 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 due 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 suspense the requirement. The open meeting law to have all meetings and 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 asset 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 T Bradley at town.arlington.ma.us.com. For this meeting the Arlington 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 in that attendees are participating by video conference accordingly please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and 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. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude the remarks I will go down the line of members inviting each to provide any comment questions or motions please hold your name. Further please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are 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 with that, I think we'll just jump right to the town manager. Sandy, take it from here. Thank you very much. Christine and members of the committee members the public watching. I welcome this opportunity to present the FY 24 town managers budget. I am going to share a PowerPoint with you. If that's all right so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Okay. See. Here we go. Okay. And if I just adjust this. So I'm going to go along here. I cannot see you. As I'm doing this PowerPoint so if there are questions as we go along. Christine or Tara or somebody if you could just let me know and I will pause to take questions. I have an agenda here. What I was planning to do is go through the operating budget first for the general fund. Talk a little bit about the long range plan. It's what some of the major changes are in the managers budget, minor changes. Talk a little bit about FTEs. I'll say a few words about the enterprise fund operating budgets. I'll say a few words about the capital budget because you're going to get a presentation from the capital planning committee on that. And then I have a few sort of ongoing issues and just a little bit of the structure of the budget, which when I get into that part, Christine, if I don't know if you guys and your new members have gone through the structure of the manager's budget. If so, then I don't need to do that part. Otherwise, I'm happy to. Why don't you go ahead and do that. Okay. So, I, I teach a course at UMass on budgeting. And one of the first things I do is I bring in three different budgets. Students and I asked them, which one is the town of Arlington budget? A little bit of a trick question. The one that we are going to talk about tonight is this yellow book. It's commonly referred to as the manager's budget. And it really kicks things off. Later in March, there will be a financial plan, which is a big, thick book. I won't show. Hand it to you now, but it's on the town website. It's got lots of pictures. It's got graphs. It's got descriptions of the department's missions. Their goals for the coming year, their accomplishments from the past year. And then, just other statistics about performance measurements. And I think it's a good way for the public and for the finance committee generally to get some behind the scenes knowledge about what the departments do. And then finally, there's the finance committee report. That is the budget that is presented to town meeting. And once that's voted on that is the official budget of the town of Arlington. The manager's budget. It's the first crack we have at putting together a budget for FY 24. The first thing I want to do is talk about how that relates to what's known as the long range plan. Arlington has been a leader across the state in putting out a long range plan. It's been doing so for many years where we look at the town's finances for the current year, the proposed budget, which is FY 24, and then four years after that. This is a snapshot of the long range plan. It matches the numbers that are in your. In the manager's budget. And it is already out of date. So, but I will explain a little bit about that. I will just say, quite generally, the budget is divided into a revenue section. The budget list aid from the state. This particular document still says school construction aid because it's taken from an all spreadsheet. But this $5 million each year is money from ARPA from the federal government for COVID relief that we're able to use his revenue for FY 23 and 24. We have local receipts which come from primarily motor vehicle excise tax, but also the fees. And fines that we charge the public free cash. Each year after we've certified our free cash and have the state. Actually certify it for us and say that we have the right number we use half of that as a revenue source. We take money from our overlay surplus. I will be happy to explain what that is if people have questions. But I would just say that is a small source, the biggest source. 75% or more of the town's budget comes from property taxes. And that is governed by prop two and a half grows two and a half percent per year, plus any growth we have from things that we haven't passed in the past, a new building or new office equipment and so forth. And then the thing that really makes Arlington different, or has been a leader in the state is we created this override stabilization fund where from time to time. After we have an override, we start to put money into that fund for a couple of years. And it sort of levels out, we take money out of it until we run out of that fund. And then we need another override. And this year we're planning to use about $3.8 million. The rest of what is on the, this sheet is the general fund. The town also has five enterprise funds, but the general fund is what people usually think of as the town budget. It contains, first of all, spending for the school department. The school department budget is made up of general education costs, which rise. We have 3.5% per year plus an adjustment this year for changes in enrollment. We have about 108 new students expected this year. And so that would mean an increase of about $964,000 in the school's budget because of that. That would increase the special education budget by 7% per year. For the last couple of years, we've given the school department some extra money, one time money for COVID for FY 23 was $970,000 for FY 24 we're proposing 600,000 will then phase down the year after that to 300,000. The reason the school budget overall is going up 5.3%. We have Minuteman, which is broken out into two different sections. Their operating budget, which has taken a very big increase, which I'll, well, let me just talk about that. We don't have a final budget for Minuteman yet. I think that's what they've given us preliminarily. That large increase is due to two things. One is that Arlington has by far the biggest share of Minuteman students. And there's been some increases in our share because more and more Arlington students are going to Minuteman. And also the basic Minuteman budget is going up. Their operating budget is going up a little over 5% exclusive of capital. So that and various other factors mean right now they have a large increase, excuse me, on the table. The total increase for Minuteman is about 12.5% when you factor in what we have to pay them for operating and we have to pay them for capital. Now I'm going to talk about the town budget. The town budget is broken down into personnel, our other expenses, and then we have offsets. And I would like to thank Al Tosti, because this is the first year that I put the offsets as a negative number. So they show up here like this. It means that we have a town budget net of offsets of $41 million. The offsets are the places that we can charge general fund activity, and we can burst the general fund for activity and other funds such as the enterprise fund. So for example, when the town comptroller does work for the water and sewer department or the town treasurer does work with the treasurer's office does a lot of work because they produce the bills for the water and sewer department. The water and sewer department could go out into the market and buy those services, but instead they buy those services from the general fund from the town, and that and various other funds all add up to the offsets. I'm going to just, did somebody have a question? The next thing I just want to mention that these next things briefly we have the capital budget, which you'll hear more on from the capital planning committee that makes up about 5% of the budget every year. Then we have pensions which are an assessment from the retirement board. We have a preliminary insurance estimate we assumed and overall 5% increase in the rates. And then there are various plans that people can take. And depending on which plans they elect to take that determines our final costs. So overall right now the total increases about 4% because our employees tend to take some of the less expensive plans. But this number will not become a final number until about March 1 when the state group insurance commission from whom we get our insurance that gives us their rates. The state give us with state aid and the state take it away with state assessments. This is mostly the assessment that we pay for the MBTA. We set aside some money every year in overlay in case we have to give people abatements on their property taxes. We set aside a reserve fund, which is about 1% of the budget. We set aside $100,000 every year so the law department can go and do last minute settlements without having to come to town meeting. If they don't have those settlements then as you can see in 23 we get rid of that. And then there are a number of warrant articles that are here. So I have a $206 million general fund budget. It's the first year the town's budget has been over $200 million. We are in balance this nice little zero here. In the future, however, right now for FY 25. We are projecting a $2.6 million deficit. And then in years thereafter, it gets quite a bit bigger because by FY 25. When we use the last $12 million of our override stabilization fund. That fund will be empty. So, let me just stop for a second. I've thrown a lot of numbers at you. Let me ask if people have any questions about the things I've said so far. Any questions from anyone. Because it looked like it. Oh, there are two questions. I think the first one was from Charlie. Thank you. Mr. Towne manager. How what happened with when you presented those three plans to your students. You never finished that story. There is no one right answer. And so there was a long discussion about. Budget documents and budget process. I start my students off by asking them how many kinds of numbers are there. And the answer to that is there are two kinds. There are real numbers and there are budget numbers. But when you get into it, there are actually many, many variations of. The numbers and budget numbers. So. At the end of the day, Charlie, the real final budget for the town is the. Finance committee report as voted on by 10. Anything else, Charlie. Thank you. Thank you. Grant. Yes. Thank you for seeing. Thank you, Sandy. Just wanted to verify, Sandy, you said the insurance number. You'll be getting that on. March 1st. Or thereabouts. Yeah. The GIC comes out with its race sometime in. In February and we'll try to wrap. Then incorporate those numbers and have a number I'm guessing around March 1st. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sandy, just for the sake of the new people, I was wondering if you can elaborate a little bit more on the growth factor, how that's calculated and how it rolls over and such. For the students, you mean the student growth factor. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. So let me just go back to that slide. You cannot see it on this slide. But in the manager's budget book, if you look. In fact, I might. Have. Another version I can share here. This is a, this is a live version of the. Long range plan. It has since been updated. So the numbers are slightly different. And it's not in balance at this point because we just made some tweaks to it. But what I want to. So pay no attention to these numbers here. I would instead ask you. To pay attention to our enrollment numbers down here. Can people see that or somebody speak up if you cannot see those numbers. So. Each year we. Do a calculation of. What enrollment growth has been from year to year. And we do that based on the census that the state takes. Of Arlington's and other school districts populations October 1st every year. And then what we do is. We credit the school budget. With a number of new students. In this case, 108. I have a. Figure that the state puts out every year. For the most recent year, the state has. For Arlington's. Spending per student in schools. They do this for all 351. Cities and towns across the state. We have that figure. The last figure we have from them showed. We have a number of new students. We then multiply that by 50%. Because the idea is that you have new students. You're going to have some new expenses such as maybe some new teachers or maybe new. Books or. Computers or so forth. On the other hand. Every new student doesn't mean you need a new superintendent or new principal for every school. So that number, this 108 times these figures down here. Then becomes the growth factor. That goes into the school budget here. And then the next year, that growth factor then. Goes. Into. Goes into the. The base budget for FY. The following fiscal year. And it's multiplied. With a previous number by three and a half percent to get you to a new number. And. Years where there's been enrollment decrease. In FY 23, we actually reduced the school budget. By about $1.4 million because of the post COVID. Enrollment decreases. We do a new projection every year of enrollment. We take those numbers from the school department. To the state. To the state. Again, those are the numbers that they have to report to the state. So right now we are projecting. An increase this year and increase next year. And then some projected decreases in the following years. The other thing that I think is very important to talk about with those numbers is that. The state gives us. An increase in our students. Chapter 70. Based on our enrollment. So. The years that we have. Rising enrollment. The years that we get more state aid. Otherwise we just get a flat. Usually it's like $50 per student. State aid for every student we have. So that's what we're going to do. So before I get into that, let me just stop and ask Alan. If you thought that was the adequate explanation or people had other questions about it. That was excellent Sandy. And also. The enrollment does not include students or accepted to met a man. Thank you. Thank you. I see a couple of hands up. Does anyone. Toe for Alan. Charlie, do you have questions on. I have a separate question. Mines on the growth. Okay. Is the 108. An actual number or a projection. That's a good question. That is the actual number from this past October. And the numbers for the. Years in the future or projections. That's a good question. That is the actual number from this past October. That is the actual number from this past October. That is the actual number from this past October. Years in the future or projections. Okay. Have we returned. To the enrollment. Before the pandemic. No, we are still short of that, but we sort of reset everything last year when we cut the budget by that 1.4 million dollars. So. Should we be giving an increase. When we've already funded at pre-pandemic levels. Well, that was that last year's. Decrease of 1.4 to get us back. To. Taking consideration of funding that they're. What their enrollment is. So. I think. We do a year to year. We do a year to year. We do a year to year. We do a year to year. And the analysis of what their enrollment is. Based on. It's comparison from the previous year. So I think the fact that we reduced their budget. Sort of reset them down to a new bottom. And now we're going back up again. I will say in FY 22. We probably gave them more money than the formula. Merited. To reduce their budget that year. But again, I think we caught up with that for the FY 23, the current year budget. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, madam chairman. Sandy, I think you may have just answered this question, but let me. So that 1.3 million. That was reduced last year. That actually lowered the base going into the calculation for this year. Is that correct? That is correct. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My question is on the slide that's up here right now. The ARPA funds. So those temporary positions. Yes. Those are various positions we've funded, but for ARPA. And with the knowledge that when the ARPA funds. Disappear. Those funds, those positions are going to disappear. And they're just sort of there for now. You know, it may be that a year and a half from now or two years from now, when the ARPA funds disappear, the departments may make an argument and ask for those positions to remain in the budget. And we'll have to have a conversation about whether we actually have the money to be able to pay for it. But right now. And I've set ever since we got the ARPA funds, the understanding is it close positions there only as long as we have our funds. Okay. Thank you. All right. So there, I just want to give some kind of 50 foot. 50,000 foot overview of the budget. The town budget this year on that paper that I just showed you is going up 3.5%. So, you know, most years under the long-range plan, the maximum that the town budget can go up is 3.25%. However, we had something sort of odd happen in the last year or so. With our offsets. One of the things that offsets the town budget is our funds are the funds that are used to pay for the service at two levels, a basic and advanced level. The town firefighters operate the basic ambulances. We contract out with Armstrong ambulance to do the advanced ambulances. In the past. In the past, we had a lot of insurance companies that provided insurance. The people who were transported by ambulance. We're split about 50, 50 between. The general fund where most of our, and all those dollars I showed you a few minutes ago go. And a ambulance revolving fund. And out of that ambulance revolving fund. And we got to keep about 40% of that, that money. And frankly, overall those funds. It was slightly more money going to the general fund, but the ambulance revolving fund had a lot of money coming into it. They're in COVID for a variety of reasons. Armstrong and the fire department changed how the ambulance services are delivered. And how the payments are delivered. So that now almost all the ambulance revenue. Goes into the general fund. Means there's not enough fun in the ambulance revolving fund. To adequately fund the offsets that we always had. We always had a little over $200,000. Essentially paying for two firefighters out of the ambulance revolving fund. We don't have enough money to do that now. So what I did is I reduced the offset from the ambulance revolving fund to $100,000. And I then used more general fund money. To pay. On the fire department. It means that it looks like the town's budget is going up. By 3.5 instead of three and a quarter percent. It's really only because of an accounting change for where this money is coming. There's much more coming money coming as the general fund. So overall, I don't think the general funds being hurt. But this is an exception to the town budget on a one year only basis. To account for this accounting. Change. And if you're all still awake after I explained all that. I give you my congratulations. Thank you. School budget, as I said before, it's going up 5.3%. Capital budget is still going to be 5% of the total. Our pension assessment, we know is 5.7%. And we know. That we're spending $357,000. Of our funds for positions. What we don't know or what is still uncertain. Is. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. Minuteman assessment is an almost million dollar increase overall 12.5%. We need to see a final budget from Minuteman. We do have a representative. On the school committee. I also talked to a Minuteman superintendent from time to time. That. We know that. The overall. Weighted average. Rate increase for the. Group insurance commission this year is 6.8%. So that's higher than the 5% that we have estimated. But again, until we see. Those final rates. We know the overall weighted rate, but we do not know the individual plan rates at this point. We know the overall weighted rate. We know the overall weighted rate. We do not know the individual plan rates at this point. So until we see those rates. We won't know our insurance. State aid. In the manager's budget is estimated to go up. 2.94%. I'm going to talk a little bit about that more in a second. But that we won't know for sure until the governor releases those numbers later this month. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a second. She has to release them by March 1st. State assessments. Similar thing. We won't know those final assessments until they come out. They're not likely to change a lot. And our offsets are up only. They usually go up at the same rate. The budget goes up, but they're up a smaller amount this year. Again, because of largely because of that change and how we take money from. The budget. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. Otherwise. Carolyn. Yeah. So on the ARPA funds. My concern is that those will end. Either just before or just after we've decided. How much of an override we're going to do. So is there. And I'm saying that only because I have no idea when these will take that into consideration. If we have no idea which. Positions departments will want to keep. And which ones. They're willing to give up. And so I just want to make sure that we consider that when we're looking at override numbers. That's it. Sure. Sure. Yeah. And I would say again. We keep. We know who all the ARPA people are. And that's what we're going to do. And that's what we're going to do. And in fact. We to some extent show that in the budget, which I'll get to in a minute. And it is the expectations that Adam chaplain put out. And I've been putting out. As our roles as time manager, the department should not consider these. Employees to be. Baked into the budget. You can see those positions on page five of the town manager's position. Yes. Thank you, Christine. So Sandy, first of all, thank you for that explanation of the. What's happening with the ambulance offset fund. John Griffin and I actually met with. Chief Kelly this afternoon. Over the budget. And so this is now the third iteration we've had. And it's finally sunk in. I hope. So I just want to affirm that sort of the net of that change is going to happen. I think it's going to happen. I think it's going to happen eventually. To. Sort of compensate the fire department, if you will. From the general fund, what they're not now getting from the ambulance fund. Is that. That is correct. What's happening. That is correct. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Now. As I mentioned. The numbers on the. Long range plan are numbers that are snapshot in time. And they have. And will continue to change. They've already changed in real life. In one way. And that is that. Yesterday, the state announced its projection for its. Revenue increase for FY 24. There's a consensus revenue hearing that's held where. The governor and the house and the Senate. Bring in a number of experts and as well as state officials to talk about revenue projections. And then they have a joint. Revenue assumption for the state's revenue for the coming year. Which is a very actually good and productive way for them to all agree on a number. As opposed to the old days where they all. The state's revenue is going to grow. So that's the good part. The bad part is there. Estimate is that state revenue is going to grow by only 1.6% in FY 24. That means one of the components, one of the large components of our state aid, which is called unrestricted general government aid. And we get about. Well, that's a lot of money. I had originally estimated that that was going to go up 3%. It is now going up only 1.6%. So. That's a loss for us for about $125,000. So we'll have to adjust the long range plan and the budget by that amount down the road. The other thing. However, is that there are. The state aid for education. So. In doing various long range plans, I have a number of different what if scenarios that I've produced for the long range planning committee and for my own consideration. And I did one scenario where what would have to happen. So that by FY 25. If revenue were to increase enough. How much would that have to increase in what areas. So that we would have no override. Need for FY 25. So just to be clear. The previous long range plan I showed you showed a $2.6 million deficit. In FY 25. We are now talking about it presented to you the FY 24 budget. It has been a common. The currents in the town. That we have sometimes had an override. In other words, in other words, basically a year before we absolutely need it. In other words, instead of having an override. Just to affect the FY 25 budget. If there was a deficit in 25. We would have it in 24. So have it this coming June, for example. Have the money start to flow into our coffers. Build up the override stabilization fund. If you don't have the money start to flow into our coffers. It has a number of advantages. One, you can have a smaller override that way. You don't wait until you have to have. An override that's in the. Teens, which would be a very big override. It means that you don't have to put out essentially two budgets. If we waited till 25. Under the old scenario. I would. I would have to put out a budget that shows. Assuming an override passed and assuming an override didn't pass. And that. It gets a lot of people nervous, including a lot of our town employees. Some of whom then decide to go work someplace else. So we try to avoid that. One of the things I did is I said, what if we look at all the assumptions in the budget. And decided to tweak some things. So that we could have no override. Necessary for FY 25. And I did that. With three variables. I said, if. New growth, which is the amount of taxation we have on. New buildings in town. Or somebody's turned down a house and built a new one. Or. No, if you've had a complete renovation of your, of your house. We generally have estimated. About $750,000 for new growth for the coming year. And then in the long range plan, we then. Ratched that down to 700 and then 650 and 600 in the out years. So if on the other hand. We had a million dollars of new growth in FY 24. We had a million dollars of new growth in FY 24. Which is frankly fairly consistent with the amount of new growth. We've been getting over the last few years. And if our state aid, instead of going up the 2.9%. That I showed you a 2.8%. I showed you a minute ago. If it went up 7%. In FY 24 and 5%. In FY 25. We could avoid that override. So where did I get those numbers? I don't know. There's about a million $125,000 worth of state aid. Which is consistent with the amount of state aid we got. In FY 23. And again, as I was saying before. When we have rising enrollment. We get more state aid than other cities and towns do. And then we would otherwise get. We didn't have rising enrollment. We might get. Generally about $250,000 in state aid. It varies from year to year, but that's a good, good guesstimate. With enrollment increases. I think it is. Not unreasonable to expect we could get that $1.2 million. Arlington has had the second largest fastest growing enrollment in the state over the last 10 years. Prior to COVID, the COVID numbers have screwed everything up a little bit, but in general, we have a very fast growing school enrollment. And for many of you, you may know, that's. Fairly exceptional. They're only a handful of cities and towns, mostly right around Boston that have rising school enrollment. The rest of the state has flat or declining. And that's what we're trying to do. And that's what we're trying to do. I think that 7.1% is reasonable. Given that our enrollment growth this year is bigger than the previous year. And that 5% would be reasonable for next year. Given that we also are projecting enrollment growth there. If those three things, just those three things come into play. We would not have to have an override this coming spring. But that's what we're trying to do. And we would have to have this again, that's what we're trying to do. And we're going to get that out until, until we get those final health insurance numbers to see what our costs are, but that's where we stand now. So, and I presented this to the long range planning committee. And we'll update them when we get more numbers. Are there any questions about this from anybody? Jennifer questions. basically said, we want to put more money into education. We also know that the millionaires tax passed and there's sort of potentially more money in education. So a couple of questions. One is, has the state sort of fully funded the Student Opportunities Act? Because I know the timeline had changed a little bit. And then two, would we get money from the millionaires tax this year or is that sort of the next year? So in the first question, the original schedule for the state to fully fund the billion-some-odd dollars that they were putting into education statewide was over a seven-year period. We're now in, we've already had two years of that. So, you know, we're in year seven, not year six, we're going to year five. And it's our expectation that they will continue to be able to fund their commitment to that on a sort of steady state level. The first two years, so that's a quick answer. They are funding it and they will continue to fund it over the next few years. How they are funding it and how the formulas that they're using to more accurately reflect the costs that we have for educating students, in particular, things like the costs of health insurance or the costs of providing education to students for whom English is not their first language or low-income students. There are a couple of other factors all involved in this new Student Opportunity Act formula. How that gets played out over the seven years is going to affect sometimes differently than others. And it is also subject to the appropriation decisions by the legislature year to year. So there's no ironclad rule about how this is going to happen, but I do expect we will get more money. And as to the millionaires tax, the state is estimating it could get as much as about $1.4 billion from that. They will not start collecting that money until this year, that it went into effect January 1st, but you have to have already earned a million dollars before you're hit with the tax. So Jason Tatum, let's say from the Celtics, it earns well over a million dollars a year. I don't know if by February 1st, he's already earned a million, but it won't be until that point that he's gonna get taxed. Whereas somebody on the Red Sox, I don't know when they're paid, if they wait until spring training or whatever. But those people aren't gonna start paying until they hit their million. So all of which is to say, they're collecting the money this year and they will put it into play starting in the FY25 budget. They have also not said in any way how they're gonna distribute that money. There are no estimates or figures or whatever out there. So it's a big unknown. Okay. Thanks. John? Yeah, hi. What's driving the jump in the Stabilization Fund use? It looks like it jumped from 2.9 million and 24 to 13.7 and 25. So yes. So part of it is that we will have lost $5 million of ARPA money that we had been using. So that right off the bat goes away. Second, we have a structural deficit in town by which I mean that our expenses outpace our revenue on an annual basis by between $3 and $4 million a year. And that is very much dependent on our school enrollment because school kids are very poor. So we will have run out of our Override Stabilization Fund by 25 and use up the last of it. And in this last couple of years we had, again, those ARPA money is $5 million each year. And let me just say one more thing about the ARPA money. We don't have a lot of money. We don't have a lot of money. We don't have a lot of money. We don't like generally using one-time money, the operating budget, that's a bad budgeting practice. We were willing to do it because we knew that our local receipts, particularly our motor for vehicle excise tax, our hotel tax, our motel tax and some other things dipped a lot during COVID. And our expectation is that those things will have come back to their previous levels by the time we stop using ARPA funds. So I just wanted to add that little bit of context. Thank you. Is it, I hope that answers your question. Yeah, yeah, that was good, good summary. Tofer. Yeah, thank you. I just put a couple of things together. So I'm gonna ask you about the school enrollment. You had mentioned earlier there'd been a jump of 108 students, I believe, this year. But then Alan said something about this doesn't include Minuteman. But if we're sending more and more students to Minuteman, I mean, is the true growth of our student population actually more? Yes, but that, and we get hit with that. Yes, in terms of dollars in the Minuteman assessment, but yeah, the total number of kids who live in Arlington who go either to Arlington schools or Minuteman has been increasing by more than 108. Okay, yeah, now I realize it's not part of the growth factor, but just in terms of our total school enrollment. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I have a question, Sandy. I understand we're in year two of our three year solid waste contract. Yes. What are the assumptions going forward being made as to those costs? Well, we know we have a 2% inflation rate baked into the contract, which is a pretty good deal actually. So when we signed this three year contract, we had to bump up that one year. I think I forget what the total amount was, I think it was six or 7%. And then we have 2% increases after that. And then we will have to negotiate a new contract there are, I will just say, then this sort of goes to kind of big issues looking down the road. I think one of the things we're gonna have to decide whether we need to do is to buy toters for everybody and require toters. People just to use that toter only for their trash. And with a toter, if you have them be the uniform size and shape, the trash truck can just use a mechanical arm and pick up the trash. That should benefit us in our next contract renewal. And in the capital plan there is a provision for us to be able to do that. So, but I think that's something that you and the next manager will have to keep their eyes on or talk to DPW about, because that's gonna be a big decision. Annie? So is the current contract the contract where we start paying for recycling or will that be the next one, Sandy? We do not pay for recycling now. So depending on what the next contract looks like, it could be that we could be paying for recycling in the future, but it depends on what we negotiate. It's not Gary. My understanding was that this was probably coming because the market for recycling is not great. And because you've got to have really clean recycling for it to have any value. So... Yeah, I think that's a good question. The recycling market certainly did go way down for a while. It has picked up some because people are using so many cardboard boxes. It's just one of those stupid wasteful things that our society has entered into during COVID. But, you know, and so who knows where it will go? Yeah. Okay, thanks. All right. I'm going to keep going. Yes. This is just the sheet that shows what different overrides would look like under the different scenarios, one of the $2.6 million deficit. If we had an override in June 23 or June 24, if the override were to last from two to five years and it would therefore, if we just had a two-year override under the scenario that's in the manager's budget, it would only need to be $1.4 million. It'd be 1% of the levy and the average impact on a single family home would be $102. Whereas if we waited until a year from now to have that override would have to be, and last five years would have to be a $19 million override or $1,300 an 87, $1,387 override. And I will let you make your own judgment as to whatever kind of override we have, how likely one of, you know, this size versus this size is to pass and what the voters are likely to support, which at the end of the day is the key question that you have to ask when you put an override about. I present these scenarios, a long range planning committee quite often, you know, every time we change the numbers, I do a new set of these things, but these are the ranges that we're looking at. And by the way, I will send this to Tara and so that she can share these numbers with you. All right, I wanna talk very briefly about the enterprise funds. Our water and sewer fund right now is looking at like a 3.89% increase, a lot lower than we've had in the last few years because we have now phased out that the tax subsidy, sometimes known as the MWRA debt exclusion subsidy, that's no longer affecting the budget. So the increase in water and sewer right now looks to be a lot more than it has been in previous years. We are using some of the money that is in the water and sewer, the version of free cash, the retained earnings, to pay the oncoming debt for building the new DPW building. So that is not yet reflected in a rate increase or a budget increase. And I think we will try to continue to use those retained earnings for a few years just so we don't have to increase the rates too much. Recreation fund is going up almost 17%. This is mostly because coming out of COVID, Connolly thinks that we have the opportunity to increase the number of programs that we have. And so it's just kind of people getting out there and doing more stuff. That's a similar thing with the WRENC transportation. We decreased that budget. That's mostly because this is a fairly small budget. It provides the vans that drive seniors to the community center. There was one employee who does a lot of the coordination of that work and who is paid for out of CDBG. We had listed her in the enterprise fund last year for the first time ever for more transparency. I think instead of creating transparency, creating confusion, so we took her out. And that's really the reason that budget's going down. And the AYCC, which provides mental health service counseling to youth here in Arlington, is going up 11%. Again, that is because they see an increased need for those services. They, as those services go up again, those are paid for mostly by the insurance that those children have. And so they think they can cover that. That's really the overview I was going to give the enterprise funds. And unless there are any other questions, I'm going to keep moving on. I want to keep moving on and we'll get everyone's questions at the end. Okay. So I have just a couple of more slides. I just thought, Christine, I would talk a little bit about what a budget book looks like. There are two main sorts of pages in the budget book that you're going to look at. The line items and the personnel pages. This is the personnel page from the Human Resources Department. There are four employees here, one of whom, Ms. Shaw works part-time. So she's a 0.8 full-time equivalent. If you work full-time here, you're a one full-time equivalent. If you work part-time, you're some fraction. This is the union or non-union area. None of these people is in the union, but the department heads management and then these two are classified as different non-union pay scales. We show you their grade. We show you their step. Most of these people are the same step all year. This part-time person happens to have a step in January, so we show you the beginning and ending step. Karen Molloy, the department head. Once department heads reach the middle of the pay scale there, they are off of steps and they get an annual increase based on what the town manager decides their increase is. And so they're off the step system, so that's why you won't see steps for a lot of department heads. We show you the minimum and maximum range, what was in the budget book from the previous year. This is sometimes confusing when there are collective bargaining settlements because what's in the budget book does not reflect those collective bargaining settlements. Those collective bargaining settlements are voted separately in town meaning. So you may see a difference between what was in the budget book and what somebody was actually paid, but we tried to be consistent with the budget book, in other words, the finance committee report and show those numbers there. This is what somebody's new pay is. It's made up of their base pay, whatever step they have. All department heads got a $2,000 step if they were eligible for a step this year. And then longevity is, for most employees, part of their contract. If they're in a union, otherwise it's based on formulas. We have offsets. In this case, we are showing that about $18,000 of what goes into the HR department's work is work that is related to water and sewer. The water and sewer department is paying. So at the end of the day, for salaries, there's $320,000 of taxation that is being appropriated at town meeting. The other part I just wanted to show are the line items. When town meeting votes a budget, it votes a bottom line budget that is the total amount, essentially down here, this 403,000 of total spendable funds of which 384 are made up of tax dollars or other local fees. We show you the line item. I hold department heads accountable for their bottom line. So I do allow them if they, let's say, if they had a vacancy in a department and didn't spend all their salary money, but they needed more office supplies, as long as they stay within their bottom line, I allow them to do that. And that doesn't happen all that often, but that's just the level of control. We show you the FY23 budget, but was voted at town meeting. What we're proposing for the next year, the change between those two years on a dollar and percentage basis. And then we show actual amounts spent in each of these areas for the previous years. And one of the things that's been a little confusing sometimes with the finance committee is what those numbers actually mean for past spending. For most departments, it's not a big deal. And for salaries and wages, it's not a big deal. But for, because most departments just spend what they were appropriated and they spend that in a year and they're done. So it could be, I'm gonna use this as an example, training. We have a $50,000 budget for training in HR. They spend 47 one year, 34 the next. They're using just that $50,000. There are some departments and public works is probably the biggest example of this. Where at the end of one year, particularly because their build season and their work season starts in one fiscal year in June and ends in the next fiscal year, they often carry money over from one year to the next in their actual spending as is shown in other reports. And last year, Julie Wayman, our budget director produced a report for the finance committee showing the actual spending, total amount of dollars spent, including from previous years. This book historically has only shown what's spent from the previous year's budget in that year. So at some point, Julie will forward that to you. And I just wanted to point that out because it can be kind of sort of confusing from time to time, oops. So with that, I'm gonna stop the presentation. I am just gonna talk about a couple of things related to the budget and related to finances. One, as I mentioned, my financial plan comes out in March. You can review that then. Related to the budget, as I mentioned before, Julie Wayman, who many of you know is our budget director. We have for this past year, not had a deputy town manager that had been my position before as promoted to town manager. We have hired a new deputy town manager who will be the finance director and who will oversee the budget process. His name is Alex McGee. He is the finance director for the town of Hamilton now. He had previously worked for many years in the city of Lexington. So he's got experience in both smaller and larger budgets than ours. He also has collective bargaining experience. He starts March 6th and I look forward to introducing him to you. The final thing I just wanna say is ongoing issues. I don't have too many of them, but I just wanna mention collective bargaining. We have collective bargaining agreements in place through FY24 with all our unions except our two police unions. The patrolmen's union or patrol officers union is in arbitration with us. That will take place sometime in May. So really not in time for this town meeting. Depending on when there is a resolution to that, town meeting will have to go back and fund that contract. It is my duty if there is an arbitration to present the arbitration award and ask for your support and town meeting support for it. It is your duty as the finance committee to make your own judgment. And that's all I'm gonna say about that. I think you can make your own judgments. Okay? The other thing I would say, in that regard, I just mentioned that because these arbitrations, the unions that go to them, and it's been policed over the last few years, asked for some really outrageous amounts of money. And so you do have to keep your eye on it. The other thing that I think is good, and one of the things that is sort of on the table and collective bargaining is whether we stay in civil service. I don't think that's gonna come to a head while I am still manager, but you never know. I'm manager until this July and then I retire. I think this is gonna be a huge issue and I mention it to the finance committee because to get out of civil service, we may have to give our public safety unions some money to do that. Not too much money, I think, because they wanna get out of civil service too, but they're also asking for huge amounts of money to do so. We are gonna have a very hard time maintaining our ability to hire and retain police officers if we stay in civil service. So I mentioned that as a big issue because it may come up in the future and I just wanted to give you my perspective on it. With that, I'm gonna stop talking and be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Sandy. I don't know who's hand up was first, but I'll start with Alan Jones. Thank you. I think my hand went up last, it was only fast. Just a comment about the actual FY23 in the budget book, and this is only because I ran into this today. It isn't always 100% accurate compared to what the finance committee voted. So if there's anything that looks a little funny, please go back to last year's FINCOM report where it's the actual number. This isn't the FINCOM budget, Sandy. We moved 550 from the recording secretary to the executive director and it didn't work. A broader question, we hear on the news all the time about inflation and interest rates. We probably don't buy many eggs in town, but was that baked into this budget at all? Projections for inflation and interest rates, increasing interest rates? Basically, no, because the one area that really has the most impact on us in terms of inflation is our energy contracts, our electricity, our gas and gasoline. We have long-term contracts for those things and so we've not been affected by the inflation in electricity and natural gas. Gasoline, to some extent, yes, but as you know, that fluctuates. And also, frankly, this last year, because DPW was under construction, we were paying high rates for gasoline as it was because we didn't have a fueling station and those rates are gonna come down once we have the fueling station. We basically level fund all of our expenses for the departments. They are allowed to ask for specific increases and there are a handful of increases that we gave, like $500 here for office supplies or something, but very little. We also, I just wanna mention, did not add any new positions in town. I added, I think, 10 hours for one librarian and a couple and some hours for somebody in the police department, but other than that, we did not add any new staff. And in our collective bargaining, our position has been we have given people increases all through the COVID period, even when other towns didn't. So we're not giving them big inflation increases now because we've already kept pace. So. Thank you. Josh, you have a question? Yes, yes, thank you. If you could clarify the override projections you had, it looked to me like in the original presentation, we went like from $2.9 million out of the stabilization fund for the last couple of years and then next year we had kind of hit a cliff and it's about $12 million or something like that. But then in your other slide, in terms of the override alternatives, you said if we could just kind of ratchet up and increase by $1.4 million for one year, then we wouldn't need an override next year. So that $1.4 would be like $2.8 over two years. What's the gap that I'm missing between the $2.8 million and the $12 million? So the $1.4 would just get us through FY24 and FY25. It essentially was enough to eliminate that $2.6 million deficit. And so it would be two years before we'd have to go out for another override. In other words, we'd made an override for the FY26 budget. And so the intervening deficit that was there, the $2.6 million can get wiped out by a $1.4 million override. In other words, you need a small override for a small deficit. And since we don't have a deficit in 24 and just in 25, that's how it works. Is that, does that make sense? I mean, if I thought it was in 25 that we were hitting the $12 million, is it, am I off by a year? You're off by a year. Okay, fine, all right, thank you. Yeah, so just because you mentioned the big rises in the various enterprise funds. Sandy, I just wanna remind everybody because four of those enterprise funds are my budgets to review, that enterprise funds are standalone, that none of those increases are gonna hit the general fund beyond a standard amount that we always move from the general fund to AYCC. And I think either the RINC or the REC gets a standard allocation from us because those funds can only spend what they earn or what they have in what's called retained earnings. They're sort of completely independent in the rest of the budget. There's no other to be any confusion about those being big places to make cuts to new funding, new spending or whatever that would help out with the override problem. That was a statement or a question. Just winking away there, Chris, as you go. Thank you, Chris. I guess I have three questions, Sandy, and or comments. First of all, on the enterprise funds, on page six of your manager's budget report, you show town personnel trends. And amazingly, and congratulations, the last four or five years, the number of personnel in the general budget only increased by 1.4%. On the other hand, in the enterprise funds, which generally speaking, I agree with Annie's comment, except that the town is the guarantor of the last resort of the enterprise fund. So if the revenues don't come in, but the expenses of the other town has to pony up the money. So the personnel in the last four or five years has increased by 34% in the enterprise funds. Why is that, why that big increase? That's the first question. Do you want to ask all your questions or take them? No, let's take one at a time, if you don't mind. Yeah, sure. So the overall increase is really the major driver of that is that we had to convert the counselors who work at AYCC from contractors to employees. And so we went from three employees in AYCC in FY21 and 22, we then went to eight in FY23 when we brought them on as employees. And then they added 2.34 FTEs at AYCC. Again, that is all related to... So one, there was a big jump. I think the biggest jump is because of that, but in that area, it is very much related to the number. The more counselors we have, counseling students or youth, the more insurance proceeds we can get. The other enterprise funds, Water and Sewer has not changed over the last one, two, three, four years. Recreation went up 0.8. Ed Burns went up 0.2. So that was one new employee between the two of them. And Counsel on Aging went down 0.8 for this last year. So it's really mostly happening in AYCC. Thank you. Does that mean that the... Oh, let me rephrase it. With that increase in the employees in the AYCC, does the Chargers, the insurance company cover pension and health insurance costs to the town? No, AYCC has never covered that. In fact, as Annie mentioned, we subsidized them $120,000 a year because they are such a breakeven proposition. They need a small subsidy from the general, direct subsidy from the general fund and they have never been large enough to cover the pension and health insurance. Neither does the Counsel on Aging Transportation, Water, Recreation and Ed Burns, however, do. Okay, thank you. So the other two questions that I have are related to the low-range plan. And the first one is that you've had a slide showing various override scenarios with different years of override, but that slide does not, for example, if we had an override that only lasted two years, that slide doesn't show that you have to have another override in a third year. That's correct. It's just an immediate decision. Yeah, it's not a, I'm not saying that the slide is disingenuous or anything, but it doesn't really capture the longer-term costs on the average, is what I'm trying to say, okay? The second question is on a, at your long-range planning committee meeting, I believe two meetings ago, maybe three meetings ago, you made a comment that the town was considering electrification of the energy systems in all the schools that have cost the $10 million apiece. And I haven't seen that anywhere. And I can't understand in the face of all of the, you know, the debt we're carrying in the various school buildings and the pressure on the capital plan, how we can be even contemplating that. So I think what I was trying to say is that we did a study of six schools to see what it would cost to electrify them. And the cost came out at about $10 million a school. We have not put that into the capital plan at this point. We have not proposed that. It's really just the result of a study. If we were to electrify those, that's what it would cost. Whether the town wants to go forward with that, I think you and others are gonna have to make that decision in the next few years. And I think, frankly, that, and in addition to some major work that's probably gonna have to happen at the Otteson Middle School, Otteson is certainly gonna require a debt exclusion, in my opinion. At some point, it may be that the town would want to do something similar in order to electrify or decide not to electrify and just keep investing in upgrading the HVAC components of those buildings. But that's not a decision that's been made today. Thank you. So we have a guest who had a question that's in the chat. So I figured I would, and it's a good question. So I'm gonna ask it. Well done. We've more comments. I'm gonna go back to it. When we are talking about the police arbitration and exiting civil service and that there will be a significant cost to that, have we considered that when looking at override projections? I would say the police union and there are two unions, the patrol officers and the ranking officers have asked for a significant cost. We have not agreed that we will pay a significant cost. So I just want to be clear about that. I do think we have to get out of civil service. And so at some point, the town is gonna have to come to grips with what to do about whether we're willing to pay something or we're just gonna force the issue and we can get out of civil service with a vote at town meeting. We don't have to have an agreement with the unions about that. But traditionally we have not made those changes, big changes like that without having the unions agreement. So I'm just setting the stage for a potential big issue down the road. I just wanted to flag. Okay. Thank you. Questions? Tosti. Okay, yes, thank you. I got three questions, hopefully short. Do you anticipate a water and sewer rate increase for next fiscal year, if so approximately what percent? Yes, I don't know. We'll have an increase. I think it's good idea to increase water and sewer rates every year and not wait as some communities have done and get themselves into trouble. It will match what we expect our costs to be. So I would not expect it to be much more than about a 3% increase, but I have not seen numbers yet from Mike Grottemacher and he will come to the select board in probably March to ask for that rate increase. Okay, secondly, what do you think the timing is on the arbitration with the police unions? We have an arbitration now scheduled for May 23rd. That will be when each side presents its case, then it is very typical that there are then written briefs filed. So it could be a few months after that before we actually get the decision. So we will probably not have to deal with that at this town meeting. That is correct. That is my best guess. The only thing would be if at some point we come, we could always, we could settle the contract tomorrow if both sides were willing to. And we are still trying to do that, but I wouldn't bet on it. Okay, and last, what's the status on body cameras? That is something that is in our negotiations. It is something that the town and the chief think are essential. And it is again, one of those things that like many things that come up in negotiations, if the town wants to change, the union wants money. And, you know, then we just have big arguments about that. Okay, thank you. Jennifer? A question and a comment. So just to keep on the police unions, I remember sort of similar conversations happening a few years ago when things were also in arbitration and just as a sort of history lesson for me, what happened with that? Did we ultimately accept what the arbitration agreement was or was there post negotiation on that? The last time we had negotiation arbitration with the police union, we basically won. So it was fine. Okay, so I remember some conversation about whether we should accept it or not. So if it comes out of arbitration and the finance committee is really unhappy with it, what happens? Like how do... So it has to go to town meeting to be approved and the finance committee would have to make a recommendation to town meeting on how to vote. Okay, and we strongly don't want it. Tamin can do what they want with that recommendation. Okay, then I just have a comment which is that I'm actually very impressed with our headcount budget. We've gone up 7% in the last 10 years in population. I know we're not increasing roads, but that does mean more garbage picked up and other things that happen. 25% of that are kids under people under the age of 17, but three fourths of it is not, right? So as young adults, it's a lot of people between 55 and 65. And so I'm actually really impressed that the town has been fairly conservative with their headcount given that increase. Yeah, thank you for your comment, thanks. Dean. Hi, so first apologies for being late. I had a conflict that I had to work through, but now I'm here. So, Cindy, my question, seriously, you can tell me to go watch the tape if it's already been answered, but I'm essentially gonna ask you the same question I asked you in the spring, because I think it's gonna be, I think I said in the spring, I'm gonna ask you the same question for like two straight years, and now we're gonna do it again, right? And so in the spring, what I said to you was, we're currently in a period of really high, we continue in a period of very high inflation, right? We had high inflation in 21, we had high inflation in 22. If you look at the consensus economic reports, I think the term they're transitioning to is sticky inflation, which means unless you're in, I think whether they say food services or something else, which were in the services business, you'll be fine, right? Which to me, when I step back, it creates what I view as the most perilous economic municipal environment since the inception of Prop 2 and a half, right? Like revenues are capped, like they're straight up capped, right? You can't pass costs on directly to consumers. There's not a lot of synergies you're getting through technologies. And so when we met, when we talked in June, I was like, you know, I'm happy I don't have your job because I think this is gonna really stink for you, right? And I think it's gonna be tough. And since that time on the municipal side, things have seemed to be quiet, but we've now hit the era of like significant labor unrest in public education, right? It started with, I think, like it was Maldon maybe that went on strike right out of the gate. And I was ready on Monday to talk about Melrose, but no, right? And so the natural question is, does that problem come to the general government side? Does that problem show up in Arlington? Like is there like a tsunami that's about to hit us in labor unrest and problems and employees whose costs are going up far greater than their wages? What's the deal? What's the path forward? So that's a very good question. We have had to look at what we pay people based on our ability to fill positions and retain people in those positions. And so one of the things that we did in this most recent round of collective bargaining is we set a flat cola pattern for all unions, one and a half, two, two. And every union got that same cola pattern. Different unions got different adjustments depending on variety of factors. The fire union, their goal was to stay at 72% of carpaville communities for the Arlington 12th. So we had to give them that cola pattern I talked about and then give them some other increases in their pay to get them up to closer to an 11% increase over three years. Similarly with Ask Me, the DPW workers and a lot of our clerical workers, again, we gave them the same cola, but then we gave them a market adjustment in their contracts of either a certain number of cents per hour or dollars per week. Again, getting them, they kind of got up to probably like a 9% increase. So we have had to adjust our collective bargaining to meet our ability to hire people. That is dependent on what other cities and towns are paying and is dependent on our ability just to come up with the money ourselves because we are limited. Arlington has had a pattern of consistently giving people increases over time so that they have not fallen behind their comparable communities. So whereas, again, there are other communities that just gave zeros a few years ago. So in that regard, I think we've been fair minded with them and we stayed competitive again with some of those adjustments. And I will finally just say in the town budget and it's in my letter in the manager's budget, there were really three things that ate up all our money this year. The trash contract, fully funding facilities as it takes over buildings that it didn't have before, like as we expand DPW, there's just two buildings there that they never had to pay for, they now have to pay for. And it's the collective bargaining agreements and those bumps that we had to give people to keep ourselves competitive. I think going into the next round of negotiations will start probably about a year from now, you'll be very interesting to see where the unions, how they're talking about inflation and where inflation is. But I don't try to say this too much, but I will now, that's gonna be somebody else's problem. Okay, well, so two things. First one is for those who are new, I will applaud you at how you gave me the exact same answer. The second, like it was pretty impressive. And then two, look, I would say, look, I do think it's gonna be really hard as someone who had a little bit of insight in how municipal government worked for 18 months, like there is nobody I would pick. If I could pick a team from scratch, I'd pick you, Karen, Y, Eda, Julie and everyone else because having competent, highly tactical, professional adults in the room makes life a lot better over the long term. So thank you. All right, I'll second that myself. Annie, you have a question? I have two questions. The first question is mostly just get the information on the table. Sandy, approximately what percentage of the town's budget is personnel related? Salaries, wages, health insurance, retirement? 80. Okay. So when we were talking about personnel matters, we are really talking about the biggest driver in our budget because it's 80% of our budget. The second question is, is there a scenario in which we accept the results of the police arbitration and then say, however, we're not in the police budget and leave it to the chief to figure out how to manage that? That would not be my way of doing it because I think that would be a very difficult thing for any police chief just to be able to do. I do think over the long run, we have to think about how we provide police services and whether we need officers carrying guns or we need social workers or the town is at the forefront of that. We've been way out ahead of that compared to other communities around the state, around the country, but that's gonna be an ongoing conversation. But going back to your other question, I don't think you just, I have to be careful how I say this. Sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. You can, it's okay if you refuse to answer the question as you can tell it's a rhetorical question. Thank you very much. Okay. Question, Sandy, talking about personnel, I understand Phyllis is retiring or has retired. Yes, Phyllis is retired. We have a interim treasurer. His name is Bill Fowler. He's a retiree. His last full-time job as an active employee was this is a treasurer for Sharon. He worked in Somerville for many years. He's worked in other communities. Today was his first day and he's fitting right in and so he's there to supply the guidance for staff there to sign the documents that certain documents needed to be signed and to help us with things that the rest of the staff doesn't need to do, know how to do such as when we sell bonds. So he'll have that under his purview. Do you have any timeline as to when that position may be filled permanently? We are gonna close the application process this Friday and review and set up the review process. Shane, you're having a hand up. Thanks, Christine. Thank you, Sandy, for another excellent budget presentation. The last time we'll see you, but thanks for all your work. I had a question. We talked a little bit about collective bargaining agreements and can you talk a little bit more about how like for managers of departments, how their pay increases are determined from sort of year to year. Is there any sort of formal structure or is it within the discretion of the manager? There are three types of management people. So three grades. I am a grade three, or I used to be a grade three and now I'm just a manager. But so depending on their level of responsibility, how many people they oversee, et cetera, et cetera, it's like with the unions, there are different grades. There are then five steps, initial steps when people are first hired, they go through, then they hit the midpoint of the pay scale. After that, their raises are at the discretion of the manager. So steps for all employees around town pretty much, there's some exceptions, are a 3.75%. That's a standard step. For our department heads or other management people, they get a certain dollar amount. It's very between $2,000 and $2,500 over the last few years. So that's about a 2% step for them. And that is done basically on the basis of what we think we're gonna afford. Thank you. Well, if I can, I wanna thank you all. I probably talked way too much and went way over the time you allocated for me, but I found it a good colloquy back and forth with all of you and your questions, you had good questions. And so I thank you for your time and attention and for all the work that you do, I get paid for this, you don't. And so I think the citizens of Arlington are very lucky to have an excellent finance committee. And I look forward, if you do have other questions, you may reach out to me directly or reach out to Julie Wayman. And of course, if at any time you want me to come back, I'm always happy to speak. Very much, Sandy. And thank you, Julie. All right. All right. Have a good night, everybody. Good night. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you, Sandy. Thank you, Sandy. All right. We have some minutes that we can approve, but I'm wondering if anyone has any budgets to send to people in terms of next week, who thinks they may have some budgets ready next week? Okay. All right, a bunch of people. So we'll have, I see Sophie, Caroline, Annie, Daryl, Dave, hands up. All right, great. All right. So then, if we don't have any budgets, let's go to the minutes of Monday night's meeting and we can approve those. Can everyone see this? All right. Sorry, can everyone see this? Yes. Okay, great, great. Okay. Let me know if you want me to go anywhere specific here. Correction, starting at the top where it says. Oh, sorry, one second. Sorry, my dog has a line of his own. Okay, sorry. Under the date, it says conducted by remote participation. Oh, yes. And then on reports from working groups, paragraph five, I think we're in year two of the three year contract. So I think we'll need a new contract in one year. And the only other revision I have is I would say that the June 22nd, 2020 meeting minutes as revised were approved unanimously. Anyone else have any other corrections to the minutes of Monday night's meeting? I just put one in right here. Move acceptance of the minutes. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? All right, I'm going to take the roll call vote. When I call your name, can you please say yes or no to approving the minutes of January 30th, 2023? Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Brian is not here. Carolyn. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Daryl. Yes. Annie. Yes. Allen. Yes. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. Altosti. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. And Dave McKenna. Yes. All right, so the minutes have passed unanimously. All right. I don't have any other business. Does anyone else have any other business? Madam Chair? Yes, Allen. Okay, I sent an email to you and David. I'd like to reopen the finance committee budget. I think it's $550 too high. And the reason is this is what I mentioned to Sandy. Last year, after our recording secretary, Pete Howard retired, rather than have a new recording secretary, Tara assumed that responsibility. And we moved the $550 stipend that the recording secretary was getting and increased Tara's pay by that much. In the manager's budget, the $550 was still in the $3,050 finance committee members line. That should be $2,500. In other words, the $3,050 should be reduced by 550 to 2,500. So I'd like to move to reduce the finance committee budget from the voted number to $11,298 by reducing the salary budget by $550. Second. Second. Charlie, you have a question? Yes, Madam Chairman. I'm wondering if we can postpone this. I realize this is relatively small change, but I think the finance committee should get the details on the $2,945 that's in the budget. And I don't think we have that. And also what we spent last year. I think, Alan, you have what we spent last year. I have the details of what we spent last year and it was, well, an FY22, I have to pull that up. This year to date, we spent $572, and we would add to that, whatever our final meeting costs. It probably won't be $3,495. In the $3,495 we had baked in, we didn't know if the town was gonna go to Microsoft 365 and we did not know if the town was going to get the equipment necessary to support hybrid meetings. So that was baked into the $3,495. Yeah, I actually, I'm aware of that. Yeah, but I think the committee members should have access to the detailed line items. I'm not sure that we do. Of the $2,945? Yeah. Okay, I mean, I believe the $2,945 we just carried over. As a lot of things in the manager's budget are, they're simply carried over from the previous year. And I think, you know. Yeah, that's what we did. We carried over what was previously budgeted to the share. If we want to come up with a closer projection, where we traditionally spend money is for ATFC annual dues and people attending the ATFC conference, the MMA conference, and then our final meeting. And we can do an estimate of that. I doubt it would end up at $2,945. And the handbook. And the handbook. The Fincom report. Yeah, which we haven't paid for yet this year. I can provide, Charlie, I can provide an itemization of the last two years. I think that would be great. That would be good for everybody. Charlie, are you still wanting to hold up on this vote for that information? Are you comfortable? I'm making a motion that we postpone this till the next meeting. Done moved. All right. Or a second. Or a second. Yeah. Any other further discussion as to Charlie's motion to postpone? All right, we'll take it to a vote. If you want to postpone, say yes. If you don't want to postpone, say no. All right, starting with Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes, but I have a question. Do we need to vote to postpone if we haven't voted to reopen? Well, I will take the, I will, if Charlie. But it's fine. It's acceptable that I'll take the motion as both a motion to reopen and a motion to postpone. Okay. So are you your yes, Jennifer? Yes. Sophie? Yes. Carolyn? Yes. Rebecca? No. I'm sorry, Rebecca? I said no. No. Josh? Yes. Grant? Yes. Charlie? Yes. John? No. Daryl? No. Annie? Yes, to reopen and no to postpone. So you are a no to postpone? Yeah. No. Yeah, no. Same as Annie. Topher? Topher? Yes. Peggy? Yes. Altosti? Yes. Dean Karman? Yes. And Dey McKenna? Yes. There is one, two, three, four. 13 yeses to postpone and five noes to postpone. So we'll postpone this to Monday night. And I'll get that information out there, everybody. Anything else? Anyone have anything else? Sophie? Just a question. I think we might be ready to do the Zoning Board of Appeals budget. Throwing that out to Dave because we got a final answer on a question. Dave, do you think? Yes. Yes. All right, let's do it. Let's do it. Okay. It's on page 77 in the budget book. Actually, 76 and 77. The only change, it's a personnel change. And the zoning, it's gone to a 0.89 a position which is 31 hours. And the workload has dramatically increased issue in permits and whatnot. Right, I would add to that. So it was a 0.89 last year too. The response we got to Dave was that what's really changed is the step. Last year was a step three. This year is a step six. Everybody hear me because I just faded out again. I'm sorry. I can say that the difference, the FTE of 0.89 stayed the same from last year. What changed was the step. It was in step three last year. It's in step six this year. The position was vacant last year and it's been filled by an internal transfer from somebody that was in the school department which is why that person came in at a step six versus last year, step three. So that would explain the increase. That's right. And also the previous person that had the position actually it was sheared. He worked for the building inspection as well. So a portion of his salary which was on a part-time basis was picked up in the building budget as well. This has been changed now to 0.89. So it's a full-time position. And that's the only change in the zoning. Recommendation as to the zoning board budget. Yes, as printed in the budget book of 73,910 dollars. Second. All right. Any discussion, questions for Sophie or Dave? The zoning department budget as contained in the manager's budget. All right. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Annie. Sorry, muted. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. Tofer. Yes. Peggy. Yes. El Tosti. Yes. Dean Karmann. Yes. And Dana McKenna. Yes. All right. That budget passed unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Sophie and Dave, for having fun for us to do tonight. All right. Anything else on Monday for a bunch of budgets? That would be great. And Alan Jones will have some information about the FINCOM budget and then we'll go for there from there unless anyone has Carolyn. And we're doing Zoom again? Yes. Yes. Terry, you'll be sending out the link. Yes, I will. Yes, is it possible just before the meeting to send out a list of the budgets that sound like that are going to be ready? Let's, why don't we have people tonight? Budgets, they think will be ready on Monday. Yeah, I think, Daryl, you'll have police, will you have fire as well? John will have fire, yes. Okay. So we have police and fire. What else, people? Human resources. Human resources. Health and Human Services, AYCC, Council on Aging, Veterans, Recreation, Rink, and the Council on Aging Transportation. Great. Anybody have any other budgets they think they can do on Monday? We'll have the Selectments budget, the Clerks budget, in the Clerks budget will be the Election budget and also the Registrar's budget ready for Monday night. Other budgets they may be able to do. Well, that's a good list, people. That's great. Chris, I just want to mention that I would like to get all those budgets that I just listed presented next week because then I have some travel coming up. And, but you should choose the order. Like if you tell me you don't want to do Health and Human Services till after other things are done, that's fine. Just let us know. You'll be here next, both Monday and Wednesday, right? Yes. Definitely gets to them. Great. Josh, you have your hand up. Is that from your last question? Yes, it is. Sorry about that. No problem. All right, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. Oh, I'll make a motion to adjourn. Is that moved? Second. All in favor. Bye. Bye. All right, see you all next Monday night. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.