 Okay. Great. Thank you, Athena. So, hello, everybody. My name is Paul Backelman. I'm the town manager. I'm going to convene this meeting. We will introduce ourselves. We will, I will conduct an election for the chair. And then once the chair is elected, the chair will conduct the election for a vice chair. Then we will go through an updated budget projections and then have a discussion or report on budget status by the different three different elected groups. And then have a broader discussion and then public comment. So, um, I'll, and I'll call on people and you can introduce and what's your role. And if you're a member of the committee or not. So I'll start with Lynn. Hi, Lynn Greece, my president of the Amherst town council, and I am one of the representatives for the town council to be CG. Okay, Andy. I'm Andy Steinberg member of the town council and the member of the finance committee. Okay. Mandy Joe. All right. Councilor Hanneke. Mandy Joe Hanneke, one of the town councilors and a member of BCG. Okay. Irv. Irv Rhodes, member of the Amherst school committee and vice chair. Jennifer. Hi Jennifer show Amherst school committee member. I was appointed to fill in for Bridget Hines, who is the other Amherst school committee member on the BCG. She's not able to be here today. Do it to a work obligation. Okay. Austin. You're muted. Austin Sarah Jones library board of trustees and I'm a member of the BCG. Bob. Bob ham. Library trustee treasurer and member of PCG. Thank you. Doug. Perfect timing. Of course the bell rings. So it's lunchtime for somebody. So Doug Salter interim superintendent at schools. And do you want to introduce your staff. I also have online is Jen I corn is doing some support work for us this year in our business office and Shannon Bernacchia. Who's stepped up to be our interim director of finance. And Jen and Jen, do you want to say hi. Hi there. How are you doing today? Shannon so we can know we can hear you. Hi, how are you guys? Great. Thank you. From our team. I'm Jen LaFountain and say hi. And what your role is. Sure. I'm Jen LaFountain and I'm the treasurer collector. Holly. Holly Drake. Comptroller for the town of Amherst. Okay. Sharon. Hey everybody. I'm Sharon Sherry. I'm the director of the Jones library. And last but not least, Sandy. Welcome. Hello everybody. I'm Sandy pooler. I'm. I'm doing some help with the budget and capital this year. And it's nice to be back at BCG. My God is Sandy pooler. Did I get everybody. So as you know, Sandy. How about Athena? Oh, I'm sorry. Hi, Athena. Hi everyone. I'm Athena. I'm the clerk for the town council and I'm helping out on the budget process this year. Yes, thanks. As you may know, Sandy came on a couple of weeks ago to help us through this budget process as well. We're in the middle of looking for a new finance director where, you know, Sandy brings a boat load of experience as a. Financial municipal finance expert in the state, but also he knows Amherst well because he was the finance director for the town of Amherst for many years. And left about five years ago to go to the town of Arlington. First as the deputy town manager and then the town manager and then retired and then we went said, Hey, retirement is boring, isn't it? It come back and help us out for on a part time basis, which he is doing and we really, really appreciate it. The whole team does. So thank you, Sandy. Um, so the 1st of order of business is to elect a chair and I will conduct that process. So the floor is open for nominations and it does not require a 2nd to be nominated and you can nominate yourself. After we do the nominations, we will ask for people to vote by naming the person that they would like to. Service chair for this group. So the floor is open for nominations. Andy. I nominate increase there. Lynn, do you accept the nomination? I do. Okay. Other nominations. I don't see other nominations. Are there any. Okay, I do not see any other nominations, then. Um, I will go through the room and ask the people who are designated to vote to express their desire to vote for. Lynn or or not. So I'll start with Andy a point of order. Paul usually, we usually let the nominee say a few words and then if anybody else wants to say anything before the vote. Okay. Lynn, do I say a few words? Just very quickly. First of all, thank you, Andy. This is a role I've played in the past. Although I have to say as we go forward to this meeting. I think the stakes were a lot higher. So. I'm glad we're able to get together prior to the 1st to the 4 towns meeting this coming Saturday. Any other comments? Seeing none. And then can we have, can we have a motion and 2nd to elect? Um, please. Sure. Thank you. Andy was, is your motion to. So moved. Second. Second. Okay. Um, okay. So we will do the roll call vote. So call Andy. Yes. Lynn. Yes. Andy Joe. Hi. Irv. Yes. Jennifer. I will abstain. Austin. Yes. And Bob. Yes. So the motion passes. So you are now the chair, Lynn. Did you call on her? I did. Okay. Thank you. All right. The floor is open for nominations for vice chair of BCG. I. I nominate her roads. Okay. Since you nominated yourself, we assume you accept. Are there any other. Are there any other nominations for vice chair of BCG? I'm seeing no other hands. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have been around town for more years than I can remember. And I've worked with every almost everyone here. I've been on the finance committee. For the town. I've also served on the joint capital planning committee. And I am really. Grounded in the finances of the town. I'm happy to. So much for the opportunity to be and enjoy. Serving as vice chair of this group. I'm going to make a motion that we elect or roads as vice chair of BCG and seek a second. Second. Okay. And we'll go around. I'm not, it's not an alphabetical order, Yes. I'd like to move to the library, Bob Pam. Yes. Austin. Yes. And the town councillors, Andy Steinberg. Yes. Lynn Griezmer is a yes. Councilor Hanneke. Hi. Okay. With that, we're going to move on to a presentation. Andy, I understand you're making the presentation with Paul. Well, so. Sandy is, yeah. I'm sorry, Sandy. So, so, well, just add a test to that. You're fine. Yes. To frame this. As we, as we begin the budget process, we begin with financial indicators process, presentation back in November. And then we show a projection of where we think we are financially for the town during the course of the coming months, as we continue to develop things, more information comes in. We refine that estimation, that estimate. And that's those projections, just, you know, because as you go through the course of the year, you get more clarity on who's saying what, what's, what's going on with our income, with our finances, our, you know, what revenues are looking like, things like that. So we're at a point now where we'd like to share the latest version with the BCG. And this will continue to develop over time as we learn more about the state budget and things like that. And we use the exact same format every year. We've been using it the same format for multiple years. So it, but we'll, but Sandy can walk it through, walk through, because some people that have not seen this before. So it might be helpful to be a little more detailed than you normally are Sandy. So you want to take it over. Everybody. Let me just ask first off, are these numbers big enough. For people to be able to see. At my age, yes. Okay. They passed the recent tests. So we're going to move forward. So these numbers. First we'll go through revenue and then expenses. And they reflect pretty much the latest numbers, the complete numbers that we have, including the cherry sheets from the governor's budget. Updated health insurance. Pension assessments. And some updated capital numbers. So just to walk through. Our forecast starts with our biggest source of revenue, which is property taxes. It's all set by prop two and a half. We start with the previous years. Levy, the maximum amount of the town is allowed to tax under law. Add two and a half percent. And then what we do is we add a new growth. And then we add a new investment, which has been fairly consistent over the years of new growth. In other words, new buildings that are going to go up in the town. Or major renovations that add things that hadn't been taxed before. That's at 650,000. As I say, it's. A little bit lower than what you've seen in actuals for what that number is going to be still for several months until the assessors have assessed all new things in town that have been built as of January 1st. That takes them several months to do. So we have a 3.5% increase in property taxes, which is typical for Amherst. You can ignore this number here. In fact, why don't I just get rid of it? That means we have. 66 million dollars in taxes, so 3.6%. We then go through our local receipts. These pretty much are similar to what we had. In fact. They are exactly the same. That was enough financial indicators. Some things have gone up. For example, motor vehicle excise based on actual. Collections of those taxes over the last few years. We have a number of other things have stayed stable. Like. Like penalties and interest or rentals and so forth. We think there's going to be a slight increase in hotel motel and meals taxes. We know from agreements we have that we have pilot payments, payments in lieu of taxes from various sources. Rentals are not expected to change. And we have to change it. We have to change the departmental revenue, which is never. You know, we don't have a changed our fees or fines or things very drastically. So that's going to stay the same. Looking at license and permits, they've been up pretty high. I mean, look at a three year average. Special assessments also from known agreements. Investment income. We both. Did by boosted by about $30,000. We've seen a lot of that. We've seen a lot of that. We've seen a lot of that from. Sign contracts, things with UMass and so forth, that we are fairly confident in, in having come in. So we have an 8% increase. In a local receipts, which for emers, frankly, is a good increase in local receipts. Again, you saw that all in the financial indicators back in the fall. State aid is now new. We have a budget. We have chapter 70 with an allocation of $30 per student, which is about a half percent. Amherst never gets a lot of chapter 70 increases. Because we have a fairly steady enrollment. And because the major driver for chapter 70, 80s days is something called the student opportunity act, which really focuses on giving additional state aid to some of the poor communities in the state. The other significant increase was an increase in unrestricted general government aid, otherwise known as UGA. The governor, notwithstanding the fact that her projection for state revenue growth is less than 3% pegged UGA at a 3% increase. She announced that at the MMA meeting. And then when her budget came out. So that's a nice number for us. The other things are fairly small and frankly, not particularly significant so that the overall increase in state aid from what we thought we're going to get back in November is about $240,000. Other sources look like they're going down only because last year kind of not part of the basic budget. There were a million dollars in free cash and $5 million in stabilization fund. Otherwise things are essentially pretty much the same from last year or so. Overall, we have a $96 million or $96.5 million budget. Before I talk about spending, let me ask if there are any questions about the revenue figures. Jennifer. Hi, thank you, Sandy. So sorry, this is my first time participating in BCG. What was the free cash and stabilization, the $1 million and $5 million from this current year? What was that for? There was some additional money for roads and sidewalks for some capital. And there was money put from the stabilization to build the new elementary school. Okay. Because of increased costs and they had to be amended. Okay. So those. Sorry, can you move your mouse so I can see that. Thank you. Thank you. So. Because of those things that looks like our overall revenue is down 3.4%. Or it is down 3.4%. It is down, but. I would say. Don't pay attention to that, or I could recalculate it in a way because the thing that's really essential in this sheet is not so much for how we compare to. Our final from last year. We have to put under this category called recap, which is the. The form that we have to file with the state when we set the tax rate every year, that's called the recap sheet. And so we have to include all this stuff in it. What's really important on this sheet. Is how much revenue we have versus what we're going to spend. We could do a calculation based on the original budget without paying attention to the other sources of revenue. So that's really important for us. I would say that we should focus more on the additions if that was important. But. I would say I would focus more on whether we have enough money to cover our spending. If that's helpful. Thank you. Okay. Um, Lynn. Jennifer, I think that was a good question. I just want to point out that. One was when we were actually doing the school discussion and the other one was when we got our receipts. And so as we looked at last year's budget prior to those two amounts, you don't see as drastic a difference. Very good. Andy? And I think the other thing to note is those were allocations that were for very specific purposes and those are non-recurring purposes. Exactly. All right, I'm going to keep going forward then. So we have what's coming in, now what's going out. The most significant change on this forecast is that as opposed to the projection back at the financial indicators report, we had at that time a 3% increase in spending. We now have put in a 4% across the board increase for all four major categories, towns, elementary school, regional school, and the Jones Library. We did that because as you'll see in a minute, we have some better news on some things than we had before. I'd already mentioned the increase in revenue from the cherry sheets. There are a few decreases in spending that we had that I'll talk about in a second. But it means overall, we are able to come up with 4%. And so therefore, that's what we are proposing to allocate. And it's up for discussion among this group as to your opinions on that. So overall, I would say this is good news for the town and for the schools. The capital budget is coming in at, well, $7 million. What we really focus on is that we're going to spend 10.5% of the tax levy on capital, plus there's some non-tax levy expenses up here. This number is up from what was in the financial indicators, not because the percentage changed, but just because we noticed that there was a formula that was counting the 10% from two years ago, as opposed to the previous year. So when we corrected that, that increased our capital spending. And then the really big change here is that our retirement assessment is virtually equal to what it had been in the previous year. In the previous year, there was a fairly normal increase. This year, it's steady. So we would have expected to see about a half a million dollar or so increase in this line. Part of the reason that that increase is not so big is a one-time event in that we measure the number of people who are expected to get pensions every year on October 1, just take a snapshot on who's on the rolls. And the retirement board then sends us, based on that snapshot, an estimate of what they expect to see for expenses for the coming year. This year, that snapshot happened to have several vacancies that will probably be filled a year from now. But it meant that the retirement assessment just came in lower than we had expected. So in any given year, you have to budget based on what the retirement board says. You, by law, can't budget lower. And so I would say for the FY26 budget, this number is likely to go up. But for FY25, what we're planning for now, it's good news. And so we'll take advantage of that. And that is, in large part, what helped us increase from 3% to 4% in our overall operating budget spending. The other things are just continuing to increase funding for OPEB by $50,000. That's the trust fund for health insurance for our retirees. And then there are various unappropriated uses, most of which come from, well, the biggest one comes from the state. Giveth and the state take it away. They give a state aid. But then they net back out things like the assessment for Pioneer Valley Transit Authority. We set aside 1% of all the taxes we bring in every year for our abatements, what's known as an overlay. In case people file for abatements, we have to be able to write them a check. There's some other offsets on the cherry sheet, specifically money that's going straight to the schools for charter reimbursement and then some minor things for other things to be raised. With all that, it means the important number here is that we have, at this point, a positive balance of $21,000. Not a huge number. By town meeting, we will make that zero by tweaking these numbers because you have to have a zero balance budget. But it does mean that overall the town's finances are strong enough to support the most important number, which is that 4% increase. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Indy Jo? Yeah, going back up to the retirement assessment, my question is, you touched on this a little bit. FY26 won't be this favorable. But are we going to, should we be expecting an overly large increase in FY26? If you were expecting, say, a half million dollars from 24 to 25 and the snapshot gave us zero, are we going to be looking at, like, a million dollar increase from 25 to 26 if the snapshot's not? Or is it still going to be about a half million? Like, yeah. That's a great question. I don't know the answer. These things are a little bit fluky sometimes because of who's on the payroll at any one time. If you look at the pattern over the last few years, you can see it's gone up 400,000, a little under 500,000, a little more than 500,000. So yes, I would expect it's going to be more than 5,000. I would also say a million is probably too high. But I think there are going to be constraints on the Amherst budget next year. And the town's ability to fund things across the board is probably going to be more limited. So instead of a 4% increase, we may be looking back at a 3% or a 2.5% increase for FY26. But it's still very early. I'm not putting any of those numbers out as a prediction. I am saying, though, that 4% is kind of a one time nice thing to be able to do. Holly, did you want to say something, Mark? No, I was going to more or less say the same thing. I certainly don't think that it would double, but I think that it would go back to more or less a normal type of increase. It could be a little bit higher. But again, it is based on a snapshot. It is, and I'm sorry I'm going to correct Sandy, it's as of September 30th. Anybody who is on your payroll September 30th is what that assessment is based on. You're off one day, Sandy, I'm sorry. But they basically take everybody who is active in our payroll system as a full-time benefited employee in the retirement system, and they do a calculation of that. They do that for every city in town as well. So when they put it all together, who knows how it's going to shake out? Because who knows if other cities and towns had a lot of vacancies that now they're not going to have? So it's a very complicated formula for every single person in the retirement system. So it's hard to judge. I expect it to be normal. I would not expect it to be double, but it is possible. It could be a little more than normal. Jennifer. Thanks, can you scroll up so I can see the school line? Thanks. So, okay, wow, great, okay. So again, I'm new here. You have to forgive me for this. So this 4%, is this new news as of today? Like, I guess like, okay, so my question maybe for the superintendent, that we didn't know this even last night when we had our Amherst School Committee meeting. So this is like new good news, right? Right, okay, great, thank you. Excellent question. I always like questions about good news. Bob. Typically in pension systems, if there was a deficit, it gets amortized over a 10 or 15 year period. I would assume that that's true for the pension system we're in. And the question is, at what point will we have amortized that long-term debt? Under state law, all pension systems have to be fully amortized by 2040, but each retirement system picks its own date. And Holly, I don't know if you know off the top of your head what that date is, or when the pension system's gonna be fully funded. Gents on the board, maybe she knows. 32, 32, I think. 30, okay, okay. 2032 perhaps. That's what I believe, yeah. Yeah. So more in that ballpark for sure. We just signed about it, yes. Okay, and how much? They have a target that they try to hit, and then as they get closer, they sometimes have to adjust that year, which they have every ability to do as long as this before 2040. Okay. And how big is that nut? And I have the make-up payment. The overall liability? No. There's an overall liability portion of which is amourst. And the question is, how much of the amount that we pay out is towards that nut? I don't know that off the top of my head. I would ask one of the other staff people to follow up and get back because- That'd be fine, thank you. Lynn? Thanks, Sandy. Does this retirement assessment cover all employees in the town, the library, and the schools? It covers all except teachers. Teachers are in a separate retirement system and are paid for by the state. But other school employees are- Non-teachers, yes. Okay. And then I just wanna go back to the question that I hope, I think we're hearing, and that is that because of this aberration, if you will, in assessment that happened this year, we're able to have this good news today of the 4%. But it's not something that we can assume will show up in another year. And in fact, probably more down at the 2.5 to 3%. So, and I know you're not predicting that, but I just wanna make sure that, because this is a desired percent. It brings us up to the other contributors to the regional schools. But it's not something that we can see in the future. So thank you. Yep. Andy? Yeah, I just wanted to quickly point out that Bob Hamer raised a good question about the retirement program, the fact that it will be, we will retire that obligation. But we also have a huge obligation for OPEB and there has been a long-term plan that when the retirement is fully paid off the retirement system that we will then have the funds to make some serious payments into the OPEB trust to address that issue. Very good. Holly, did you wanna say something? That is correct. I was just going to, this is a little bit old, but I think that what Bob Hamer might have been getting at and looking for is I have a figure from the retirement system as of the end of FY22. I don't have an updated FY23 figure, but in FY22 the retirement system was approximately 78.5% funded already. Again, with investments, that number does go up and down, but they are doing very well towards their goal and I think that it will be, they're in good shape to reach that goal by the FY32. And like Andy said, we do have a plan in place, a long-term funding plan that once our retirement system is fully funded and our assessment goes down, that we're going to take at least a large portion of that difference and start sucking that aside towards our OPEB liability as well. That is correct. All right. Lynn? Yeah, I just want to make sure that I'm looking at the mathematics correctly. If you look at the dollar change, say for example, the regional school district, in order to understand how much this increases from the November meeting to now, you take $710,880 and you divide it by four. And the one fourth of that is the new increase. And so that would be about $177,000. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Okay, thank you. And then would the same be true for the elementary schools? Yes. That's exactly right. Last fall, the original appropriation of the elementary schools was $777,000 and now it's a million 37. So just short of a $300,000 increase. 250, let's say. I think 250 is a little closer. Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to leave these numbers up here, but for conversation purposes, I was going to stop sharing so you could all see each other. And if people want to go back to the numbers, please let me know and I'll be glad to put them back up. So Lynn, I'll follow you. Bob, go ahead. Well, another question on the income side. Again, this is just my ignorance, I guess. On the interest that we earn on the money that we have, typically in the state, the limitations on what we can invest on basically produces income of like 1% or less. Is there any, well, A, is that true? And B, is there anything that we can do that would raise that? So there are limitations on how we invest this money that basically require that they be put into short-term, one year or less investments. Because interest rates have been for certain CDs, sometimes four or 5%, there's been an increase in recent years in the interest income that Amherst and towns all across the state have had. So we're likely to continue to get higher interest rates until the Fed starts lowering those rates at some point. So when it won't be in the 1% or 1% which we've been in for several years, we'll be at a higher level. If I knew what that percentage was, I'd be investing in bonds right now, but I don't. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Okay, so based on our agenda, we're now gonna turn to each of the branches of our government and ask them to talk about where they are with their budgeting process and the status. And we'll begin that with the library. So I'll look to Austin and Bob and Sharon. Sharon, do you want to say a few words for us, please? Yeah, sure. So for us, the health insurance has, that's what's hurting us the most right now. The fact that we do not know where we're gonna be during the in the two year period that our construction project will happen, that's making it hard for us to nail down our budget for FY25. Also, as far as our annual fund goes, we rely very heavily on an annual appeal through the friends. And those numbers, because of the capital campaign, those numbers have kind of leveled off. So that's where we stand. We're thrilled to get a 4% for next year that will help us immensely. So that's pretty much all I wanted to say, Bob. Do you want to add? Just that we are having difficulty projecting exactly what our expenses are going to be since we don't at this moment know where we'll be and what those costs will be. So it has been difficult actually projecting what it is now and what it's gonna look like for next year. And I'm gonna ask others, but I'm gonna just ask a follow-up question, but if others have follow-up questions for the library, please raise your hand. So are you suggesting that once we know where you're going to be located for the two year interim, you will get a better handle on your budget for the next year or two? I hope so. So utilities are, that's the big question mark. I think wherever we go, I think our utilities costs are gonna go down quite a bit because our systems right now are so inefficient. Yeah, so that's the unknown really. It's the utilities. Thank you. Are there other questions of the library at this time? Okay, then seeing none, I'm gonna go on to the schools. Irv, Jennifer, Doug and your team of Shannon and Jenna. Doug, you're up. Okay. So for the Amherst Elementary budget, we did our budget hearing on Tuesday night. We had a follow-up discussion last night for the Amherst Elementary schools at a 3% increase. We had about a $504,000, $503,000 shortfall of expenses versus revenue for level services. And we were posing the nature of reductions and changes in our budget that would try to close that and had extensive conversation of the last two meetings about those changes and what they were. For the regional budget, level four towns meeting tomorrow, using the 3% guideline from earlier and projecting out our level services, we were about $1.88 million short of being in balance. And so we've been working on how to close that gap in our funding and our revenue sources for fiscal 25. So this is welcome news in regard to the regional budget as well as the Amherst budget. There's a part of my brain that's wondering whether we could take some of the resource that would go to Amherst and perhaps use it for the region to help reduce that a little bit further, the gap in region a little bit further because the changes to the programming are gonna be pretty significant as a result of the size of the deficit we have. And that's for you guys to discuss and the mechanics of that will work out if that's a reasonable possibility. But either way, this is really great news. Just timeline-wise for us, we'll do a, sorry for the bell, we'll do our regional schools budget hearing on the 27th, which is the Tuesday after next week, which is the break week for us. And then on the 12th, we need to vote the budget for region because of language in our regional agreement. And when the first town meeting is and the Amherst budget will vote on the 19th of March so that it's to the town manager for the deadline of April 1st. Okay. Other people from the school committee or other staff who are working with us in the schools, wanna add to that? What? Question, go ahead. Yeah, it's really great news in terms of 4% for Amherst. We were struggling with it the other night and a number of parents and students who came forward in terms of our proposed cuts was tremendous. But one of the things that in terms of our Amherst schools that when you look at our budget, is that the second largest item and there is special education. And special education is like everything else, the largest item in any budget is the item that you really wanna go after if you wanna start seeking cuts. It's just a natural sort of reaction and that happened enough for us, but it was done well. And it was explained why those cuts were necessary. But the reason I'm raising that question, I've been raising the issue is that special education is one of the biggest reasons for people moving to this town. And that particular item is one that we have to, as a school committee, look at carefully as we go forward because it's such a large number and it affects such a large number of our students. I think it's well above 20% of our students are special ed. And so when people look at our budget, the school budget, remember that there's a large section for special ed that we are obligated to deal with. We cannot escape it. Jennifer. I actually have a question. So we've gotten a lot of questions and pressure from the public about our two institutions of higher learning in town, UMass and Amherst College. And my question, maybe this is a question for the town manager, like what actually is the process for going to UMass and Amherst College? And as a school committee member, do I just go to Chancellor Reyes and be like, hey, how about kicking in a little more? And you're like, what is the process? How long does it take? What does it look like? And yeah, those are my questions. So for the university, we do have a strategic partnership agreement that's in effect and it does have funds for the schools. I can share that with you if you'd like. Yeah, no, I'm aware of that. Okay. If, I mean, anytime anybody gets more money, we're always welcome to, we always will welcome it. If you have a good relationship with the chancellor and say, and you get them to write another check, we'll say you will cash it. That's typically we do go through sort of traditional channels in terms of those negotiations. And that's an agreement that we made between the two institutions. So what is the duration of the strategic partnership and when does it get re-looked at? So it's a five-year agreement that went back two years, basically, we're in the second, we're in year two of a five-year agreement where we are right now. So we have three more fiscal years. Okay. And who exactly negotiates and signs that agreement? It's between the chancellor and the town manager. Okay. So am I right in saying we have three more years before we can re-look at it or revisit it or revise it? Well, that's what the current agreement states. Right. I mean, again, if there are things that happen and there are opportunities that present themselves, we're always open to that. It's not, but this is, the goal of this was to create some predictability for both institutions as they budget and as we budget. So we know what money is coming in and they know what money to budget for. Okay. And how about Amherst College? So we do not have a strategic partnership agreement with the college. We continue to work on that. They have made some donations to, they make a ongoing sort of contributions to the town and to the district now, but it's not governed by a strategic partnership agreement, but we want to get to that. Okay. And is that something that you're working on with them? That's definitely. Okay. And just my last question. Strategic partnership and pilot came in in lieu of taxes. Are those like the same word for the same, a different word for the same thing? Or when people ask, why don't we have a pilot? What is it UMass? Is that what the strategic partnership agreement is? So pilot payments from the state institutions come through the cherry sheet and we are working at a state level and the university has agreed with us that we would lobby at the state level to increase pilot payments right now. I can get into the whole pilot payments because it's really unfair to the town of Amherst in terms of what the state provides in terms of pilot payments for state on land. They don't take into account the fact that there might be a building on it, for instance. So a piece of forest land is given. So anyway, there's a whole formula and the university recognizes that and is willing to go to us with the legislature to try and work on that. The colleges don't, there's no pilot payments from nonprofit institutions. Again, that's something that there is some legislation that is being proposed to create, to require nonprofit institutions with large endowments to provide payments to either the state or to the localities. So we're supporting that. That's not something I hold like is happening anytime soon. But yeah, I mean, I totally recognize that there are institutions in our community that could be contributing more to the town. Thank you. There are other questions regarding the school budgets. Okay, then I'm gonna go to Paul and Sandy and Holly and there's somebody else. I, the other Jennifer for the town budget. Yeah, so we're in the process of doing our budget review with our department heads. That's Athena and Jen and Holly and Sandy are meeting with department heads going through their budget requests. They understand the limitations that we have on our budget. There are enormous number of needs for the town that you have articulated in your goals but also our town staff have articulated. So that's a page by page kind of analysis of the budget program that you have. That will come, the schedule for the town is a little bit later than the schedule for the library and the school committees because they have to have their budgets in by April one. We have to have our budgets in by May one. So, but that's a process that's going on and sort of looking at the financial sheets with the personnel sheets and things like that. Holly, Jen, Athena, Sandy, anybody wanna add on to that? I would just say we're gonna hold meetings with each of the department heads during March both to see if there are any changes they need to make sure that their programs are consistent with the goals set out by the council and the manager's priorities. So I don't, since we haven't started that yet I really don't know what might change department by department, but that's the process as we go forward. Are there any other comments about the town budget or questions about the town budget? Mandy Jo, I'm sorry, councilor Hannake. Yeah, I just wanna, you know when the schools put out their budget they always put out something called a level services budget that then shows cuts based on what funds might be available. The town does their budget documents slightly different. It puts out what the funds are available and then tries to match them without necessarily showing the hard decisions that have been made to get to the number of a 3% increase or 4% increase. Could you talk a little bit about how the strain on or the inflationary pressures have affected the town's budget and are we facing, are you facing similar decisions in terms of meeting level services within a 3% or a 4% increase because of those items even if it's not showing up in the documents that get presented to the council say. Yeah, so we do approach it differently. We know the number that we have to hit and we work to hit that. We have the same budgetary pressures that the libraries and schools have, health insurance of course we recognize that but also just a normal inflation plus contractual increases that have been given to employees and trying to make those all fit within the constraints of the budget. There's also, you know if we wanna maintain certain services the staffing levels have to be adjusted to make sure that we can get that. We're trying to do the best we can as we go through these meetings with department heads about what you know if you wanna keep providing this level of service we need to do we need to provide these funds. The other challenge we have and I think the schools have this as well is where we've been relying on ARPA funds for some positions and that will go away come December 31 of FY24. And so how we accommodate those positions that we've become accustomed to and utilizing in a pretty significant ways we have to figure out how to build those into the budget if we at all can. You know we also in terms of the budget had to include the major new additions of four firefighters which the council requested a couple of years ago and integrate those into our budget plus the Crest department and DEI departments. So those are all the pressures that we have to really accommodate them. We've had sort of a plan to implement them over time. We've been fortunate to have some funds that we can offset that with either ARPA or grants but that's where the pressure is gonna be for our budget. Are there other questions about the municipal budget or comments? So we've identified on our agenda for today that now we're into just a general discussion among this group. And after that we will go to public comment for the record there are four people in the audience at this time and we'll seek public comment if anybody has any. But please raise your hand if you have some general questions or comments about the process and how we move forward from here. Mandy Jo, Councillor Hannake. So I guess I'll see if I start this off or not. Thank you for the extra percent. I think that's been heard across the board. That's gonna be hugely helpful to the town budget from my point of view as a councillor but I think also school and library budget. The council financial guidelines say to split that evenly. So as a councillor I think I'm still under that thinking that we would split that sort of extra increase evenly among to keep it 4% amongst all four entities that were shown on that the region, the school, the elementary, the town and the library. I'm not sure I've heard anything to keep that different although I did hear the superintendent say potentially that maybe he might ask school committees to split the 4% between the elementary and the region differently amongst those two entities as a councillor I would say almost if the total number comes in at whatever the total is with the 4% on each side, I'm not concerned as much as if that total number requires a lower number from the town or the library. So that's sort of some of my thinking as a finance member as a councillor and as a BCG member to stick with the guidance of 4% across the board but allow the schools a little leeway between K6 and 7 to 12 by thinking about it as a K12 sort of potential system from Amherst's point of view. I hope before I move on to Andy also want to mention that councillor Hannity is on one of the Mass Municipal Association Policy Committees and councillor Steinberg or Andy Steinberg is also on the finance one for the Mass Municipal and Paul is actually now on the executive team for the Mass Municipal. So there's a lot of opportunity for them to carry some of the messages that we have about the budget forward. So Andy, please go ahead. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. I guess I might come back to that when I finish up what I was originally going to comment on and ask, but when the question that Mandy, as councillor Hannity raised about whether money could be used for either school system within the 4% increase for education, there is precedent for that. It goes back some years, but we have, in town meeting days, the old finance committee did make that kind of adjustment when there was a request to do so, but it does create a complication and that is how do you transfer it when you have the assessment methodology as because it can't be an assessment. If you don't wanna necessarily make adjustments that run across the towns by an agreed upon an assessment method. I don't know, Doug, if you have any thoughts about that issue, if it were to be proposed. So that was my question. As far as the MMA policy committee, we have been working on some of the issues that have been discussed in this meeting within the fiscal policy committee and I have been pressing with a little bit of success on getting some conversation going about the pilot, state pilot, because of UMass and the fact that the way it's calculated is so unreasonable and got a little bit of language asking that they state the ways and means committees support looking into that issue and reviewing that matter. The other thing that I have been working on very hard is the $30 increase for chapter 70. I probably spent more time on that during the past six months or even longer. It's been the entire last year of the committee talking about that issue because Student Opportunity Act well, it's very important act and that's fully support has had this effect because Student Opportunity Act names the $30 figure and the MMA's position is that it should be $100, not $30 and I think that, you know, I don't know if we want to, I just will plant the seed and I will respect the decision that's made by the superintendent and the school committee but there's any possibility to have a little bit of discussion about that tomorrow with the Fortown and what we've been doing at the MMA. I think it might be very helpful. So thank you. Doug. Yeah, just follow up on Andy's question about the sort of additional resource. So if, for example, we took a half a percent, you know, the region went to four and a half percent and Amherst Elementary went to three and a half percent those don't exactly work out to even dollars but I'm just saying, you know, so the totality is a 4% of shared across the two. If we do that now as part of the conversation essentially with the four towns tomorrow, we can make that into the assessment. There's two towns that are already at the guidelines. So just to, I should paint this picture for the broader audience that don't necessarily follow the regional agreement so much. We have an assessment method we've used over the last couple of years that has some guardrails that limit the maximum increase or decrease for anyone town to 4%. And so two of the four communities are at that. So if we were like, let's say, the increase for Amherst assessment was able to go to four and a half percent. Nothing precludes that. And the only town that would be looking at a number that's different than what we talked about a couple of months ago would be Shootsbury. And I haven't run the numbers to see what that is but they're under 2% right now. And so it would make their increase maybe two and a quarter or whatever. So it would fit, I think, but I think it'd be part of the conversation with the four towns tomorrow. If we were to use the 4% and then want to do an additional bit of funding for the regional schools separately later, sort of external to the assessment method, that would be more, and we did this, I think, during the middle of the pandemic, there was a small sort of bit of revenue that was available in like October and it was essentially a gift to the schools. So it would be the other option to do it that way. And then we added that to the base for the following year's calculation of assessment. Okay. Paul? Yeah, so I just think for the purposes of this meeting, we've conveyed the information that, you know, what we went to convey about the 4%, how the schools look at it, that's really not an topic for this conversation, this meeting, it's not on the agenda really. And so I think that can be talked about tomorrow. But for this group, who's in this room right now, what we went to convey was the updated projections and get sort of a nodding approval that were in line with what the town council's financial policies say. We just divide it up equally and haven't heard anything in opposition to that. So I don't know if there's anything else we need to do other than listen to public comment. Okay. Any other comments from people here within this group before we could move to public comment? Okay. Then the floor is open for public comment. If you were in the audience and you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. I see one hand. Are there any other people who would like to make public comment at this time? Okay. Athena, I'm going to ask you to just allow a Madalina Copey to speak without bringing into the room. And do you want to say the guidelines for public comment? Yes. Public comment is something that we include in most of our meetings for the town council. We are going to limit you to three minutes and we want to make sure that you understand that we will not respond to any direct questions, although we certainly are glad to listen to them and you may find that we address them in some future time. Please go ahead, Madalina. I'm sorry, Lynn. Can you also add that the comment right now is for matters within the jurisdiction of the committee? Thank you. Thank you. Comments are for the matters within this jurisdiction of the budget coordinating group. Hi, I'm Madalina Copey and I've never done this before. I'm one of a growing group of parents who are worried about the cuts being proposed for the elementary school that the school committee is planning to make in order to balance its budget. We're particularly concerned about cuts to the special education program and to the instrumental education program. I'm not a representative of this group. I'm just the one who decided to write to the town councilor was told to attend this meeting. So here I am. And the cuts to the elementary school programs represent about half of the budget cuts that the school committee is proposing to make to staff and special education and musical instruction are important to our children. And I'm here because I was wondering, well, what if we could get the school committee some more money from the town? So is that possible is what I'm asking? And then the school committee wouldn't have to make these hard cuts. We're all in the process of learning how everything works and that's why we're asking this question. Are there reserve funds that could be diverted to the schools to prevent staff, staff that work with children every day from being cut? If there are, then we would be supporting of them getting shifted over. And are there ways that the town council or your committee can put us in touch with other entities, perhaps the universities? We don't know that could get a little bit more money to our schools than we would work with you on that. And that's all I have to say. Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us and making public comment. I see no other hands for public comment. So unless there's other people in the group that is here for this meeting and have any final comments they would like to say, please raise your hand at this point and see none. I'm going to call the meeting of the budget coordinating group adjourned. Thank you.