 but it is it is required these days. I have keep in mind that everybody in your household knows that this part of your house is on public TV so be sure everybody's aware. Now this is a script prepared by our town council and I guess used across the state now is very popular. So this is Al Tosti, chairman of the finance committee, permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me. So first of all I'm going to go through a roll call. Please go out here if you are here as I go through it. So Grant Gibbian. Here. Jane Bondel. Here. John Ellis. President. John Ellis. Here. Okay. Here. Carolyn White. Mary Margaret. Yes. Frank Lamont. Okay. Arif Padera. Yes. I'm here. Jonathan Wallach. Here. Charlie Foskett. Here. Ryan Beck. Here. Pete Howard. Here. Shae Ween. Crawford Proquette. Here. Harold Hammer. Here. John Deist. Here. Alan Jones. Here. Annie McCourt. Here. Bill Keller. Here. Myself Alan Tosti. Here. George Kosher. Here. Christine Deschler. Here. Dean Carmen. Here. Dave McKenna. Here. Liz Diggins. Here. Okay. So Liz Diggins is our staff member, deputy secretary. I'd also like to check and make sure the following presenters are here. Dr. Kathleen Bode. And Michael Mason. Here. And Sandy Puer. Our deputy manager. I'm here. Okay. Good. Good evening. This open meeting of the Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. In order to mitigate the coronavirus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Furthermore, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access to is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberation of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. Excuse me. This meeting will not feature public public. For this meeting of the Finance Committee is convening Zoom as posted on town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some 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 meeting materials have been provided members of the body are available on the town website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless I note otherwise. Meeting business and ground rules. We are now turning to the first item on the agenda. Before we do permit me to go over 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 their remarks, I will call for questions or comments. Annie, could you explain to the members how they will be recognized? The best way for you to be recognized is to either enter a message to everyone in the chat box or on the participant list, raise your hand. So if you haven't figured out yet how to raise your hand now is the time you need to find your menu and open up the participant list and you should have a menu at the bottom that allows you to raise your hand and Alan Jones and I will watch for hand raises and try to get everybody in order. We will certainly take you in order if you chat your questions in the chat box. Any questions? Okay, then Annie or Alan will let me know who the next person is on the list. Okay, when those are finished, I will call for a motion and a second. And again, Annie or Alan will see who raises their hand. I'll call for the motion and then I'll call for a second. Further discussion will then be allowed following by a roll call vote, which is legally required. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and 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. Okay, so those are the basic rules on how I conduct the meeting. The first item on the agenda is the school budget and for that I'd like to turn this over to Kathleen Bodie, Dr. Kathleen Bodie, our school superintendent and Michael Mason, our assistant superintendent for finance. So, Kathy? Good evening everyone. It's nice to see you even this way. Actually, it's sort of nice I can just scroll down and see everybody's picture. Thank you again for again this year for inviting us to talk about our budget with you. The the PowerPoint that you have on your screen I don't know is the proposed budget for the the school committee's proposed FY21 budget, which was approved by the school committee on March 12th of this year. Most of the initial slides are things that you've already seen before, but let me just go briefly through what the agenda will be tonight. We'll just do a quick overview of the mission statement goals and vision. The school committee members, the budget development, and who are the key contributors to that, which includes a process and timeline as well, and then the budget priorities and highlights. The actual FY21 budget information will be presented by Mr. Mason, and then we'll talk a little bit about how this relates to the five-year plan. So, starting when we begin a budget process, well let me see the first slide here is actually giving you the school committee members, which are on your PowerPoint, and then followed by that are the budget development key contributors, which include pretty much everyone in the central the central office as well as our principals and the leadership team of curriculum leaders as well as some other contributors in the business office, which you can see on the next slide. When we craft and think about a budget, one of the what we definitely want to make sure is true about a budget is it is consistent and furthers our mission as well as our vision of our student and learner and student as global citizen, and those the vision and the and the mission are there on the slides for you to read. I won't read I won't read them tonight. As we look to next year, the budget FY budget 21 is consistent with the with the work we have done on a five-year budget. I'll talk a little bit more about that later, but if when we develop the five-year budget, we were looking at a number of areas, certainly addressing enrollment, which is a large part of all of our budgets in the last few years. What we need to do in order to narrow the achievement gap between students in special groups that are not necessarily achieving at the level of the aggregate. We want to make sure that we're improving our library and digital learning instruction we as a result of enrollment growth, we are in need of more administrative support, which has been fairly flat for a number of years while enrollment has continued to grow, particularly at our elementary schools in which several of them now are over 500 students. We also want to continue investing in reading and mathematics support at both the elementary middle school, again going back to our goal of narrowing the achievement gap between students in our district. Those represent really the budget priorities and highlights of the budget and all of the individual items that you will see that have been added to the FY 21 budget as compared to the FY 20 budget. When we go through this process, the development of the FY 20 budget actually started last summer. It's a long process and it begins with really assessing what our needs are as we move forward. This process goes through pretty much the whole fall at the end of December, principals and curriculum leaders present to the school committee what they see as the needs. In addition to administrators presenting, we also have members of the leadership team for the Arlington Educator Association as well as people of the administrator union as well. This process goes through, I'm trying to, I'm doing two different power points at the same time here. I think that's what's a little confusing. So this process here will go into January in which the school committee states what their priorities are for the next budget. And we have an open here, we have a hearing where there is a reach out to different groups within the community as well over during this period of time. And in March, the budget is formally voted on by the school committee. We had pretty consistent goals for the budget for FY 21 administrators, teachers, and the school committee. I think at this point, can we go on to the next slide? Yeah, the funding source is Michael. Do you want to go from here? Yes, I'd like to comment that this the PDF version that was also provided will probably provide more data. The Google version that's being presented is missing some items. So for example on the slide, there are some numbers missing to give you some relative idea of what we're trying to show the context, but I'll try my best to explain. So part of you want me to switch to the PDF? Yes, that'll be great. Okay, let me get out of here. You might want to stop projecting your screen if you know it's okay. I've only got stuff up this relevant. The PDF Sam tab. Yeah, I could go there. It's up there. You're the beginning. The PDF you're referring to Michael. No, that's the budget document. It's okay. We can. Yeah, it was I sent it to in the email, but it's okay. We can continue off this and I'll try to my best to explain. Okay. Excuse me, Annie. It might be at the very end of that document. From the fan document. All right, let's see there. If it was something that we received today, it's in there at the end of the of his original document. Okay, let's just take a minute and give me a chance to grab it because I know I have downloaded it. I just need to find it. One thing we're going to have to learn about this entire process is patience. Yes. Okay, I believe. Does this look like what you're looking for, Michael? This is what I have to email that Annie sent. Listen. That's the only PDF I've got. Yeah. The only all the alternative is if you download it and open it in actual PowerPoint, it will show everything. Google just has a way of turning PowerPoints. I don't have PowerPoint on my desktop. Okay, well, I'll explain it as best as I can, and we'll go from there. Don't don't don't worry about it. Annie, look today at 622, an email from Liz. Yeah, but there's a PDF of the PowerPoint. Okay, hang on one second. Let me see if I can find that the PowerPoint. This is a PDF. This is what I got. Much better. All right. Thank you very much. You're welcome. So part of developing any budget is understanding how the operations will be funded. And this slide, the funding sources shows you how all the public schools have been funded historically from fiscal 2016 to fiscal 2020, and how we anticipate to be funded in fiscal 21. The graph shows two different percentages. The lower percentage shows how much Chapter 70 state aid has changed year to year that the town of Arlington receives. The higher percentage is the change of all the funds year to year that we incorporate into our budget. In fiscal 21, we anticipate fortunately through our formula that the town has about six and a half percent year over year. We can go to the next slide in terms of what we anticipate for our revenues. This slide shows revenues compared to the FY20 budget to the FY21 proposed or requested budget. The town appropriation is the funding that is allocated from the town based on the established town formula. The town appropriation includes a local contribution from the town in an amount provided from the state, which is through the Chapter 70 formula. It also shows that the grant revenues, which is hard to predict or project what we will receive in fiscal 20, therefore we have level funds, which is showing a zero change in funding. One thing to note this year is that circuit breaker revenue has decreased. We base our circuit breaker revenue based on what we would have received in fiscal 20 to give us cushion. Circuit breaker is aid from the state that the district receives to use toward special education costs. The district is allowed to make these claims for out-of-district tuition that exceed four times the per pupil aggregate costs. These funds have decreased since we have been providing more students in district services than out-of-district services. Therefore, this revenue has decreased. Since it is difficult to predict special education out-placement, we are still reserving funds through our other revolving fund sources, which you will see that there is quite an uptick this year where we are using some revolving funds. We are budgeting to increase revolving spending to cover that loss. In addition, some of these funds are used to be the true up utility costs because in the past we have under budgeted in utilities. Therefore, our total increase for all of our funds for our budget is a little bit over five million, which is the six and a half percent increase that I discussed in the previous slide. You can go to the next slide, please, where we can talk about it is another way of looking at how it is funded. It basically shows that the town appropriation, which is about 91 percent of the budget, funds the education. The grants and revolvings have three and six percent respectively. The following slide, which is going to show similar information, is showing it breaks up what the actual town portion is, which is about 72 percent, which then is offset by 19 percent state aid. Then circuit breaker funds about three percent of what is considered to revolving funds. If you can go to the next slide, it breaks down how we intend to spend our budget in fiscal 21 of this approximately 82.9 million dollars. As you can see, special education is the largest followed by secondary education, which is grade six through 12, and elementary education, which is grades kindergarten through fifth grade. If you go to the next slide, we show that the town manager 12, where we benchmark. This slide shows that, once again, our fiscal 18, which is the most up-to-date data that we have access to, based on end of year reports that are submitted by districts like ourselves and the other fellow districts in the town manager 12, we're in the middle of the pack. This shows that we have performed well with the resources we have been provided compared to our fellow districts in the town manager 12. If you go to the next slide, this is the FY, the fiscal 21 proposed budget change of summary. The total increase in revenue from the fiscal 20 budget is about five million dollars. However, before we look at what we can use it for ads, we have to take things off the top. Most of our budget is salaries, about 80% of our budget is salaries. 2.7 million dollars is used to cover contractual salary increases, bargain salary increases, and other non-bargain groups salary increases. We are also allocating about 148,000 for instructional supply budgets. These are usually to address principal supply budgets, but as well this year, we're dedicated, we have dedicated budgets for the performing visual arts and music programs, which will be allocated on a per people basis throughout the district. We are also dedicated to increasing curriculum materials and professional development district-wide by 175,000. Of that curriculum materials, about 50,000 dollars is dedicated to supplying library books district-wide. This is something that we have started in FY 21 budget, as well as continuing to do so in FY 21 budget. We have also, like I said, discussed about the utilities in the previous slide. We are dedicating about $500,000 to increasing utilities, which would be on both the town appropriation and on some of our revolving funds. In addition, the upcoming high school project that I'm sure everybody knows about, there requires some movings with the phases. Yep, the utilities. That's a pretty big number there. Increase. What is the idea of why that is? John, I think we need to wait for questions to be in. Okay. I'll take note of that question, John. Thank you. We'll get back to it first. All right. All right. So, in addition to the new high school project that I'm sure everybody's aware of, it has a couple of phasing elements. One of the moves that are phasing parts of this is moving the preschool from the high school, the current high school to the par mentor school. Once that school becomes online, there's actually additional operational costs related to that. So, that's tied up with $180,000, where we anticipate additional facility personnel, supplies, as well as utility costs for that building as well. And then you'll see that at all the reductions in terms of this increase, we actually add back some funding. As I discussed that there were some decreases in circuit breaker for special education, but we also looked at how we're spending out of district tuition, and we're going to use some of those funds to allocate for new proposed additions. So, that leaves us with a total of reductions to our net increase of about $3.4 million, which leaves us about $1.6 million for net increases. In the following slides, just shows you can go through the metro and leisure, just shows the increases at the different levels and the amounts that we budget or we estimate that it would cost to fund these additions. Most of these additions are part of the five-year plan. Some of them are from the, they were meant to be in the fiscal 20 plan, but they would not be able to afford in the fiscal 20 plan. So, we fund some of them in the fiscal 21 plan, and in others that we couldn't fund, we would fund in out years. And then we also went through a process where, which Dr. Bode discussed earlier, where we all kind of talk and meet and discuss, we reevaluate what the district needs, and then additional ads that may have not been thought of during the five-year planning process were added. And so, that's all the proposed ads that you will see here, which add up to the $1.6 million for the net proposed ads. And so, the lastly is just the update in the five-year plan update. And really, I just explained it, and I'll leave, Kathy can probably better articulate as well. But we basically look at the request from, that was for fiscal 21, and the ones that were not able to be funded in the fiscal 20, and use that to kind of reprioritize the, you know, what the requests, and the still the need, like the level of needs for those requests. And we then also look at what we currently need, because there are other students that, as the population changes that comes into the district, we also have to look at those particular needs, and try to make sure that we're addressing, you know, things like the achievement gap, and, or students like, that may need special care, such as English learners, and other things. So, it's not that we feel that things are not going to be funded, it's just that we do not necessarily have all the funding required to meet all the needs. And so we have to go through a process where we prioritize and decide what we can fund and what we cannot. Kathy, would you like to add anything further to that? I think you said it very well, actually. It is a process. When you look at the FY, the five-year budget, what you will see is that there's more requests in the different years, particularly the earlier years of the plan, that exceed actually the revenue that we would have. So it's a process of just reprioritizing, and that's what we need to do. So, and some things can change as well. There are new needs that present themselves, and they have to be prioritized against other requests. And that's a process that we went through this year. The other thing that you should know about the FY 21 budget is that Arlington needs to present a plan to the Department of Education mandated by the legislature with the new funding, the Chapter 70 this year. And the plan on that is that you can have three quarters of the monies that you have in your three-year plan, which is different than this five-year budget plan. We have another plan we have to present to the Department of Education. It was supposed to be due this week, but it's been extended. This three-year plan addresses how we're going to narrow the achievement gap. And so that is one of the functions of reprioritizing, but in that plan, they recognize that you have a continuum of effort in this regard. And so you can use monies that you spent in FY 20 and continue to spend them as part of the plan in FY 21. Roughly 75% of the budget is designed that way. 25% can be new initiatives that again further those goals for narrowing the achievement gap for a certain of our subgroups. And in fact, even before we knew the formula for how the three-year plan was going to be required to be developed, it was already in our budget. We really had to make no changes at all to comply with what is being asked of us. So that's pretty much the summary of where we are. We were asked to keep this photo short. And this is a good time for any questions that you might have. And maybe, Michael, you could talk to John's question first. Yeah, that's the first one up. And then Alan Jones has a question after that, and then a race, and then Charlie's off it. Okay. So I think the question will just make sure I understand because he was, I think he's caught off guard by the increase of the utilities. So the question is, is it why is the utilities increasing as much as they are? Yes. Okay. So the utilities, we've typically, in order to fit everything in our budget, we have, on, it looks as in history, has shown that we've underfunded utilities about four to 500,000 a year. Working, we work closely with Ken Pruitt, who's the energy manager in the town, who provides us projections. And the prior years budget, we didn't, we were not able to include those projections in that. So we basically funded it, level funded, compared to the prior year. And we have to remember that we had opened the Gipp School in that budget. And so it wasn't necessarily 100% accurately showing the normal expenditures, plus adding on a new school. So this budget is here to reflect the four, about 400, a little bit over $400,000 increase in electricity and about $100,000 in gas expenditures. That is also, of course, includes as we are adding new chillers to buildings and capital projects, there are other costs that are actually going to add on to our operations budget. So as we add more features, we're doing energy efficiency projects to try to combat those particular negative trends. But unfortunately, yes, the costs of utilities have increased in such a way that we do need to true that up in our budget. I hope that answers your question. Okay. Thank you, Michael. Annie, who was the next person? Alan Jones. Okay, Alan. Hi, Michael. This is a question about the revolving, the use of revolving funds in the total funding. And I'm looking at page 12 of the budget document. There are four revolving funds, athletic fees, building rentals, foreign exchange and tuition and revolving that show large increases. And I was wondering, is that mainly use of, called retained earnings or increase in revenues or a mix of both? I just, you know, if you could comment on those four. Yeah, so yeah, so some of them are tied to retained earnings. And some of them are based on projected revenue increases, hopefully that we anticipate, but mainly we, they're from retained earnings. And so to speak about the like, specifically the athletic funds, we actually have anticipated increases in expenditures in terms of the coaches that have been providing services to our students throughout the district have not received increases in over 10 years. And so they're now just getting an increase. So that's what you're seeing there. So most of those are from that's going to be covered by retained earnings. The building rentals, what you're seeing is partially retained earnings, partially is going to be an increase in possibly in fees to vendors that rent our spaces, but mainly we reassess those fees every year. And so that's to cover the utility costs that we just discussed. And then you'll see the other expenditures, adjustments are tied to either increasing professional development or the curriculum materials and then special education. What is tuition and revolving? Tuition and revolving is revenue that we would receive for providing tuition for students that are from other districts. And we can use those for special education costs. Okay, thank you. Okay, Annie. So I thought it was a reef, but that was a private question to me about management. So it's Charlie, Charlie Foskett. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, this is Charlie Foskett. So I have a couple of questions. First, I'd like to start with a comment. And Kathy and Michael, I thought the budget book was extremely well done and I thought and I think your presentation was well done. So it's really very interesting. One question, I have a couple of questions. One is a comment that you made, Michael. You said that you were using the savings in the out of district tuition, out of district costs for the special education for new hires or you're removing them using it for new hires. I thought we were going to take those savings and put them into a SPED reserve for, you know, when the SPED costs go up. Is that, is that still a program or do we change something? So you want me to answer that your first question or is that all the questions? No, that's the first question. Okay, so to answer that question is still a program that we do. So typically what happens is most of our in the years, like in FY19 and currently this current year, there aren't a fact that, you know, this the current COVID-19 situation, most of our surplus has been driven by special education out of district tuition. And so what we do is if there is substantial savings in out of district tuition, at the end of the year, we do vote to have the school committee vote to transfer that into the special education reserve fund. But however, in it's in developing the budget, there are since we're bringing more students in district, that means that more resources are needed inside the district. And so it's appropriate for us to reallocate some of those funds to actually use those for services to help special students with special needs. And that's that's what we're doing. So those those funds that you see that we reduced the special out of district tuition by that $300 or so thousand dollars is actually going to be used just for special education addition added positions that we would have saw on that list. Okay, thank you. Then I had a question both in the budget book and in the in your presentation, you mentioned the or Kathy and Kathy also mentioned the this goal of closing the achievement gap. And I know that started a year or two ago. And I'm wondering how how we're measuring that we're closing the achievement gap. And are we in fact closing the achievement gap? I'll answer that. Actually, this has been a goal for quite a long time, maybe more specifically articulated in the last couple of years, but certainly definitely on our minds for a long time. We have one of the ways that we measure is MCAS scores. That's that's the way that actually the state will evaluate this as well. They're not going to look at our individual in district assessments to measure that. On the other hand, it's important for us to have assessments as we go along during the year to see how students progress. And overall, when you look at our results of the last few years with this concentrated effort, we are seeing we are seeing improvements. There is some that are not as improved as others, but overall, there has been. But the the goal and the goal of the the Commonwealth is that we the ultimate goal is that there isn't any kind of disparate performances. So we have industry created a data bank, a file where we keep all of the the different kinds of assessments that students maybe answering more than you want to know, Charlie. But we are keeping track of students on an ongoing basis all year. But the way that the state will measure whether we've improved is how we do on MCAS. And the second part of the question was, are we making are we closing the gap? That was really we're making progress. Have we closed the gap? No, we haven't. That's one of the reasons why over the many years we've been investing in interventions that support students who are not only have an education plan, but also students who do not, but but are struggling with meeting a lot of the standards. So in fact, we probably should have put the graph in on this particular spreadsheet. But when you've looked over past years at how much we're spending on intervention work, math support, reading support, more coaching for teachers so that they can help students, it's been it's been significant and incremental each year. And I think that what we're starting to see clearly in numbers also in terms of performance, but also what you're seeing in terms of how we're reshifting and reallocating special ed funds is that we are seeing that the work that we're doing is making a difference. We're seeing more students that are we're able to support in district in district programs than having to have them be out of district. The interesting thing is the number of our enrollment keeps going up. The number of students of district is relatively remain somewhat flat. So there's there's metrics like that we can look at too, which is something that's important. I think most people would prefer that their children go to school here in Arlington rather than go to an out of district. On the other hand, if they need that kind of specialized program, which is more restrictive, then that's what we want them to have as well. So the the short answer is Charlie, yes, we are making progress. It's steady. And but but in the right direction. Thank you, Kathy. The last question is have to do with this year's financial situation. Are we are you ahead of the game or behind the game with the cost associated with the COVID-19 situation? Well, I think that we're going to be in fact, I'm very confident that we're going to be fine with respect to meeting our expenses in that regard. With just going back to special ed, the Department of Education has told districts they want us to continue paying the tuitions and the and the vendors who do transportation. So all of those costs are going to remain the same as we go through the year. As a district, we've made a commitment that all of our hourly workers are going to be continued to be paid. But, you know, for example, there are, you know, a lot of programs that we have that you see reflected in our revolving accounts are based on fees. And while we have, you know, certainly pleaded with people through different different emails that, you know, it would be great if they were able to continue paying, even though they may not be having the service, it's still we're still going to continue paying the people who salary comes out of a revolved with comes out of these fees that come in. So in our projections, as we've looked at them, we should be fine that what we're in a fortunate position is that we were projecting before all of this hit, a positive surplus, which the plan had been to put into the special ed stabilization fund that we have. And we'll just see how that that goes over the next month or so. But, you know, for example, community ed, you know, we have a lot in that, that revolving account that comes from revenue from last year's summer fund. I don't know. And that pays is it sort of pays expenses up front. I don't know what's going to happen this summer with respect to that. So a lot of unknowns that we're all dealing with right now. But at the moment, I would say that we should be fine. Thank you. Okay, I just like to make a note that Carolyn white member of our finance committee has joined us. Hi, Carolyn. Annie, who's the next question? Brian. Okay, Brian. Hi, Michael. Speaking of unknowns, I was looking at the sources of funding. I would imagine that the state is going to be in a dire predicament for this year and for the beginning of next year, at least. Is there any anticipation or any news as what the chapter 70 funding is going to be? And if it's a significant shortfall, I mean, what would you be planning to do? Well, currently, I haven't heard any additional information in regards to funding from the state level at the moment for the outgoing year. So I can only go based on the information that I have today. And in that information, it seems as though the state could possibly fund the current numbers that they're providing. But I know that there's a lot of concern about, you know, anticipated revenues and shortfalls. But we have no additional information in terms of how we intend to handle that. I've been, you know, we work closely with the town and understanding that our finances and how we can operate. And it seems as though we should be good for next year in terms of how we operate the budget. And we'll continue to work with Sandy and Adam and trying to figure out what it will look like as the time goes on. But right now, it looks like we'll be fine for the next year's budget as well. Okay, thank you. Okay, anybody else? I don't have anybody else. Although if anybody else wants to plunge in, you could either chat or raise your hand or something. Okay, I notice when is on when cotton from the chairman of the school committee, when do you want to add anything? Okay. At this point, okay. Sorry, Annie had to be muted. Sorry, you have to show you have to show me how to do that for my meetings. We didn't know we could do that. So yeah, just just just I want to thank Dean and John and Gillene for, you know, meeting with us, a couple that met with us to go over the budget. They also offered, you know, to support any, any ongoing any COVID-19 related needs, which as of now we don't have. Just in respect to Brian's comment, you know, everything, everything is up in the air for next year. We're operating on the assumption that hopefully the state will deliver on, you know, what's in the governor's budget, but who really knows. And the town faces a revenue crunch as well. So when all that happens, we'll probably have to have more meetings with you all to figure things out. There may be capital needs going back in the fall. We may, you know, for example, if we need to bring in portable sinks, so people can wash their hands more often, who knows what's going to happen in the fall. So a lot of uncertainty and this is our best budget that we can put together as of now, as of actually two weeks ago. But things are changing quickly and we'll adjust as we need to. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Lynn. Okay. At this point, I'd like to ask the members of the finance committee, do I have a motion on the school committee budget and the town's appropriation to it? I'll make a motion. Second. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Bill Keller is the second in motion. So made in second it. Is there any further discussion? Okay. So this would be the total appropriation of the town for 76 million 030531. I'm going to do a roll call vote now. Uh, Grant Gibbian. Hi. Shane Bundell. Hi. John Ellis. Hi. Carolyn White. I'll come back. Mary Margaret Frankelmont. Yes. Uh, is that a yes vote? Yes. I'll read Padaria. Hi. Jonathan Wallach. Hi. Charlie Foskett. Hi. Brian Beck. Hi. Pete Howard. Pete Howard. I think some people are not unmuting themselves. Yes. Yes. Okay. Uh, Shailene Pocas. Hi. Carol Harmer. Hi. John Deist. Hi. Alan Jones. Hi. Daniel McCourt. Hi. Bill Keller. Hi. My cell. George Cozer. Hi. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Carmen. Yes. State McKenna. Yes. Okay. Uh, Carolyn White. Yes. I. Okay. Okay. The vote to approve the school budget and its town appropriation passes unanimously. Kathy, Michael, and all the members of the school committee who attended, I want to thank you very much for coming and you're more than welcome to stay or leave at this point, whatever your wishes is. But thank you very much. Thank you very much, all of you. We appreciate your support. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you. Okay. Good night. Good night. Good night. Okay. The next item on the agenda is the water and sewer budget. Grant, you're there. I am here. Okay. Uh, Annie, could you put up the, I think the next thing after the school budget was the water and sewer? So I think this is healthcare and water and sewer also in there or big PDF. It should be before it. Okay. There we go. No, you went past it, Annie. I went past it. There we go. That's it. That's a note. Well, it's next slide. It's the second next slide up from there. That's it. That's it there because that's part of it. That's all I've got is this PDF. Hang on. PDF page 109. All right. Let me get there. If you allow me to share a screen, I could pull it up on mine. I can do that. I will stop sharing. Oh, come on. Well, I'd actually have to pull up and bear with me on that. I'd have to pull up the budget. Just hold on to 109 and you'll get it. Yeah. Let me just get down to 109, Grant. That's going to be okay. That's fine. Oh, yep. There you go. Oh, there we go. Great. Oh, excellent. Hang on. There we go. Pretty good. All right. There we go. Annie, can you widen? Can you blow it up a little bit so we can see it better? This is pretty good. We don't want them to see it any better. Is that okay? All right. Am I on the first page here? Yeah, I'm on the first page. But that's the right page. All right. Grant, the four is yours. Okay. Well, the real magic comes in the attachment C, but we might as well go through the budgets. So the sewer, it's really the water and sewer is the right way that we logically think of it, because the water comes in first and the sewer comes out second and gets collected. But it's really the other way around inside the computer, because s starts is sooner in the alphabet than water. So we start with the sewer collection system, and then we move on to the water. So that's why sometimes jokingly called sewer and water. In essence, the water and sewer department has four divisions, sewer collection, storm sewer collection, then water distribution, and then water and sewer properties. The subtotals, because of the way that we have indirect charges taken from the water and sewer, they don't always total up correctly. So that what they total up correctly, but they have different subtotals than you might expect. And that ties up on the expense summary at the very end of the budget. So if we start at the sewer collection system, we immediately come to the indirect charges. And hey, Annie, how quickly can we page through to like the attachment C? That's the fourth one. Oh, that's way down there. Oh, never mind, Annie. I'm so sorry. All right, let's go. Too tough to do. There we go. This is attachment C, but we'd have to swap back and forth. Yeah, let's sorry about that. Let's just stay with the sewer collection. This is going to be more tedious than it usually is. All right. There we go. Okay. So if we take a look at the, if we take a look at the first lines, indirect charges. This is a collection and best explained on them. This is essentially salaried wages of all the DPW divisions that are involved in the sewer and water collection and distribution. Their salaries are totaled up and divided. The portion of their salaries is divided in half and half it goes into the sewer collection staff indirect charges. And the other half goes in the water distribution staff indirect charges. So those numbers are pretty much fixed by the wages and salaries of the supporting divisions, which is engineering DPW admin highway and the motor equipment repair. And the total of those is really a 1,143,987 and half of those is the 571,994 that we see there. So the increase in that is really attributed to the salary and wages of all those other divisions and not necessarily the water and sewer budget itself. There are many other variances like that due to the indirect charges. So the next section are indirect charges. And again, this is only the sewer portion of it. You'll see a matching portion of this in the water distribution. I think this one's under water sewer property section. Now the workman's cost and the unemployment compensation, those are fixed amounts. They're the same way every year. Now that Sandy's here, he can actually hear my pitch to say that, oh, we talk about this every year, but by the time we get to it, we don't really think that moving them around is really worth it. My best guess on these is that when the system was set up, they had to have amounts in them because they are required for payroll. So they're plugged amounts of 6,000 and 1,500 in this one. And we'll see in the water distribution section that it's a 1,500 each. They're the same every year. They don't change. Now the next three items are all offset amounts. And I have this detailed on attachment C, but these where they all match up to the offsets in the budget. The retirement, for instance, the retirement costs of 672,070, that comes from the budget book page 150. The health benefits are the same way. That comes from budget book 160, the health insurance budget. We'll see that next. And then the indirect costs and the indirect costs are similarly allocated the way that the indirect salary costs are, except these are charges that are offset against the select man town manager, other town departments that provide support for water and sewer. Those are also listed on attachment C. They're also listed in attachment B, the supporting offsets. And these amounts or the percentage of these offsets were essentially assigned by a consulting company at some point in time. So they're all the same and they're all dependent on the and they're all matched up to the other amounts in the other budgets. So those things are beyond the DPWs control, so to speak. But the next section isn't. So the next section is actually sewer collection expenses directly related to the expenses of collecting sewers. And if we looked at these, this is a flat, this whole budget is pretty flat. And the only thing that changes are things that are really beyond the budgets control, beyond the department's control, for instance, the indirect costs and things like the MWR assessment. Everything else is pretty flat. So with that, I'm going to kind of move through it because other than questions about the offsets and how we actually got there, it's pretty flat budget and I'm going to ask for your vote. So the next section is the MWR assessment and this is for the sewer portion. And if you notice, this increases by the same amount every year pretty much, again, beyond the water sewer department's control. Annie, can we slip to the next slide, please? Oh yeah, is that the next slide? Okay, what a distribution system. So these are the actual salaries and wages of the people who are assigned to the, strictly the water and sewer. And again, this is no great surprises in the variants and it's very similar to last year with the exception of the personnel, but those are basically because of the longevity. The next section, the indirect charges section, this is that matching section that we saw in the previous. Annie, I think we missed sewer and storm sewer collection. I think there's a slide previous to this. There we go. That's it. Now, isn't that something, I don't have this in front of me and yet I know, isn't that sad when I know this budget pretty well? So there we go. So this is again, these are items that are related to debt service and beyond, really beyond water and sewer department's control. And if you see that the increases are pretty much as similar as they are every year, the exception being the sewer rehab, which is within the water and sewer department's control, because that's the amount that they're investing in rehabbing the sewers. And then here's that other division, which is a separate division called a storm sewer collection system. And this just has expenses allocated to it. This is the only part of this budget. And you can see it's contracted services and materials and rehab. And they're all pretty much the same as last year. So that concludes the sewer portion. Alan, when did you want to take a vote on this? Did you want to wait for the whole thing? No, let me, let me stop here. Are there any questions on the sewer section such arts that Grant went through? Any who's? Oh, Brian, do you have a question? Yeah. Okay. Grant, how much are the salaries in the sewer division? They're the same as the water division. It's the same, they're the same for the actual salaries are the same. It's the indirect ones that are split into the two different into water and sewer. Well, I'm looking at the retirement costs. And I'm probably asked this last year as well, but I've forgotten the retirement costs are 600,000. And I'm looking for the salary that that's applicable to. Oh, it's a that's not a water and sewer retirement salaries. That's Arlington, Count of Arlington retirement. In the retirement budget, when we discuss the retirement budget, that's the amount of the offset. The 506 is half of the amount of the total offset. But isn't the, is that, is that for then the unfunded portion of the retirement as well? Oh, again, we're talking about the indirect charges, right? Yeah, I'm talking about on page 110, line 50, 707. So, if you could just do, if we can make it to attachment C, because that's where this is easily explained for the rest of the. Okay, one more, one, that's it right there. Okay, so this is actually water and sewer combined. This is the water and sewer budgets combined the so if you look at the retirement costs on the section salary and wages, which says 5707 retirement costs. Yeah, that amount is the offset for the budget book, page 150, the retirement budget, that whole amount, 1344, 140. Okay, represents the offset. Half of that is the 565, 333, I mean, sorry, the, yeah, that's it. That's the whole thing. What I'm at, what I'm at, what I'm asking is we have, and there's going to be another line at him in the water distribution as well, correct? There is. Right, so the total, the total is well over a million dollars for retirement costs. And what I was asking is, what's the total of the salaries, if you're, if you want to do it together for water distribution and sewer, that's fine. But I'm just trying to figure out the percentage of the retirement costs against the salaries. You need to look at the retirement budget. But the retirement budget doesn't have the salaries for the water and sewer. That's right. That's because this amount doesn't represent that this amount represents its portion, a portion of the retirement costs that water and sewer covers. But it's retirement costs for the retirement budget. And it's the offset amount that's listed at the bottom of the budget. This is how this sheet is how I make sure everything tick and ties. I think I'm, I think I'm a dog to my tail here. I understand, or maybe you're barking up the wrong tree. I think I'm barking up the right tree actually. No, I think you want to bark up the retirement tree. No, no, no. I understand the retirement side of it. I'm asking what are the, the retirement is, is basically two factors. Okay. There's the unfunded portion of the, from prior years, and there's the current year as well. My question to you was what is the gross salary because it's in different spots in here. And what I'm looking at is it's approximately $2.5 million, applicable to the water and sewer budget. Is that a correct statement? 2.5. There's roughly from what I've seen here from the indirect cost, then I take the salary and wages from the water. I think I'm missing something in the salary line. And that's what my question is. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Charlie. So, Brian, the, the retirement costs include the cost for the, the direct cost and the, the normal costs and the unfunded liability costs for the existing retirees, I'm sorry, the existing workers, but it also includes an allocation for costs of retirees that, that we're working in the water and sewer department. So it's not directly taught. You can't directly tie it to the current year's salaries of active workers. In other words, if there's I understand what you're saying. I understand that. My only question was, and I was just curious, what is the total salaries for the water and sewer? And I'm just trying to find out if it's 20, if it's 2.5 million. That's that's basically, oh, the total salary. Total salaries for water and sewer. That's under the water. That's that's salary wages. That's a million 90s. Oh, I'm, you're looking way at the end of the total expenses. No, I think you are. So if you take I added the added three or four things together, I, my question is straightforward and you might know a better grant. Roughly, what is the, in your estimation, what is the salaries that are been allocated and directly included in water and sewer? So are you asking for the salary page then the salary page salary page, but there's things out there's salaries allocated here. It's more than just the salary page. The allocated. So they're, they're, they're portions of the other people's salaries. There are certain portion, there's certain portion of the, of the all of the engineering DPW highway mortar equipment to pair of repair. And are those salaries in this budget? No, they're in the DPW budget. That's why we have the indirect. That's why we have these basically intercompany charges except they're into departmental. Is it that like what the, that staff indirect charges is? Indirect. Yep. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So I included that 500,000. It's, it's okay. We can, I'll meet you over the summer in my backyard. We'll discuss it. Yes. It cocktail hour. Yes. I mean, take a look here. If you're looking at the page that says total water distribution system personnel service summary, I think that's the two and a half million you're looking at. Actually, it wasn't, I was just, I was just trying to, I went through the line items and just added them up and I got there. It was, it was an approximation, but I'm happy because like I said, I believe we went over this last year as well. Yeah. Well, you've got the personnel summary service summary of about two and a half million, but that's just for water. Then you have salaries for your sewer and then you have all the indirect DPW charges. So I think it would be considerably, you know, more than the two and a half million. Well, that's what I thought. That's what it would cost for the retired people. Okay, Grant, do you want to, are there any other questions right now? I have a question. If we're, isn't this a, an enterprise fund? Yes. So shouldn't we be voting also on the revenues? Yes. Don't we do that? Well, that's, that's, that's what the second to last page, but yeah, we'd vote on that too, right? Yes. That was my question to Alan. We do it all together. And I think he just wanted questions, however, Alan wants to do it. Okay, so why don't you, I think you've finished the sewer. You're going on to the water distribution system. Yep. Okay. Go. All right. So this is, so these salarying wages are the actual people who work for the water and sewer division are directly charged. And as Alan pointed out, the total of these personal expenses plus the total indirect charges are what we see as the personal service summary at the very end. And so again, this is, they did fill a vacant position, but also I think the reason why the high increase in the salary, we had just mentioned this before, before we had to go back to the sewer collection, is that there's a longevity factor involved that they've been quite high, I think. The next section is the indirect charges, which is, as we talked about, is also schemed out on the attachments about how they're allocated. And then there's the water distribution section of it. And this is the actual, the actual expenses that are not personnel related and not offsets. And these are stayed exactly the same as they did last year. And the next section should be the capital section. Here we go. The MWA assessment. And again, this increased similar as it has in the years past and is beyond the control pretty much of the water and sewer. So that sets up the total water distribution system. And here's the final division, which is the water sewer properties. And this is a division that's set up to contain the indirect expenses of the salaries and wages. This is the half of the amount that we discussed before. And the remainder of the budget is either a capital or debt. So here's the next section is the 100,000 that we're going to do to rehab the water mains. And the next is that how we're going to pay for the MWA loans for the water mains. We also have some line item expenses that have stayed the same every year. Pretty much, haven't varied too much. He's been pretty close and accurate on those. Next line is the principal and interest on the water debt service. I believe we're trying to pay this off faster. Sandy could speak to this maybe a little better, but we'll pay this off a little faster so that we can focus on the next big expenditure coming down the line. Onto the next slide, please. Okay. Here's more capital. So there's a hydrogen valve replacement program and they allocate the same amount to it every year. In the past, they haven't quite accommodated it, but they like to have it there. Next sections are, I want to point out they're actually spending less on the capital equipment this year than they have in the previous, than the budget did last year. Okay. And if we go to the next slide, I believe this is the summary page. Okay. So here we have the, this is the reason why the subtotals are total the way that they are, because they, all the salary and personnel services total into this line, the very first line of the two million, two and a half million, all those individual expenses like the contracted services and the electricity for both water and sewer, this is where we have to bring it back together again. Okay. And actually, just one second, if I may, this has always been a pet peeve, and this is the reporting system. But if you look at that very last line item right above this summary where it says total water distribution system, it should not say that. It should say total water distribution, sewer and properties. Because that's what that amount represents. It's actually not just water distributions, also water, it's also the water and sewer properties combined. But with that, that's just a reporting typo that they could just change the description of the total line and that would work fine. But it just, it makes it a little bit difficult if it's more confusing if you're trying to total it out, because it doesn't seem to match up. It's because it's not just not named accurately. So we talked about personnel service summary, we talked about the expense summary, and the next is basically a total of the MWA or assessment for both water and sewer departments. Then we total up the indirect charges, and this should match up to what we have in the other schedules. The capital debt and the health insurance is the other match, and the retirement is that matches up with what we saw in the line items. And those plug items for the workman's comp and unemployment, those also match up there too. So this is a way as well as attachments see that I just make sure that all the offsets do indeed match up correctly. Again, that everything ties out. So here we have total expenses of 22,957,178. And when we go to the next pages, we'll see that we have the same amount for the revenues too far. And one of the reasons we have the same amount is because we transferred in a little bit over three and a half million from the general fund. And here are the rest of the revenue items that Charlie had mentioned that we do, in fact, need to vote on. So Alan Jones has a question. Are we going to go for that or do you keep going? Okay. Well, first observation, everybody should pay attention to the fact that the transfer from general fund, which is the debt shift, has gone down. And related to that, the user charges have gone up. So this is the beginning of the phase out of the debt shift that pays for capital costs. The question I had was sort of related. And it's a question on my mind. How much are the MWRA assessments based on the actual water usage? And I'm wondering as we eliminate the debt shift, which is sort of a fixed thing to more to user fees, would people actually save money by using less water now? It's sort of a relation between what used to be a fixed charge, the debt shift. And I assume the MWRA charges are based on water usage somehow, as well as capital. And as we're moving towards user charges, I'm just trying to figure out how that will affect future budgets. And what happens if we start saving water or using more water? You know, I thought of the sort of the same thing in the relationship. It's an interesting relationship. The relationship we have between the water sewer and the end users is similar that the relationship has between the MWRA and its communities. In that there's a fixed amount, they have a fixed amount of expenses that they have to cover. And everyone has to pay a share. So they take the total and divide it by your expected usage. And that's what you get billed for. And that's also how we assign rates for the end users on the town, on the town situation. So it's sort of a closed game. I'm not really thinking about, I can't really picture offhand about the effect the debt shift would have on it. But I still think the charges based on water usage are fixed. I mean, the debt shift has been a big chunk of the revenues. And as it goes to zero, all of that shifts over to user charges that are based on water usage. So, you know, I don't know how that impacts the budget or the user, you know, or the end users' costs. Yeah. I'll leave that as a question. My show has gone up every year about their assessment. It's pretty much the same amount. Yeah. Honestly, that was a question, but I didn't want to emphasize this. This shows the beginning of the elimination of the debt shift. Yes. And I thank you for pointing that out, because that was a better explanation than I was going to give it. Okay. Any other questions? Charlie Poskin has a question. Okay. Charlie? It's actually a comment on the question that Alan asked. So, I looked into this a couple of years ago with respect to saving water. And first of all, when I looked into it, a substantial portion of the water bill that the town got from the water sewer bill that the town got from the MWRA was pretty much a fixed cost because it's associated with the debt service on the big dig, which we probably all forgotten about, but, you know, that was billions of dollars. And we were in a strange situation where if we use less water, then they don't get the revenues that they would get, you know, per gallon or whatever it is they charge us. So then the fixed cost allocation for all the towns goes up. So it's almost a situation where there's no incentive to use less water. And I can't comment on, you know, I'm not commenting on the social aspect that I'm just saying that the finances don't provide us an incentive to use less water. Right. I was just saying that from the revenue point of view, the debt shift has been a fixed amount that's sort of based on the value of your house. Whereas the user charges are based on the amount of water you use. And I don't know how the MWRA assessment is related to, you know, how much of that's fixed cost and how much of that's variable cost. So it's really an open-ended question how that will impact things as our fixed charge as the debt shift goes away. Don't forget, though, that the less water we use, the more we'll get charged for it. Right. Per gallon. Right. So that's what I mean about fixed. So we use less, so we got to pay the same amount so we pay more for it. I guess, Charlie, maybe it'd be interesting, you know, maybe we can talk about it later to go through your same analysis but assume no debt shift. Well, I don't think it won't have any aggregate, according to what the selectment have promised and what we heard from the town manager. It won't have any impact on the total cost to the taxpayers as a whole. But it's probably going to have a cost different, you know, from you and me. In other words, if I don't water my lawn all summer, I'm going to have a different, it'll have a different impact on me than it will if you're watering every day. Right. That's what I'm curious about. Any other questions? Okay. Then Grant, do I have a motion from you on the accepting the water and sewer budget of $22,957,178 expenses and the same amount for revenues? Yes. I'd like to make a motion for that very same amount now. Okay. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Second. Okay. Is there any further discussion? Okay. Then roll call. Okay. Grant Givian. Aye. Shane Bundell. Aye. John Ellis. Aye. Carolyn White. Aye. Mary Marge. Aye. Yep. Arif Padera. Aye. Jonathan Waller. Aye. Tralee Foskett. Aye. Brian Beck. Aye. Peter Howard. Peter Howard. He's muted. Peter, you're muted. Yes. Muted or asleep? I meant, you know, my presentations. I know, I was muted. Oh, all right. Okay, Peter. Okay. Kayleen Pokress. Aye. Okay. Darrell Harmer. Aye. Undiced. Aye. Allen Jones. Yes. Allen. Aye. Aye. Any record? Aye. Bill Keller. Aye. Okay. George Cozer. Aye. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. Dave McKenna. Aye. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Grant, for your presentation. It's appreciated. So could you go to health insurance or town insurance? Annie. Yes. There you go. Okay. Good evening, everyone. Bill Keller here. And I see that we have the correct budget. It's the updated budget based on the new insurance rates. So we're looking at a budget online, 5704, 16,762,497, which is a 5.7% increase. So what I thought I would do is, because this is the most important line item on the page, is to discuss how we get to the 5.7%. And then if there are any questions on any of the other items, Medicare penalty, the group life, Medicare payroll, flexible benefit, we could take that up and then from there, proceed down to the offsets. And then I'll be asking for a motion to accept. Okay. Okay. So the 5.7% basically is pretty easy to get to, but it is a big number. It is a big number. It's about a million dollars versus the year before, $900,000 versus the year before. So I would say that one factor, and I'll just kind of ramble off maybe three or four quick bullets. First one is the total enrollments increased last year from 2019 to 1065. So that was a 4.5% increase in enrollments. So you got to understand that within the enrollments that these are folks that are going to be getting a health insurance plan of one kind or another, and that one fact that we know is that the town pays 80%, roughly 80% of the premium of these plans and the employee pays 20. Now, there's some different, there are some exceptions to that I won't go into necessarily, but the average is about 80, 20. So it's a very, very good program, a very nice benefit for the employees of the town of Arlington. Next thing I would say is related to that. And by the way, if you want to see the enrollments themselves, it's on page four of the 15 page handout that I attached, but I won't necessarily have to go there unless anybody has a question about that. So stay on the budget. Next is the average increase in the GIC or the group insurance commission rate was roughly about 4.8%. And every year, each carrier has a different plan each year and their premiums change each year. Generally they go up. And in fact, they all go up. And he wears from 0.3% to 7% or 8%. And what we find is there's generally a cluster of town employees around two particular carriers. And those are plans offered by Tufts or plans offered by Harvard Pilgrim. So they kind of skew the participation by the fact that, let's say 60% want Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts and their premiums are higher, it's going to be a higher cost to the town. So the other two points I just want to point out that affect the increase are when employees are aged out. And what that means is that when an employee is a younger employee who's living at home and is presumably in their parent or parents' healthcare insurance plan, at some point they age out. Now they're an employee of the town. So now the town picks them up on one of the health insurance plans. This past year, there were 12 such employees that aged out. So another factor that adds to that 5.7% increase. Two more quick bullets. In the town of Arlington, another very, very nice benefit that we offer to town employees when they retire is that at age 65, when they go on Medicare, when they select a Medicare Part B Advantage plan, the premium is split between the town retiree and the town. So 50-50. And that's important because that's paid for life. And there were a number of retirees, every of those retirees, but there were, I don't know the number exactly, but there are people that retired in the last year. And they just go up into a different category and they received this benefit for life. The last point is just one that I think we all can understand is that Arlington's become a very, very popular, well-wide place to want to live. More families are moving in. They move in with kids. The kids go to school. Our schools need teachers. And so we hire more teachers. All the teachers in the town of Arlington are covered under the group health care plan as well. So that's just an illustration to see if maybe we can work, understand, illustrate a little bit better how we get to that 5.7%. And with that, I'll just, you know, I'll go down to the bottom line there. If anybody, does anybody have a question on any of the other online items? I'm happy to address or talk about, but there's no surprises to our finance subcommittee in terms of those items. Okay, so going on down after you apply the offsets and the offsets that we were on page two, we can walk through that if you like, but again, they all make sense. The offset of $708,089 brings the group health insurance budget for 2021 to $18,376,970. So I would like to ask for a motion to accept this budget as printed. Don't move. This is Charlie. And Carolyn seconded. Any discussion? Okay, I think I heard 23 eyes. Is that right? Virtual. I heard 23 virtual eyes. But now we have to hear it. I think you have to go through all the budgets and the insurance budget gets voted all at once. Well, this is the group health. After this, what do you mean? After this, we're going to go to the liability, but this is the group health life insurance. And this is the total budget of $18,376,970. Did you mean, Charlie, did you want to go through the different lines to comprise this? And I'll be happy to go through it. No, we have several different insurance budgets, right? No, there's only one budget that we're going to be voting on. There's only one budget that we're voting on. There's about 15 pages of documents that support or back up how we got to the budget page. And that's why I ask people if they have any questions. I'll be happy to explain, but I did send out by email back on March 17th, the 15 pages of documents that support the request for this particular budget, including the offsets and other aspects that I mentioned, the increase in enrollment, the increase in fees, and so forth. So I guess I'm not really understanding what the problem is at this point. If we're at a point we can put this to a vote, I'm happy to put it to a vote. If there are any questions or discussion, I'm happy to entertain them. So once again, I'll ask, do we have a motion? Bill, are there any questions? I'm sorry, I had my mute on. I shouldn't have done that. Are there any questions on the group health insurance budget? Okay, then the motion has been made and seconded to approve for 18376970. I will do the roll call now. Great, give me a hand. Aye. Shane Bundell. Aye. John Ellis. Aye. Carolyn White. Aye. Shoot. Aye. Mary Margaret. Right on. Yes. Arif Padaria. Aye. Jonathan Wilde. Wallace. Aye. Raleigh Foskett. Aye. Brian Beck. Aye. Peter Howard. Yes. Shailene Pocrest. Aye. Darrell Harmer. Aye. John Deist. Aye. Alan Jones. Aye. Annie McCourt. Aye. Brian Keller. Or Bill Keller. Aye. Kay, George Coster. Aye. Christine Deschler. Yes. Gene Carmen. Yes. And Dave McKenna. Yes. Okay, now I just realized my problem of doing this. Bill, could you take the liability insurance and go through that please? I can. So, moving on, next is the liability insurance. And after all sets, the 2021 budget request is for 481,818 which is the 0% increase from last year. So, when we reviewed this budget, we saw that there are again no big surprises. I can explain each one of these line items if you like, but if there aren't any questions, I recommend that we accept this budget as printed for 481,000, excuse me, $818. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Okay, so issues been made in second. Are there any questions or discussion? Okay, I should have done this vote as one. I apologize for that, but it's a little too late to go back now. So, I'm doing a roll call vote on the liability insurance. Grant Gibbian. Aye. Shane Bundell. Aye. John Ellis. John. Aye. John. Aye. Very much. Aye. Frank Lamont. Yeah. Arif Padaria. Aye. Jonathan Waller. Aye. Charlie Foskett. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter Howard. Yes. Shayleen Pokress. Aye. Darrell Harmer. Aye. John Deist. Aye. Allen Jones. Aye. Annie McCourt. Aye. Bill Keller. Aye. George Kosher. Aye. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. Dave McKenna. Yes. Okay, Bill, thank you very much for that. Appreciate your work. And the next budget is the cable access. And Sandy? Yes. Sandy, are you there? I am here. Okay, Sandy, could you tell us something about the cable access budget? These are about the same categories that we have last time. Any highlights or lowlights or anything? Got most of these from ACMI. And so we know how much we're expected to get from the cable providers. That's $798,000. And plus they put in some money for capital. And then there's a small amount of estimated revenue from other things. But most of what ACMI spends its money on is salaries to 608. They have a capital plan that lays out $145,000 for their capital needs. And so then they frankly sort of back into the expenses number of 185. Beyond that, I really don't have a lot more to say about it. Okay. Do I have any questions? Do I have a motion? So moved. Moved. Second? Second. Brian? It's been moved and seconded for fable action on the budget. Remember, this is money that basically used to come in, go directly to the cable access until the Department of Revenue said that no, you've got to go through the town meeting process. So these are basically the same, not exact numbers, but categories that we had before. So this money comes in and then comes in from the cable providers and then goes directly out to the public access. So the motions been made and seconded. Are there any questions? Discussion? Okay. Roll call vote. Grant Gibbian. Says I. Shane Blundell. Aye. John Ellis. Aye. Carolyn White. Aye. Mary Margaret Franklin. Yes. Erie Poderia. Aye. Jonathan Waller. Yes. Charlie Foskett. Aye. Brian Beck. Aye. Peter Howard. Yes. Shailene Pocress. Aye. Daryl Harmer. Aye. Daryl Harmer. Aye. John Deist. Aye. Allen Jones. Aye. Annie McCourt. Aye. Bill Keller. Yes. George Cozer. Aye. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. Dave McKenna. Yes. Okay. Now that finishes that. And now we go to the review of changes to the budget from the town manager. Annie, if you could slide that up. All right. Can I say something? Sure, Peter. Annie, can you find the little thing that I got set out this afternoon from Liz through Liz? The one page. Same with that. Is that this? Yes. Okay. So I'd like to ask for reconsideration of this book of the manager's budget. If you want explanations, Sandy's right there to provide them. All right. I'll take, we'll do a, when we do the vote, we'll consider that both a reconsideration of the old and the acceptance of the new all at once. So Peter, do you want the deputy town manager to chip in here? Sure. Okay. Sandy, are you here? I'm still here. Okay. Do you want to go through these? Now I know Adam put together a memo sort of explaining these changes, but do you want to perhaps summarize that a little bit and then exactly what's happening? Sure. So we're at the final phases of the budget and what we're trying to do is align everything to one to get to the town budget to be at a 3.25% increase over last year's budget. And so that takes place in several different departments. The first two you see on the screen now are the town manager's department and the legal department. The change in the town manager's department comes largely because Adam with the support of the select board has wanted to reconfigure how it organizes the town departments that report. A couple of years ago, as you know, we created a finance department including the treasurer, collector, controller, and assessor. Those departments, plus purchasing information technology and acting as a liaison to the school department, would fall under my jurisdiction. What's new under this budget and where most of the changes come from is promoting Jim Feeney to be the second deputy town manager. He's currently the assistant town manager, but he would become a deputy town manager and oversee and have report to him, public works, facilities, recreational rank, inspectional services, and he would act as a liaison to the town clerk. Adam would retain oversight of the other departments. And I think the whole reason for him doing this is to reduce the number of direct reports to him and to allow him to work on things other than just overseeing the day-to-day operations of departments. So there is a substantial increase in the pay to Jim Feeney from what he had been as an assistant, but what he will be as a deputy. There's also a $2,500 increase over and above what my increase would have been. And so that totals up the total change the town manager's budget. So because of some of those changes, there's also a slight change the longevity numbers just to have them line up. So before I go to legal, Al, I don't know if you'd like me to take questions or just keep going. Why don't we take questions with that since this is the major one. Are there any questions on the change in the town manager's budget? I'm just going to raise a concern. The new assistant has been here a year. The person who's getting the increase in their salary? Yes, Carolyn. Yes. He's been in the town manager's office a little more than a more long employee of the town. And he's played the role of being an interim the help run the recreation department when we had after Joe Connolly left. Yes, but his role, his role, his current role, which we're about to change, he's had that for a little over a year is what you're saying? Yes. It's a little more than that, I think. So we did this less than two years after the community development or town development person started as well. We had a significant increase in her salary. And I, again, I'm very concerned about the fact that I keep watching the top people, the professional class in our town get these really significant increases in their salaries. And we don't see that at the bottom end. And I'm just going to throw that out there. I want that put on the record. And I'm not sure I'm going to approve this. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. And Peter has also raised his hand. Are there any other comments or questions? Yes. Peter. Howard? Annie, could you put that my do grab back up there? I want to show, I just, there are changing salaries. There's a change in longevity for a new, a new sum of those two things, which is a $27,525 increase. So the bottom line that we vote on was a $756,021 increase. It becomes $783,546. I wanted to simplify the numbers so we know what the revision is that we're talking about. As I also like to comment on that organization chart that I don't provide, that reduces his span of control from 12 or something to eight. I don't know how many of you have been exposed to span of control, but it's a favorite topic in management theory. And for this kind of a situation, age is a much more recent, is considered by the experts much more reasonable than 12. Okay. Any other questions or comments? I just have one comment and that is also on this chart of account. And I'm just going to mention to you, Sandy, that information technology would normally be considered an operation, not a finance function. And there's a lot of reasons that it being in the finance department is the wrong place. So personal opinion, also life experience. Jess, you should think about it. Okay. I'm glad to hear offline more of your thoughts on that. Okay. Before we move on to the legal budget, I want to just make one comment. Remember in all this, you're looking at the position that is in there as opposed to the position itself and what it's worth as opposed to the individual in there. So the person is getting a promotion to a whole different thing. That's not the same as the cost of living raise. So I just wanted to make that point. Okay. Sandy, could you go on to the legal budget? Yes. So we've also had some major changes in the legal department. Ed Marlenga retired and we are looking to replace him. So in FY 20, Ed earned 153,365 plus he got a $9,000 stipend for dealing with some of the workers' compromises that he did. We have eliminated the stipend and we've reduced the salary to, one we think will be significantly competitive in order to attract somebody into this position. We have given Doug Hine a bit of a bump in his salary and a $5,000 step as opposed to the $2,500 step that all other department heads got to reflect his taking on greater duties within the legal department now that Ed is gone. So that is really what the changes are in this budget. The change in his salary means there's a concomitant change in the $25 in the longevity amount but this is all really trying to reflect the increased responsibilities that we see Doug having in this position. I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, are there any questions on the legal budget? I have one. Charlie? So Sandy, are we replacing Ed Marlenga? Yes, we are. We have budgeted $140,000 which we think is more than sufficient to attract somebody and Doug has somebody in mind who I won't say who that is but he has somebody he'd like to recruit and we will have somebody in that position both to do workers' comp and some of the general legal work in the office. So there'll be a little bit more of sharing of Ed's job between the new person and my hand as well. Okay. Annie, could you put my so you see there the legal the changes in the legal budget spelled out here the original numbers and the new numbers the town council the stipend and the assistant claims coordinator and the longevity changes. So the bottom line changes as 486171. Okay and the bottom line of the entire budget is 486171 which represents about $11,000 decrease over the prior year. Okay, is there any other questions or comments on the legal budget? Okay, Sandy, do you want to do public works? Yes, if any you could move down to the next page please. No? There we go. Thank you very much. So really to bring everything then in line to get us to the 3.25 percent we had a surplus so to speak of $8907 and we are requesting that the committee vote to put that into the engineering budget. There's a line item there that Mike Rotemarker uses to hire outside consulting engineers or to hire extra time from the people who designed our projects. But there are times when the department doesn't have enough inside capacity so they have to use these outside people and in order to give him closer to what he's probably going to spend he suggested that this money be added to his budget in that in that line item and so we will request that you do that. They'll come in particularly useful for the Mystic Street bridge and for the Lake Street light projects. Okay, Christine are you okay with this? Yes, I am. Okay, are there any any questions then on the public works change? I think Alan Jones wanted to. Yeah, it's really more of a comment and it's the way that Sandy phrased it and just wanted to make it clear that the 3.25 percent is being treated as a target and not an upper limit. So it seems like if we have a budget that's that ends up being less than 3.25 percent that we just add stuff say well where can we spend this money and bring it up to 3.25 percent. So I'm just making those a comment. Okay, anybody else? Okay, we have three budget changes here and I just have a feeling that what I should probably do is do three roll call votes. So what we're going to do first is the changes to the town manager's budget, which would be the bottom line of 7.83 to 5.46. Okay, so we're doing a roll call on the town manager's budget along. Grant Kibbian? Aye. And this basically revisits the old budget and does the new one. Shane Bundell? Aye. John Ellis? Aye. John? Aye. Okay, Caroline White? No. Mary Margaret Frankelmont? Yeah. Arif Federa? Aye. Okay, Jonathan Wallach? Yes. Charlie Foskett? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Peter Howard? Yes. Shane Prokres? Abstain. Darrell Harmer? Yes. John Deist? Aye. Alan Jones? Aye. Any record? Aye. Bill Keller? No. Yes. I was turned off, sorry. No problem, I did the same thing. George Kosher? Aye. Christine Deschler? Yes. Dean Carmen? Yes. Dave McKenna? Yes. Okay, so that was the town manager. The next vote is the legal budget. John Kibbian? I vote aye. Shane Bundell? Aye. John Ellis? Aye. Caroline White? Caroline? Mary Margaret Frankelmont? Yes. Arif Federa? Aye. Jonathan Wallach? Yes. Charlie Foskett? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Peter Howard? Yes. Shane Prokres? Yes. Darrell Harmer? Yes. John Deist? Aye. Alan Jones? Aye. Any record? Aye. Bill Keller? Aye. George Kosher? Christine Deschler? Yes. Dean Carmen? Yes. Dave McKenna? Yes. Okay. And the last one is the DPW, the addition of $8,970 into engineering for consultant services. Grant Kibbian? Aye. Shane Bundell? Aye. John Ellis? Aye. Caroline White? Aye. Mary Margaret Frankelmont? Yes. Arif Federa? Aye. Jonathan Wallach? Yes. Charlie Foskett? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Peter Howard? Yes. Shane Prokres? Yes. Darrell Harmer? Yes. John Deist? Aye. Alan Jones? Aye. Any record? Aye. Bill Keller? Yes. George Kosher? Aye. Christine Deschler? Yes. Dean Carmen? Yes. Dave McKenna? Yes. Okay. So that takes care of that. Now, the last warrant article that we have is the fiscal stability fund. Now, Alan, what's the amount that we have in going into that now? You're talking about the Override Stabilization Fund or the long? Yes. Calculated now. 561,041. Okay. Does that include all the changes that we've done tonight? I believe so, yeah. So 561,041. Yeah. Okay. I think. And wait a minute. Sandy, are you still here? I am. We ended up with a somewhat different bottom line on the capital budget, right? I thought we had resolved that. And I have the same number that you do, although I for some reason am off by a dollar. We're at 16 million. No, remember the number we came up with today was 16 million 280,134 at the end of our phone call. Yes. Well, that's not what's in the long-range plan. The Override Stabilization Fund, the 561,041 is based on a capital appropriation of 16,280,134. Can you just give me a second opening my file here? Could you just confirm that the 16 million 280,134, which I agree with that number. Okay. So Al, that 561,041 is based on that new number. And I don't know if we need to refold the capital budget. If we do, maybe Sandy can explain why it's all changed. Well, I think we voted the capital budget using the different sheet. It was a vote to approve. Right. I mean, it's not, I think it's like $26,000 different. So it's not a huge amount. But Sandy, maybe you could just take a minute to explain what's happened on the capital budget over the last few days. Sure. If I, I'll just take a minute as Julie Wayman and I were reviewing our last items for publishing the town manager's financial plan. We went over the capital budget and how it related to what was in the long-range plan. And we noticed that there were a couple of small differences, both in the non-exempt debt service number and in the offset carry forward number that slightly, that changed the bottom line slightly to get it to the 16,280,134, which I believe is consistent with the sheet that I handed out before that is called attachment number four. I think those numbers all line up to that. So, and then it does mean that the Override Stabilization Fund, the product should have been $561,040. Does that guide what you believe, Alan? It's within a rounding error of a dollar. It's within a rounding error of a dollar. Yeah. So, I think we're good to vote on that number. Okay. And Al, if I could just say one other thing. I don't know if you've done the rink budget, but we need to, I need to ask you to take another vote on the rink budget. Okay. Let's do one thing at a time. Sure. Just want to make sure we didn't miss it. Right. Okay. So, is the, Alan, do you think we need to take another vote on the capital budget for that $26,000? It's, it wouldn't hurt. So, I move $16,280,134 for the capital budget appropriation. Okay. And differences in part of the debt? The debt calculations? Debt and the offsets, yes. Okay. Do I have a second to that motion? Second. Second. Okay. So, what we're going to do, and with those changes, Alan, then the amount going into the Override Stabilization Fund is the $561,041? Right. Okay. So, I think what I'd like to do is take one vote to modify the capital, the bottom line of the capital vote. So, what was the number again, Alan? $16,280,134,16280134. Okay. And how much is that different from the vote before? I don't have it in front of me. If I recall, it was about $26,000. Okay. So, it's about $26,000. So, why don't we take one vote to approve that modification to the capital budget? So, we have a bottom line of $16,280,134, and that we appropriate into the fiscal stability fund, $561,041. Does anybody have any objection to taking one vote for those two items? Okay. So, that's what we'll be doing with this next vote, to approve the modification for the capital budget, to vote the $561,041 into the fiscal Override Stability Fund. Okay. Grant Gibbian? Aye. Shane Bundel? Aye. John Ellis? Aye. Carolyn White? Aye. Mary Margaret Frankelman? Yes. Arese Padaria? Aye. Jonathan Waller? Yes. Charlie Foskett? Aye. Brian Beck? Aye. Peter Howard? Yes. Uh, Shaye Polkres? Yes. Darrell Harmer? Aye. John Dice? Aye. Allen Jones? Aye. Annie McCourt? Yes. Bill Keller? Aye. George Kosher? Aye. Christine Deschort? Yes. Dean Karman? Yes. Dave McKenna? Yes. Okay, so that was the fiscal stability and for the capital plan. Okay, so the last item on the agenda then is the, is the rank. So Mary Margaret, have you had a chance to review any changes, the changes? To these changes that we just talked about, you mean? Well, to, to, to Sandy has in his packet. Uh, no. Okay, well Sandy, why don't you go through the changes and we, the question, yes, is we have already voted the, the rank. Yeah. So, uh, so there's a take will be to re, uh, to bring up again and, and vote it again. So Sandy, what are the changes from the original budget? There's only one change in one line. And that is in line 5871, which is debt service. And, um, that number needs to read 58,881 dollars. I don't have the original in front of me. What was the original? It was about $2,000 less. It was 56 something. And I just, I don't have it with me because I'm home and not in my office. Okay. So it's a change of about $2,000. Correct. Okay. Do you have any objection to that, Mary Margaret? I know. Okay. Uh, now the, uh, arena total expenses will be 620,364 matched by the same amount in revenues. Do I have a motion? I'm a second. Okay. Moved and seconded. Any discussion or questions on that change in the ring? Yes. What was that number again, Alan? 620,364 for both expenses and revenue. Thank you. Okay. I have a question. Charlie. Where did the additional revenue come from? I just, uh, revenue, if you look at this, I believe you could go down to the next page. Is there another page for the revenue sheet? It's an ice time to increase an ice time. Oh, thank you. Okay. Thank you. So this is in the, uh, re-vote of the arena with the small, uh, $2,000 increase in, in debt service and counterbalance by ice time. So roll call grant. Gibbian. I vote aye. Shank Wendell. He had to leave. Yeah. Okay. He's left. John Ellis. Aye. Caroline White. Aye. Mary Margaret Frankelmont. Yes. Arif Padaria. Aye. Jonathan Wallach. Yes. Charlie Foskett. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Howard. Peter Howard. Yes. Uh, Shay Pocrest. Yes. Daryl Harmer. Yes. John Deist. Yes. Fallon Jones. Aye. Annie McCourt. Yes. Bill Keller. Yes. George Kosher. Aye. Christine Deschler. Yes. Jean Carmen. Yes. Dave McKenna. Yes. Okay. And I'll just for completeness, there was also a small change in the health insurance that was required to balance it out. Didn't we just do the health insurance? No, no, sorry. The health insurance number in the RIC budget. But otherwise it didn't balance. Okay. So the bottom lines are correct. I just wanted to mention that. Okay. Thank you. So I'll consider that vote for it. Alan, I have a question. John. Sandy if he's still around. Sandy's still there? Yes, I'm still here. But is there any progress on getting a department head for Wreck and Rink? Well, right now we're looking, but we don't have, we haven't set up interviews or anything yet. So we still have Bobby Jefferson as the acting. So he's working on a part-time basis as a retiree. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Now just a couple of comments to sort of end this. Obviously we don't know what's going to happen with the state budget and the state finances. And even some hits at the local level from hotel motel and meals taxes. So that's going to affect us. And Sandy I'm assuming you're taking a revisiting that issue. Sure. We've, I just been keeping track of that. I, and there are a lot of questions out there that I don't have the answers to, but we're watching very closely. Okay. And obviously this is going to be a substantial impact, or it could be a substantial impact on the state, both an income tax, sales tax, meat and meals, hotel, the whole bit. So on April 15th, the House Ways and Means Committee is supposed to be coming out with its budget. And hopefully we will not get hit too hard, but we could. And then obviously the House votes at the end of April, and then the Senate Ways and Means, and then the Senate. So this is a long process. And I have a feeling it's not over. You've already given Allen and I authority to adjust the Override Stabilization Fund, depending upon what the House does. But I think probably it's very likely that we're going to have to come in for another meeting sometime in late May or early June. The select man have postponed the Senate of the election until I believe June 3rd or early June. And the town meeting would happen after that. And the town meeting would have to be fairly quick. So I think I'll try to keep you up to date as far as when our next meeting is. But my guess is it'll be late May, early June. Plus in June we'll have to have another meeting for the reserve fund transfers. But we'll just have to see, we'll see what happens. We've got a little money to play with with the 500,000 that we just put in the Override Stabilization Fund. Hopefully we won't have to come back and cut budgets, but that's a possibility too. So, is anybody have any questions or comments? I do. Hi, Margaret. Sure. Mary. So I wanted to say that Christine Brunzorno has been doing an extraordinary amount of work to help keep this town safe. And also Sandy has been doing a lot of work. And I'm going to send out answers to some of these questions that people have asked and the answers to the problem I had with the co-transportation budget. But I mean, Christine has been so busy that she was actually texting me after midnight. But so I say kudos to both of them for all the work they've been doing. Any other comments or questions? Charlie's got a, Charlie's got a hand up. So, Annie. Yeah, I have a question for Sandy. Are we going to be staying within our anticipated town budget for fiscal year 2020 in the face of the current changes impacted by the COVID-19 virus? So there are two things to look at, expenses and revenue. Who so far have not had any additional major expenses. There have been a few here and there, but nothing really significant. What's more of a concern is revenue. I think in particular the areas I'm looking at most closely now are the RINC and REC budgets because in fact, we've had to lay off on the RINC side some of the part-time people who keep the RINC going. We have not laid off anybody else at this point. And I think everybody I'm talking about on the RINC side are people generally who have full-time jobs elsewhere. So I think this is just some extra money for them. But I think revenue is a big side. I don't think that we will not have enough revenue to meet our needs in the general fund. What may end up happening is that we have a shortage compared to what we've seen in the past few years and that will affect our free cash. But again, just to reiterate, by spending side so far, we have not had a lot of additional expenses. We may have to subsidize a couple of the enterprise funds and we're looking very closely at how our revenue will affect us. I hope that answers your question. It does. Thank you. Will the manager be instituting a hiring freeze at some point? We have, he and I and Karen Malloy have been talking about that. We've held off thinking any hiring decisions that don't need to be made right away. So I think informally we are looking at that. That's about as far as we've gotten on it, but it is under active discussion now. Are there any other questions from the committee? The last thing I wanted to mention was that for the first time this year, we had a unanimous attendance. So thank you very much for coming. I know we've had attendance this year, but this was a unanimous one. It was an interesting experience in doing this. We probably could have cut a half hour out of the meeting if I didn't have to take roll calls. But I argued with the town council and he wouldn't revamp on that. So I'll keep you up to date. I'll let you know when our next meeting is. I want to thank you for all your work. And I want all of you please stay safe and have a nice night. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right.