Caroline, I think she's still absent. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Annie. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Al Tosti. Yes. Dean Kermit. Yes. Day McKenna. Yes. All right. So the fire department budget is done. John, are you and Darrell still working on the inspections budget right now? Yes. We're not ready to prepare to present that. OK. All right. So let's revisit the finance committee budget that we looked at, I think, last week. First night. So I'm going to turn it over to Sophie and Dave and let's let's turn it over to you. Madam Chair, if we could be allowed remember that Alan Jones made a motion after he located discrepancy. So we're going to defer to Alan on his motion that was put on hold for further evaluation. So, Alan, if you could repeat your motion that was put on hold. If you can repeat it and explain it. OK, sure. The explanation is that the total salary number included the five hundred fifty dollars that was previously paid to the recording secretary but has been moved into the executive secretary's funding. So we were double counting that five fifty. It had been included in the other members budget. So what I had proposed was to reduce the total personnel expenses to eight thousand three hundred fifty three. And then Charlie brought up a question about the expense budget and I sent out an email last week. Then I have to dig up with a breakdown of where the money. I would go and it's not that different from twenty nine forty five. So I don't I don't have a compelling urge to change that. But maybe Charlie would have something to say about it. Of the five my numbers. So on page 18 of our budget book. The salary and wages line item fifty one hundred should be eight three five three. Correct. Correct. All right. Which would which is five hundred fifty dollars less than the eighty nine or three and that changes the budget total to eleven thousand two ninety eight. Madam Chairman. Yeah. Sorry. So just a quick recap from last year last year in order to not we made the same change last year, which was the first time we moved the five fifty to the executive secretary's salary. And last year to not change the bottom number. We also increased the otherwise the expenses by five fifty. So that's the number at the bottom when you change for the town. So our twenty twenty three budget per our finance committee report was not two nine four five. I don't think it right. It's not two nine four five. Last year we changed it to three four nine five. So. Right. That is an option this year to if we don't want to change the bottom number and keep the eleven eight four eight. To increase the expense line. Right. By the five fifty, which is how we dealt with it last year. I don't have a recommendation either way. I don't have the experience to know. Yeah, I think at the last minute, I mean, you're right. And I think at the last minute, we did that so that it wouldn't throw everything out of balance. But I think if we sort of, you know, make those changes early enough in the process, it shouldn't be an issue. In other words, if we don't have a reason to put that five fifty in the expenses, we don't need to balance the books. All right. So. So if we were to. So the two things we can do, we can just take the five fifty out or just leave it as is putting increasing the expense line. We can leave it. We can leave the bottom number as is and add five fifty to the expense line or excuse me, you know, just shift the five fifty from salary to expenses. But I, you know, I don't know if there's a justification for that as opposed to just reducing the salary line by five fifty. There I can think of a justification this year is that we have the expense line as you I think people have seen with the details that were emailed around. Part of this expense line is to pay for people to attend the annual conference. You do have a lot of new members and we have some new vice chairs as well. And I would be happy to see people go to that conference this year, have a big delegation, especially the new people. So I I I can see a reason to keep that money in the expense line. But let's open it up for discussion, Charlie. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Can you hear me? I guess I'm on. Yes. Yeah. OK, thank you. I would recommend increasing the expense line by the five fifty. And I want to thank Alan for and for the reasons that you stated. So I'm going to make that motion. And I want to thank Alan for providing the detail that he did in the email because I think the entire committee has the right to understand what's going on in that line. Thank you. So Madam Chair, I'll revise my motion to reduce the personnel services to eight three five three increase the expenses of three four nine five and the bottom remains eleven eight forty eight. Second second to that. Second. All right, that motion has been made and seconded. There are a couple of I think there have been a few questions. The conference is typically. Like October, November, right? Altosti. The annual conference. Yeah, excuse me. The annual conference is usually in October or November. There's often a spring conference and then you have the MMA annual meeting in January. So there's lots of opportunities for additional training. And I've attended those conferences and they're really they're really interesting and not infrequently. Members of the Allenten Finance Committee present at those conferences as well. So I think it's a really good opportunity for people. So any other questions, comments? All right, so there is a motion made and seconded to move the five fifty from the salaries line to the expense line for a total appropriation of eleven thousand eight hundred and forty eight. All right, so I will take a vote now. Jordan. Yes, Shane. Yes, Jennifer. Yes, Sophie. Yes, Rebecca. Yes, Josh. Yes, Grant. Yes, Charlie. Yes, John. Yes, Annie. Yes, Alan Jones. Yes, Tofer. Yes, Peggy. Yes, Al Tosti. Yes, Dean Kerman. Yes, Dave McKenna. Yes. All right, it is unanimous. All right, so we have completed the fire department budget, the finance committee budgets, and now we will go back to Annie and Rebecca to finish their budgets. And I understand we have been joined by Christine Bonjour now. So welcome, Christine. So I'm going to cover everything in the HHS budget and the consoling and transportation enterprise fund. And then Rebecca is going to present on the AYCC enterprise fund. I'm going to share my screen now, I think. And we will this. So the first thing I wanted to share with you is this graphic, which Christine graciously sent to me. And this shows you the totality of the money blowing through the health and human services budget. So this is the general fund exclusive of the ARPA money. These are the ARPA funds going into HHS. This is state money, mostly elder affairs funding. There is some CDBG money flowing through health and human services. As you can see, there's a large chunk here that is insurance. This is mostly supporting AYCC, where we file for insurance reimbursement. And then part of that is co-pays from families. And then we have some money coming in from private grants. A little later on, I'll ask Christine to say a few words about the opioid settlement and how we're going to use that in the future. But I don't believe any of that income is registered here yet. So this gives you the big picture of the extent to which health and human services is seeking funding outside of the general fund. So let's walk through the budget a little bit. I just want to run through a few highlights on this budget. OK, so in personnel, we have reduced by two positions. Last year, there was a. It was either one of the health compliance officers or one of the public or the public health nurse that was vacant. That position did not get filled. And then we've gone down one more position this year. So if you look at these total positions, OK, and last year, we were funding three point two positions with ARPA funding and we had some funding from an income outside income line called Medical Reserve Corps. The Medical Reserve Corps funding is gone, but the two positions that we are down were ARPA funded positions. So we are down to funding one point six one positions with ARPA funding, which everyone involved is clear. Those positions will not be able to stay in the budget unless another income stream is found to support them. So that's what's going on with personnel. You'll see on the expense side. This $60,000 reduction in rent don't get excited. There is a concomitant increase in the facilities budget. And so that's really just a transfer from one budget to the other. You'll see similar amount in council on aging. It's really just a transfer from that budget over to facilities. This facilities takes over more of centralizing maintenance and utilities. The contracted services that you're seeing in this budget is our contribution to the Somerville Homeless Coalition, which is a program we participate in across several communities that is trying to. I don't know, Christine, are they doing rapid rehousing or just trying to find housing? They do pretty much all different types of housing. So, yes, they're a major resource for us in accessing housing in the region. Great. And then the road and control was the other line item where we're seeing some, not so much a big change from last year, but you can see that the actuals are very low, which may make you wonder why we're budgeting at this level during the pandemic. We simply weren't getting as many calls for road and control. Because restaurants were closed and obviously, we didn't have the staff to both deal with the public health crisis and major efforts on road and control. But we are now back on top of that. And we are doing integrated pest management, which means that we are trying not to use poisons. So it's dry ice into identified burrows and some new technology that I would describe as shock boxes. I'm sure Christine could give more detail if you wanted it. So rats are being baited into the boxes and then they're electrocuted and accumulated. And then the company managing those boxes comes clears out the corpses and resets. So that's what we're trying to do to get rid of rats. If I can just finish a couple more highlights and then we'll do some questions before we go on. The auto allowance, somebody had asked me about auto allowance. That is for Christine and other staff using their personal vehicle for business travel. And I just want to point out that this 5.75% reduction is not really what you think it is because of the change in the rent. What we actually have is a 2.3% total increase in this budget. So that's Health and Human Services. Christine, you want to take questions here before we do the other sections? Sure, Charlie, you have a hand up. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Yes, Annie, I have a couple of questions. One is, can we get some feedback on how effective the road and control expenditures are? Are we actually succeeding in that area? And has there been any measurable decrease in the effect of road and poison on wildlife, aviary raptors, and that sort of thing? Could we direct that question to Christine Bourne-Journal? Chris? Great, thank you. Thank you, Charlie, for that question. So our road and control program, we tend to get complaints, and if we find that we're getting multiple complaints and the area is a pretty sensitive area. So for example, we've got an issue going on at a school right at the moment. Actually, there are a couple of schools. So we have dispatched those shock boxes, as Annie called them, to those schools. We were able to collect data and see how many rats are collected and it's real time. So they reported real time, which is really helpful. And we're able to then move them to different sites as we see a decrease and as we see a decrease in complaints. In addition to those boxes, those shock boxes, we also, we look at trash removal, making sure that there's no source that's drawing these pests in. We also make sure that our buildings are secure and safe. We do not use pesticide and have not used pesticide. And in fact, there is a new policy townwide that there is no second generation pesticide to be used on any town property. That's been in place on the school side since probably since 2000, because there's the Children's Protection Act. So there's been no pesticide use in the schools. But on the town side, we just adopted that just recently. So we, as the health department have never used pesticide as a method to kill rodents. We've always used dry ice and now we've employed the shock box method, which just helps us gather data. We are seeing that it's useful. I mean, we're definitely seeing that those boxes will draw rats in, they'll die off and then we'll sort of move them to another area. So we are seeing and we are definitely seeing some results. And it's really just like Annie said, it's IPM integrated pest management, which means we look at what's drawing them, their sources of food and water and their nesting areas and just treating those and also using those boxes to draw them in. So we really try to use a multi-pronged approach, but we've definitely seen a decrease in the areas that we've been treating and working on. So does that answer your question? Yes, thank you very much, Christine. And I have another question, Madam Chairman. Please go ahead. On line item 5381, in the actual we spent in 2021 was 37,500. This is on the Ionathan Youth Health and Safety Coalition and then it's dropped to 7,500. And I'm just wondering if you could just describe, I mean, I'm sure that your decisions on that spending are totally responsible, but I just would like to understand what the difference arises from. Yeah, so if you can, if you just take a look at the next line down, we didn't have spending in contracted services that same year, but that 37,175 was the same number that we spent the following year. So we just, we didn't have the 5382, we didn't have that contract in services. So we had to pay, that was the year we started the contract with Summerville Homeless Coalition due to the increase in the homeless population and the need to rehouse them. So we paid out of that line. It's just a simple cost center that we didn't have at the time. We just, we took it out of the Youth Health and Safety Coalition line. I believe we, I believe we didn't have a staff person at that moment. So I think that's, that had some funding in it. So we used that and then we were able to transfer more money in from another division with an HHS. It was just simply a place to charge it to and really nothing more than that. So I hope that answers that question. It does. Thank you very much. Jordan. Thank you. My question was just regarding again, the road and control program. And I was just curious about the, the road and box that you mentioned. So I actually worked for the city of Summerville, Christine and I recently helped procure what I think are probably similar boxes. Is the vendor modern pest by chance? It is, yes. We actually, I would say that we all work together and share data, share the science behind these methods. So yes, I believe it's modern pest. And yeah, we've had success. So that's really helpful to know, Jordan. Thank you. Yeah. And I actually, I ran into the vendor at the Bass Municipal Association annual trade show and we were sort of discussing the new boxes that I believe were also being deployed in Arlington. And I know they do a great job tracking the data, but I was curious about the number of boxes that we have in town and approximately how many rodents have, I would say like on an average month, do they capture? So we have 10 boxes. There is a cost per month for each box because it includes staff time coming out to empty them and to monitor. So we have 10 that we shift around to different sites. I wanna say, as you look at the data, like right off the top of my head, I can remember there being 44 rats caught in a certain period of time at one of our schools. It does take the rats a little bit of time to get used to the boxes and feel comfortable in going into them. So it does take a little bit of time for them. We do have a report that I'm happy to share, but I don't remember like the details of every site that we use them out, but we found them to be helpful because doing the dry ice, they'll die underground and we really just don't know the magnitude of the problem. So we find this to be a little bit more useful in data collection, but we do have a spell report and I'm happy to share that. Yeah, I would be curious. I know they are very effective and I think the way you're utilizing them is great. I know Somerville has done approximately 1,000 in a year. So I'd just be curious to know what Arlington was, but thank you for the explanation. Jennifer? Yeah, I was just wondering about the vacant position and whether that's been filled out to the prevention services manager and then also the question of care being both the previous and the current person, a public health nurse. Oh, Kerr, okay. Yes, so I'll start with the prevention services manager. That's currently being advertised. We're looking, if anybody knows anyone, just send them our way. We're looking to fill that. Hopefully we'll be doing interviews soon. Kerr left and we were able to steal her back. So she's back. Jessica Kerr, our public health nurse. That's great news. Yeah, thank you. One of the most difficult positions in public health across the state to fill at the moment. So we were lucky to steal her back. Great, thanks. Jennifer? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. What exactly is a prevention services manager? Great question. Do you want me to answer that, Christine? Please. I did send the job description to Annie LeCourt and it is posted on the town website, but basically this position will manage the opioid funding that's coming in. We, in order to receive that funding that's coming in, the attorney general's office had a settlement with the major drug companies. In order to use that funding, there's a number of steps that we have to take to spend that. We have to do a lot of reporting. So doing a lot of data collection and allocating that funding to programs specific to preventing overdoses and deaths and dealing with trauma related to the overdoses and deaths that we've had and that we expect down the line. And also just looking at our data around mental health and developing programs and applying for grants. I think that's kind of our hope is that this person will be able to continue to seek out funds, alternative sources of funding. We're also part of a collaboration with Somerville, Cambridge, Everett and Lexington, I believe, and we received some grant funding and were required to do some duties related to that work as well. This is a position that we had previously and we adjusted it to really fit what the needs were moving forward, sort of like the 21st century needs of prevention. Can I just jump in? How much are we expecting in opioid funding? So it's a 16 year pot of funding that's coming to the town and it's probably, I believe it's, I literally just got an email, there's a new settlement that's coming in. So it's close to about 800,000 over the 16 years. It's all really all over the place as far as like one year we'll get 40,000, one year we'll get 12,000. So it's really, it's all over the place, the numbers, but you will see in the warrant, a request for us to actually start accessing that funding. And we have currently 148,000 in the fund that's come in. We are required to use that funding in a certain way. There are nine areas that were required to use that funding to support. And those are outlined by the attorney general's office in the state's department of public health as well. Sophie, you have a hand up. Can I just jump in here really quick, Chris Sophie, before you answer that question, just to say that the job description that Christine sent me is posted in SharePoint in the this year's health and human services budget folder. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Sophie? Yes, thank you. I was wanting to go back and ask a question regarding her, the public health nurse. So when she came back, her grade increased by two. And I'm curious as to, are you seeing this across all hiring positions of changes leaving and coming back and having to offer, I'm assuming, negotiating a higher grade level? Yeah, so public health nurses are very difficult to find. So that was one that was advertised or quite some time. And we had to re-grade that job and we did. And we spent a lot of time calling Jessica and checking with her to see if she was interested in coming back and with the new pay and some other arrangements we were able to bring her back. We are proud to say that she was at Harvard, which is a great employer. We were able to really give her the job that she loved doing for the amount of money that she wanted. Nurses are very, very difficult to find. COVID did not help an already scarce market. And so this is something, I think, for public health nurses in particular. You could go on the state's website to look at jobs for public health and it's every town's looking for a nurse at the moment. So it's very difficult. Any other questions anyone has on this subject? Christine, with pressure, if any, do we put on businesses and restaurant owners and other businesses, not just restaurant owners, to address the rodent problem? So they are required to have a pest control plan. We really push the IPM plan. When the inspectors go out and look at establishments, they're looking to see how their trash is kept. When we get a complaint in a neighborhood, we're looking to see what sources of food are potentially within the vicinity. And if it's a restaurant, we will then work with the restaurant to make sure it's addressed. But they are definitely held accountable for any issues that they may cause. It is, we're in an urban suburban community and we will forever have a rodent problem, but it's just a matter of making sure we do the best we can to not have as much available sources of food and places for them to harbor it, harbored areas. Thank you. Any other questions on this budget? Annie, I'll leave it to you. Should we take a vote on this budget or do you wanna go on, keep going? I guess I'd like to keep going and then we can decide whether it's one voter on the whole HHS or we're gonna do it department by department. After folks have got all the facts in hand, does that sound good? I think that sounds good because it might be more efficient when for Christine herself, you'll be able to have her address all the questions and then we can take our roll call vote or votes when it's over, when she's finished getting us the information we need. Great. Okay, so veterans. As you can see, veterans is level-plundered. We really have only one employee, which is our veteran services director and we'll just talk you through a few highlights. I wanna remind everybody there's a relationship between this money and one of our cherry sheet items. We get about 75% reimbursement for services provided to veterans under chapter 115, which is me just saying words that I don't understand the meaning of but I'm sure Christine can answer questions about it. We're providing, there are conditions under which we get 100% support from the state, things like emergency housing or disaster support. And last year we received $147,000 on the cherry sheet. I don't believe we have the cherry sheet numbers for this year yet. Those cherry sheet numbers are generally related to how many veterans we are serving. And we are currently surveying if I've got your numbers correctly, Christine 22 veterans and their dependents with chapter 115 aid. But that number fluctuates as people move in and out of town during the year. And the director is also supporting roughly 100 new veterans that are filing veterans administration funding support each year. And that funding allows our veterans to receive funding, oh to them in including to pay rent, taxes, money for care, et cetera. I believe Topher had asked about signs, the signs budget, the signs line item in the expense budget here. Yeah, this $5,000, that is going to pay for the preservation and restoration of military markers and signs through the town. We recently restored the sign at the entrance to the old burying grounds at a minimal expense to the town. And personally, I think it's money well spent. So that's about everything on this budget. Do folks have questions? All right, anyone have any questions on the veteran services budget? Do you have another one, Annie? Yep, we'll just keep going. By council on aging. Okay, so the highlights here are that our salary costs are up about $31,000. This budget is also offset by state money. The town is reimbursed based on the number of residents over the age of 60. And I believe we currently have 12,069 residents over 60. And we are receiving 12, is it $12 a year, Chris? $12 per person per year, yeah. We'll use them for a year. And that is the offset that you're seeing here. And again, we're seeing that $60,000 reduction in rent. So our expenses are up about 10%. And the total budget increase is actually about 5% with you added all up. And then you can see this is how we are staffed. And I don't believe any of these positions are new, but the executive office of elder affairs that $12 per head is covering close to two of those positions. We won't have any questions on this budget. Any more, any questions? Charlie. Thank you, Annie. Can you say again, what is the change in the budget if we take that hundred, if we take the rental buildings out 60,000? I calculated the total change in the budget as approximately 5%, 5% up. Thank you. But I mean, you can see that we have a, I didn't, I don't know if I did that on the taxation total or the appropriation total. I think I did it on the taxation total. I'm happy to answer that, if that's helpful, Annie. Yes. Give me another one. We had a receptionist that was working, I believe 31 hours per week. She unfortunately passed away. And at that time we decided we would hire someone at the full 35. So that increase you'll see is covered through the offset. So there was that increase, but it is covered. Any of the hours, additional hours were covered outside the fund. Thank you. Any other questions? So let's talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. Okay. Little bit changed in the focus of staffing here. I don't remember exactly what the positions were last year, but one of them was administrative support for the director. And we have changed that position to an ADA order. Am I correct, Chris, that this is new this year? In 23, yes. So we changed the focus of that position to become an Americans with Disability Act coordinator. And that is based on demand for assistance for our differently abled residents. This is a person who staffs and works with the Disability Commission and also seeks funds to help us continue the transition to all of our street sidewalks, facilities, et cetera, et cetera, to be ADA compliant. So that's one of the two positions in this. The other position, the community outreach coordinator is covered by ARPA funds at the moment. And this was a position to work with us on the equity audit and then to help us develop outreach programming for those community members who are feeling disconnected from the community. I'm gonna let Chris make two minutes, be chair about all of this because she understands it way better than I do. But really we've just kind of changed the focus of how we're staffing this department. Chris, you wanna say a few words about that? Sure, so this has been a division since 2019 and it was primarily Jill Harvey and then we had an admin. We decided to, when the admin left the role, we decided to bring on the ADA coordinator, as Annie mentioned, that's Tim Ross. He's been able to leverage his position to access a lot of state funds through grant writing for a number of departments. So he's very helpful in sort of coordinating ADA across the town. So whether it's the rec department, engineering, DPW, the town manager's officer are a number of departments on the library as well. So he's been able to help departments with improving our town spaces. I do think we acknowledge that, although this was an increase from the original position, this position will be adequately covered by the amount of funding that we are now leveraging from the state and the feds. So that's been helpful. The community outreach and engagement coordinator, we embarked on a year-long community equity audit. Some of you may have participated in that that was made public on Friday and was accepted by the select board on Monday. You also may remember that the select board as one of their core values is equity within our community. So we embarked on this year-long equity audit. Theresa Merzily has been working closely with the other two in the department to work to make sure that that equity audit was running as smoothly as possible. And then the goal is to take that audit, that information, the findings and the recommendations from that audit, develop a strategic plan, which will allow us to essentially develop a roadmap for the next few years in how we're going to move the equity audit with, I mean, the equity needle within our community to make sure all members of our community fail included in the sense of belonging. I think what I can say is that our ARPA funds have been used to pay for the audit, to pay for the community outreach coordinator. It's been such a valuable source of funding for this division. Without that funding, we wouldn't have been able to obviously do this work. We've also done a lot of work with one of our actual general fund lines, our consulting line. We did an all town employee equity training that was a 21 session training, five different workshops where we brought every town employee together to basically learn about the history of equity within Arlington and also to understand how to become a more equitable workforce and making sure that we're serving our community in the best way. And I think that those series of workshops just ended. We did them from November through January and they were very successful. So there is definitely a lot going on in this division. There was a recently a Lunar New Year event last week. I think what we're seeing is just there are a lot of individuals within our community that may have felt on the outskirts of our community and now are feeling with this outreach, with these events and activities that they're feeling more included. And I think that becomes a benefit to our community as well as people that are potentially thinking of moving here. I think that's something that we're hearing is people are interested in communities that have a sense of belonging for people of all different backgrounds. So that's my more than two minutes to be all sorry, Annie. No, that's fine. And Chris, the 36,000 that we're gonna spend in the upcoming budget is to extend that work with our employees, correct? A portion of it will be used for that, yes. We do anticipate that, yeah. And remind me what the rest, you did tell them, give me the details but I'm not staring at my notes at the moment. So a portion of it is to extend our work with the employees and the rest of it is going to go to community outreach? It's, yes. I mean, I think what we found is that our budgets pretty slim as far as office supplies and other needs within this budget. So we may only put maybe 30,000 towards the town employee trainings next year so that we would have a portion to use for the other needs within the division because we are sort of borrowing. Right now we're borrowing from a revolving fund that the health department has to pay for some of these programs, so. Got it. Yeah, I was one of the stakeholders on the equity audit and in the findings there were some things and even just in our discussions with the folks running the audit, there were some things that kind of startled me that kind of made me realize I take certain things around this town for granted that are not necessarily things that can be taken for granted by other people. So I'm really looking forward to the work we're going to do to make for a more cohesive community. Let me just see if I have anything else I wanted to note about this. I don't think so. Does anyone have any questions on the DEI budget? Topher. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I did read the audit. How much did we pay the consulting firm that was engaged opportunity? Opportunity consulting. It was a hundred thousand dollar year long expense. All right, thank you. Charlie. So actually I'm a little bit of a disadvantage here because I was searching for the equity audit and I couldn't find it on the website. So it's posted in our SharePoint in our budget folder, Charlie, if you go to it's in our folder, OK, yeah, it's in our folder. If you go to documents FY 24, 24 budgets, health and human services, I posted the pieces of the equity audit there. OK, so absent that information, I am concerned that this department has grown from one person to now getting getting up to spending close to a quarter million dollars a year. And, you know, my question is what are our objectives? What are the metrics that we are measuring this spending by? For example, you mentioned that, Christine, you mentioned that the the new ADA coordinator is applying for grants. Have we gotten any grants? And where does that income show up? I mean, from a from a financial viewpoint, this seems to be a significant amount of money that we're spending. And at least from my viewpoint today, without having read the equity audit, I think the benefits are soft. I don't know. I don't understand what, for example, what benefits have we gotten out of training all the town employees for five courses? You know, things like that. How do we how do we measure the efficacy of this funding? OK, that's a great question. Thank you. The the equity audit outlines 10 findings and 12 recommendations. We will be taking those and developing a strategic plan, which we will then use to measure success. So we'll develop goals and then we'll be working to to meet those goals. Some are some are soft, some are hard. So I think there's there's a lot of work that we need to do between now and then. But I can honestly say that, you know, I think from that first slide that Annie showed you, you you you and because you've known me for so long, Charlie, you know that we take our dollars in HHS and we leverage other dollars. We we are always looking for additional grants. We haven't received because they were due in November, but we haven't received the grants that were submitted by our ADA coordinator. But we are always looking for additional funds by having an equity audit that will make it. And by having a strategic plan and in areas that we can improve upon, that will allow us to become eligible for other additional grants and foundation funding. So I think as with every part of what we do in HHS, we're always looking for ways to do more with less, right? Like we're always looking at ways to join a collaborative to get more money or or or sort of join in and grab as much funding as we can. And and and there's no difference in this division. I think that it's still in its infancy, so it may look like a big amount of money, which is a portion of it. Don't forget it is ARPA funded, but we do anticipate the the ADA coordinator and then the director applying for funding to pay for programming moving forward. There there will be there is and there will be additional state resources coming out for DEI across the state. So I think that we'll start seeing more and more opportunity for outside funding. Does that help to answer? Well, first of all, let me say that unequivocally, I believe that your department has been absolutely miraculously successful in generating additional funds over the years. I mean, I've said that many times and I fully endorse your record there. But I this is to me this DEI effort. You know, if I throw the the hundred thousand dollars for the consultant in there, the ARPA money, etc., we're talking about a fairly significant amount of money. And I have a hard time getting my arms around what the benefits are going to be and how many people will be benefited and to what degree. And, you know, maybe I'll maybe I'll find that out when I when I read the equity, I'm sorry, I didn't do I was looking for it. I couldn't find it. I didn't realize that it was already in the Fincom SharePoint. But this I just think this is serious money. I think we're facing an, you know, override pressure coming up and we need to consider where we're spending them on. That's just my my my view. But thank you very much for the answer. Thank you. I love following up on that. I'll just point out that we just looked at the veterans, the veterans services budget, which is actually granted. They need to get funding to offset that. But that budget itself is larger than this budget. And one could argue, if you want to play devil's advocate, this budget, DEI actually serves all of the town rather than simply veterans and their dependents. But I I think Charlie's right that we should be looking at this budget in all budgets with a sharp eye. Jordan, you have a hand up. Yeah. And Christine, I think this sort of going off of your last statement, I think that this probably builds on it. But my question was just, you know, you've Christine, you've explained a lot of the roles in the projects that the DEI department has been working on, whether that's making making transit options more accessible. You talked about the work that the community outreach coordinator has done. And, you know, I know from being in Somerville, that trying to do things like public equity audits, you know, they are quite the undertaking and they're quite time consuming. And they take a lot of effort and a lot of cross department efforts to be able to really get an accurate representation. But I was I was curious what else what other kind of work the DEI office is currently involved in, both within the the town offices and with the community as a whole. And what the what that currently looks like and what it might look like for the future. So at a minimum, the the three staff are work directly with three of our commissions, the Rainbow Commission, Human Rights Commission and the Disability Commission. And they coordinate all of the events and programming that come out of those commissions as well. So the Human Rights Commission, for example, has a calendar of events and a calendar of activities. So, you know, we're in Black History Month. So we've got banners all up and down Mass Ave. There's an art project. There's the Black Joy Project. There is going to be a Juneteenth Project. You know, I think every month there's a program that the division is running. So in the Lunar New Year event that was at Town Hall last week, I think that these events are are have always been going on and will just continue. And I think that the richness will. You will see you will see the impact of these positions on those events because they will become more and more a part of our community. The Disability Commission, I think, you know, it's a required position within any city or town across the country. You know, you have to have an ADA coordinator and that that person works directly with our commission will receive requests from community members, complaints from community members and we'll have to follow up. So there's a lot of work in that area as well. And then the Rainbow Commission is the same. I mean, it's often the staff are doing a lot of the work of the commission to run events and to respond to complaints. A lot of residents will bring complaints forward and the staff are working to to support the residents that are are complaining. You know, a lot of police reports are sent to the department and this follow up that needs to be done and the staff are following up with the police and with the victim to sort of work out a resolution as well. Any other questions, Jordan? No, thank you for that explanation. I think, you know, that's it's a lot of work that I think that that it's involved with being accountable with three different three different committees and also having the role that you just described as working both with police and with the public to try to address some of the issues that come in. So thank you for that explanation. Sophie, you're up. And yes, thank you. So maybe going back a bit to what Charlie was saying, if I think this affects all of our budgets this year and I know when the ones I'm working on, we're waiting for some answers from the town manager's office to explain some a lot of raises happening and sort of across the board to bring non-union personnel up to sort of the union level of pay. But this particular budget, I think, is more than that. These increases in pay, I'm calculating, right? Sometimes they're in the percent increase. Is that can you explain that a bit? Gee, Andy, did you want to explain that? Did you want me to? I'm happy to take a shot at, you know, part of what I think is going on here. So the community outreach coordinators position is totally new, I believe. I don't believe that was in the budget last year. We had a different position. No, we had it in 23. Had it in 23. But we didn't. Did we hire it? We hired it in 23. We did. So I'm happy to talk to you. So those two positions were were put into the plan last year, but weren't hired until the summer, until we received the funds. But they were they were eventually graded and people were hired into those positions at a different rate. So they may have, you know, we may have thought, OK, we'll put 50,000 into the budget as a placeholder. But then HR graded the position at a little higher. So you may that may be part of it. And also, I think we thought, oh, we could hire the person at point eight. And then we ended up hiring them at one point out. And so that's a little bit of the issue. And then because they're brand new, they come in at a low step and then they're eligible for steps each year. So there's no, you know, other than the guests on the amount of money that we would be putting in last year. There was really no major like salary increase for each person. It's it was just that they were brought in at the rate that it says new pay. That's really kind of around where they were brought in at. And then they're eligible for the step. Right. So so last year, what we had was placeholder dollars. Yes, not a real salary somebody was making. And then when we hired those positions, as you can see, we always have a range. And so and that's based on sort of grades and steps and where we think they're going to fall and they were hired at a higher rate than we had originally budgeted for. So this is not necessarily a big increase this year over last year. Sorry. I believe the only big jump is the directors. And Chris, wasn't that also a title and step and grade bump? I think she was reclassified, but that was I believe that was two years ago. I don't I don't believe it was this year in twenty three. I don't believe it was twenty. There is again, a big jump. Of course, this is a budget book jump. So she may have been salaryed higher than this last year. Right. Not be such a huge jump over what she was actually earning. I do know there was a title and concomitant and regrading at some point recently. So for you to answer your question. Yes, I see there's a two step increase from last year's budget to this year's budget for that director position. So that must be that. Thank you, Jennifer. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm always curious about reserve funds. So just wanted to ask about is a reserve fund. You mentioned a reserve fund or is it a reserve fund for all of HSS or and about how much is in it? And what are where is it coming from reserve fund? So it was a revolving fund. I mentioned revolving. So that fund is the Board of Health Revolving Fund. You'll see it in the annual town meeting. It might be in the select board packet. I don't believe it's in the Fincom packet. But we have currently it's usually about 200,000 in there. We are allowed to spend up to 150. There are different lines within there. We use that to bring in money from insurance reimbursements for vaccinations, flu, whatever it is now it's COVID. But then we use that that revolving fund to purchase the vaccine. So it's into purchase time, a nurse time, if we have to pay nurses. We do have like a line in there that's like general office supplies that we're able to use. So we that's the fund that I refer to Jennifer. When I said we used a portion of our we bar right, right? I was just wondering, yes. OK, OK, and Board of Health Revolving BoH revolving is what you'll find it under. OK, great. Thanks that answers question, Charlie. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I just wanted to I think I have an answer to the question about that jump and salary. I believe it was last year that we created this department. There was a position previously and then we we created a department. So the the lead staffer there became a department manager as opposed to the staff position that she had originally. Yes, any other questions? I have one. We have this is not we have had previously someone who has been at least acting as the ADA coordinator for some years. Arlington has had somebody in that position doing that work. So can you remind me who that was and and why we now. Looks like we have a different person doing this for more money. Yes, so the other person that was in the role was a grant funded position that fell in weatherization, which was just a it was a person who didn't receive any funding from the town for this role, but did it through their grant funded role for the town. It was a Department of Community Development position grant. The program is now gone and the person had retired. And then once we brought on the DEI coordinator, Jill Harvey, she became the ADA coordinator. But what we learned is that there's just too much ADA work to do that we needed a full time. You know, we needed a person specifically to do that in addition to all the other work that needed to be done. Thank you. Anything else on this budget? Do you have another budget, Annie? Charlie, do you have a question? Charlie, you're muted. Still muted. You're still muted. Oh my God, I think I'm OK. OK, I'm sorry about that. So is the syllabus or the the text or manuals or whatever that we use for the training course for the town staff available? We are getting a whole packet, like a booklet from them, I think this week. I'm happy to share that whenever we do get that. That would be helpful. Thank you. Yeah. OK, the only thing I have left to do is the I'm just going to float around here a little bit. The Council on Aging Transportation Enterprise Fund. And I just want to check and see what my notes were on this. So we are down in the gallery here because we had a position that is CDBG funded that we showed in the budget last year, but that we are not showing in the budget this year. I think this is just another accounting decision. So that's not I wouldn't call it a savings. I guess is why I'm headed with that. And then most of the employment here is a van driver and some on call van drivers. And the training budget is really required training for the van driver to retain that position. It's certification or something. Christine. Yes, CPR and other driving requirements. Yeah. And then the obviously auto gas and oil for the van and expenses related to the van. And then we have expenses related to providing taxi receipts or vouchers for folks who need transportation that, you know, under circumstances where the van does not work out. And then you can see that as sort of, you know, lines of income, we get some fees and we have some CDBG funding. I guess we don't have any gifts and donations this year. We have transfer from retained earnings. Summer, Chris, you noted for me what the balance and retained earnings is. It's not very much, as I recall. And and then we transfer $50,000 in from the general fund to help cover some of the transportation costs. So total expenditures, total revenue, $127,549. Chris, do you have any idea how many rides we've provided? Any of the stats that go with this off the top of your head? Or I forgot. Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. I'll have to get that to you. That's whenever I'm not I'm not up on at the moment, because there are different rides. There are all different types of rides that we do Uber to. That's under the taxi expense. So there's a bunch of different types of rides all over. I can get you that. OK, questions. All right, Al Tosti. Yeah, I'm looking at the revenues to support and this almost should not be an enterprise fund. We're basically spending one hundred and twenty seven thousand expenses and we're bringing in thirteen thousand in revenue. Everything else is from the from the taxpayer, the community development block grant, the thirty four thousand, thirty five thousand from a chain earnings and fifty thousand from the general fund. You know, why why shouldn't this just be a budget? Is that a rhetorical question or no something the finance committee can do to. Simply say, dissolve the fund and roll it into the budget. I guess I was just asking a question. It doesn't itself. It brings in very little revenue. Less than 10 percent is more of a policy question than anything else. It's a budget that brings in less than 10 percent of its expenses in its own revenue. Everybody else brings in almost all of their revenue. Well, all the other enterprise funds, all the other enterprise funds. Pretty much pay for themselves with one or two minor exceptions. This one, if we didn't transfer all that money. Oh, they don't even bring in 10 percent of their budget. So so I guess what I'm asking is a question. Right. But whose policy? Well, I guess that Alastastia is making a very good point. And since we have her with us, Christine, do you have any thoughts on on that? Does it make any difference whether this is just a plain budget or whether this is is an enterprise fund or not? Do you want here's an opportunity to to weighed in on on on that this issue? Yeah, I mean, this is a conversation that comes up quite often. I think we're one of the only in the state that has an enterprise fund for the transportation, the senior transportation vans. So I think it would make sense to, you know, think about that. There is a new our Comptroller has said no more gifts and donations or grants can run in through that line. So that's why you'll see no more money coming in. We don't we don't put any of our grants or donations in here. We run it all outside of this fund. So it really it having it as an enterprise fund, it really limits what we do as far as, you know, running, running the monies through here. So if we're evolving fund, it might be different. I think I'd love to just maybe chat with our Comptroller to see what what she thinks would make sense. Look at what other cities and towns are doing. But it would make sense to maybe not be an enterprise fund moving forward. Right, but that's I mean, Chris, the reason I'm asking the question about whose policy decision it is, is that I don't know whether it's our policy decision or it's the town manager's policy decision or it's the block boards. So I'm sort of hoping maybe our Charlie knew how you move a revolving fund from being or a enterprise fund for being an enterprise fund to being a budget instead. I'm I'm not necessarily saying that we're going to do something this year. We've got a director coming in. We've got a new town manager coming in. And I'm just raising the issue among us and with Christine that maybe there's a better way of doing this for next year. Yeah, so I'm not making a motion. So I understood that. I guess what I'm wondering is whether there's the next action step we ought to put on a list somewhere for us to take as those new people are on board to raise this question. So well, I think Christine already talked about her maybe having a discussion with the controller and it is something that the finance committee could follow up with as we finish out this budget season. And we prepare for the next one. I think that's a good point. And if there's if there's no benefit to doing it this way, then we should think about the alternative. Charlie, you have a hand up. Yes, thank you, Madam Chairman. So I thoroughly support Al's question in general, but I'm looking at the at the revenues. And so if we're pulling thirty four thousand three hundred forty nine dollars in from retained earnings and bringing in fifty thousand from the town in order to balance the funds, it seems to me that we have no more retained earnings. So if the service level is going to stay the same next year, that means we have to we have to support it at the rate of close to eighty five thousand from the town funds as opposed to fifty thousand. That's just my, you know, unless unless we get more money from CDBG or something like that. But in any event, the, as Al said, the the idea of an enterprise fund here is is somewhat thin. And to answer any question about. How do you end an enterprise fund is as long as there's you know, no liability, you just don't put money into it and you spend the money on the services out of the general budget. That's that's just a just let it go to just let it go to zero. OK, thank you. Hi, you call me OK. So I'll just so Charlie's right, we can stop spending it. The other way to do it for the division of local services is after three after at least three years, a legislative body. I'm assuming that's town meeting subject to the local charter. Yeah, absolutely does may terminate the enterprise fund. So if Tom meeting wanted to kill an enterprise fund, they can do it. So it sounds like it's Christine internal discussion and then possibly a article on the warrant next spring. Yeah, and I think the challenge is it doesn't it doesn't mean I mean, you know, Al's right. It doesn't meet the criteria for an enterprise fund, right? So I mean, I'm looking at the DLS bulletin and matches everything I've ever known about them. And there's supposed to be these proprietary type enterprises within the government, right? So people point out like water departments, electric departments. I think they use motor pools a lot. These are a lot of examples. It's like Christine said, it's not supposed to be a council on each transportation budget. So it's not there anymore to meet the standard. Any other questions? OK, not seeing anything further. I need to have another subject. We wanted to go ahead and let Rebecca do a YCC. We could then let Chris go and have our discussion and then vote the budgets in whatever order we wanted to. So without sharing and let. Rebecca, take the hot seat for a little while. Take it away, Rebecca. Thank you. All right, let me just get my screen up on here. Great. So AYCC is an enterprise fund much more in the traditional expectations sense of an enterprise fund. So if we look at the budget here, we see a lot of money coming in and a lot of money going out and increasing every year, which I'll talk about in just a second. But the bottom line for the town and the taxpayers is this transfer from other funds, which you can see is steady at a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. But to go over some of the. Some of the items here. By far the largest expense is the salaries and wages for the AYCC There are two new positions this year of mental health clinicians who are full-time and one new budgeted part-time psychiatrist, which hasn't been filled yet, is my understanding. If you look at the salaries expenses over time, you know, they're definitely going up quickly. I will point out for those of us who are new this year on to town meeting, the increase in salaries and wages for the AYCC. The increase from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two in actual is not as large as it looks because you also see this line item fee for service clinicians drop and disappear. So a decision had been made to put these clinicians into the regular staff. Nevertheless, there are increases, you know, significant increases every year because of the fact that people are being hired. The major source of revenue for AYCC. You see here is this eight hundred and twenty thousand, which is expected from insurance reimbursement. So this is just insurance held by the, you know, the children's families, which AYCC can can bill. And the other part of that is eighty five thousand, which are budgeted as youth services client fees. This is money that the families would pay themselves as copays or deductibles or coinsurance that, you know, that's set by their insurance. There's also an amount of one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars from the state. This forty thousand dollars that you hear comes from the schools for services that are provided in school buildings, a little bit of money, fifteen thousand from CDBG. And let's see a hundred thousand dollars from ARPA. But again, to emphasize the amount from the town, the taxpayer total is a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which is flat. There are a couple of things that were noted in the meeting that we had with Christine and with the director of AYCC. One thing that's being seen across the country, of course, is that the demand for services, counseling services for young people has just shot up. They've seen an increase of two hundred percent since January of twenty twenty in the demand for their services. So they really are looking for opportunities to expand, but they can offer right now they're using essentially all the space they have available to them at the Whittemore-Robbins House. So it's while it's not relevant to this budget, you will see when we start talking about capital that they're interested in moving forward on plans to renovate the cottage house there to give them some additional counseling space. And they're using some Zoom appointment steps to help them meet some of the increased demand. Another thing that's not shown in this document, but it's important for people to have on their radar, is that they were just granted a ten year grant of fifty thousand dollars a year from the Cummings Foundation. And the intention with that is that that will go towards some of the insurance expenses for the staff of AYCC. And I believe that's what I have. If there are questions. Charlie, your hand is up. Thank you, Madam Chairman. This is not a question. This is just an observation or comment, especially for some of the newer members on the committee. If my memory serves me right about ten years ago, maybe eleven years ago, this activity was about to be shut down by a prior town manager because it was bleeding profusely, cash, and there was nothing coming in. And to Christine's great credit, she basically turned this into a business, providing services, collecting money from the state, from insurance companies, from other organizations. And that's the reason why that hundred and twenty thousand dollars contribution to the town has maintained flat. So I think this department, this particular part of the department is a, or this particular activity is a huge feather in the cap for the Health and Human Services Department. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree completely. Thank you. El Tosti. Two questions. One is, and this would be both for the Council on Aging Transportation and AYCC. Do you have the fiscal 22 fund balances for each of those? I have for AYCC, I have only $12,800 in retained earnings. Does someone else have the Council on Aging handy? The Council on Aging retained was about 38. Okay. And my second question is, will we be using some of the opioid settlement money here? It would seem like a natural fit. That is definitely going to be part of the conversation in order to start using that funding. We need to have a community outreach meeting and then do a strategic plan and start planning to use the funds. But yes, there is a piece within the state legislation that allows us to use it for some trauma response for maybe children that have witnessed a death or overdose. So we will certainly be looking at that. Okay. Thank you. Shane. Thanks everyone. Question, how do we define youth? Is it high school or a wage? And then just curious, like an annual basis, you know, how many youth are we serving? How much sort of, we have a high demand like nationwide is sort of how much of the demand, you know, how much are we able to meet here? Or how many people do we have to unfortunately turn away for services? Well, we don't turn anyone away. But we, there may be a wait. We're always looking to decrease that weights. We're always looking to increase that weight. But at any given moment, there are about 200 people in and out of the, the agency for services. But we may see somebody for three months and then they go off and then new clients come in and out. So it could be up to three, 300 per year. And then there's also work going on in school. So that's a different number. I unfortunately didn't bring my numbers. Or I, maybe I do have it. But I think we'll want to get you that, that those numbers specifically. I can send that to Annie. Shane to the first part of your question. I believe it's correct that they serve ages three to 21. Is that correct? It is. And then there are families. So there may be some family counseling parents support groups. We also do domestic violence support. And then we have, as you can see on the budget, there's a position. That's shared with the police department. And then there's a, it's listed as Liza Lazar. And then the former person was opar. It's the case management homeless outreach. That person is doing work with residents up to age 59. That are in need of housing services, mass health, staff benefits, any other services to keep them. You know, safe and, and, you know, housed within our community, basically. So that, that's the one position that's mostly all ages. Up to age 59. At 60 years of the council on aging. Thanks very much. Jennifer. Yes. Thank you, Madam chair. So. Well, first of all, I say that we are very, very lucky to have this organization and not every town does. And I, it's just a fabulous organization. I noticed the very tiny gifts and donations. Is this worth a gallon of money used to go, but we haven't had fundraising for yellows. Is that. So there's a rule in the state. DLS, where we're not allowed to use them. We're not allowed to bring in gifts and donations into an enterprise fund. We learned this from our comptroller. Just recently. So we are running that money outside of, we're running a position in that money outside of the enterprise fund. So like this budget is a little bit bigger than what you see. And that's sort of where we're paying for some of our insurance. And so when we moved from FIFA service to town positions, the agreement was that we would pay a portion of the insurance for some of the clinicians that were eligible. We just got our first bill yesterday. Annie, I know we said we hadn't gotten a bill yet, but we got our first bill for insurance, health insurance to pay for the town staff. Okay. So. So that's what we're using. So that's going to pay the insurance costs. It is. And also additional hours. So it's run outside of the, the fund. But yes, and it's supporting the agency still. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. John. Yes. Someone mentioned that the, the opioid funds may be a good match for this, this area. I was just wondering, since this seems like these services almost pay for themselves. Would, would the opioid money funds actually be better used elsewhere in some of the areas that don't pay for themselves? Or do you expect actually, you know, some of the counseling services related to opioids, not to be reimbursable? Just any thoughts on that? Anything that's not reimbursable will be paying for. So we, we have started to. Through ARPA funds, we brought on board recovery coach, and we've been paying for some housing for people to go to treatment. And so those are services that, you know, we know we'll need to continue with, but through the opioid money, but, but here, if there's a family in crisis or in need of mental health services, we would, we would run them through a YCC because it's almost impossible for a family to get. To access services. If they were just to call a facility, it's the weights are just too long. And there are usually no slots available. So we would want to run them through this agency. And if it's not reimbursable by insurance, it would be covered through here. So. Got it. So, and that's maybe where I'm just going into the future a bit when it sounds like there's going to be some opioid funds available. And is what you just described where maybe some of those funds would go towards. Correct. Thank you. Yep. And as a fear to say that we are expecting the ARPA funds to dry up after the 2024 budget. So we have. This year and last year we had 100,000, but we're not going to, we can't expect that going forward. Correct. Correct. Any other questions? John, you have still have your hand up. Do you have any. Charlie. Yes. Thank you, Madam chairman. I have a question for Christine. Were you able, was town able to attend to the needs of the homeless. In the area in the cold snap last weekend. Yes. Yes. Through our partnership with Somerville homeless coalition, they had a shelter that they had. Set up in Somerville. So we were able to make sure that any of the individuals that were. In need of a shelter were brought there. We also had, I believe, one or two that we were able to put into temporary housing within Arlington. So we were able to cover. But our homeless outreach person worked. Worked for that. Which was great. Thank you. Yes. Through our partnership with Somerville homeless coalition, we were able to put into temporary housing within Arlington. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Any other questions. Annie, this is, is this the. Rebecca. Is this the last budget we. That's correct. Yeah. Need, need Christine for. Yes. Yes. Before we let you go, Christine, if you could just stay on for a little bit longer in case anyone just has any general questions. Not specific to a particular budget. Okay. Okay. Here's your chance. I don't know if there are any further questions left, but. Just wanted. She has done great work and a lot of different departments. And we rely very heavily on. Her and, and her people. So here's your chance to. To ask any residual questions, anything else that's. Anything. If I could just add. Chris, the. You can see why with this complexity in the budget. I, I ask. Christine to come and be present when we present these budgets. So for anybody who's looking for an example of why you would ask somebody. And back you up a department head to attend meeting. This is really the reason that I do it. I'm ambitious that at some point, I will know this all well enough that I don't need her backup, but last couple of years, that is not in the case. Thank you for backing me up. Thank you, Annie and Rebecca for being our wrap. I appreciate it. And thank all of you too for the work you do on the town budget. It's appreciated on my level. So thank you. Thank you for your time. And again, thanks. Thank you for the great work that you've been doing. Thank you. All right. So with that, I would like to start. Taking some votes on the budgets that we have. Have covered. So the health and human, we'll start with the health and human services budget. Did you want to motion or did you want to try to do them together? Yeah, I think that would be great. I think that would be great. I would like to separate them in case anyone has. Any particular issue. With any one department. I think that would be. Ultimately quicker and easier to do than to get into it. A debate. Over all of them. All right. So health and human services. You have a motion. I move approval. On the taxation total as printed in the budget book. $745,297. Second. All right. Any further discussion. On the health and human services budget. All right. Seeing no hands. I'm going to go to a roll call vote now. So the health and human services budget. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Annie. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. Tofer. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Altosti. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. Dave McKenna. Yes. All right. Unanimous vote approving the health and human services budget. Next is veteran services. I'll remove approval for the taxation total of. $367,408 for veteran services. Second. What's that number again? $357,408. As. The veterans. Veterans. Am I. Right. I'm on council of aging. Ah. 327. 2775. Sorry guys. So there's a motion. To approve the veteran services budget and the amount of three, two, seven, seven, five, three. Do I have a second? Second. Any questions? Discussion. Seeing no hands. I'll go to a roll call vote on the veteran services budget. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Annie. Yes. L Jones. Yes. Tofer. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. The next budget. It's been unanimously approved. The next budget is the DE. I budget, correct? I'll call phone agent. What I have next. Counsel on aging. Counsel on aging. All right. Do I have. Motion. I move the taxation total of. $367,408 as printed in the budget book. I have a second. Second. All right. Any discussion. All right. We'll go for a vote. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Sorry. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Annie. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Annie. Yes. Jones. Yes. Tofer. Yes. I'll toss. Peggy. Yes. I'll toss. Yes. Dean. Yes. Dave. Yes. All right. That budget, the council on aging budget has been approved unanimously on the next budget is the DEI budget. I move approval of the taxation total of $193,666. Second. Second. Second. Second. Any discussion. Charlie. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'm going to vote against this budget. I think it has. Grown. Too rapidly and there's additional funds that are being spent that I'm not happy that I'm not, I'm not convinced that. That they're not going to try to creep into the budget. When the outside funding goes away. And I think the. The controls and the metric. Metrics. In this area are just. Too weak. So I'm going to vote against this budget. I don't have a substitute motion, but I think that I need to send the message. That this is. Not satisfactory. Thank you. Sophie. So I am concerned. Whether it's this budget or maybe others, but that we had some vacant positions. We budgeted last year. I'm fairly under budgeted. And we didn't catch that they were too low. So I'm going to vote against this budget. I don't have a substitute motion, but I think that I need to send the message that this is. Not satisfactory. Thank you. Sophie. Thank you. Thank you. And we didn't catch that they were too low for the future hires. And I'm afraid that's going to go. Everywhere. Do we need to worry about. How we're budgeting for vacant position. This is a 20% increase on. Each position. Well, other people can chime in. I don't know if the problem is that we. When we. Budget for vacant positions were budgeting. Low. I think. The issue. Maybe we're hiring. Too high that we're, we're feeling positions with a higher salary than perhaps maybe we should, especially if it's a new, new person, new, new position. I hear Christine Bonjourn will say that it's hard to fill these. Positions and. You can only hire what you can hire at, but. It's been, it's been the, at the urging and the finance committee, that, that vacant positions be. Posted and hired at, at the lower range and the salary. Then, then mid or high. So. Where as a new member. For relatively new. Where does the money come from when they. In this situation when they hired so much higher. Where do they get the money from to make these hires. Budget. From their set from, from whatever they have, they have leftover and they can, they can use in their budget. That's free. Right. They would, they would, if they hire part way through the year. They'll have part of that salary. To apply to a higher rate. Okay, so when we. And then it has to appear in the budget. I mean. Knowing manager. They would have looked at what they were able to do. Positions at the time of hiring and said, what is how does this affect the next five years and projected it forward. So. I mean, I can't tell you that's a fact, but that's. That's a fact. So we funded it and then it stayed vacant. So money was there and they were able to buy that. They are not allowed to. Exceed the budget. There are extraordinary circumstances under which I can exceed the budget and we will make a. Reserve fund transfer, but I don't think we would do that for. A miscalculation of hire. We usually do that for things like. Retirement payouts or an extraordinary expense. So. And we are not going to be able to do that. So. I think it's not a problem for the Americans. Only to. Read. Just open your. I think what you. You're raising Sophie is very important and valid. And I think we should be looking at. When you look at the budgets, we should. See where are these. People, the new higher is being put in the, in the pay scale. manager to not hire put higher people and put them at the higher end of the pay scale. And if they do they're going to have to figure out, they get that money. Annie you have your hand up. Yeah, I just with regard to this issue of hiring in general in particular hiring these new positions in the current climate. I would urge everybody to remember that we had 67% inflation the last couple of years and that we are in the middle of an historic labor shortage despite the Google layoffs. So, you know, hiring, looking at this and saying hey we can't cover $54,000 might have meant not hiring anybody at all, which I don't think is effective. So, I would defend those new hires in that manner. I would also defend work of this department as probably one of the most important new initiatives in town, as undertaken in the last five years. This is about a change in our world that I think is very important. I'm not sure there are good metrics. But I do think that it's a very important level of cultural growth for us. So, my two cents. Yeah, I during the presentation earlier I think someone compared this to the veterans department said oh that is similar funding in the veterans department. But if you look at the veterans department they actually have $76,000 in salary expenses compared to 220k 220,000 here. And also and then their actual lost actuals available in 2022 were 93,000 so it's jumping from 93,000 in 2022 of actuals to 220. Whereas it seemed like in 2022 was a lot more in line with the salaries of the veterans so I think the veterans is a good comparison. And I mean, you know I'm still learning about this committee but I feel like it would be nice if the salaries did stay a little closer to the veterans. So, I think Charlie makes a good point. Just wanted to say that. I just want to clarify what I meant when I was referring to the veterans budget I was just looking at the bottom line. And comparing it to the DEI to the department and, and making the point that the veteran services department services veterans and their dependence where the DEI department, arguably services all of us. Townwide. It's not I didn't mean to make it a apples to apple comparison I just wanted to throw that thought out in terms of who this budget services. Just to have people keep that in mind having said that I think points being made about the, the budget are completely valid to Peggy. Yes, thank you. I do have a question. She spoke about events that this group has put on Black History Month flags or Lunar New Year. And I'm curious, are those types of events new, or have they always been ongoing, but are now in this new group. I guess I'm trying to figure out what. I mean, I understand where Charlie is coming from how do you, how do you measure the diversity equity and inclusion, but I'm also curious just about some of the tangible events, whether those have been ongoing in the town over several years. Or is this something that's been newly started. Other people may have a better perspective than I but I know that some of these things have happened in the past some of these things have have happened in the past and are bigger now and I think the, the some recent activities, events that have never happened before. I don't know if anyone else. Yes, more information. I would like to try to answer that question. So I would, I would answer in a couple is that when we hired a DEI coordinator and assumed that that person was going to partly be the ADA coordinator what we pretty rapidly figured out was that between those two connections between trying to look at how we operate as a town internally in other words how our employees behave and how they interact with citizens through an equity lens, and also look at the larger community and how it functions as a community through an equity lens that what we found was that Bill Harvey's job was full time if not more. I think that our ADA coordination and inadequate and I can tell you as a former member of the select board who worked with the Disabilities Commission that they were very frustrated for a long time about their inability to get attention on their issues. What they needed was internal staff time and persistence in dealing with the challenges that people with disabilities face with the built environment and so on and so forth. So I think that both Jill Harvey's position in the ADA coordinators position are perfectly justifiable in terms of their growth. I think that the community outreach position that's being funded by ARPA. You know I agree that we can only continue to fund it. If we are moving forward with grant funding for that position in the future. But if you read the equity audit, I think you will discover why we need a position to offer those functions I was very startled to discover that there are people there are things that I'm connected to in town. I lived here for 35 years. There are things that I'm connected to in town that I was able to connect to as a resident as a parent of young kids through the schools on and so forth that there's a segment of our community feels very disconnected from and we need to build those bridges to that segment of our community to make them feel engaged in a full resident of Arlington and that's just one slice of what that equity audit is has found and is talking about. I don't want to wax poetic about the sort of social aspect of that but I think it's a very important thing. So I think this department's activities are highly justified I think what Chris was trying to do was to say and there's all this other stuff they're doing, but the real important work is the boosting of the coordination work. This equity audit the new community effort and the fact that we now are actually looking at diversity, equity and inclusion in the town of Arlington which we were assuming and not actually examining before we added Jill Harvey's position. So, I think we are justified in spending this money. Can I ask anyone who's not speaking to mute themselves or some feedback and that audio again. Alan Jones. Thank you. I just did want to mention there are new events, for example the lunar New Year's event that was a couple of weeks ago was tremendous Juneteenth, and there are other things. And to some extent, if these events are well received and serve a useful purpose, that's almost a metric, you know how many productive events can we do, but I also wanted to remind people in terms of the money spent. It is a zero sum game in that the managers committed to a certain level of growth for general government, three and a quarter percent. So, the DEI department or any other increase in the DEI department isn't necessarily an increase in what they're spending that's providing less money for other departments. It's a shift of priorities. So it's not a cost, it's a shift of priorities. You know, it's a big policy decision that's that but anyway, it is a zero sum game or three and a quarter percent sum game. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Charlie. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I just wanted to comment that both my experience on the Finance Committee and both my experiences on the Finance Committee and the Capital Planning Committee. I recall reaching out to the Disabilities Commission on multiple occasions, and not getting a response. So the idea that, you know, that somehow or another, the town hasn't been addressing these concerns sort of boggles my mind because we have been reaching out to the disability community, the Disability Commission, which has been around for a long time and has had members that are representing disabled folks. So just it's not something new. Thank you, Charlie. Sophie. Yes, so a couple points. I'll start with actually what Charlie just said so last year. When the Disabilities Commission came before the committee, I ended up sort of being a liaison with them. I don't know for the old members if we remember that but I will say at first it seemed hard to connect with them. As I learned more about them and there is a requirement that I think 50% of that committee have disabilities, right? And what was explained to me is that those involved and usually chairing and vice chairs are trying to run a committee or the disability commission and deal with their own disabilities, which limit their ability to do such things. So it, you know, I think there's some leeway that has to understanding that has to occur and how we relate with them and what we can expect from them and the help that they need from us. And I can echo that what Annie said that absolutely last year, the lack of an ADA coordinator was mentioned by the Disability Commission and they were looking forward to really needing that. And that was one of their chief complaints actually was not having that. And there was one when it left and the loss of that was definitely felt within that community. So my concern is just that is the increase from what was posted and for the vacant position and how it was hired. And I don't know what we can do about that because we do need the ADA coordinator but going forward. I hope we can impress on the town the importance of respecting sort of the budget and not having our hand forced for the next budget, because the people are in place. Thank you. Jennifer. Sorry, thank you ma'am chair I just realized I put something in chat that I should have done. So I wanted to say publicly, which is that I've, I've said in several disability commission meetings from in various roles that have had. There have been some problems but there's also been a tremendous turnover so anybody you might have talked to five years ago, probably isn't there now so there's, you know, constant. It's, it's a tricky committee to staff but there's, there's just sometimes it's great. And it's just, it's just a huge message turnover and there's different people every time. But hopefully that's all settling down. Thank you, Jordan. I had two points I think, firstly for for this department I think there's been a lot of change for them recently and I think that, you know, and especially with the nature of this kind of work things tend to change very rapidly, depending on events that are happening in the country, the state or at the local level. I think that this, and especially knowing that we have a position that's going to be ending due to the ARPA funds in about a year and a half so I think this department could definitely benefit from some strategic planning perhaps that could be something that the select committee could engage in but I think it would be good to have some sort of a plan for them and how they see their services and their staffing, moving forward. And just secondly about the, about the hiring as somebody that's had to do me hiring in a municipal setting in a previous role that I was in I certainly understand this, this committee's concern about hiring at the higher level, I will say however that it's becoming more difficult to try to hire to these positions at the town level. Many of them as we've just as it's been discussed have been unfilled for quite some time which is what we're seeing across many municipalities, and the level of the hat trying to bring somebody in who can immediately make an impact can be a very difficult thing, especially to be able to operate in a municipal setting which is a bit different than the private sector so I certainly echo our concerns but we should also be, we should keep in mind, it is, I can't stress enough, very difficult to try to hire for these positions. Thank you Jordan and grants. Yes, thank you Christine. When we get back to voting, I do plan on supporting this. I recognize the salaries, but also, look, we had a rehire the nurse back at a higher rate. That's pretty revealing in itself, you had a higher rehire the same person back at the higher salary so it's probably going to be harder to hire new people in as well. And then I'm going to, we're going to see what the, you know, this audit. Recommends. So I plan on supporting it. All right, thank you. Thank you. Topher. Yeah, I just wanted to make a point that I think measuring metrics is going to be important. I think it will help build support for the efforts. So, there may even be things just like voter turnout among certain groups could be measured. I mentioned, you know, the number of different events that could be another one. I think it's important to, while there will be intangibles that probably can't be measured that we try, or that the people running this do try to come up with some metrics and show how the needle is moving because that was Jill mentioned, move the needle on, not so Christine rather mentioned, move the needle on DI and that's one way to show that you're moving the needle. Thank you. Josh. Thank you. Since Andy did post that audit and I was just kind of glancing through it quickly. It seems like that might be the kernel of a strategic plan. And I wonder if, if Charlie or other people are in opposition to this particular budget. If it makes sense to have a chance to review that audit before you make that determination. So the question Josh is to Charlie. Does he want to move to postpone a vote here so he can look at the strategic plan or the equity audit? Is that what you're asking? Right, I mean, I think in general that we've been very supportive of all of Christine's budgets. And to single this one out. I understand there's a concern that it's growing quickly. I think we have taken a big part of what they've spent this year is for that audit that we should at least take into consideration before voting against it. Well, I did take a quick scan at it while other people were discussing this, these various budgets, after I learned that it was posted on the, on the SharePoint. I don't think I want to stop the finance committee from taking a vote. If the committee wants to go ahead and vote. That's okay with me. I'm just not going to support it. Okay, thank you. But thanks for the thanks for the offer. All right, so for a second time. I actually think Josh has having read through the report at the audit in some detail, I think. Josh has a very good idea there that it might be helpful for the committee to have everyone have a chance to really review it. Whether you know I'm not saying it's going to change all everybody's vote but you know it is as Josh said it's you know they put a lot of resources into that might be good to have everybody have a chance. Since not it seems like not everybody's had a chance to review it. I am disinclined to want to postpone the vote unless there is a motion that passes to postpone the vote but I do think we would be. We should all look at that report at some point. I'm just not hearing a motion to postpone. I want to bring this to a vote. Anything further from anybody, especially anyone I we haven't heard from yet. All right, we are voting on the budget. It's been moved and seconded. All right, Jordan. Yes, Shane. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. No. John. No. Annie. Yes. Ellen Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. No. No. Dean Karman. Dave McKenna. Dave. Is Dave here? Yes. All right. So I have 12. Four. And. Four. No. So the budget has passed. And. So we have a YCC list. A YCC in the council on aging transportation. Let me just get to the. Number for council on aging. So I move on the one on aging budget for revenue and expenses. All 194,644 dollars. Okay. What page are we on with, but. I am on 175. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right. Wrong. Wrong. I'm sorry guys. Can't read tonight. 127,549 dollars. Second. This is a YCC or a council on aging transportation. Second. If I may say so, I think we should be voting. I think we should be voting. Madam chairman, may I make a comment? Sure. We should be voting. Both the revenue number and the. Expense number. Yes. Yes. So revenue and expenses of. Revenue of 127,549. And revenue of 127,549. Revenue. Any, any discussion. All right. Everyone understand what we're voting on. All right. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Annie. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Altosti. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. Dave McKenna. Yes. That's unanimously approved. And now we have a YCC. And what page is that? Okay. Page 180 sincere motion. I move acceptance of the pay YCC budget with the expenses totaling $1,355,382. And the revenues totaling $1,355,382. It's been moved and seconded Alan Jones. Question. Okay. I wanted to make a comment about the cancel of aging transportation and maybe after this vote. All right. This isn't about a YCC. I put it up for the last one. Can you bring it back after this vote? Sure. All right. All right. So we're, we're. About to vote on the AYCC budget. Any, any discussion. All right. Seeing no hands, Jordan. Yes. Okay. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Annie. Yes. Ellen Jones. Yes. Yes. Tofer. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Tofer. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Dave. Yes. All right. That budget has passed unanimously. Now back to Ellen Jones and council on age aging. Okay. Yeah. On transportation, I guess I was just wondering if it would be appropriate for the finance committee to take any sort of motion on a resolution or something to start putting in action the elimination of that as an enterprise fund. And how do we, it seems like there is some preference, including Christine to do that. Should we, you know, take some action to. Start that process. What would people think. And maybe a resolution, maybe a comment in the finance committee report. Or maybe just, you know, you and Sandy talking. I don't know what the, I think it's a good idea. I just don't want to fall through the cracks. Yeah, I think it's a good idea. Grant. Well, thank you, Christine. Well, wonder why it was established, two things, wondered why it was established as an enterprise. Fund in the first place. May or may not matter. And the second thing, it's probably just as. It might be worth it to wait until she meets with the. I don't think we need a vote in a formal resolution. I think. Perhaps Christine can put it on her. To do list after town meeting is finished. Along with Annie and. Maybe one other person to just. Approach the new manager. And Christine. And I. Eda. About whether there's a better option to look at other options for this fund. That's all. You know, maybe the enterprise at best, or maybe it should be a revolving fund. But, but I think that the three of them can explore it. With the new manager after town meeting. If the, if the chairman's going to do that. Absolutely. Dean. Yeah, so I largely agree with what Al just said. The only thing I would. Sort of add to it is I think it. It probably just warrants a sentence. In the finance committee report. You know, finance committee is. You know. You can start concerns. I don't like the word, but just so it says, Hey, we're thinking about this. We're looking into it. We might be back in the future. To tie it. And we want it to go away. That way. There is a conclusion reach. That in spring of 20, 24, it's dissolved. At least. We can stand in front. You could send it for a time. Last year's meeting. You told me you're looking at it. Here's the work. Here's the result we arrived at. And now we would like to endorse that. First, it's just showing up. Out of the blue. Madam chairman in line with past practice. I agree with that. Suggestion Dean. Not your. Alrighty. That's fine. Right. Right. I agree with that. Suggestion Dean. Not your. Alrighty. That's right. Right. The sentence. Right. Or two. Yep. Thank you, Dean. All right. Anything else. All right. We have only a few minutes left. I don't know if anyone has any. Other budgets for tonight, but I think we won't deal with them, but there is something I think we can quickly deal with. If people look at. Page one 95. Of their, of the budget. And it deals with deals with appropriations for. Committees and commissions and town celebrations and events. So for the new people. Two things. Well, a couple of things we, we, we have to, we have to. Vote on appropriations for town committees and commissions and town celebrations. It has been. The policy of the finance committee that if these. Organizations, these groups are not seeking. More funding than they, than they got the prior year. We don't ask them to come in and. Defend their request. We don't ask them to appear before us for a hearing on their budget. We essentially agree to it. Unless there's a particular budget, a particular commission that we have questions on. The other policy of the finance committee is that we never. Punish anyone for not spending money. That's been an appropriated. So the. For example. Envision Arlington. They've, we've been giving them a $3,000 budget, but they haven't been spending $3,000. We're not going to punish them and reduce their budget. We'll just continue to give them what they've been asking for and any money that they don't spend. His return to the general fund. At the end of the year. What I would like to do now. I want to get a sense of. From the group, whether there is any of these committees or commissions. That we need to have come in. And I, I want to. Point out that nobody is asking for. Any additional funds than. They got last year. Oh, Christine. I have not reached out to them yet. Well, it's in the. I'm assuming that the town manager's budget. They're not, they haven't, they're not going to be asking for more money. Is there any reason we should. No. What usually happened. What happened at least last year is that. I emailed all of the. Contacts for these commissions. To see if they were requesting any more money because usually the. Budget just includes whatever was there last year. And that is where we get our request for. Increases. And I think we. Got like one last year. Early. I see your hand up. Yes. Yes. Thank you. I don't see. The water bodies commission on this list. The water bodies committee. That's a separate war and article. This is, these are appropriations that go into. Into the one. Thank you. Thank you. Sophie. I would like to at least reach out. Maybe. As the liaison to the disability commission, just to see what they're spending it on. I think my concern last year was. Sometimes they were spending things on that. I thought maybe the town should be paying for it for certain. Trainings and programs. And it was sort of getting. Not forced, but. Suggested that they use their funds instead of the town using its funds. So they just want to touch base with them on that. And then the arts. I feel like when they're. I mean, personally, when it's 35,000, I mean, I'd like to hear from them here with their. Spending. Because that's salary amount. So to the extent that reasons to a salary level. I think it'd be good for us to hear what it. Spends on, but that's just a personal. With regard to the disability commission. Can I ask you, Sophie, to reach out to them. Yeah. And find out. Whether they're asking for the same amount of money and. Determine if they're, if they want a hearing or if we. If there's any information that we should know about. All right. Since you have been dealing with them, you have been our liaison or you were last year. We'll do. Altos. Yeah. I just, I agree. We should connect. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I agree. We should continue with the same policy. Most of these are small dollars. And big amounts of work. On the part of volunteers. The two committees agree with Sophie. That we have heard from. Are the two bigger ticket items. The commission on disability for 25,000. And the arts and culture for 35. You know, that we've asked them to come to us. And just explain what's happening. And. Very briefly. You know, we're not going to take hours on it, but I think those two committees. We should hear from. Okay. Topher. Thank you. Madam chair. I just want to make sure I'm clear. Like we're looking at one 95, one 96 and one 97. But we're not getting into town celebrations and events. I just want to make sure I'm clear. Like we're looking at one 95, one 96 and one 97, but we're not getting into town celebrations and events. I just want to make sure I'm new. I'm trying to make sure we're looking at that. Well, primarily we're looking at the committees and commissions, but I would also include the, the, the. Okay. Celebrations. One 98 also, but then not the things after that, I see the water bodies there. So that's, that's separate. Right. Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, this is what we'll do. Sophie will reach out to the disability commission. Possibly ask them to come in. Tara, will you reach out to arts and culture and schedule. A time when they can come in. Yes. And then as to all others. Can you send an email and if they are not asking for more money than they got last year. Tell them they don't have to come in. Okay. All right. Anything else on. That Charlie. Yes, I'm concerned about the water bodies. They have a lot of money. And a big reserve. I mean, I think I do think we should be looking at what's going on there. Well, now we get again, we're getting into the warrant articles and. Okay. El Tosti will is, is our warrant officer. And we'll have an opportunity to discuss. Which warrant articles we will want. To conduct hearing ons in which we do not. So let's hold off on the water bodies for the time being. Thank you. Got it. Thank you. All right. Anything else. Madam chairman. Yes. I think on the water bodies, we hear them every year. And that is, as Charlie said, a big ticket item. So I think. Tara should schedule them to come in, you know, in March, I think they're one of the ones that always, you know, that we always have. And we should. That's fine with me. I'm always the one who has the questions about the water bodies. And that's fine with me. I guess I'm just going to do that anyway. Yeah. So, Tara, if he could do that, that would be good as well. Thank you. And Annie is working on getting minute man to come in any. Any. New words on that. Annie. No, I proposed March 1st. I haven't heard no, but I haven't heard. Yes. I think that's fine with me. I think that's fine with me. I think that's fine with everybody who's been. Trying to coordinate that in one email, which hopefully everybody saw. Did you see that email, Chris? I did. So I'm waiting to hear from you to Julia or Nikki that. The March 1st works and that a meeting, an intermediate meeting with Dr. Dawson will work out. So. All right. Thank you. All right. Who will have budgets for Monday. Madam chair person. I would like to ask you, if you have any questions from the budget director. On the question that we had. As we mentioned, as Sophie mentioned to you. Do you think you'll have them by Monday? I don't know. We're hoping. But I don't know at this point. Charlie. I think we'll have a comptroller's budget by Monday. We'll have the assessors budget, right? I hope so. Yeah. We had an aborted meeting today, but hopefully we will get to meet. Get those questions answered. All right. Great. All right. Well, we'll meet on Monday. Hopefully we'll have those and maybe a few other. Or an articles. If anyone can work real hard between now and then and do it. Get a budget ready for us. That would be great. Yeah. I think we'll get to it. The more we can. Schedule the quicker we can get through our work. Chris, have we seen a draft warrant yet? Altosti. No. I've talked to Doug. I've talked to the select man. I've talked to Doug Heim. Doug said he'd get back to me on getting. On initial draft. Sometimes it's like pulling teeth. But I didn't get a draft warrant until the last week in February. Yeah. Oh, I'm planning to call them tomorrow. Great. Thank you. All right. All right. Sophie. I don't know if we heard Dave and I heard while we were doing our budget reviews in the department's earlier this week that there was now talk of a special meeting in the fall. So I don't know if we heard all the zoning. Articles getting taken off this meeting a bit. On special meeting in the fall. So I don't know that. This news are not pretty. That's, that's definitely because. And it's, it's not all the zoning articles, but it's at least all of the ARB proposed articles. There may be some citizens owning articles that do not move. All right. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So move. Second. All right. All in favor. All right. We are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.