 Good evening. This open meeting of the finance committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's order of March 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth because of the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends the requirements of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with the agenda for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to tbradley at town.arlington.ma.us. This meeting is convening by Zoom app as posted on town's website identifying how the public may join in comment. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Supporting materials have been provided by members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. And the public's encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the chair notes otherwise. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will invite members to provide any comments, questions or motions. Please hold until you recognize your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or your computer when you're not speaking and please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response please wait until the chair yields the floor to you. If you wish to engage in, we'll let members please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself. Due to the size of my laptop screen. I may not be able to see all the members at once so if someone has raised their hand and I've not noticed I hereby request that either Tara Bradley or any court bring this to my attention. Finally, each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by roll call. So, allow me to take the roll call of attendees at this moment. Advian. Here. Chain blundell. There. John Ellis. The kayak healy. Here. Brian Beck. Every Potaria. So, so if you make me answer. Yeah. Jonathan Wallach. Chaleen Crawford. Darrell Harmer. Yeah. Andy McCourt. Allen Jones. Here. George Kosher. Here. Bill Keller. Here. Al Tosti. Here. Wanda Nascimento. Here. Christine Deschler. She's away. Dean Karman. Here. And David McKenna. Here. Thank you. So. First item on the agenda. I guess it's my comments. I'd like to just make note that we will pick up the. The unfinished business with the capital budget tonight. After we. Do the minutes. And I wanted to thank the folks that got together this week to follow up on that issue. So. Do you have. To put up. I'm sorry, what was that? I said, do you have the minutes put up on the screen? Oh yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, I do. So I just have Monday. Three seven. Which was the capital planning committee. And I have just received the comment from Charlie that. Just confirming Chris Moore's title. I think. Yeah, I just, for clarity. There are. Approximately four. Members. Of the capital planning committee. And. They are all appointed by the moderator. Oh, I see. I see. Okay. So it's not exactly a title. But it's just a very simple question. But I think I think we're just going to go back to the. The exact same. Acknowledging how we was appointed. So are there any questions, changes, comments on the minutes of three seven. Which, by the way. Thank you very much. Exhausted minutes on the. Capital budget. Issues should. Should the rest of the. Moderator appointee members be. Classified that way. Then. I think you could just say citizen appointee. As well. Okay. So as amended vote, are there any questions on the minutes? Motion is in order. So may. There a second. Second. Any further discussion on the minutes. Go to vote grant you being. Yes. Shane Blundell. Yes. John Ellis. Makaya Healy. Yes. Brian Beck. Yeah. A reef bed area. I love staying. I was absolutely. Sophie. Yes. Jonathan Wallach. Yes. Shailene Crawford. Darrell Harmer. Yes. Annie McCourt. I will also abstain because I was absent. Alan Jones. Yes. George Cozer. Yes. Yes. Al Tosti. Yes. Wanda Cemento. Yes. Christine Teschler's not here. Dean Carmen. I abstain. And David McKenna. Yes. Thank you. The minutes are approved. As presented. Okay. Are the guests from the. Capital Budgeting Committee Jonathan? Or are we. Are we dealing directly with the issues? I don't believe we're having any guests. Coming. Okay. We're having teamer and Sandy. Pooler as well. And I think also. Joe Connelly from the. Recreation department to discuss the playground audit. Conversation. Well, then I stand corrected. Thank you, Tara. Okay. So. They're not here yet. Is Brian back here? Al Tosti. Who's going to do the parking budget tonight? Oh. It's really. Bill or I could do it. We can do it together. Let me get the. Why don't we, why don't we just handle that parking budget. While we're waiting for the other folks to come on. Okay. 66. I'm pulling that up. Just a second here. Do you want to start? Sure. If we take a look at the top. Erica, you make it a little bigger. Okay. Salaries and wages are. Pretty well set. No change. Okay. I'm curious. Are. Pretty well set. No change. In case people were curious. The amount spent the actuals and 20 and 21. Was the, as you know, the. Meters were shut down. For a good chunk of that time. And so they had to replace. The. Inputter for one of a better word. And so they, they just delayed that. And so that's why that money wasn't spent. They were asked to delay it and they delayed it. The printing. Is primarily for tickets. And now that the meters are open, of course, they have to go back to that. So. And that's the end of that. So the price rise in communications. Is that's being used the offsets are from the parking benefit district, which helps pay for the collection and maintenance. And. The parking total. Is the 58, 7, 68, which is what we are recommending. Thank you. Any questions on the parking budget. committee we also read the um the parking district funding and revenue statements are they available also uh no i think brian correct me if i'm wrong but uh brian was going to be getting those uh from the treasurer he was he's going to get those from uh phyllis and then brandy okay so we don't have yeah we can review them when uh when he when he's back so any any further questions on the parking budget uh is there a motion uh i move the amount as printed is there a second second then moved and seconded let's go to a vote gibbian yes chain blendel yes john ellis mackaya healy yes brian vexman arie padaria yes sofie miguelazo yes jonathan wallach yes jillian crawford's not here darryl harmer yes annie lecourt yes pal jones yes george coser yes bill keller yes al-tasi yes wandana cemento yes uh dean carmen yes david mckenna yes thank you at the park budget it's approved unanimously our our guests from um and not yet they're planning on joining at 750 i think we got through the announcements in minutes faster than and anybody have anything to say so charlie i've got a couple things yes um so i know i have neglected this terribly and it's taken me longer than it should have but i talked to christine today about this warrant article about rodenticides yes and um so the skinny is that dug hind believes that the warrant article will not make past muster with the ag because we can't really forbid the use of materials that the state allows however if it survives in some form in terms of the public education it calls for that public education will cost money and therefore we should probably do a hearing with the proponent on it unless you want to assume that they won't sever its provisions am i making sense yes um did you have any idea how much this is going to cost no christine and i just had a brief conversation about it today um but it's probably a question we could ask her tonight to come up with an answer and it probably depends a lot on what kind of level of effort the proponents are expecting or town meetings expecting if we pass it what is this article again this is a warrant yeah i'm trying to remember which warrant article it is it's about banning the use of certain rodenticides oh okay and there's if it wasn't for the public education component there's like three points in it and the third point is educate the public about these materials you know and for some reason that survives that's the part that will cost money summerville was going to electrocute them well that's that's capital budget item yeah well budget item uh in any case um and then i have the answers on wreck and rink if we wanted to try to vote those budgets although we're getting a little tight to do that at this point but um why don't we take that up under old business tonight uh yeah okay so i think uh tara i think we should get in touch with the sponsor on that rodenticide by the way good work on pronouncing that word um i studied latin and high school charlie um and and that way uh we can sort out um what what's what's going on there if it's going to have a financial impact we have to we have to uh write it up looks like joe connelly just joined us good hi joe hi everybody yeah i'm not sure uh i guess we can ask um christine to if she has any comments on that tonight but uh we really can't debate it it's not it hasn't been noticed um and we shouldn't you know it should go on the uh meeting law yeah i was thinking i was thinking more like just asking her if she would provide an estimate before the yeah hearing yes yeah she could do that in writing or something yeah uh okay so we have joe here comes brian beck you might have the parking documents oh brian brian beck did brian been there he is brian yes brian we already enthusiastically voted your parking budget in your absence oh cool could could you uh could you enlighten us on the documentation on the park district while we're waiting for the rest of the capital planning absolutely let me put the correct glasses on um were there any questions about what anything was oh the only item that was open was you know reconciling the the offset from the district well they they have to do the parking that comes from the parking district that that budget hasn't been totally finished yet so i'm waiting for that there's this better tie into it is that's half the salary of the um uh for uh that goes on the parking district and half goes on the town so that number that number should be forthcoming but we don't have it yet okay um i've spoken to the treasurer who's not necessarily responsible for it but that's just given me the numbers in the past um she said that she's trying to get me everything uh towards that i can tell you one thing about the parking district budget and that is that the revenues are running way less than were anticipated or budgeted i can tell you the number as of december 31st was they had 152,573 dollars of income from parking and in prior years that number is normally 500 pre-pandemic is 500 to 600,000 so does that mean the budgets um that that district fund is running in red it's not running in the red they haven't again i haven't seen the numbers from it um but i think they're gonna have to tone down what they're gonna have to do in the current year for in the you know in festival 23 well are there any things that that they have done that cross over from one year to the next in the past yes um i asked about what's going on in arlington center and they said that has nothing to do with the parking district that has to do with the water and sewer so if you go into town you'll see that there's um work going on there but that's not that's not from the parking district budget okay so i see team or is here kate leary is here jill connelly is here are we ready to go on on the and sandy's here oh all the firepower so um thank you very much for coming back jonathan do you want to uh watch on this or darryl who's who's um i was just gonna suggest that darryl has provided the finance committee with a short slideshow presentation and perhaps he can walk us through that okay can everybody see yes just back so hopefully we can get through this this quick quickly and um the firepower that took the time to attend can keep their powder dry i guess the expression is um so the the question i had um was whether the annual playground safety audits and inspections uh should be capitalized or should be included in an operating budget and um we met with um team or and sandy last week uh wander john and i and team or uh pointed us to the um the last year's capital planning report that contained that presented the criteria that the capital planning committee uses to determine what should be capitalized and what should be in the operating budget and i'm just going to walk through that quickly um so this was the slide that uh generated my question particularly this item here about this annual safety inspections and repairs it sounded more appropriately part of the operating budget to me um so we met um so team or planned me to the section of last year's planning report that had the criteria and as you can see um it's it's pretty detailed one thing i do want to stress is this sentence up here at the top um that these are the uh definitions that the arlington cpc uses other communities like the state which was my context um may define these terms differently so i think the two relevant criteria i've highlighted uh the first is um the capital improvement which is an improvement to a capital asset that may may be reasonably expected to appreciably lengthen the useful life of the capital asset uh beyond what may be expected with normal maintenance and in this next paragraph i think has actually some useful examples of um what the cpc considers uh valid capital expenditures things like electrical wiring plumbing uh picking up windows to strengthen the wall letting improvements whereas uh interior painting by itself would not be considered a valid capital expense and then finally item three underneath here uh plans or studies in preparation for the purchase of the capital improvement um are valid and anything else needs to be funded through the operating budget so before i go any further uh team or sandi did you want to add anything or joe did you guys want to add anything i don't think so okay keep going we'll take questions any questions we arise um so as i said um team were on sandy took the time um to meet with us um sandi actually took time out of a collective bargaining uh meeting that was invading his office as we were wrapping up the meeting um and then john uh wander and i also attended so this these are essentially the minutes of the meeting um that inspection activity isn't really an audit more an annual comprehensive review uh determined significant needed repair replacements that are valid under capital of the 75 thousand dollar amount to be funded um 25 thousand goes to inspections uh considered a study um and then 50 thousand used for repairs and team are stressed that these repairs were not things like tightening screws uh these were um major expenditures that would extend the life of the asset the town did conduct an audit a couple of years ago um and some safety issues um were brought to light um for example this one which is a little scary that a child lost part of a finger um so there was a high awareness that something needed to be done and um sandy noted that um the capital planning committee has funded studies that lead to capital investments um so with all of this uh so again thank you uh for taking the time out to meet with us the all that said uh i'm satisfied that um uh you know one of the cpc has no clear criteria and that the um this particular item aligns with those criteria so uh from my point of view um question is asked and answered um um wanda and john if you want to put out your opinion as well no that covers everything and and i concur with that conclusion thank you daryl are there any questions for daryl or for team or or sandy or um joe connelly or or katie sophie has a question yes sophie hey thank you um just to follow up i think this was asked too was um is there any possibility that somebody um within the town offices could get qualifications to do these inspections so that we don't have to outsource the inspections is that a possibility want me to take that one yes please please go ahead um yeah i mean certainly there is um we could have someone internally take um go to get certified for a certified playground safety inspector um that would absolutely assist us i think in the annual inspections i think that um what happened playgrounds to get more more complex um back when i grew up they were simple steel monkey bars and there wasn't much to them um so i think that once we did get someone certified it would probably take them you know a little bit of a learning curve um so it might be you know a year of shadowing maybe a professional inspector but i think we could get there yes any other questions um just whether or not getting someone in house to certified to do this would save us any money like would somebody have the capacity in their current job to add this responsibility i can tell you from the rec department we have myself in a programmer we don't we would not have the staff within the rec department um current staff for the rec department to take this on that would have the transfer to the department of public works um and sandi better than i have their you know their capacities sandi do you want to comment on that yeah i i guess my experience has been that um it's fairly common for communities to outsource this when i was in newton we were big enough that we could hire our own internal when i was in amherst we outsourced it um and so you know i i just think it's comes down to as joe was saying kind of how big your department is and how much you know money you have to do this on many playgrounds um and so i don't think there's any one single answer but i think so far we haven't found it beneficial to do that in-house um we can just hire on a case-by-case basis um so if i can just follow up really quick on that sandi generally though we look at whether or not having somebody versus outsourcing versus overtime is the most cost-effective way to perform any piece of labor we need done correct um yes and including the benefits because when you hire somebody then you have their health insurance and pension so yes all those things go into various analysis we do from time to time on all these things great thank you any other questions for our visitors our guests okay um jonathan i think the motion might be in order actually um charlie i understand that um there's a revised page um which sandi is going to walk us through the most important page of these of the capital planning committee's presentation well then we better look at it yes so tara uh and he's here thank you um so this week i got notification from the fire chief that he had heard back from the suppliers of the fire engine that we're going to purchase um that prices have gone up on that you also heard back in a similar manner from the suppliers of the um the truck that would carry the lighting and the air tank air tank filling machine that prices had gone up on both of those uh it was about 22 000 more for the engine and 11 000 more for the truck um and keeping that in mind and deciding that we really needed to have a vote from town meeting that made sure that when we authorized the purchase of these things that there is enough spending authority to actually buy them we modified um the plan in in three ways by increasing one by increasing the uh fire engine two by increasing the other truck that is a combination of truck number 10 015 and 10 016 which you may remember um and then in order to keep the whole plan in balance we then had to reduce our um our total spending by about 12 500 dollars which we did in fy 26 by reducing our spending on um sidewalk improvements we have it going up every year and now it's just going to go up a little more slowly in one of the out years that does not change uh this part of the slide the fy 23 debt service so alan your number with the whale next to it is still the same number what it does change is um this figure here for total things that were buying in fy 23 because we had to increase the bonded amount the purple number here to increase uh for the cost that we saw the out years are still part of the plan there's nothing that you need to vote on that today it's still the plan is still within the five percent limit on the overall plan um and i think we are secured against the kind of price increases that we think are likely to hit us when we actually buy these fire pieces of fire equipment so we would ask that your final vote reflect the numbers that are up on the screen thank you sandy garyf yeah i have a question so when you talk about the increase in dollars can you um tell us what what is the percentage increase um instead of just the 11 you know what does that mean like what is the in terms of truck the 11 to 22 000 whatever it is the five percent the truck went from 133 to 144 a thousand dollars and the uh fire engine went from i think it was 675 to 697 thousand dollars um i don't know off the top of my head what those percentages are but those 10 percent 9 percent on the first one and the second one is about around the same but i guess my my follow-up question to that is um i mean when you buy these i mean again this is just to try to understand the process so when you bought the or when you big there must have been a big process for these trucks right so there must have been a whole process in order to source them so when you come across a situation like this when the when the cost has gone out um perhaps 8 10 percent um does it make sense to go back out into the market to see if there are other trucks that are available that are often you know that can meet the original budget or is that how do you guys think about so those are good questions the fire trucks there are um two or three big companies that produce fire trucks pierce and e1 are really the two kind of around here that people buy from they uh and e1 is the one that our chiefs have been using for several years we used to have a lot of pierce engines but we've been buying e1 engines more recently in part because e1s tend to be a little bit cheaper a little bit less expensive i guess i should say by about $50,000 a pop then the pierce um and since we have the capacity in-house with our own mechanics to make repairs to these things as needed we have continued you know buying these pierces um so we don't go out to the market again but we do um we do look around and we do try to buy what we think is the most economical as well as the most compatible engines with what our staff can continue to maintain and repair. Carol um so sandy i'm assuming that an actual purchase order can't be cut until it's been approved by town meeting right that's right we are we are in contact with these truck manufacturers but a contract cannot be signed until july 1st when the new fiscal year begins after the town meeting vote but we do try to get some sense of pricing and we did that originally and then they reached out to us not too long ago to say hey you know their supplies are kind of coming under pressure and they wanted to warn us it is likely that by the time we actually put the bid in in july there would be a an increase in the overall price oh so that's that's the that's the expected price increase for july so you're not concerned that there would be who knows these days during uncertain times but at this point you're not concerned that there would be additional price increases no i i mean i we're all trying to gaze through our crystal balls at this point but uh i think this is a reflection of what our um our supplier has said is you know he sees in the market and wanted to give us a heads up about it okay thank you any other questions for sandy or teamwork okay so um jonathan i think motion is in order charlie am i miss remembering i i i thought that al toasty had already made a motion uh last monday am i making this up uh if he did these we have to make a different motion because there's a different number okay well then i'd like to make a motion to approve the capital budget as printed here on this recommended vote page second that's been moved and seconded for the capital budget cash acquisitions to three million four hundred twenty six thousand two hundred seventy seven dollars debt service of nineteen million one hundred forty four thousand six twenty other acquisitions of three million eight hundred six thousand five hundred and appropriations for bonded acquisitions of authorization for borrowing of two million two hundred fifty two thousand one hundred dollars that's been moved and seconded is there any further question or discussion okay then we'll move to a vote grant gibbian yes shane blundell yes john ellis is not here i'm here i'm here now and i know you're here now okay john ellis yes um kaya healy yes brian beck yes arif padaria yes sophie migliazo yes jonathan wall yes yes chaeline crawford is not here uh darryl harmer yes annula court yes alan jones yes george coser yes bill keller yes altosie yes wandana cemento yes yes uh dean karman abstain david mckenna yes we have 17 in favor one abstention and no objections so the capital budget um particle is passed thank thank you very much see more sandy kate john for coming in and uh wanda john in thank you for following up on those other issues appreciate everybody charlie yes could could would it be all right if sandy sticks around for three minutes and we do the answer to one question on the reckon rink stuff that he may have the best answer to all right it's an open he can stick around all night no no but if we could do that now i know christine's here but we could just squeeze it in for a couple of by all means hi christine welcome to finance committee go ahead thank you or who has a question who has a question what's the question so but there were two questions that were asked that the reason we did not vote reckon rink yet and one of those questions was about the uh the amount of the balance of the fund and oh yes he kindly sent me the answer which is i can if i can share my screen which i think i should be able to do i can show you the answer so the answer shows up in the budget message on page 215 but here's the thing that we probably want to know that this doesn't answer which is how did the fund go from 317 is one thousand dollars in 2020 to the 700 plus thousand dollars that are in it now and i thought sandy might be able to speak to that or tell us when he could get us an answer because that's part of what's hanging us up is why did it make this big jump between the 2020 ending balance and the 2021 ending balance or whatever the last ending balance is um joe is still not here is he i don't know if joe is still here okay so he would know this definitely at the top of his head i think one of the reasons is that one point we consolidated all the activities of recreation into the enterprise fund and we stopped really using the revolving fund we still do have the revolving fund but it isn't used for that much and so we basically dumped a lot of the activity into the recreation fund and then at that point the balance ended up going up okay so this was al-tosti's question so i guess the question is al are you satisfied with that answer so we can vote this budget after helping human services now i'm trying to remember you were concerned that we couldn't tie the current balance back to like a set of balances like this shows the balance over time here in recreation enterprise and you can see there was a jump but then it dropped at the end of 2020 and now we're saying it's back up and i'm not sure whether or not sandi's saying the explanation is a consolidation of funds but yeah i remember that happened a couple of years ago and uh one of the one of the problems i'm having with a lot of the enterprise funds is positives or negatives and negatives or positives mm-hmm the way the parentheses are handled um but i i do remember we consolidated the revolving fund so uh that sounds reasonable to me okay if i might alt has talked to me about the positives and the negatives and in next year's budget we'll make all the numbers look positive we just try to put a positive spin on everything well looking positive is the way we would like them all to work okay that that was my only thing i wanted to squeeze in charlie we can move on okay that's fine uh i by the way before we go too far i netasha is that you that your name i see on the screen here um you weren't on the finance committee meeting last week but i did want to um congratulate you on being the representative clerks inviteee to the state of the union address thank you so much i'm just here to listen in on the health and human services budget so thank you very much it was really an honor and thanks for recognizing us okay um so indy this is your budget right yes this is my budget um so what i think i would like the order of operations to be here is to allow christine to make a brief presentation to sort of give you the big picture on what the health and human services department is doing and what the pressures on it are and then to walk through the budgets and have christine stay here as a resource to answer our questions um should the questions that uh wanda and i got answers to not be clear or our notes not make sense to us anymore whatever so that we can just get to the end of all the questions on this budget and vote it tonight um and then with that wreck and rink i will feel less like i'm keeping us from writing our report um so does that sound like a good order of operations charlie sounds like a good that's a good order of battle yes so christine finance committee committee and um please go ahead thank you i think sandy wanted to wave goodbye bye sandy thank you if it's okay i'd like to share my screen i just have a brief um powerpoint sort of um if that works for everyone um let me see yes you should do that great thank you all right so actually sorry i'm not able to okay i'll start here all right i'm just having a hard time because i'm trying to here we are okay there we go so i'm just going to scroll back to the beginning um all right so there we go sorry for the technical difficulties um so i'm the health and human services director here in town and i've been in my role since 2006 i've been through a lot of um changes over the course of the past um 15 plus years um in my role as you can see these are the divisions of health and human services so we've got the health department veteran services counseling aging diversity equity and inclusion the earlington youth counseling center and then you'll see um the coa transportation program is an enterprise fund so it's one of the budgets you'll be voting on but we usually um lump that in under the counseling agent so i'll do that throughout my presentation but what i want to just um share with you is that these divisions um employ some of the most dedicated creative um brilliant individuals that i've ever worked with um we're so lucky here in earlington to have these individuals that are so dedicated and passionate about the work that they do to serve our community um we do so much with so little um and i say so little uh the budgets that you'll see may seem large but um the amount of um services that our community is getting from these budgets um just is top-notch so um the first one i'm going to to bring you to is the health department so as you know the health department was thrust into the forefront of the past two years um so both the environmental health um unit as well as the disease disease prevention and control those two areas really were the the heart and soul of COVID response here in town um when we look at the ARPA funds that our our community received we received some funds to address public health and we're looking at improving public health infrastructure so what we saw over the course of the past few years so environmental health is really where you see inspections you'll see food inspections housing inspections nuisance um you know rodent inspections a lot of the the inspections that our department does that that that group of individuals was really working hard on enforcing the governor's orders enforcing the mask mandate working with small businesses to comply with um COVID response and and to really answer questions of the community a lot of community members that were really scared and nervous and so those individuals really stepped up and we're out in our community daily just helping people um you know our our community um really neat had a lot of needs beyond just um what our departments offered and in our our divisions really stepped up disease prevention and control the individuals in that group so we we have a lot of cross um jurisdiction response so the inspectors were doing a lot of the contact tracing and contact tracing as you may know is when someone's positive with COVID or positive with any communicable disease they're um they are entered into our system the state system and we receive those reports and we follow up with those individuals to make sure that we're preventing the further spread of these so our our entire staff was working around the clock on contact tracing um and and as you may remember vaccinations testing there are all these different things that popped up that our department really stepped up and was able to to manage locally there were a lot of offerings at the state level so for example contact tracing was something that was um was offered by the state and there were millions of dollars dumped into the contact tracing collaborative at the state level but what we found here locally was that that was not not enough for our community our community members that were testing positive were not getting phone calls right away we were able to locally provide a better response our contact tracing at the state level was was maybe contacting people four or five days after they tested positive whereas our team was right on it right away able to get out to people and communicate the the the details of what they needed to do so it was really important that we were able to pivot and really have staff available to do that so as you'll see in the budget um there were some additions over the course of the past few years and um that was made possible through CARES funds and now we're pivoting over to continue some of that through ARPA funding and that will end in three years and so we have plans to address that as time goes on so the other area that we're looking to improve with some of the ARPA funds is just the infrastructure so we know that across the state across the country and around the world the public health infrastructure was really tested we know some of the areas we need to work work on and focus on so we're we're going to be using some of that funding to address those areas we've also been into a partnership with the cities of Somerville and Medford for regional partnership on doing some of this contact tracing and some of this surveillance disease surveillance so we hope to be able to improve those those areas through that partnership we're also entering into a partnership with the town of Belmont to share a public health nurse as well utilizing some of the ARPA funds so so some of those areas that we're looking at will hopefully improve our ability to respond as we all know you know the the end of COVID people are really living their lives again but we we in public health are always really on the forefront of trying to figure out if that is you know you know what with the next variant is when is the next vaccination clinic we're always working we're always planning emergency planning is one of the big areas that we work on in our department and had we not had that for the past you know 20 plus years that have been in the town of Arlington we probably would have been in a very different response situation for COVID so I'm going to move on to the next slide because I don't want to take too much time but I know veteran services is another area that we have as a division of health and human services we have one veteran's agent here in town this is another so back to the public health public health is a mandated required department within a community veteran services is another mandated required department within a community so we're mandated to have a veteran's agent within our community and we're mandated by state law to provide direct dollars to veterans that financially qualify so our community provides direct financial support as you can see in the aid and assistance line in the budget in the veteran services budget we provide direct financial service to veterans in need so the state then reimburses us 75 percent of the dollars that we spend in that area and then anything that's related to housing and emergency housing support we receive a hundred percent reimbursement from the state the chapter the state law is mgl chapter 115 some people like to look it up and just kind of verify you're welcome to do that and I'm happy to go into more detail if that's needed our veteran services director Jeff Chung low is as I mentioned earlier in the presentation we have some of the most creative and amazing stuff Jeff Chung low is the director of veteran services and some of you may have met him throughout the years and now they're just amazing person really out to support our our veterans so Jeff does a lot of work to help seek out veterans he does a lot of outreach to find new veterans that have come into our community veterans that have been out in our community that we may not have ever connected with he does a lot of that outreach by reaching out to families of veterans he reaches out to veterans living in subsidized housing he's able to provide them with the resources to access VA claims so a lot of our veterans are eligible for the federal pensions or if they were disabled in any of the wars they're able to access funds through you know monthly funds through that that source that's a federal source that's outside of the funding that we receive that we we provide so Jeff is able to connect them with various health benefits as well which you know again it goes above and beyond so so our veterans director is providing support in many ways to our veterans in addition to the veterans services that we provide directly to veterans there are a number of veterans events that are planned by our our director veteran services and this is another way that we're able to access or to find new veterans in the community and as we may see from some of the capital budgets over the course of the past few years we are looking at putting in a place a new veterans memorial the current memorial is does not include all of the names of veterans that have served in wars so we're looking to update that veterans memorial so we'll go on to the next division of the department so this is the council in aging and this looks like when when we first are trying to figure out how to show what we do you know I want to apologize because it looks like we're all over the place and we are and so you know at the heart of it we are we have the council in aging staff and we you know we are about to open up our new community center which was formerly the senior center so over the course of the past few years not only have we been dealing with a pandemic but we've been living in a construction so so our building the community center which is really the hub of all the action that goes on in the council in aging that hub will will open reopen to our community and we're we're really just on the cusp of that happening so we're really excited I've here kind of laid out four areas that the council in aging is able to provide the coa provides services to our community members that are 16 over and that really counts for a quarter of our population here in earlington so about you know 10,000 almost 10,000 residents as of in the last census are 16 over and and that's growing as we all know so in the council in aging we at the bottom I've listed the funding sources because I think you know as the fincom that's what you really care most about I'm assuming so we've obviously received some talent funds we've got state funds which is EOEA the executive office of elder affairs we receive a per senior dollar amount from the state and that we use that to pay for staff and for programs we also receive foundation funds grants donations and user we collect user fees to run our programs so we have social workers in the department that are really connecting our our residents need with resources to keep them active in our community and healthy as well as able to live here because as we all know the costs are are getting up there for some of our older population and so our social workers are continuously connecting those seniors with with resources we have a geriatric nurse who works a lot with seniors around wellness we of course through our community center hope to provide a high degree of socialization we've missed out on that over the course of the past two years and our seniors have suffered significantly as a result of having to um cancel various holidays with family um having to to stay away from people so to reopen and to allow the socialization and the gathering again for this this population is is crucial and has been something that we're really eager to do we offer speakers art classes exercises so many things that are offered at the senior at the community center and we are very excited to start that and then transportation that's a whole budget um you which you've probably seen that's under the transportation enterprise fund we offer rides to person 60 and over to a number of different areas we utilize taxi rides boobers we provide mbta discounts we do curb to curb rides so people are picked up at their house and they're brought to their location whether it's a medical appointment or to the community center and then they're brought back to their home after and it's it's a service that people really appreciate especially those that are unable to drive or find parking wherever they're going so that's a counseling aging the next is diversity equity inclusion for those of you that have been around on the think com for a while you know that this is somewhat of a new division we through health and human services have been very fortunate to be able to to establish this as a division um DEI which is what we're all calling it is um you know incredibly important area that I think um you know we're just beginning to put in place in local cities and towns across the country um we are looking here in arlington to add two additional positions so as you may remember last year we had a program coordinate a program assistant we took that position out and we we converted it to the ADA coordinator because what we saw was that there was just a greater need to deal with the ADA issues what we see is that there are a lot of grant opportunities um through the ADA various resources at the state and federal level and by having someone I can focus on that we're able to I believe we're going to be able to pull in some extra dollars to help improve some of our buildings some of our programs and so by having a person focus on that we'll be able to I in my opinion pull in some some funding to support improving our community and then the other area which will be ARPA funded for two and a half years which will begin this this upcoming July is the outreach and engagement coordinator this person will be focused solely on going out into our community and and working directly with residents um what we know is that our director of DEI is doing kind of the macro level work to address equity issues across our community working big picture again with the school system she's working directly with Margaret our new DEI person at the schools and and so this outreach and engagement coordinator will be able to go out in the community and really kind of work directly with residents that that are you know in in need of of of engaging with the with the town so this is an exciting change here utilizing some of the ARPA funds and then last but of course not least is the Earlington Youth Counseling Center AYCC so AYCC has been around for over 40 years and in 2008 for those of you that have been on the Fincom for a while know that we were facing elimination of this program and it was really a lot of work to switch the way that the the center was funded so the center had always been entirely funded through town funds and so we were able to shift that and make this an entirely FIFA service model so it's a license this is a licensed mental health counseling center for youth and families in town we are providing direct mental health treatment and providing us a a resource to our our residents that no other community in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts offers this is something that is unique in that our residents are able to access mental health counseling right here in town for either you know just utilizing their using their health insurance or low cost for those that maybe are between insurances so as you can see we have worked really hard to pull in all sources of funds if one source drops because maybe the state revenue goes away we know that we're going to be pulling in we're going to have to bump up something else and we're always pivoting and looking for ways to bring in extra money and to to make this this incredibly important division self-sustaining so we have been like I said since 2008 been doing this insurance and fees as you can see we collect medical insurance and copayments and that's our biggest source the town provides $120,000 it's the same amount that we have been getting since 2008 so I'm proud to say that we've been able to really grow our insurance and fees and and we have been able to bring in state revenue through the support of our state legislators which has been amazing as well and then as you can see ARPA will support an increase so we are seeing a major increase in need in this area as a result of two years of isolation and you know everything that's been going on in the world so the intensity of the the need has grown and the number of cases of youth needing access to this service has grown so that ARPA funds we're looking to utilize to bump up staff hours which will be a three-year temporary bump we hope that in three years we can sort of scale back because these positions are they these are these are individuals in roles that that can can go up in time and go down in time they have additional jobs outside of AYCC so they can they can shift their time but we're really looking at the next three years being an intensive you know trying to trying to address the need in the community so that's just a really basic macro level overview of the divisions of health and human services and Annie I want to just send it back to you if you wanted to start asking questions or present the actual budget yeah I'm going to grant do you want to ask your question now or do you want to ask it after we're looking at the actual budget I'd like to if you don't mind ask it now sure actually just two questions that was a fantastic presentation and who prepared the PowerPoint me thank you I use canva I know I showed my husband he asked the same question where did you get this it's canva feel free to check it out online oh wait so the other question I had while you're on national tv where is the new community center the same place that's always been it's 27 maples street it's the senior center we're rebranding it because the new the new way of the world is to not call people 16 over seniors it's to call them part of our community these are these are members of our community and where we want them to be part of our community so it's a it's a new shift in thinking great well it's a great quad once again great great presentation and also a fantastic job with the AYCC too so that was my questions thank you excellent hey Annie why don't we do the budget yep let me just get to the I'll show my screen sorry I just want to get to the right place okay all right so this is the health and human services budget itself and I believe if you take a look at this the only change in the expenses at least is the $5,000 increase in contracted services and Christine I'm sure we talked about this but I do not remember what we said it was what you had so we had yep so we had 5480 was a salary we had a stealer of weights and measures that we had paid a few hours per week under the salaries that we shifted that over to contract we're going to be contracting that service moving forward instead of hiring a person um great excellent and you can zoom in on that a little bit oh can I zoom in on that a little bit I think I can do that in the pf nope hang on a second let me get when I go the other way yeah there we go better yeah thank you excellent okay um so I guess at this point I would just ask if anybody's got any other questions on the expenses everything else is pretty flat after over last year's budget um because I want to look at the salaries on the detail page because as you can see the salaries are going up um but some are the offsets and I think that's where the ARPA funded positions show up yeah so I have one salary so Annie you can get to that that'd be great all right anybody got let me just quick see if anybody's got any questions on the expenses uh Annie um I have a question sorry about the road and control um if you could talk about the 2000 and the 40 000 or the I'm sorry the the actual budget on the road and control Christine do you know why there's yeah so we've always received 40 000 in this line but as you may remember 2020-2021 we had COVID and so our department not only did we see a decrease in the amount of food coming out of restaurants and the the number of rodents was sort of it was less we also just didn't have staff dedicated to doing that work so it is still needed we just at that time we were focused on COVID response so okay any other questions on the expenses reef has a reef your hand is up he's waiting for salaries Charlie so I'm going to scroll to the salary page we'll come back if anybody decides there are other questions okay so this is the salary page and you can see uh that we have even if I make it bigger it's not gonna look that good there oh that works nicely okay um so I believe the biggest change here um is the amount of um offset we're getting from ARPA but a refund can you ask your question yeah no I'm just trying to understand where that differential is coming from because if you go back to the other page there was a what is it 90 000 something like that yeah so if you could explain that that would be good Christine that's the addition so yeah so this is the first year we have really added in all of the um additional um offsets so I think that the goal was um at least from the town manager the town manager's office was to get every single position every single hour worked on these sheets so you're gonna see just that that 90 000 increase there but it's being offset by um you know all of these these these sources so we um added another nurse position um for through ARPA and then we shifted two inspectors off of cares and moved them over to ARPA so you'll see there's ARPA is 221 000 so the the addition was that nurse which is listed here as vacant and then um I think the additional is just the the general increases that we we typically see every year so the follow on on that is that once the ARPA money goes away what happens to those positions so that's a great question one of the one of the positions has already the person has left the position so our goal was not to fill that um the other position we obviously um is we have somebody in that role for now um and we have three years of funding so I think that's a year-to-year decision um we for the nurse um ARPA the the laws are pretty strict that we can't add positions that will require the town or or city government to um continue or have to continue that funding afterwards so we know that with um the infrastructure that we're building now with some of the ARPA funds um we know that we're able to um establish uh well we have a revolving fund which we use to um purchase vaccines and then we administer vaccines so money comes in and goes out out of that revolving fund um we know that uh as we move forward with COVID and influenza our uh our revolving fund will be able to support we're hopeful that that revolving fund will be able to support that part-time physician with um Belmont that that ARPA funded nurse that we have on on here now um that is that is the goal that is what we're hoping for um so okay thank you Ellen Jones thank you I just wanted to to point out the what you don't see in this is the position that's gone away as Christine said it's the position's been um eliminated by retirement or whatever it's going to the contracting position so in the in the finance committee report that will show up with a footnote that says that position's essentially been moved from an employee to contractors as you've been explained but you don't see it in this table thank you thank you Ellen any other questions on this budget go ahead any thank you okay do we want to look at the other budgets before we vote or do we want to vote this budget charlie let's let's go through the other budgets and then we'll so our next budget is and services and you can see that veteran services is basically flat um the question that i had asked christine is you know do we have are we seeing a reduction in the number of veterans or um you know i would have thought that would be a growing population still but i think christine you had a really good answer which is just we have a really good agent and he works really hard to get them benefits from other places so that our costs don't go up and to make sure that they are served so i guess christine if you want to add anything i think you pretty much covered that already but if people have questions ellen do you have another question or are you still got your hand up okay anybody got any questions about this budget i do actually any so um where's the where's the offset uh from the state reimbursement danie do you want me to answer that yes please um that we've never included that in here because that money comes in um after so it's not going that money comes in months later so it could be three months four months later so it um it has never shown we don't usually put that on here but we can anticipate a 75 reimbursement and in our like i said our veterans agent being top notch really does work hard to make sure that that full 75 percent comes back so i i guess that's a question for the town manager's office i can certainly ask so but it goes into the general funds it's not it's not being spent by your department it's my question no no it goes into the general fund that's right i think actually it's on the cherry sheet yes actually that is where we're chill out so that comes into general fund charlie and i think that's been here we could we could check it against the cherry sheet oh i think that's right okay all right other questions about veterans or can i go to the next go right ahead any okay yeah and there's just the one position um so not much going on there okay and then we get to council on aging and this is the council on aging itself this is not yet the transportation fund am i correct or is this the transportation that's just the regular council on aging okay uh christine this is where we have the change that we know is coming in which is that that offset is actually larger than this do you have the exact number for that offset yes of course i it's 95,494 let me just confirm that i'm sorry it's 96 115 96 115 okay so i'm just gonna walk this through a little bit there we go where am i there we go okay so christine and i talked today and she talked to sandi and she had discovered that this offset number was too low and that that offset is actually um the larger number and so let me try to keep straight my tabs okay so over here i did the math on that and so the corrected taxation total on council on aging would be 402 thousand dollars and that is a much smaller increase over last year i don't know what the percentage is but it's not 12 percent it's more like two percent or less two and a half okay and let's got it two and a half percent um so when we come to vote this budget i'm actually going to jump us over to look at these numbers we're going to vote the corrected number so just to to jump in annie um sandi said if you vote the current budget as is um knowing that there's that surplus that just goes that reverts back to free cash at the end yeah we wouldn't spend it but i think he had thought that that would be probably the easiest way to manage this this error which i guess is a good error to have as opposed to i mean i i think i think as far as the committee is concerned it's six or one half a dozen to the other what it does for us if we actually apply to the bottom line is it makes the increase in this department much smaller which always makes us happier and it's also accurate yes it's also accurate and transparent okay um any questions for any expense budget the expense budget is pretty flat so we should go to the salaries yeah let's go look at the salaries and see what that increase in the salaries was and i think it was we added a new position but it's offset by elder affairs and again same problem we don't have the right number for the offset here but if you increased that offset it would offset the which of these positions was the new position it's the second yeah the positions have always been in place we just now show them on the budget uh this budget sheet so witty Dana witty um some of gd gondy's hours some of sliny hour sliny hours and some of august's hours okay so it makes sense to everybody that this is money we've always received but we've just not shown it on the budget before so we're showing the full salary and the offset i think this is part of the Julie wayman explanation of several weeks back any further questions for any on the count on aging salaries budget okay okay and then we get to diversity equity equity and inclusion and again you can see the expenses are flat the differences in the salary and the offsets um and the taxation total increase is 21 percent um the explanation is as christine provided it that we're adding this outreach position and christine is that the full arpa offset let me just scroll on the salaries real quick and see yeah yeah and we're offsetting that with arpa money um um questions on the expenses questions on the salaries hey blundell yes thank you i just curious what what kind of programming you see for the future um for the coming year that you hope to where some goals or projects you envision uh well so we have a director of de i who um manages the the division so with the the new outreach and engagement coordinator i mean obviously the goal would be for that person to get out into the community um to engage with with residents um we have a number of trainings and programs planned um and then the de i director also works with the three commissions the human rights commission the disability commission as well as the rainbow commission and so there are lots of projects and programs going on within those divisions as well um i don't know if that it's kind of a big picture answer but i am happy to get more into more detail i you know we've got the annual report and our goals objectives are all laid out in the financial plan i can share that with you if you'd like yes that'd be great i'm supportive but yeah if there's any information that you can share afterwards thanks yeah um christine just really quickly can you remind me what the 36 000 and consulting is i mean part of that is i know powerful pathways but what yeah so the yeah the real training is also part of that as well which is the racial equity um and learning in and that's something that we are putting in place across all the departments and divisions in town um it's been an incredibly valuable um program that we've we've been able to to we started it before covid literally the month before covid and then um we've done one additional follow-up during covid so that was virtual we're helping you up back in person because of the work that we need to do within the town of government is there's a lot to do so we're hoping to kick that back off again excellent so that's training four town staff so christine um during covid did you do the training or not and if you didn't do it did you save the money so we did do a training during covid yes so one training cost 36 000 so there was another program that we ran called with the consultant called powerful pathways um and she was running trainings within the community for residents so that that shifted over to working with our community um so that so there are two different trainings that that we were using that funding for and that training was 36 000 for the powerful pathways so what what does that include in other words how many meetings or hours or what what is it uh i have the contract i don't i don't know the details i'm so sorry but um there were uh i want to say there were probably weekly meetings that we had with the coordinator of powerful pathways for a pretty good chunk of time um she did a number of trainings within that basically um she she offered a number of programs within the community in collaboration with jill and worked directly with some of our residents um and supported some of our residents around these issues as well um i could pull up the contract that we had with her if that's helpful i don't know the details off the top of my head it's been about a year since we've done that work so i participated in the training series for residents charlie and i think it was like six or eight meetings um with with you know presentations materials um three members of power pro pathway powerful pathways staff present small group breakouts with those staff members so on and so forth so it was it was pretty intense and then if i recall correctly christine didn't um didn't powerful powerful pathways also work on some of the assessment of uh where everybody in the police department was out on these issues they did yes yeah so there was also some intensives with just just listening to um folks in the police department um sort of you know um how how do you feel right um so does that answer your question charlie because i got sophie and a reef stack up um partially uh go go ahead a reef a reef your hands okay yeah sure um yeah i mean it's basically similar to perhaps similar to what's being asked christine is uh this concern you know this training and the money being spent and you have your own staff as well that's i'm sure it's quite uh well qualified to run these trainings uh perhaps um and and i guess my macro question is perhaps is from naivety um perhaps not is how do you measure return on investment for the staff i mean it's all loosey loosey i understand that but we are finance people so i'm trying to understand what's a return on investment metric that you measure or what kind of um what is your metric for seeing success it is um incredibly difficult to measure um year to year i mean this is something that took 400 years to get to right and so it's going to take some time for us to move the needle and that's really what it's all about is to move the needle in the positive direction and um you know it do we do um surveys and try to gather information about what people are learning and how things are changing um yes but i mean it's almost um it's not something that i'm sorry to interrupt you but anyway i read don't interrupt me but not charlie i need to understand i understand let her finish her statement have you finished yeah yeah okay um so okay thanks look i'm struggling with the words because this is such a you know uh charged subject that if i say something incorrect you're going to all come after me um and and and certainly uh i want to be careful um but at the same time i feel a bit frustrated because um as as having been a consultant in various capacities myself always a technical and financial and and so forth but not not this type of consulting how does one understand and and and uh and quantify uh a charge that a consultant proposes uh and and how do you how do you uh choose amongst consultants one who may charge 10 000 other who may charge 20 another who may charge 50 um you know uh i understand the consulting peers in business certainly if i choose a mckinsey over a deloitte i know what i'm getting and what i'm paying for so i'm just trying to i'm just trying to understand how do you that's why i ask the question of return on investment but then return investment always based on the cost component and then um so if you can help me there that's fine if not i will not interrupt you again and take whatever your answer is and move on okay um so we when when choosing consultants we we have a whole list of areas we evaluate we use a tool um you know in in in your right it is it's it's not as clear as maybe a technical consulting that that you know another department may be looking at um but but there are standards that we we look for we want to make sure that there has been experience doing this in other communities that there's um you know that there are measurements that that that these consultants are able to meet you know like steps that they're able to take in order to meet various requirements um it's it's um you know changing uh changing people's beliefs over over years is something that's hard to measure so um you know i think we're we're looking at best practices that have been that that have been in put in place in other communities um to to make changes and so that's that's really sort of what it comes down to we we are members of um gaire which is um a national organization that really has been pushing this this initiative out through various communities across the country and looking at best practices it's it's um something we're all still learning and um so i think that i hope that answers a portion of your question thank you christine sophie yes thank you um so if i understood correctly on this consulting it's sort of half for staff and half for residents could you tell us how many residents are actually participated i i think if you said it i'm sorry i missed it i didn't say i i don't know i'll have i would have to find that out from the director um i might be able to answer that um i would say there were 50 or 60 people attending each session um and the cast of characters changed a little bit so maybe 70 in total sophie um because you know there was always some people who didn't make one session or another um but for from my personal experience it was a really impactful training i might add one quick note that might help you with this idea of measuring this kind of change when i worked at youth build usa one of the questions we used to measure the effect of our programming on young people was you know sort of what are your plans for the future and frequently young people coming into the program would say well i don't have really have any frank plans for the future i don't know if i'll be here after i'm 30 and at the end of the program we thought is a success if the answer to that question was um you know i want to be there for my grandchildren so you know it's it's not as quantifiable as what those of us in finance are used to kind of looking at it's much much more subjective and it's can be hard to find to the question that will get you the answer so annie i'm curious since you participate is this something you think residents like they do one time and then that's it they're sort of done for the year they're not going to come back year after year or is this something where residents would keep wondering if at some point residents stop going at what point do we say not enough residents participate that it's not worthwhile well i i think part of what christine and christine will correct me if i'm wrong is saying is that the the money this year is going to be spent on intensive training for towns staff so imagine what you're doing is you're centrally training town staff on how to be um uh aware in their interactions with the public and with each other you know their their staff their colleagues who may be um you know uh people of color or people in some other minority um but what i would say about the powerful pathways training is that essentially what it is is it's a start it's sort of a kind of training that that surfaces some awareness that at least for me is now a sort of part of what goes on in my brain around these issues i would hope that you know there's a intermediate class that would be available to me at some time and i would also hope that we might be able to find ways to offer that same kind of uh interaction with the material for additional residents um but it is a pretty emotionally intensive process um so it's not something everybody's going to do thank you thank you uh thank you charlie um question about the offsets um i guess so offsets are you know typically the magic word for transferring money within the town um so we received this money somewhere else and um can you tell me more about the sources uh where the is there more than one source where these offsets come from i noticed the guy the water and sewer guy talking about offsets right but i noticed the amount is uh uh substantially higher this year annie do you want me to answer that or do you well let me start and then you can join in if i get it wrong so grant what has happened is that the town has received a very large sum of money from uh the american rescue plan right american rescue plan and um part of that large sum of money is being used to offset this additional position that will be with us for two and a half years and that is this community outreach coordinator that christine was talking about you'll see those arpa offsets elsewhere we just saw them in the health and human services budget and i suspect we're going to see them in other places and some of that money is going to go to community groups some of it's going to small business grants uh to support small businesses who suffered during the pandemic some of it is going to social service agencies like some of it i believe is going to the housing authority some's going to food link some may be going to um far linkedin eats so it's basically sort of think of it as dollars to repair the social fabric and hence um its application to this position sure i i can appreciate the concept of it i'm thinking more about the amounts and the sources and and how they're distributed distributed um for instance are all of those places you mentioned all within the health and human services budget or are they in other budgets no there's actually grant if you look on the town's website yeah in the last uh three weeks the um i think it is probably the town manager's website or the board the select board they published the revised arpa distribution um numbers and it's it's pretty complex there are four categories this is town uh town town lost town revenues there's housing there's um you know housing there's rent support and then there's uh other social social services so some of those and there's capital capital expenditure so it's a it's a lot to ask in one question here okay no thanks actually though that was the answer for most of it but i noticed the substantial increase in the amount that we received which you know it's a negative but i understand the the flow of it and i was just um curious about that amount and is that a sustainable amount uh does it change year to year type of thing i mean it's a hundred thousand dollar difference the town received 34 million dollars uh and 10 10 million dollars goes into the municipal budgets without any question to be used by the town it's essentially check and then the the remaining 24 are allocated amongst these various groupings and and can be spent over five years so and and they will be audited by the federal state government okay very good thank you you're welcome christine is a follow-up to the grants question can you tell uh in health and human service in total how much arpa money you received that's a great question um i'd have to add them all up and it's still happening so we're still going to select boredom next monday to kind of finalize the arpa plan um i think i'd have to probably get that number to you maybe after to after tonight's meeting charlie if that were you have an estimate so it's a hundred for a ycc uh 54 here um the health department was what um 90 it's 92 292 21 so yeah probably about 400 000 um across the divisions okay here just for this year that does that help you grant actually um yes that sort of helps me but at least the other question so is this number going to change it it could i mean the number here in this division no but i think across health and human services as various programs are put in place it could like if we were able to purchase an item we may add that to the budget you know i i think every year there'll be new addition there may be things coming in and coming out of the budget but i think we we have we have a couple of months of planning uh to make decisions on what what the the final expenditures will be over the next three years thank you will change the amount that we're voting on tonight no okay thank you so before you go to the next subject i just have one question christine um you know having listened to annie's description of the consulting program and also that we're planning to spend these funds on the downside and and your comment that um the outcomes are not measurable is this money the town should be spending if we don't know what the outcomes are going to be how to measure them i would say uh of course i think it's incredibly important for us to be um trying to move the needle i wouldn't say that the measurements i mean that we can't measure or um you know i i think that um maybe i'm not the best person to be explaining this at the moment but um no i i do think that these are these are programs that that are incredibly important for us to participate in particularly the the real training for town staff i mean we're looking at um educating our our staff on issues that um that we face around equity and ways that we can improve the services we provide and those those services that we provide that the the changes that we make there i think are measurable you know examples would be the the terminology we're using um in the forms that we put out to our pub to the public um you know we can measure that that's stuff that we can measure but but we we really need to look um more globally at the work we're doing across our departments and making sure we're consistent and so i do think it's important i i would stand behind it for sure thank you any um so i wanted to go on to the enterprise funds unless there are additional questions on diversity equity and inclusion seeing none okay so this is the enterprise fund for transportation um and these are the what do we get here yeah so this is money going out and this is money coming in and we are in balance uh we have an increase in personnel services of $53,764 i think where we just it's an offset yeah i think this is just an offset so again we're putting the cdbg funding on the books to make sense to everybody that the the coa transportation fund has been supported by cdbg for a long time and that i don't believe we've ever shown it on the books before and now we're doing that uh so that's this line so that increase is offset by an increase in cdbg funding um and the transfer from retained earnings that's just a transfer from a balance in the fund and the transfer from the general fund is slightly less than it has been in the past and again that's support from the general fund for coa transportation um just a reminder based on pristine's presentation that this is money that is spent helping um folks who need the help uh get transportation for essential activities like medical appointments and grocery shopping um so that they can essentially stay in their homes and stay as independent as possible as opposed to um you know having to go into some kind of care facility because they can't get around um they characterize that correctly pristine yes mm-hmm does anybody have any questions about this uh but just sorry a quick question about how many um about the you know 10 000 residents that would be eligible how many are served how many are served so this year versus last year I mean during COVID it was obviously a very different number um I would say in in our senior center has been closed so for medical appointments I would say it's a I want to say it's about a thousand for medical and that's you know whether it's uber cabs um or our vans um and then I'd have to go back in the records to sort of look at what we have done historically for the senior center and for the other trips around town but medical is really our big area so I have a question any other questions from the committee on uh on this enterprise fund so if I can ask a question look any could you just slide the budget down a little bit just one little bit or make it a small or something there we go okay so the um the is a big jump in salaries between 21 and 22 actual and budget and that's also the year in which there was from previous practice apparently of not transferring from the general fund we now transfer $50,000 a year into the general fund and this was um to the current operating year so what is it that we changed here in the current operating year that we didn't need to have in the prior years so we brought on a number of um on call uh van drivers we had one van driver um in previous years not not anything on this sheet but um previous years we had one van driver um when that van driver was sick there were no van rides so we changed things we changed the way things were operating and we brought on on call van drivers um they're budgeted they may be budgeted at that level at you know so we we put in the budget 108 um but we may not spend all of that if we don't have those number of rides so um for FY 21 we may have budgeted the one we may have been up to that 108 but then we ended up only spending the 76 569 so I don't know if that that answers your question but but um the on call van drivers is kind of like a placeholder that we use in order to um to make sure we have enough um leverage within the budget I was just trying to understand why um we were able to so you're okay so you're saying you have more van drivers available because that seems like uh we also had yep and we also don't forget there were two years where we had COVID and the building was shut down so the the on call van drivers um may have been budgeted at higher levels for those two years but we didn't end up using them we do anticipate using them for this year once the building opens people are now going to the medical equipment so we are using the van on call van driver um pot more and obviously next year as well so for the past two years it was not utilized as much as um we would have liked thank you do we know what the balance of the fund is do I uh yeah I think the balance of the fund would be on that same page in the budget message for just 219 I have it here if you want me to sure 79 79 027 thank you and then I think this is the salaries so this is the on call van driver line that may not get spent any other questions and then we're on to AYCC I am going to make this a little smaller guys so that we can see it all on one page okay so we can see we have a big jump in salary um I believe that what's happening here is that we have moved some what were on call or fee for service clinicians who were not um salary into salary positions I think we were we're going to do that by law weren't we Christine we got kind of dinged by right some employment law violation and so that's the big change there and then everything else here okay so we insurance reimbursements are up uh transfer from other funds is slightly down from what we asked for last year we are applying $100,000 in ARPA and we're using some balance of funds so Christine do you know the balance in the fund at this point it is we anticipate it going up but it is 68,724 at the moment or at the start of the year but we anticipate it going up a bit going up a bit okay so we're we're spending it okay okay and then these are the salaries and you'll see these are those mental health clinicians who have been put on salary rather than being paid by the hour because we got dinged Shayna thanks you have a question thank you insurance reimbursement is that just commercial insurance is that mass health it's all yeah it's all of the insurances it's um public and private insurance thank you yep and then you can see we have additional ARPA offsets so um any any other questions for Annie or Christine on this um KYCC budget so I have a question and for first of all I have uh yeah let me ask my question first then I have a comment to make so earlier this year earlier earlier this season let me call that Dr. Holman from the school department gave us a presentation and she remarked on the huge increase they are having in the school system emotional and psychological issues amongst the students who have been going through you know one to two years of remote learning and missing out on social interactions etc that are so critical to you know that young age group um is it our only thing about the school is utilizing the AYCC to help mitigate those situations of course yes and we actually have a contract with the schools we see a number of students in the school during the day the school day and we provide sessions within the schools so yes and and obviously we work closely in all of the divisions of health and human services with the schools so AYCC wouldn't be any different not only do we have clinicians in the schools but you know I know that Colleen and the school staff are in regular contact we are seeing you know the hospitalizations of of students in the various schools increase we're seeing the intensity of the need increase and you know Dr. Holman's you know 100 correct and saying that um yeah the need is is is huge right now and and obviously we're working closely with them to make sure we address that so thank you for that so the other I wanted to make a comment which is that you gave your presentation earlier and you were mentioning that you know when you joined in 2008 the AYCC was underwater um my recollection is it was so far underwater that the town manager at the time was going to close it and and I just think that you've done a magnificent job at the last um 14 years I guess it was 14 years um in bringing this department to and not only stability but growing it to provide services to the town I just think it's amazing considering the situation that we were in 14 years ago so you you deserve that any other questions on on the AYCC budget yeah well what was the reason for making the fee for service clinicians into regular town employees again so we um we were made aware of uh uh an employment law that we wanted to become in uh compliance with so we uh had to convert our our clinicians our fee for service clinicians into um staff in order to comply with that law we we did not receive an order letter there was no order letter it was just that we were made aware of the law knowing that we would soon uh could soon become um in compliance yeah exactly so we wanted to make sure we were in compliance with the law so there were seven full-time positions approved um that is not included in the uh in the budget here Christine is that uh just is that the IRS contractor versus employee distinction correct yes really you know you have to characterize the job and the IRS doesn't like it if you call an employee or contractor because of benefits correct then answer your question okay Micaiah's got a question well I'm I'm just wondering how much in health insurance that cost us um how many of these people went on a health insurance um I mean seven people 15 thousand dollars that's over a hundred thousand dollars and increased uh health costs so so but I would assume that'll shop in the health insurance budget any I'm sorry any I didn't hear what you said I would assume that'll show up in the health insurance budget yeah Micaiah did you have a question yes thank you um I think this is one of the most underutilized um services and I'm so so thankful for these clinicians and for all that you do um and in particular I would be curious about like that comment about um Arlington or AYCC being a model um for other communities um because this is you know this is a crisis that like your department is addressing and and so I'm wondering if you could explain a little bit about why this is so unique to um yeah why this is so unique to other communities mm-hmm so the only the closest um agency to AYCC um through a town would be the Brookline Mental Health Center and that still that's its own separate non-profit the town of Brookline just gives money to that to that agency this is an actual agency of the town and there are no other fully licensed mental health clinics um that are part of a community budget or a community um you know local government so um yeah I mean it is it is something that we are very lucky to have here and and had this gone away in 08 never would have come back and at this time we know that the the need is just so great that um we're very fortunate to have it here in town thank you Makaya Dean thank you um I did sorry a little slow on meeting um so I don't really have a question as much as I have a comment and since Christine we have you here I just want to say um thanks for your last couple years sort of running the health department during a global pandemic that you know really was probably held for your department um you know I was always amazed I was always nervous actually because I saw all these health directors who kept quitting their jobs because they were like yeah I'm done right um and I used to always think about like like how how hard it is not just to coordinate all the things but then he in some ways to be like the you know the I don't know what the word would be the bad guy or the the person's going to make enough decisions to close things they're not allowed people to go back into things or whatnot and um it's a really it was a really hard I'm assuming two years but it was a it was a critically important two years for the community um I'm really glad it was you I'm really glad you stuck with it um I would say to the committee like there were you know I just Christine I would have these brief interactions because I was um I'm on the board of the Arlington Soccer Club and I'm the we have a COVID safety officer and it's me so we spent a lot of we spent like every now and then these interactions like about different things and I remember just thinking to myself like I know how difficult it was for us and our small little world of our Arlington Soccer Club and then I thought about extrapolating that over the whole community and all the different groups how like how much effort was going into it and and whatnot so I just want to say I really I really appreciate all your work I really appreciate all the work of your team um I I mean you know we seem to be getting to the other side which is awesome and it's you know we it's no small part to all the effort you know you guys do to keep everyone safe so thank you Dean obviously it's uh it was a team effort Natasha's on the call she wanted to see this presentation she's the true director of public health um and really a huge shout out to Natasha her work and patience and together I think our team did a great job so thank you Dean there any other comments on any of the budgets from the department help you this department um I just want to add one quick comment Charlie which is that I want to thank my colleague Wanda for assisting me in the interview with Christine and sort of puzzling through all the questions we needed to ask um I find that Wanda tends to ask the questions I don't think to ask um and so I don't mean to you know steal all the thunder by being the person who does the presentation I couldn't do this without her so I just wanted to get well we we know Wanda is one of the brains in this community so in this community so apropos comment okay great okay I forgot I forgot what it was but when we were doing training session um oh yeah on it was on a five-year plan it about two seconds and found inconsistency or an error whatever so I knew how to how to watch out for her um so if the committee agrees what I would like to ask um is uh that you and Wanda make a motion you are one to make a motion for all the budgets one at a time with it with the numbers including the budget it's the uh change that you mentioned earlier and yes and then um we'll get a second and if there's see if there's any more discussion and then if there's not then we'll with the permission of the committee vote all the budgets at once except for the enterprise funds we have to do those separately great I think Wanda that means you need to unmute and get ready to second me I'm ready right um so I I move approval of the health and human services budget as printed it's a taxation total of seven hundred and sixty thousand eight hundred forty nine dollars my second and then I move approval of the veterans services budget in the amount of three hundred and twenty seven thousand seven hundred and fifty three dollars my second it and I move approval of the council on aging budget this is the one I've got a change so the changes you need to make in your budget book are that the offsets are ninety six thousand one hundred and fifteen dollars and that makes a taxation total of four hundred and two thousand six hundred and seventy five dollars my second it and I move approval on the diversity equity and inclusion budget for a taxation total of one hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and seventy eight dollars second that okay and then I gotta get to the enterprise funds can you just so let's let's uh let's do let's just vote first can you confirm for me the um the first budget was seven hundred sixty three thousand eight hundred and forty nine yes I can hang on let me just scroll down yeah seven sixty three eight forty nine okay thank you okay so um it's been moved and seconded on the the health budget the veteran services budget the council on aging budget and the DEI budget I note that the council on aging budget is different from the printed form um and it's a the bottom line is four hundred two thousand six hundred seventy five dollars is there any further um discussion on any of those budgets questions so unless I hear an objection from the committee um I will take a roll call vote for all of those budgets in one vote hearing no objections okay Grant Gibbian yes jane blundell yes john ellis yes vikaya heli yes brian beck yes harry padaria abstain uh sophie medley azzel yes yes jonathan wallach yes shaleen pokers is not here uh darryl harmer yes annie lecourt yes uh allen jones yes george kosher yes bill keller yes altosy yes wandana cemento yes dean corvin yes and david mackenna yes thank you um the vote is seventeen in the affirmative one abstention okay so now to take the first enterprise fund annie can you flip that back up there please so that's the council on aging transportation right annie you want to you're muted you want to make money okay there we go i don't know why i did that um yes i i move approval of the council on aging transportation uh budget in the amount of $194,644 with a total revenue of $196,194,644 thank you one the second did so um any further discussion so we'll move for who will vote grant gibbian yes chain blendell yes john ellis yes hi haley yes brian beck yes yes harry padaria abstain uh sophie medley azzel yes jonathan wallach yes yes um darren calmer yes annie lecourt yes allen jones yes george kosher yes bill keller yes altosy yes wandana cemento yes dean carmen yes david mackenna yes so that's uh 17 in the affirmative one abstention in the next enterprise fund is the aycc yes so this is the arlington youth counseling center and again i'm moving the expense total of $1,217,740 with revenue of $1,217,740 second it's moved and seconded there any further discussion on the aycc enterprise fund we move to a vote grant gibbian yes chain blendell yes john ellis yes hi haley yes brian beck yes harry padaria abstain sophie medley azzel yes jonathan wallach yes darrell harmer yes annie lecourt yes allen jones yes george kosher yes bill keller yes altosy yes wandana cemento yes um dean carmen yes david mackenna yes so it's 17 in the affirmative one abstention the aycc enterprise fund is is uh voted supported so um annie you wanted to discuss rodents um yes i merely wanted to suggest that we need to have a hearing on that particular warrant article tara i don't remember what the warrant article number is but it's the warrant article concerning rodenticide and i believe the only thing we wanted to do other than to say that we need to do a hearing is to request that christine give us some kind of ballpark on what she think the it thinks it would cost to run the kind of public education program call for in that particular warrant article because that looks to me with your agreement christine like it is the thing that would increase expenses should it pass so do you feel like you're able to pull us some kind of number not tonight yeah i can give you a number probably not right now yeah not not off the top of your head but we have that hearing you're certainly invited to come but i think if you just communicated by email that would also be satisfactory yeah okay perfect thank you okay well um christine and i guess natash is who's hiding in the around there thank you very much for your time tonight and great presentation in very informative answers to questions so so we're done with the health and human services department and funds are there any other budgets that people have available tonight um so i'm ready to go back to the wreck and rink enterprise funds okay sorry to hand any let me pull up my screen again so we had two questions on these budgets ah i need to do that here we go i think i just go up to get to wreck the rink budget the question that we had on this but what was what was the transfer from other funds and the answer that i got from sandy was this that the rink transfer from other funds is actually use of fund balance so it's not a transfer from the general fund it's just the their that use of their of a part of their fund balance um i think what we were worried about was that it might be a use of funds from the general fund budget but it's not um so i'd like to move this budget and have us four on it so uh you're moving this 100 well that's i am 100 i'm moving 611 nine hundred and sixty eight dollars with an offsetting revenue of six hundred and eleven six hundred and eleven thousand nine hundred and sixty eight dollars is there a second second it okay this is the ed burns rink um yeah that's fun right yeah and ellen jones has his hand up ellen uh yes i anti that would just what you're saying is this would essentially be use of retained earnings yes any other funds okay in the in the chart of accounts i think it's just one of those things it is trying to change right some of the other funds calling use of retained earnings but right it's inconsistent okay thank you that would be the appropriate term and i think we'll get that straight out this year i'll mention it just okay thank you okay any other questions for annie awanda on this budget okay um it's been moved and seconded um and no other questions so we will go to a vote grant gibbian yes chain lindell yes mon Ellis yes kaya healy yes brian beck yes harif padaria yes sophie migliazo yes jonathan wallach yes daryl harmer yes yes annie lecourt yes jones jones yes george kosher yes bill keller yes altosti yes wandan esmento yes dean carman yes david mackenna yes uh that vote on the ed burns enterprise fund is unanimous thank you and do you have another enterprise fund any yes the recreation fund um so the question here was on the size of the balance in the the fund which i believe we called bird in our earlier discussion it was al pasty's question and he is satisfied with the answer i believe what happened is that there was both a enterprise fund and a revolving fund and funds were moved between those funds um but certainly if people have additional questions about what those fund balances and the flows have been i'm happy to go get the answers but i'm not sure that it affects this year's budget so i would respectfully ask that we vote the budget tonight and um if people would like further follow-up on how the fund balance came to be what it was i will happily go sit on sandy store step and get something more precise ellen josey do your hand up or is that um no okay apologies i keep forgetting to take it down sorry that's okay so any question for annie or wanda on the recreation budget uh a move motion is in order so i moved the uh recreation enterprise fund budget for one million eight hundred and ninety one thousand seven hundred and twenty seven dollars with an offsetting revenue of one million eight hundred and ninety one thousand seven hundred and twenty seven dollars seconded so it's been moved and seconded any further discussion or questions seeing none we'll move to a vote green bean yes shane blundell pass john ellis yes fire haley yes brian beck yes harry fedaria yes so if you make the azo yes jr anathan walloch yes sarah harmer yes annie lecourt yes ellen jones yes george coser yes bill keller yes al-tosti yes wander nasimento yes jean karman yes david mckenna yes so the vote on the recreation enterprise fund is unanimous thank you annie thank you wonder uh did you have any other budgets any we're one no i believe i'm done okay thank you are there any other budgets anybody wants to bring up tonight uh we'll be looking forward to the park information brian wanted when it's available i don't know who's who you have i'll i'll check with the treasurers uh the treasurer and see what she's um is she also the parking clerk yes okay um are there any is there any old business that has not been addressed that anyone wants to bring up tonight yes sophie um if you want i i have an answer for one of the warn articles behind any research on street trees if you want me to quickly please do uh this is it was the temporary article 27 and it's about street trees uh being required part of a special permit if you're seeking a special permit that this would now require that you put street trees in along the sidewalks and uh my further research indicates with jenny that at maximum they're talking about nine trees for the town a year based on past numbers uh the trees would be paid for by those seeking a special permit for work on their property so it's not the town that pays for it but the town would presumably then have um regular upkeep and treatment of the trees um but we're just talking maximum probably nine trees a year so i don't know thank you that closes that question thanks very much the other old business items that one wants to bring up okay um sorry yeah i i have um charlie i don't know if you're able to see my um email but i'm pleased to report that there's been no changes to the reclassification document uh so the presentation is accurate as was presented so so we don't have to go back and re-vote correct but we would have to good all right that's great um anything else um i'd like to ask for new business we can't do that unless it's on the on the agenda for the open meeting law so for the open meeting so i think a motion to adjourn in order so moved to adjourn moved and seconded um i i'm gonna say we we will adjourn unless there's a request to vote again you know request to vote again the meeting is adjourned thank you thanks good night everyone