 I'm going to call the finance committee meeting of March 26, 2019, to order in five minutes after two, and committee member Lynn Guzmer will be participating remotely because physical attendance would be unreasonably difficult under 940 CMR 2910-5, specifically due to geographic distance. This information shall be recorded in the meeting minutes. Lynn, can you hear me? I can. Thank you. And I guess the other question is, is there anybody? Mr. Lerlin. Lynn, are you there? I am. Okay. And everybody can hear Lynn? Okay. So we have established that everybody can hear, so let them reflect that Councilor Guzmer's attendance via speakerphone can be heard by all present at the meeting. All votes taken during the meeting will be, whether there's remote participation, must be by roll call vote. So I'm going to immediately go to agenda item two and thank the superintendent and the budget director from the regional schools who are going to make a presentation of the budget, which we then refer to, have to hold a public hearing on and then refer to the Council. So thank you for coming and I appreciate you being here. Now let's turn it over to you. Thank you for having us. So I'm just going to briefly introduce the process that led to this budget presentation. So we are a four-town regional school district, grades 7 through 12. And as such, we have two parallel processes that are related but not identical. One is to develop our budget based on what the needs of the school district are. And the other is to figure out how the funding needed would be financed between the four communities. As some of you are aware from attending four-town meetings, that's a complicated set of puzzle pieces to put together. I want to compliment Mr. Mangano for his work on that every year. It seems like we have different pieces and somehow it came together. But I also want to note from the school committee perspective that in January they had an initial budget presentation. In February there was an additional budget presentation with a public hearing where anyone in the public was given time to come up and speak not during the traditional public comment period but actually through a hearing process to comment on the regional budget. And this budget was passed by the regional school committee as well as the assessment method. It was passed and voted unanimously by the regional school committee on March 12th, so just two weeks ago. I think at this point I'll turn it over to Ms. Mangano to talk through overview of the budget. I can speak to any of the ads cuts and specifics and then we're open to any feedback and questions that we might receive. All right, so I'm just going to go through the packet that I sent out to you and there should be a hard copy in front of you. So the budget that was approved is for $32,167,342. The assessment to Amherst is $16,444,279, which is just under the guidance that we received from the town at 2.49%. I'm going to flip over to page 4. So as we go through this, I'll spend a little more time in particular this first year going over some of our summary charts and how they're organized because we use those every year and it'll just be, I think, a good practice. But before we get there on page 4, one chart we put together every year that I think is important for your advocacy and when you think about the regional school district is this chart on state aid reimbursements. So we break it into two sections and these are the two of our major revenue sources that are typically underfunded at the state level. The first one is charter tuition reimbursement and the other one is regional transportation aid reimbursement. And so the way this is organized is you have the fiscal year on the left. The mandate just means if you follow the law and it's fully funded what would our reimbursement be? And then next to that is what we actually received and then the difference between the two. So in total you can see in any given year we're somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000 under what we should receive based on the law but because the line item at the state is underfunded we're not getting that full amount. So these are two areas that I know the school committee really focuses on when they're talking to our legislators and if you ever get the question raised what could you do to help the regional school district? These are two areas that would really help. I could add just briefly last week there was a hearing which was well reported on local papers as well as the globe about education funding in the Commonwealth looking forward. And one of the things that sometimes gets lost particularly is the regional transportation. So the short story on regional transportation is for districts that agree to form into a region which means there's a shared governance model representatives from all communities. All communities on a school committee the carrot so to speak is that there's funding from the state to support the transportation needs because it's a larger geographic area, likely a larger geographic area to cover to do that in the state multiple times including currently with the current governor has encouraged districts to regionalize. We have a high number of districts as compared to other states in the country. And so I think one of the ironies for me a little political here is that while there's such a push from the state to regionalize the actual carrot on the other end of regionalization continues to be underfunded. And some of that's because there's not that many regional districts and they don't live in huge population centers. So from a state representative and senator perspective there's people who are elected officials who don't have a regional district in their constituent group. So it is something we care an awful lot about and our school committee has been heavily involved in regional advocacy. I know there's a bill right now in the house to fully fund regional transportation at the state house I should say. So just wanted to put a little wrinkle for those of you who are new to regional district why do we get regional transportation but it's sort of connected to the organization of a regional school district. Do you want any questions just along the way or do you want to go through it quickly? I find the questions along the way. So I just have a question on if you receive the mandate on transportation. Is that paying for almost all of transportation is it paying a particular percent. So I just want to know how the. Yeah. So so what it pays for is eligible costs so it doesn't include special education transportation so it's only regular like big yellow school bus transportation. And it covers the costs for students that are transported over one point five miles. So we do a fancy calculation every year for reporting purposes where we have to break down what that cost is. And that's what the state bases the reimbursement on. All right. So I'm going to go to the next page which is actually number nine. I'm going to skip a couple of these pages which are just sort of informational. So page number nine is our revenue budget. And as Dr. Morris mentioned this is sort of part of the process of figuring out how we're going to fund the overall budget. And so this table is broken into four different sections. The top section are our state aid revenue sources then member town assessments then reserves and then other which doesn't really fit into those three categories. And so at the top you'll see chapter 70 that's very predictable. It's disappointing but it's predictable every year. It doesn't ever go down or at least hasn't since I've been here here and it kind of creeps up every year a little teeny bit. Transportation reimbursement is the next one that has a value for FY 20. And so we're projecting this amount based on our cost this year but overall we're expecting transportation aid to be level funded at the state level. Medicaid reimbursement we complete a report. We get reimbursed by the state for certain costs that we incur on behalf of students for medical purposes and we get a chunk of money back for those expenditures. And charter reimbursement is the next one down 172,000 that dropped quite a bit this year because we're being conservative based on the governor's proposed change to the charter reimbursement formula. It hasn't been approved but he's basically changing the reimbursement formula from a six year reimbursement to a three year reimbursement. That has some issues but that's actually not what's impacting us the most. The thing that's impacting us the most is that the way they're calculating the reimbursement instead of it being based on your cost is this year one and your cost is this year two and they reimburse you for that difference however much you increased. Instead they're looking at enrollment and they're saying all right your enrollment for the coming year is it higher than any of the prior five years. They're looking at the previous five years and saying your enrollment for the coming year has to be higher than the max of any of those five years. If it is higher than the max of any of those five years you'll get a reimbursement average cost per student for how much you're above that max. If it's not higher than that max then you get no reimbursement. So because our tuition this coming year our enrollment we actually had a good year with enrollment last year where our charter tuition stayed relatively flat. We're not expecting it to be a lot above any of our prior five year maxes. We're not expecting a lot of reimbursement under this new formula. I think the estimate of roughly how much less we're getting is somewhere in the ballpark of a hundred thousand but I can get you the exact number but it's this new formula would not be positive for us if it goes into effect for next year. So I know this jumps ahead a little bit but just to point out the amount of the place in the budget where the other side of charter is the charge. So charters has the two sides of the coin. So the revenue of the reimbursement is right here and in the expense side of the budget I'll point out where it's grouped but there's a charter tuition expense in the expense side of the budget. So in any given year if our charter tuition goes up a lot it's bad for the expenses but we'll get more reimbursement to help offset that. If our charter enrollment goes down it's good for our expenses but that means we're probably going to get less reimbursement as well. So they sort of net each other out. Okay. Dorothy. I think I heard that you would having in the high school Chinese that you either had already instituted that or that you were going to do it. And that this might lure some people back to Amherst High School. Has any of that started yet? So we've had a Chinese program. So what was new is in last year's budget we added an additional point to FTE to round out our program. So the short story is Chinese had we've always had the program. We're not always but we've had it for many years. It's wax and waned in terms of how comprehensive it was since we did have a number of students returning who are part of a school that taught Chinese immersion. We had to adjust our programming to fit their needs. So families reached out to us to be really clear not the other way around and talked about what their needs would be. They had students that wanted to return to the or wanted to come to the regional school system but they also had interest in having Chinese program that we didn't have in place. So we did reconfigure a Chinese program to fit those needs and continue. We'll continue that this year. So the next section down at their state aid is member town assessments and we'll talk about the assessment formula in a little bit. But that's every year some allocation based on enrollment and other measures that are agreed upon splits the overall assessment among the four member towns. Below that is reserve so regional schools have something called excess and deficiency. So on the town side if you don't spend money it eventually goes into your free cash and possibly a stabilization fund. On the region for regional districts any unspent money at the end of the year goes into an excess and deficiency account that has to be certified by the Department of Revenue every year. So any unspent funds from our expense budget or if we bring in more revenues than what we budgeted the sum of those two goes into this excess and deficiency account. And for regional school districts were capped at 5% of our operating capital budget. So that reserve account can never get above that 5%. So every year there's some amount that we pull out of that E&D to support the upcoming year's budget and then usually there's money we put back in at the end of that year. And then the last source and the other section is just some interest revenue that we get on our bank accounts. So those four groups make up our overall budget that we discussed at the beginning. Any questions on the revenue side of the budget before I move to the expense side? I assume you'll pick up if you have any. I'm sorry we're doing this without you having the benefit of the paper that we're all looking at. I have it. Thank you. It was sure. That out there. Yeah. All right. So this is similar oriented to the revenue side, but it's the expenses. It's broken into two sections. So the top section are payroll accounts and the bottom section, we just call expense accounts, but it's everything essentially that's not payroll. And then you have the different cost centers under each of them. Usually there's a match as a payroll cost center for regular education and an expense cost center for regular education. That's true for most of the categories. So in payroll, the overall increase was 458,000. That's essentially from our collective bargaining agreements and the annual step and call of that. Our union employees get each year. So for FY 20, it's one and a half percent is what was agreed upon. Below that expense accounts is a few areas that I'll point out, special education. We have a pretty large increase, 193,000 from FY 19 to FY 20. It's in that change column that shaded a light gray color. And that's just due to we have more students that are out of district. We've had a little bit of a bump in terms of our district placements and that's what's driving that number going up. Other programs, which is right below that. The programs is the section of our budget where charter choice tuition are held and also vocational tuition. And so you can see that's going down quite a bit. We've had good luck with our charter tuition and choice tuition staying pretty, charter tuition staying flat. Our choice tuition, which is a slightly different program, but it works the same way in terms of tuition exchange between districts. That went down and our vocational tuition went down. We had a peak of about 50 students in vocational programs two years ago. We saw a drop of 10 this past year and we're expecting another drop going forward. So we're seeing that tuition part of our budget come back down, which is a good thing. And then the other two sections I'll point out, health insurance. You can see large decreases in health insurance. Those are following really large increases in health insurance the prior year, when our premiums went up between 20 and 25 percent and the surcharge was tacked on. So it's coming back down for a few reasons. One, the surcharge went away, so that's coming off. We weren't sure that was going to go away so quickly, but it did, which is good for our budget. We also are seeing that our enrollment is changing a little bit. We have fewer people enrolling in PPO's and more people enrolling in HMO's, which is, from a cost perspective, HMO's are less expensive. And our overall enrollment is just down. I don't know if it's because of the plan design changes that were made, between all three districts, our enrollment is down a little bit. So the cost for the number of plans we're paying for is lower. Can I just ask on that? Can you analyze that? Is that people putting their dependent on another plan or putting their spouse on another plan? Because I mean, I don't need an answer right now. We can analyze, there's one trend that we did notice sort of along those lines. We have an opt-out program in the town of Amherst. So if you have a spouse that has a plan and you're with us and you decide to go to their plan, we have an incentive where we pay you, I think it's $3,000 a year to go to that plan. We did see increases, pretty significant increases in those opt-out programs. I think there was somewhere between seven and eight in each district that decided to opt out. Employees now pay a share of the premium? Yeah, so you've put in a sweetener for so much to leave. Right, so HMO's, I believe employees pay 20% and the district pays 80. And PPO's, the employee pays 25% and the district pays 75. Below that you'll see other insurance and benefits, $92,000 increase. That's our pension. We belong to Hampshire County just like the town. And that cost generally goes up about $100,000 every year. And the last one I'll focus on is the additions and reductions. So the way our budget works every year is that we don't, any additions or reductions to programming that we're proposing, we don't put it into the cost centers above because we want to isolate it for you all so you can see what's being proposed and what's been approved. So all the additions or reductions are isolated and this number down below the $301,000, which we'll talk about what goes into that number. But every year you'll see a number there. Usually it's negative because we're having to make reductions in the past, that's typically what it's been this year because of the health insurance and the tuitions, which are moving in positive directions. We were able to add a little bit to our programming. The next page I won't spend a ton of time on, but this is just a bar chart that we put together every year that compares 10 years difference between the budget back then and the budget today and how much each of these categories comprises of the overall budget. I think the two areas that are noteworthy are other programs. Again, you'll see that was only about 4.87% of the budget back in FY10 and now it's up to almost 8% of the budget. And that's really because we had a charter school that was only K6 before expand through high school. So instead of just having one charter school at the high school level, we now have two charter schools at the high school level. And that drove a lot of that increase. And then down below you'll see other insurance and benefits and retiree health insurance. Those two both have grown to be a larger portion of the budget. And again, that's due to the Hampshire County Pension System really growing quite a bit every year and our retiree health insurance pool growing every year. Which is sort of what's been predicted in the past and so what we are seeing in our numbers. And so I'm going to pass it off to Dr. Morris who's going to talk about the ads and cuts a little bit. So I'll just briefly go down some of the key ones. So in terms of adjustments, we're now fully at one to one, which means that every student who enters our regional school district is offered a Chromebook that they have and can take home and do work on during the school day as well as at home. So since we're at the one, we finally have our 12th graders which we built up from seven. Having one to one, we can reduce the cost of adding a grade level every year. We did some consolidation of software programs which helped and just also some minor adjustments. In terms of additions, significant numbers of them are based on the students that come to us that are coming to us or are here. So you'll see a school adjustment counselor that's related to special education. We have the sixth grade class across the four member towns, has a number of students who have high levels of special needs. So the increase of seven paraeducators, there's actually more than seven paraeducators needed for the incoming class. We've been able to reduce other places to make that number lower. But we knew this years ahead. We knew about the incoming class and the needs of the students. So that's the single largest budget increase. The Slythe, I know there's an acronym below, but we're having an increase in students who are ELL students, but it's not just the English language learner needs. It's that they have had interrupted schooling. So either coming from a place where school was half a day long or the refugees who did not have the experience to be educated for years on end or they were living in war-torn places and for that reason they didn't have schooling. So traditional ELL services, English language learner services, aren't actually what the students need. They need subsistently different because it's not just about the language skills. It's actually there's a gap in content that we need to fill. One of the things we're proud about, I just got back from Amherst Media filming around it, which is expanding our restorative practices program from we started last year, or two years ago in the high school and expanding it to the middle school environment so that we have a practitioner supporting restorative practices, which is an approach that's trying to stay away from the traditional disciplinary model where there's not learning involved to way we're harmed, to interacting and resolving conflict in ways where human beings are preserved and actually the real issue is resolved. We have a number of other positions that we're aware that this good times of our budget season won't last. So some of these are places where we could have one-year positions. So one of those is a grade 6 through 12 math curriculum training and support. We'll be talking about that in a couple hours. Regional school committee meeting. So we are looking to change the curriculum, the math curriculum, and we do know that our staff need support in that curriculum adoption. So we're looking at that as a one-year position that can come off for next year. Similarly, the contribution of capital stabilization. We'd love for that to continue, but if we have next year, it's not as strong fiscally as this year. We know that money will be there for capital projects, but we don't necessarily need to bank on it for years on end. So we're trying to be thoughtful in our planning to know that we won't have this level of health insurance savings year to year. Just one other one I think I'll speak to is the bilingual psychologist. So again, that's related to special education needs and who our students are, and that's really trying to replace some contracted service lines. If we can get someone on staff instead of contracting out, we feel like the quality will be better and we may actually yield savings in the end because how much it costs to have a consultant do bilingual evaluations. So I think I'm open to any questions. I just wanted to do some highlights around the budget ads and reductions. All right, we'll keep going. This is Lynn. Lynn. Hi. I sent a little icon, but I don't know whether we set up that way yet. So one of my questions is really about the students that we pay to go out of the system and the students that pay to come in. And what is our real cost of those that pay to come in and what is our real loss of those that leave? And I think I'm more focused on those that come in. Are what we're getting for them actually covering the cost? Hi, Lynn. Hi, Sean. I'll answer that question. So there's a study that we had done, I think it was in 2014 and we hope to update it again soon, but NASDAQ, which is the New England Association of Elementary Secondaries. That's one of those educational organizations. They came in and they do enrollment projections. We work with them quite a bit, but they came in and did an analysis of our school choice program. So that's in terms of what you're talking about. It's primarily the school choice program where students come into the district and what they looked at is what is the cost to those students that are coming in? I think at the time we had probably somewhere between 90 and 100 school choice in students and so they analyzed what was the cost on the system from those students and then compared that to how much tuition we were bringing in to say, are we operating an efficient school choice program or not? And so at that time they had estimated the cost to be a .6 FTE, which essentially when they looked at the class sizes and things like that and they backed out how many choice students were in and could we save classes and things like that. They narrowed that down to a .6 FTE which is about $36,000 to $40,000 a year. So there's some other marginal cost but in terms of the real sort of staffing level cost that's what they had estimated. And for those students we bring in $5,000 per student and then there's a special education increment on top of that. So if a student comes in with special education needs we get additional funds as well. So for 100 kids, 90 to 100 kids we probably brought in between $500 and $600,000. So at that time the report was done. They had said our school choice program was very efficient but that's one of those things that we do have to monitor because that can change. As our enrollments continue to decline it's just something we have to monitor to make sure it's still efficient going forward. So that's the school choice piece and for tracking other costs in terms of how we charge our tuition, evoke tuition we just have accounts that you can see that and in our full budget there's an informational section which has the enrollment where you can see how many kids are going out of district for those reasons. Can I just ask if you went back and looked at it did they or do you when you look at the choice in groups look specifically at the kids who come in so if someone comes in and you're getting some extra for special needs but this is extremely high need so that is looked at when they're doing. Yeah so we do something called the school choice claims every year and so for the students that are coming in we complete our special education department helps complete an individual claim for those students that have special education needs so it is specific to the students. So because we have a lot of new counselors who have not been through this before would you just for a second remind us of how many people how many students are coming into the region as choice students because they were in elementary and what are we doing as far as taking choice directly into the region. Yeah so all four of the member towns elementary districts take choice students so you have Pellum which is about 35 40 percent of its students or choice students and the way the laws work once you're a choice student in a district you follow that district even if the district change that residency they're treated the same way so the vast majority of the choice students we have at the region like that are coming into seventh eighth grade they were that we don't have a choice of taking them or not I'm not suggesting that there's not value in the students who come or the choice program we actually don't take a tremendous number of choice students when we do it's often at seventh and ninth grade because those are the transition grades where it's a little more predictable or a little more unpredictable on the front end because some students come back from other private schools charter schools and some students go that's been what we've done we haven't taken huge numbers at those grade levels the vast majority are coming from Amherst Pellum Leverton shoots very elementary schools as they're entitled to do entitled to do and the other thing I think I'd note is tonight at our school committee meeting we'll be having that final report from JCJ who looked at you know good sixth grade fit in the middle school could seventh and eighth grade fit in the high school and so we want to think about choice in a larger context too of what are our buildings what's our enrollment going to be is there going to be any adjustments based on the enrollment based on things going on in all four member towns something we take really seriously and it's a good question because particularly at this moment in time we want to be hawkishly looking at that as we may be considering decisions about what students are educated where at least considering decisions in the next few years I'm sure I did not understand what you said about the costs you said it was it cost each one who came in 36 to 40,000 that can't be right I'll clarify a second so what Nezdek looked at was the total cost of all the choice students that were in the region and they estimate that total cost to be the 36 to 40,000 and then so what was the total cost of what you forgot from tuition in terms of the revenue that came in so I can't remember that specific year but we get $5,000 per student so if we had a hundred students I think that's $500,000 roughly there I'll have to double check them out but in general we get between $500 and $600,000 a year when our enrollment floats between 90 and 100 students that are choice in so it's an advance then you're coming out on top that was the conclusion at that time but again it's just something we have to monitor because the enrollments change over time I think the only thing I'll add is that our choice waiting list is long and I say that because I want to be deliberate I want to make sure that the council knows or the finance committee knows we're very deliberate about how many students we take it's not all comers because we're really conscious of class sizes the experience of our students have and also being efficient with our staffing so we look at certain grade levels based on the number of students we have we say well that grade level could accommodate 10 to 12 more kids in 7th or 9th grade there's other grade levels I can think of last year where we just said based on the number of students we have there's not really space if we added more students we need to add staffing where I was in this role but just a very consistent methodology the district has had we only add, we fill empty seats we don't create seats and so that's been the approach and it continues to be said and on the flip side of choice in we monitor choice out because school choice feels like a good bell weather for how the school district is doing because it's choosing between different public school options and so we have roughly 90 to 100 kids who choice in with a wait list and on the choice outside it's usually between 20 and 30 again that's been going down the last few years down to I think the low 20s might even be under 20 at this point so our choice out is relatively low Does that include charter kids? No, no this is just school choice so public school programs so the next two pages I won't spend a lot of time I just wanted to make you aware of them we also include in the budget summary tables on the grants that we get so these are state and federal grants and some private grants so if you ever are curious who's given us money this is one area to look and that's broken down into payroll accounts and expense accounts as well just as a general observation for the region our largest grant is the special education IDEA grant which is an entitlement grant from the state to support special or from the federal government actually that goes through the state to support special education students and we have a few other grants but that's the largest grant and then the next page is a summary of our revolving funds so school districts have a number of revolving funds which are basically special purpose funds that track monies that come in for specific purposes so athletics is a good example of the athletic program charges participation fees those participation fees gate receipts for events go into a revolving fund and then that revolving fund pays for some of the costs of the athletic program so coaches, officials some supplies and things of that nature another one is our food service program so again we collect federal and state reimbursements and fees for lunch from families and that goes into a revolving fund and pays for the staff who work in the program and the food and all that stuff so we have a number of those and those again the major ones are listed here question it's just kind of weird looking under food services in FY16 and 17 you got 14,000 then it jumps up to 308 yeah so I'll start so we decided back in FY17 to bring our food service program back in-house so we went from contracting out all of our employees through Wittens so that cost was down in the expense section so if you look at food services down in the expense section you'll see a corresponding drop in that same year where it jumps you'll see a drop on the expense side and that's because we went from contracting out to the program being in-house and hiring our own staff so when we made that switch for FY18 all the staff came on to our payroll and that cost to outsource it went away and the first year was very successful so we measure success from a financial perspective in terms of how much we have to subsidize the program each year so however much money what we have to pay to provide the meals and there's usually a gap every year that the operating budget has to fill in because none of these revolving funds can end the year in a deficit and so that amount that we had to basically fill in went from $220,000 I can get to the exact number at some point $220,000, $200,000 in FY17 down to the low $120,000 somewhere in that range so that first year the program being in-house was very successful and it looks to be continuing that trend this year but that's one program that we're monitoring very closely because it's in the second year that it's been in-house I was just going to say that came from a lot of popular interest in having in-house food service and having more control and the non-financial side I know it's a finance committee meeting but has been not surprisingly they go hand in hand so I was going to transition to the capital budget which is on the next page so the school committee approved one capital request for FY20 but it's a relatively large one it's the $3 million for the middle school roof we have applied to the MSBA through their accelerated repair program to try to get partial reimbursement for this cost and we'll find out sometime over the summer whether we were accepted to that program when the town of Amherst would actually start paying this would be a couple of years down the road once the project's completed and we've gone out to borrow for it but this is the project we're hoping to complete probably not this summer but the following summer depending on the timing of if we get into the MSBA program does the grant pay for 50% if it's awarded? somewhere in that range it's not exactly 50 but they'll pay for whatever reimbursement rate and then calculate the Amherst share based on your formulas so will that be coming into the FY20 town capital budget as a guesstimate on the Amherst share? it wouldn't be in the FY20 I don't believe yet because the town's not probably going to be paying that in FY20 probably the earliest you would actually make a payment on this project would be FY21 but in general the regional debt from these projects that are approved is in the JCPC I was just really asking about is it FY20 or not I don't think it'll be FY20 because it hasn't shown up yet but you're saying that you think you're booking it for FY21 it depends on the timing of when it gets completed so if we get into the MSBA this summer and we can do the project by the following summer and then go out and borrow for it because the way the process works is we use temporary borrowing so bond anticipation notes to pay for the projects as we complete them and then once they're completed if it's a large enough project we'll go out for a bond and convert it to a long term debt and then once it's converted to a long term debt we assess the towns for the annual debt payments so that process can take a little bit between just how long we do the temporary borrowings versus when we convert it to a long term bond so if we get into the MSBA money this summer then there's also a question of do we reapply for the MSBA the following summer or is the situation getting bad enough with the roof where we just have to do it so this $3 million is for the full cost of the roof and it also includes some we're not quite sure yet if it's enough but it includes some amount for strengthening the roof at the middle school to be solar ready so that if the state comes out with new solar incentive programs we'll have new panels on the middle school roof so this is the full cost if we do get into the MSBA the cost of the town will be lower I know I'm getting in the weeds a little bit here about the roof but if you move the sixth grade up I saw some plans on where the classrooms might be and some of them don't have windows but there was a question on whether if you're replacing the roof you could put skylights in so that would be part of a consideration it is so you all should welcome to come tonight at 6.30 your whole presentation but I'll give you the preview of it which is fine so skylights are not the option that any facility director likes frankly because they leak you'll see in the Amherst budget we've asked for funds I wasn't suggesting you do them now but one of the things the architects have talked about and we had a facility advisory group of community members who advised that process was what's called sky tubes so some people have them in their homes they're certainly the cost structure could fit within what we're talking about the initial estimate that'll come out is I think it was $67,000 to put 57 of them in the interior spaces that really we should be thinking about whether sixth grade comes or not because you know there's still students in those spaces without natural light so that'll be talked about tonight with a nice visual that the architects have used from another school where they had a project and they wanted to add natural light so from a leaking perspective they function much better than skylights and from a cost perspective they're certainly well within I don't want to say drop in a bucket but $3 million compared to 60 some odd is certainly something that I think is worth considering I think Lynn has a question Lynn Lynn I think you did you put a thumbs up Lynn okay I had to unmute so let me understand this the money that you're asking of JCPC is on case you don't get the money from the state so we're not asking JCPC at this point for any funds for this again the way this goes into JCPC is it comes in as debt essentially it's not the regional plan is not considered as projects it comes through as debt I really think because of the arrangement between the four towns and how the approval process works is that if it gets approved by the four towns then the member towns are obligated to pay for it at that point it's not a request type thing so when it eventually comes into JCPC it will come in if it's approved it will come in as debt not as a specific project request I guess the question and Andy you might be able to help me understand we're going to bring this up as part of our hearing on the regional school budget correct we are um the regional agreement Sean Mike can explain this to you a little bit but if need be but there's a provision in the regional agreement that requires that the regional school committee notify member towns when there's a proposed expenditure for capital and there's a specific period of time within which communities can go through a procedure which historically has been the select board deciding that it wants to put it on to a town meeting warrant and then town meeting has the choice as to whether it wants to object if it doesn't act within that specific period of time then the proposal goes through and it is assessed a portion is assessed to each town according to a formula that's established in the regional agreement which is different from the formula that we discussed at the fort town meeting that contains to operating budgets um the other thing that I'll note and then turn it back over to our guests is that in my recollection for all of the years that I've been involved in finance committee in the old format and on the select board I can never recall a select board in Amherst or in any of the towns actually referring at the town meeting that this agreement to accept the assessment as a reasonable and thought out process that was achieved through a fort town process and so I don't recall it ever happening even though it's provided in the regional agreement we are in a new realm and we haven't quite worked it all out but I think that we kind of are at right now as it really is a council decision there is no separate select board to put it on the town meeting warrant yeah and just filling in the specific so it's 60 days from the date that school committee votes authorizes the debt that the towns have to act on it and if no action is taken within that 60 days then it's basically approved um and so I like Andy since I've been here even before I was in this role I don't believe it's ever been brought up at town meeting I think in large part I think it's because it's usually presented at the four town meetings and we get feedback on the capital plan at the two four town meetings and try to craft something that is supported by the officials from the four towns but in terms of the timeline it's 60 days and so we always have that vote within 60 days of the annual town meetings so people so the mass and the three smaller towns can consider it at their annual town meeting if they want to and so the 60 days would be up later in April I believe or is it early May but it's March 12th to April 12th so rough it'd be sometime in May so um but I had suggested was that um the topic be eligible for consideration at the regional hearing just so that the council is aware but um I think you know I'm not inclined personally to recommend that we take action but I think that it's important that council understand the process thank you and that was very helpful and the other thing you'll see on the capital plan just because it may look funny is Summit Academy renovations this is a project that the school and town took on together back when the school was still when the school district was still using Summit Academy and we agreed to pay the town back over 10 years for some work that was done back then so even though we're not there we feel it's the right thing to do to continue to pay the town back for those costs the next page I'll try to go a little quick on the next page this just gives you what your debt assessment is so for FY 20 the way this chart works is the top half versus debt schedule and debt expense those are our obligations that are outstanding so right now the region has a bond for projects that were approved between FY 13 and FY 15 and that's the principal and interest on that bond we have bond anticipation notes for projects that were approved between FY 16 and FY 19 and because those projects were relatively small we're probably just going to pay back the notes and not convert it to a bond because it just doesn't make sense to and then we gave you an estimate for planning purposes for the roof so you can actually see here I have it in FY 22 and you can see what your assessment is so right below the debt expense you'll see the assessments of the towns so for FY 20 Amherst is 294,160 and if you wanted to see what the impact of the roof would be if the full 3 million was expended with no MSBA reimbursement that's what it would climb to in FY 22 and so the assessments of the towns are sort of a lower point in history I'll share with you the sort of a fuller history of what data assessments have been to the towns over the years because I think it helps give you a greater picture of sort of the capital investment because really most of the capital for the regional school district is through this mechanism so that will help give you the context of where we are in terms of historical spending on capital and the last page just because I know it comes up sometimes is OPAD so other post employment benefits the region does have a trust fund established we have been making investments into that trust fund we have a standing line item in our operating budget for about 90,000 that's going to climb every year for the foreseeable future you can see our liability is quite large just like the towns it's 57 million and our fund balance and the trust fund is in the $200,000 range but just in case you get asked the region is trying to fund as much as it can and putting money aside for that purpose and that's it Questions? I really appreciate it and I thank you for coming since we had asked you to come on the fourth for the hearing I'm very pleased that you are here to give us the preview I guess if you have anything that you would like us to distribute to the full council in advance of the hearing we have encouraged the council to be there for the hearing on the fourth and have posted it as a or will post it I guess correctly stated as a meeting of the council in addition to a meeting of the finance committee and we've encouraged the entire council to attend which we believe should be the last presentation that's necessary on the regional budget but thank you Is there some place here where there's going to be a problem if people come to this hearing are they coming to speak for or against something because I mean this looks like very professional and thorough and detailed and you know having a hearing so what are people coming to say so I think the only right predictor of the future is you know you look at the past we did not have public comments at our public hearing at the region I don't think we had any public comments and that's unusual for us and part of that's that we're having a particularly compared to the past couple years a particularly strong year so I can't predict that that will definitely happen but I think that's the best predictor is who comes before the regional school district passes it my experience you know also is with the four towns having a really successful outcome of four town meetings that also we've been communicating frequently about this we did more outreach this year than we've done in the past also and superintendent newsletters this is the budget this is when the budget hearing is Sean did a great job meeting with faculty and staff I was able to attend one to get their input so I think what we're finding is that as we front load the feedback process it's a good way to do it but I think it also helps not have things come up later that were unanticipated yeah and I'll just add in terms of increases to the overall budget that's always something we're conscious of that the costs are going up this year because of the health insurance and the charter tuition the increase in our budget is relatively low I think it's 1.8 or 2% or something like that which is either at inflation or a little bit below inflation one thing if I have one second I just wanted to quickly show you all if we're on TV the community where they can find this information on the budget some of you probably know this but so if you go to the ARPS website go to departments and then business office there's a number of links here one of them you can click on any of the stuff audit reports, bid postings whatever you're interested in but we have budget information and with our new website everything is held on a google drive and so you have budget documents presentations and reports so reports are we do quarterly reports every quarter but every fiscal year for the school committee so if you're interested in sort of how's the budget doing, the budget that's already approved how are we doing with that budget you can go to the quarterly report section and view those and we update those typically right after we present them to school committee and then the budget documents themselves are here as well we've got FY20 budget documents you'll see we have the region one posted and the Palem one posted and I've got to get the Amherst one posted because that was approved last week, shame on me but I'll get the Amherst one posted as well and so if you're free to again go here whenever you want if you have questions on anything you can email or call and we'll answer I think that was really helpful thank you Mr. Scott when you do the hearing too the first time I went to search I found it but it was like not here, not here and then I found a little tree on where to go and can I find there I found some old documents but if I wanted to know the total amount of money that flows out of our system to the charter schools where would you find it? so is there a current number I'll just tell you real quickly what page it's on it's in the big document, I can find it it's on page 91 of the big document that's the other program section and you'll see a few years of actual and then what's being budgeted but that's the vocational tuition the charter tuition, the choice tuition are all on that page so I know I'm not it's your presentation and not mine when you do the public hearing I really jump out at you and I heard during the summer forms where people were shocked at that number I heard people go and then you've got this other number of the shortfall on what was promised but not given so it makes a link back to the state where you say that voice is not just locally but voices at the state level really matter and it's not just our town but it's particularly our town here but it's not like a circle is around it with stars or something on it but making that point really strongly is how well you're managing despite the shortfalls we can do that one last thing while you're on the subject of the links and I actually to ask our IT department to follow up to go to the Amherst website to government and budget and there's a link to the school budget it doesn't work anymore because I think it goes to the old version of the budget and that link needs to be updated that was the detective work where I said oh well that didn't work so let's try the school the school does not I just checked it right now so thank you okay well thank you very much appreciate it see each other again see you again in the fourth thank you so I think what I would like to do because we have one other person who's here and that's Dave Burgess and David thank you yes so welcome so I think that there were two questions that came up in the discussion why we were hoping that you could come and we're very pleased that you were able to one is that there's several members of the committee who have been asking for general question about how tax is calculated if any of my fellow committee members want to restate it after I stated because I think I haven't done it well enough please jump in but to understand on rental property and mixed use buildings how you make that calculation and then the other question was whether there's any estimates estimates on the east street school as far as what the sale value of it might be if there's any appraisals that would help with that and also any information that might help sort of understand what revenue might be coming in which is based on a little bit on understanding the first but may have information that you just don't have well we'll start at the beginning the mixed use properties are valued using the income approach to valuation what we're going to do is we're going to find out what the income is for both portions commercial and residential so we're going to look at each portion which is residential and commercial we will take the total income from the residential portion and we will apply a factor for vacancy in Amherst we allow a 5% vacancy it's always going to be that 5% and we'll take that off and we will then assume that we're going to take a factor which is somewhere between 38 and 43% for operating expenses of the property that's what we have been using that will change if we're working on some low income projects such as the weekend property it's going to be a little bit higher that will give us a net operating income we subtract those two figures from the gross income that will give us a net operating income and then we capitalise it and we're using it at the moment in Amherst the cap rate of any was from 7.5% to 10.5% based on the property the quality of the property and we do the same thing for commercial but the expenses are a little bit less and the vacancy is still 5% so that is how we do it then we'll add those two figures together and that's the total valuation to the property if a commercial part of the building is empty but in theory would be rented are there still being assessed on it yes everything is assessed whether it's empty or not we always look at those properties can I ask about an arrangement I believe up by where I live at Amherst where the new development is coming in the land is owned by one party the commercial is operated by a party and then the rental units so would you be issuing two tax bills then or does the whole thing get one tax bill good question there's going to be two tax bills there will be one for the residential portion which will go to the vegan companies and one for the commercial areas I guess can I segue into the street school to ask similar questions what Michelle wants to ask I just wanted to know is there an advantage of keeping commercial and residential we don't separate between residential and commercial properties so is there any advantage to doing that I assume you mean we don't have a separate tax rate for residential and commercial I know the reason for that okay but we are okay so let me see what was the question yeah we're not separating out like when we show residential property some of them are rented out and some of them are used by the owners so right now when we show residential property which is showing this lump we're not separating the two no so the reason we don't have a different rate for the two is because it's not enough commercial property to justify but then oh yeah so my question really is why is there any benefit to why do we not make the residential that's for rent a commercial why is that treated as residential we don't have any option it's at the state that decides what's commercial and residential and if it's used as a residential property it's residential except for hotels that are considered commercial but apartment complexes are all residential okay so I'll segue to my question if the land that a building is on is owned by a public entity a municipal government and the building that it is built by developer you can still assess the developer a tax rate even though the land is not being taxed so I should ask as a question can you still yes we consider the building on least land so that is what we will assess the building owner for the property and the land obviously we're not going to assess the town if you look at the north hamhurst the old school yes the old school now the day here if they paid taxes they would be taxable on the property on the building alone not on the residential or not on the land and the same for the new development on Olympia Drive would that be true if UMass had a commercial housing development on UMass land I know I'm jumping into a question that I know only part of the answer because I've seen other states you can do it but I don't know whether you can it's really going to depend on what the state allows us to do when it comes right down to it personally I believe it should be taxed but we'll have to see what happens when we get some private development on there we have a hotel sitting up there we have never been able to tax you know I'm going to have figure out whether he was telling me exactly the situation but I came up on a plane today next to a young man who said he was going to a privately owned training center on UMass property where they own the center so I'm not sure he understood which piece of property but they conduct training sessions there so I just tracked down what he was talking about but it was for UMass students but they were the trainers service recruiters and training people for jobs I'm not aware of any property they got the only thing that we have to look at right now is UMass Boston because I think that they actually are ahead of us on setting up these I really don't know I wonder what's happening there okay shall we do something else here so that the last piece is on the east street the piece of land when the presentation was made to us a week ago they said that it's been determined that only part of the land can be built on because another part of it is very wet or wetland and they weren't sure if we wanted to get a value just a value from you on what you value it as so we know what gift we're giving for all housing would it need to be re-looked at to take into account that part of it can't be built on we can certainly do that but I haven't no one's asked me to do it yet there was a bit surprised when you were asking the question but yes we can do that we can take a look at it and give you an idea what we think the value should be obviously if you're going to sell the property it might be a bit different so that would be a question that would have to come from us Andy then I think it would be helpful to the council if we wanted to put a number on it where it was left of course was that the council voted that they would not refer to us which it was the benefit of saying that they were not expecting a report back so I think that it then makes it optional for the committee as to whether it wants to it has anything to report that they think would be helpful to the discussion so we will have to have that discussion before and my understanding was we weren't going to influence a decision but it's just we wanted to put a piece of a value on it you know so if we're entering in a deal we say you're getting this much from us and it's more than zero yes we can do that that's not a problem and also for future as we create guidelines for future such transactions so we have a history of what has been done and then we can create a process for when we're giving property away for affordable housing what that's going to look like yeah it's not a simple arithmetic for that reason Paul? a couple of years ago we decided Amherst college we're looking for values on their property so the values on the normal assessment problem is based on market value of properties these are all special use properties that we're looking at here at the moment and really for resale the value is not very much so we're using a replacement cost value on the buildings for these that's basically almost an insurance value for the property not exact not what it would sell for so that's why they're quite high at 3 million the high schools are all high at the moment because they really wouldn't have a market maybe the acreage has the market that someone wants to knock the building down and build something on it if someone wanted to knock the street school down that's a big building it's a big knockdown in the minutes that we're going to get to later that I took on the March 19th meeting showed it to my husband I said we were interested in finding the valuation of the land just so they would know the value of the gift and he said something which may or may not be true he said that evaluation is necessary for the recipient because they need that for their tax filing so then we do need to re-value it the value they're going to come up with when we give them they're probably going to have an appraiser as well for their purposes for their starting point for their tax purposes going forward our value of the gift is what we think it is but then their appraiser is going to hope what they need so you know if you have anything we would certainly report it to the council on Monday but I don't know whether I don't think there's a rush on it to the question of this what part of the land did people even know it existed so we don't want to put a price tag on it that is higher you've got the question we can probably come up with a value if you want it by Monday because what I'll do is take a building site on the property and use that as the base value and go from there and then the rest of it will put back as wetlands and backland so I think probably as an idea how much of the land is wet we can work from there thank you you're on so were there other questions about how assessments are done that would be helpful to ask while we had the opportunity and I think that the other thing you were alluding to and I just say this to the committee as a whole there is a tax classification hearing that takes place in the fall of every year which the decision has to be made annually as to whether to keep the factor of the distinction between commercial and residential at one which is to say we're taxing them at the same rate and in that document which is available on the select board page for that particular meeting and can be easily found and sent to you if you're interested it explains what the effect would be on the tax rates for homeowners which would be very small and what the effect on commercial properties which we are interested in promoting within the town which would be very high because of the large percentage of our property that is in fact residential and if anyone's interested in the details of that the best document is one that I think our guest today actually probably writes but it's actually issued by the assessors I know you did but I appreciate it and it's very clearly set forth every year as to what the current estimates are for what would be the effect of change and the ultimate conclusion the select board always came to I can speak to it from that side was that the benefit to our homeowners is so negligible in the penalty to our property is so great that it wasn't something that we would fairly consider and I think there are a lot of communities that are in the same place now that you've clarified that apartment houses will be residential tax by state law we don't really have a big question do we it's just the commercial part the restaurant is still gone as commercial so sometimes do a differential tax rate if they have a substantial enough commercial because they're making a lot of money well you get to make it in the future anything else I'm just looking around okay so thank you very much this has been very helpful appreciated thank you so you want a brief break sure then we'll take a brief break right now okay so what we're going to do is ask our town manager to speak with us briefly about some aspects of the budget document so that to help us understand how the budget document is structured so with the table saying this for limited benefit is that Paul and Sonia are now ready to make a presentation which involves a small number of slides and so this is under a Friday 19 budget review so we're hoping that you brought your budget which was in your big binder I didn't bring the binder but I brought the thumb drive that's good so that's your FY 19 budget it's the document that the town manager would hand over to the finance committee that's the document the finance committee would work from when it was evaluating the departmental budgets and everything that was presented so that's the document what we wanted to do just quickly today was to orient you to what that budget looks like what are the components of that budget on the pages so I think Sonia is going to walk you through that I'm going to try so the budget book and what are the contents of the budget book this is the town manager's chance to tell the story of the town and in the book in the beginning of the book you'll find the transmittal letter or on the town manager letter which shows the picture through the town manager's eyes and we have the finance committee and select board as well really so we have the guidelines from the finance committee and the select board as well in this book because this is 20 I think we have it in the 22 okay then we have the forecasting charts in the beginning of the book which include charts and graphs showing revenue and expenditure history as well as FTE history in the front of the books and you can see the FTE history on page yeah XBI 16 and 17 and then starting on page 2 of the budget book we have history of revenue sources so this tells you over time what our revenue sources were back to 2015 and it has state aid it has the chart in front that shows the three major sources what this chart doesn't have is other financing sources which would be if we took money from free cash or ambulance receipts that's not here but the continuing pages has more detail has the detail of property tax it shows you how the levy is calculated back to fiscal year 15 it shows you local receipts detail on page 6 you have a lot more detail on local receipts so it shows you how much we're taking in for motor vehicle excise and all the other categories under local receipts then it has state aid the chart of what our state aid is over time and then the numbers chart on page 9 that shows the amounts that we have taken in over the years then we go into our expenditure side sorry which starts on page 13 and there you have pie charts of expenditures by type and then expenditures by functional area and this is for the town operating budget only so it's not the overall town budget which includes the schools and the library and then on page 14 and 16 it gives you more detail on expenditures by department sorry I'm trying to adjust between my glasses and okay and then we go to the budget document itself turn my notes and this the next couple of pages will tell us what's our purpose this is departmental pages and it will tell you what is our purpose what have we accomplished what's next and performance measures so you have the mission statement and this tells us what is our purpose it tells then we have the recent accomplishments and current challenges recent accomplishments and current challenges could include things such as I'm going to use the IT department since we have the IT department up here participated in negotiations for renewal of a 10 year contract with the Amherst media that's one of their accomplishments the challenge might be managing many large projects in a timely manner while maintaining the current IT infrastructure as one of the challenges then we have long range objectives and examples of this would be to maximize the town's ability to provide services online which is something they're always driving to do more of and then next year's objectives what do we want to do next year in the budget one of their objectives was to upgrade the police department's internal video recording system or to upgrade the audio visual equipment in the first floor meeting room as an example and then we have the performance measures or service levels each each department or each page where the departments have a lot of different information it's interesting to look at and compare over the years and then this page gives you the budget numbers this will give you the history and change from previous year's budget what does it cost for benefits and how are we paying for this department and how many FTE's what are we spending money on and what has changed what are the other appropriations this is the budget for the department the history of the actuals and then the comparison of the previous year's budget to the budget that we're proposing and it will show you any significant changes this top part where it says total appropriations this is the main focus of the budget these numbers that are here are very accurate I'd say almost anything can change up until the budget is voted but these numbers are pretty well set when you get below the supplemental information where the benefits and capital is anything below that is just that supplemental information this employee benefits shows what it cost for benefits in this department if we don't appropriate it in this department it's just appropriating in the general fund budget under benefits but this gives you an idea of what it costs and this also includes retirees so it's also shown like when I retire from the finance department eventually here in the finance department there will always be a figure in there for me for paying out my retirement benefits for my employee health insurance benefits whoops I forgot to talk about the capital the capital that's in here is what the departments put in their budgets to begin with so we won't really know what the capital is going to be and for another few weeks here until the capital budget's been approved and so the numbers that are in here are what they asked for at the time so these numbers will change but it gives you an idea and then we have the source whoops I want too many here the source of funds this shows you an approximate idea of the funding sources for this department this also change this is one thing until the tax rate is set for a fiscal year these numbers can fluctuate because there's a huge calculation that happens with the recap and we sometimes have to adjust some of these figures that are in here especially local receipts and then the FTEs this tells you how many positions are in that department and what we're paying for and then the explanation of major budget components which means what are we spending our money on personnel services, re-licensing and it gives you a good idea of what's going on here and then if there's any significant changes in the budget it would show up right here so if funding changed for people like I know in IT for fiscal year 20 we budget we have one employee that's half paid out of IT and half paid out of public safety because he was doing all the public safety work we are moving that money over from public safety and putting it into general services we pay totally out of IT so you'll see a big increase here for half a position but you'll see a decline on public safety side so this kind that's the kind of thing that would be put in the significant budget changes for an explanation and then further in the back of the book you have our debt and interest section that shows our debt service for that year just the principle of payments and interest and the general fund so there's a few pages specific to that and I'll let's see page 115 and also we have other expenditures what our OPEB payment is what our reserve fund if we're still doing reserve fund for fiscal year 20 I believe we are not we have other assessments page 120 shows all the state assessments over the years and from last year's budget and there's the county regional lock up assessment, the pioneer valley planning court co-op and then the retirement assessment over the years and then we also have the pages for our enterprise funds which show all the same detail that we see in the general fund that will show the revenue sources and the expenditures that will show the debt and there's revenues what types of revenues, how much we've collected over the years and then what our expenditures are going to be including our indirect costs that are charged to the enterprise funds and then we have the appendices which have a lot of useful information in there there is debt service, the full debt not debt service but outstanding debt lists in there there's revenue collected in there over years there's expenditure types through the years, there's all of our grants what we're taking in for grants for that year so there's a lot of information in this book and I think that's it sorry about that I was a little That's okay I had some questions so on I'll try to recognize them first on enterprise funds if they take on or they need a new capital expense within the enterprise fund does the enterprise fund itself finance all of that or is there ever a point where part of it is taken up by the town so I've got two questions that are linked to this and when those decisions are being made is that coming up to you as the town manager if something needed to be happening whether it's a new waterworks, a new something in the future would that come to the town council what's the flow of decision making on it so you are the town council is also the board of water and sewer commissioners so you would see it in multiple ways one would be do you want to appropriate funds to do this as the board of water and sewer commissioners would be doing that's entailed that would be required to vote by the town council and this would also be shown in the budgets that you would see from the various enterprise zones enterprise funds and this would somehow we'd be alerted to some things on the you know it stays quiet for a while until something major needs to be addressed or would there be an annual time we're looking at enterprise funds I know we're in the new world here the enterprise funds will be looked at and one of the things I've been thinking about I haven't talked with the chair about this yet is how do we educate the council about the enterprise funds because that's happening at the same time as the regular budget that's why it's included in your budget it's included in the budget book so we have a day that's sort of reserved for revealing DPW and at the enterprise funds where there are four of them we go through them each water sewer transportation and solid waste solid waste okay so that's helpful and then for the most part am I right that if it was a major capital investment that needs to be made it would somehow be financed within the enterprise fund yes and yes by the water depending on where you look for the source if it's for transportation you'd say where is the money coming from for a transportation project transportation means basically parking downtown parking really but it's one of the things we were wondering about if the council wanted before you get the budget a time just to talk about enterprise funds because it's not something we touched on I think it would be useful because even on the issue that came up with there was this potentially earmark set of funds to do something to offset the bus cuts sitting in an enterprise fund so on a I presume you've got the authority to release that money if you decide there's a way to do it and at what point decisions like that in the future would be coming to us because that's a decision that was made in the past in terms of setting aside that amount of money I mean that was a town meeting decision but it's just not been clear to me that when would we even know if the decision had been made so that would have to be in the budget so that what the town meeting did is they said I'll take some money out of our I'll call it free cash for the transportation fund and put it into this function so it took money out of the savings account and put it into this into this purpose basically so I have one that I'm about to get in the weeds on something else but I just wanted to add a little to that money that was added there it was added for this fiscal year only this fiscal year 19 budget so at year end if it's not spent it goes back to the free cash and the enterprise funds it doesn't sit there until we decide to spend it so it's like the federal government whether it was use it or lose it right well we don't lose it but use it for that purpose I mean it doesn't I didn't mean literally it disappears it goes back into upper grabs I made a decision to actually get more into the weeds than I had for this so I went I love these appendices that went through when we've gone out for debt service and what we're paying off and there was one I flagged it's the purchase of the gas station up that I saw it's the only one that has a high interest rate and high as 4% as opposed to 1% and 2% someone is managing those so that you could make a decision maybe that one should be when can you refinance it that you know rates are in our favor so how does that happen I think at the time that this budget book was put together it was just a projected amount and we use 4% and 5% when we project in years ahead and we haven't borrowed yet and we haven't actually gotten more narrowed in our following so that would have been a projected debt but we would put it on there because we know we'd have to pay interest on a ban so a ban is a bond anticipation note so before you actually go out for a bonding you can issue a ban a bond anticipation note where you would borrow the money for a short period of time it's usually at a slightly higher interest rate until you get a assemblage of borrowing that's worth it that's big enough that's worth it to go out to borrow we don't go out for issues for every $650,000 we have a substantial amount of money that would go out to the market and say we have all these projects we have 10 projects we would like to put into permanent borrowing that's where you get the competitive interest rates on that one what you're telling me Sonya is that was new when it went into this book that it may have just been a placeholder than it because some of these are great I mean 1% it you'd like to get 1% you know and on the era that we're in but this helped me see that we're paying off you know so it's been that large number that we're paying off but what are we paying off and when is it about to be paid off I mean these appendices are very useful so were you going to take over note taking now that Shalini is having to go I need to get the transition here yes thank you so you had no questions on the way out okay Lynn do you have a question I'm seeing the word question right did we take advantage of low interest rates and refinance at the time that they went down are we were we already sitting at reasonably low rates we're not usually that quick to make changes so once we issue a debt we issue the debt and it stays there we don't really go out and play the market like that so when we're prepared to borrow we borrow and it's sort of where we are at that moment in time the reason I ask this is because the university at one point back when interest rates were really high was carrying the usual amount of debt and took advantage of the dive in interest rates that went on about 8-10 years ago maybe even longer and refinanced and I was just curious whether or not the town did that at any point I think the answer is that we did it once but I my recollection going way back is that John was town manager at the time but you would know Sonya I'm pretty sure he was treasurer at the time finance director treasurer and we've done some refunding okay thank you so and I just want to point out to the committee that on April 23rd we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this question of how the bond process works and we'll have two guest speakers that day I think there was some confusion because not the same topic but they're actually two different people who are going to be talking about the two different subjects that are involved I'll ask my question for the future then I've been attending all the JCPC meetings and I've added up the request and I understand at this point it's request and it adds up to substantially more not surprisingly then what I can see is the amount if I take out the flow in and the debt service out so at what point are you centrally deciding we're going to take on some of that because we're going to issue it as debt rather than try to do it you know so the big one might be the fire in the new letter truck if we decide to do it how we're in the process does that decision be that we've got four million to spend if we're just doing it cash versus take on debt so it's part of our financing plan we've talked about many times we're trying to reduce our debt load as we anticipate there could be an argument made that we should borrow money to invest in roads for instance and I would not support that so at some point with JCPC we would present a plan if we were intending to borrow we'd present a plan to the council for how that would happen but at this point we're not looking to borrow we need to live within our means so their task or yours and their task will be get nearer to the amount of flow that we've got we will get to that flow we will get to that yeah this year the process is going to be really different and I think that we're really trying to figure out the process because in the past the way it's worked is JCPC sort of reporting both to the town manager and to the town meeting at the same time even though the final decision is to whether to accept a JCPC documentation really in the old form of government flowed to the town manager under our new form of government the charter says what the charter says which is JCPC is reporting to the town manager and I think so we have to figure out what it is where else the report goes and how it's going to be worded this year which is a different topic to think about but in the end it ultimately is part of the town manager's budget under the charter so that the capital request which will be made accepting or rejecting recommendations of JCPC is really within the review of the manager and that's at least my understanding of the charter when does the town council or does it does the town council go finance committee and then to finance committee to JCPC and then to the town manager or does it ever come to a full town council vote well it comes through the budget process it will be included in the May 1 budget and it will be part of the review process that we will set up after May 1 and what the charter indicates is is that we can remove items as a council or reduce items we can't increase or add items and that's how that's going to work was something that we're all exploring can't we? I don't have anything more on this I don't know if you want to do other parts of the agenda or I think we should thank Paul for being here thank you very much we're going to talk about the committee charge and then get to minutes and make sure we have our plan for additional meetings I really appreciate that both of you are keeping what you can see you've been doing it forever but keeping these history tables I think those are incredibly valuable to be able to see what's been happening now over time thank you are you all still there? hello can anyone hear me? can you hear now? I can now thank you okay we lost all mics in here we heard you fine so let the record reflect we just said about two minutes ago that we lost contact with the remote participant but we are now back online I think that we're we're running out of steam so one thing I want to do is talk about the committee charge piece and Kathy thank you for having taken our work from last time and put it into an initial draft format for us to look at so I think the question first question is in general are we satisfied with our decisions about three resident counselors and the fact that it's going to be two year terms and the and the way that it is worded is that all within agreement because I think that what we had said at the last time is that we were going to then turn it back over to the GOL committee and made a Joe to make sure that it is consistent with her expectation well I haven't I know the format that she wants and it's not quite there yet I just stayed with the old format so I'll get it closer so I guess Lynn the process do you want to bring this to the council to see if they're in agreement with the substance of it and then have GOL again the new and better revised format for charges I'd like to bring it to the council if possible on Monday and have them adopted so that we can get started on the process given that we only have April May and June to do it so I don't know you know again I'm not asking I don't think putting it into the general format is a big deal yeah I don't think so she's just got things there are certainly some changes so I think we should bring it to the council on Monday and then have if there's serious objection then obviously it has to go back either to finance or GOL but if not then we can adopt the subject to the changes of GOL okay one piece that we had the rules committee meeting earlier today actually just before this meeting and Alyssa pointed out that rules never reported out the decision to kick it over to finance and do it this way so she's writing up that report so she wants to close the loop on that so I think she'll be doing a report for you saying this that's I think that's irrelevant for this process but she was concerned that finance went ahead and redid the process you know redid the charge without it first going to the council and then coming back to finance so I'm fine with coming with the charge on Monday you know I can clean it up a little bit like the special municipal employees I saw what Mandy did on one of the others and for the non-residents I think they have to be and there might be a typo too but I'll just clean it up so it doesn't have track changes in it I mean it has to have track changes from the original document but you know the missing pieces the yes on me is actually a complicated issue that I raised and with Margaret and she sent a memo this morning on the subject and it raises some serious policy questions that I wanted to hear back from Lynn and Mandy on because the policy questions are bigger than the single committee so are you suggesting that since we don't have the answers on that we should in fact wait till the 22nd we could adopt the rest of it because we're trying to establish the principle about committee membership and appointment process and indicate that the SME status and the final presentation will be needing additional work and it will be presented consistent with whatever the council decides on Monday regarding the reduction in the number of resident members and how they are appointed in their terms and Lynn we're looking at the document where you put in yellow do we need something here on special municipal employees we could just leave that yellow highlight when people are seeing it that we haven't answered that question how do you want to resolve Elyse's issue how do you want to resolve Elyse's issue I don't know she understood that when rules took a vote and we decided to do this process that I think she understood that we were coming right away to finance to suggest this so we could discuss it so she just felt that there had not been a report to the council and then the OCA group was hearing it indirectly rather than a vote by the council to use a different process for this set of interviews so it's not an issue about us changing the number of people or the term it's the interview process that's that issue she wasn't objecting to that process but object at this point because you know she voted for it but it was more rules was supposed to report to the council so the council could say yes and then finance was supposed to have this discussion so we have already had the discussion and she was fine with it by the way with the charge I said the charge talks about three rather than four and two year terms you know so it's I probably should not put anything about what the interview process would be in the charge because that doesn't have to be spelled out I would agree that that's true I would agree that that is true you should not have anything about the interview process so I can just take that part out where it would be you know finance chair or designee so it just would be we're looking for these kinds of skill so I can fix that part of the draft mm-hmm yep so the suggestion is that we make the change to the appointment section that Kathy just described and that we otherwise leave it as it is prepared to report it back to the council on the first of April with the further report that the format will change and that we will need to come back with the answer on the SME status after getting comments from other committees right and I said you were on the you should have received the copy of the email exchanges I did I saw it and understand the issue so it's just a question I didn't feel it was a finance committee decision as to how to resolve that one that's why I was wondering where you wanted it to go before I made that decision on the issue on the SME issue the committee has either be listed one way or another it can't have you can't do it for some members not others that's what the opinion we well I think we have to go with whatever way the town council is already structured so I don't think we can excuse all of a sudden have the town council members on this committee be treated or seen differently than other committees that town council are on the of course this is a unique committee because it involves members who are not members of the council and I think one of the questions that was posed was whether having not having SME status for the committee which would then apply to the citizen members the resident members whether that would discourage some resident members from choosing to participate so what what's your recommendation Andy I haven't had time to think it through and I was hoping for a comment from Andy okay let's go ahead and prepare it for Monday and see if we can get a comment from Mandy Joe about that otherwise we can always pull it from the agenda and take it to the 22nd but we can always I think that what I would suggest is a motion to make deletions from the appointment section in the draft that was presented for this meeting that relate to the process for the appointments which I think the last sentence in that appointment section there's a whole piece there that I can just I've got as an example the way the new climate committee set up they have some criteria they're looking for but it doesn't mention what the process is so with that amendment and that our that we presented to the council with the notation that a decision still needs to be made about SME status and it may be reformatted to fit the suggested template that sounds good so that we otherwise are adopting said and agreeable so I think we have a motion to that effect I move that we amend the appointment section to just list the criteria we're looking for and that we wait until later to determine the special municipal so I will leave this blank or to be determined later language to get this so there's been a motion made in 2nd to need to do roll call because we do have a member who's not present and so I will try and do this but I think it's basically Lynn yes and Dorothy yes Kathy yes and I'm voting yes so it's four to zero with one member absent for people's information I'm looking at the committee charge for the members and the way it's written there so I will double check with Mandy yes on special municipal employees yes for residents no for counselors the way it's written in that charge so it's written in a mixed way so I'm assuming knowing that Mandy is quite thorough that she did some more configuring that out but I will double check with her whether we should use that word or leave it blank as we've just said okay minutes okay we've got two sets of minutes that Andy read and made some edits on that one is from February 26 and one is from March 5th I sent them out to everyone the only thing I did in addition is on Dorothy's I just divided it into the sections that were on the agenda so I just put one two three four five and I was hoping we could get those approved I think Lynn you took minutes for the March 11th meeting and and I still owe you those pardon you owe you those minutes okay so I haven't I don't think we've seen those and Dorothy has done a draft of last weeks but Andy hasn't had time to review it yet so we're just looking at two sets of minutes right now March 5th and February 26 right so are there any comments or suggestions on February 26 or March 5th minutes none for me me Dorothy okay so I think that you know we will need to make a decision in the future whether we need to do it by motion of the committee because we've been advised that we do not have to do that right we were told when we were had the session with Lauren that we could adopt a process that we delegate the chair their the review the final review and he can go ahead and approve I mean we've been doing it in a a variety of ways I'm waiting for everyone to at least make their comments I'm fine with you doing that Andy or you know or me helping you with it whatever we I just feel like we could some of these have been done for a while and everyone has kind of said yes but we haven't had a way of getting them over the finish line here's my suggestion somebody I'm going to make a motion to adopt the minutes of February 26 and March 5th as presented I second it okay so I'll just do the same order we have motion in the second Lynn and Dorothy yes Kathy yes and I vote yes so it's four to zero one member absent and then the for future meetings does somebody want to make a motion to allow the chair to approve minutes for future meetings I will make a motion to allow the chair to approve minutes for future meetings I will second that there's a motion that's been made in seconded again I have to do roll call and have a roll call noted in the minutes Lynn are you with us is Lynn still there yes okay Dorothy yes Kathy yes I'll vote yes also so again it's four to zero with one member absent so the going on to just real quickly because it is four o'clock the next actions of this committee is next meeting is April 4th for the joint meeting with the town council to do the budget hearing for the regional school budget and other matters related to the regional school funding and then our follow-up meeting I believe I'm looking at the process is it we're not done to April so we still have a meeting Tuesday in addition to the the hearing do we have one so we're just going to cancel April 2nd I'm not showing us as having one on Tuesday I'm not showing us as having one on Tuesday either so there's no meeting time per second okay so I think that's I don't have much else to add the comment let the minutes reflect and is there any other business that was not anticipated 48 hours in advance people would like to mention seeing none then I will consider that we have a motion to adjourn I make a motion to adjourn I second it okay Lynn, Dorothy yes yes Lynn do you want to adjourn yep okay so it's 4-0 one member absent to adjourn at 4-10 thank you very much appreciate it safe travels back