 My name is Charlie Foskett, Chair of the Finance Committee. Permit me to confirm that all members are present. I will shortly take the role. This open meeting of the Arlington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020 due to the current state of emergency as a result of the COVID-19 virus. To mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we've been advised and directed to suspend public meetings and, as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in publicly accessible physical locations. Furthermore, all members' public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with the agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access 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 tbradleyattown.arlington.ma.us.com. This meeting is convening by video conference via the Zoom app as opposed to the website identifying how the public may join and comment. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some are participating by video conference and accordingly please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Supporting materials that have been provided, members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public has encouraged to follow along the posted agenda unless the chair notes otherwise. Some ground rules. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda and after they conclude their remarks we'll go down the line and members inviting each to provide any comment, questions and motions. Please remember to mute your phone or your computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquially with other members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Let me point out that I'm dealing with a laptop computer with a modest screen. So I may not be able to see all the members at the same time. So I ask that either Annie LaCorte or Tara Bradley can signal me if someone is trying to get my attention and I don't see it. Each vote will be taken in this meeting, will be each vote taken in this meeting to be conducted by a roll call. So now let me take the attendance, a roll call if I may. Please signify your presence by saying here or yes. Grant Yubin. Here. Shane Blundell. Here. John Ellis. Here. Makaya Healy. Here. Brian Beck. Down here. Arif Padaria. Sophie Migliazzo. Jonathan Waller. Here. I'm here. Shailene Brokwitz. Here. Daryl Harmer. Here. Annie LaCorte. Here. Alan Jones. Here. George Kosher. Here. Bill Keller. Here. Al Tossi. He is in a weird teams meeting that this invite created. So I'm trying to get him over here now. OK. One to Nascimento. Here. Christine Deschler. Here. Dean Karm. Here. And David McKenna. Here. Tara Bradley. Here. We're also expecting Dr. Elizabeth Holman and Mr. Michael Mason from the Arlington Public School System tonight. I don't know if they're on or not, but Tara, if you can note when they arrived that they were there present at the meeting. Yes, it looks like we also have to. We have Don Seltzer and then we have a six one seven phone number calling in. I'm not sure if that's. I believe that's OK. Yeah, that's me. We're mode at the moment. Awesome. Thank you. Who is that? That's Dean. Oh, Dean, I'm on my phone for the next 15 minutes. OK, thank you, Dean. So good evening, everybody. Tonight, we're going to have the the honor of a visit by Dr. Holman and Mike Mason from the school department. They'll be giving us an overview of the public schools as they return to normal, I hope, as we get out of this COVID-19 pandemic. I want to remind you, as pointed out to me by Ian Carmen, that this is not a budget review, but rather it's a high level meeting so that the committee can get to know Dr. Holman and Dr. Holman can get to meet various members of the committee. Dean Carmen will be inviting us when he anticipates the school committee and school management will be finished with their budget work and prepared to present a proposed budget to us. Following the APS discussion, we'll be hearing from Dave McKenna and Sophie Migliazzo on several of their budgets and from Kaya Healy on the personnel of budget and reclassification. Finally, I'd like to comment that in the interest of good order in amicable relations, I have transferred the amicable relations with all the committee members. I transferred the responsibility and management of the budget schedule to Tara, who will confirm your budget presentation dates and with whom you can directly adjust scheduling as necessary. So I don't know what the time is right now. Oh, that was 7.36. Well, that's faster than I expected. Normally, I'm running over here on that. Maybe I just started early or I read quickly or perhaps I edited that lengthy introduction by a little bit. So does anybody have anything they want to contribute in terms of discussion tonight while we're waiting for Dr. Homan and Michael Mason? I'll just comment that I guess by now you've all seen, but just in case you haven't, our governor announced today that there will be an end to the mask mandate in schools at the end of February. And I just think that's a major milestone reading that. And I thought it's been two years and the governor says that at the end of February, schools to kids don't have to remass in schools anymore. And I just think that's great. Yeah, that's I think everybody's getting excited about the fact that we might be getting back to normal. But, you know, unfortunately, we still have had. A fairly large number of people in the state that have had disease and there still are deaths as a result of that, not just in Massachusetts, but throughout the country and the world. So it's still continued to be a difficult situation, but hopefully it's going to get to be manageable. It's it's oh, I know what one other thing I wanted to mention. So about half of us receive reappointments to the finance committee for some term or another, you know, depending depending on. How the precincts changed and so forth. And so your your terms in those appointments are associated with the precinct, not with your not with your prior appointment. So you may have had an appointment for three years last year and find out that this year you only have a one year appointment and that's because the the the precinct that you're in expired in that period of time. In any event, if you notice the letters that you likely will have received by now from the town clerk's office, you're supposed to we're all supposed to go in and get resworn into the finance committee, which I did the other day. And I as just thinking of Traylene's comment, this is the first time I've been in town hall in two years, which is just somewhat amazing. The strange, strange world that we're living in. But I encourage you to get down to town hall and then sign in. And then, I mean, swear, swear or something. And then, Tara, do you have the list of people who are current on their ethics training? Let me get back to you on that. OK, well, let's say next week or something like that or next meeting. We do have a record of who's taking their ethics training. And I believe every two years were required to take the ethics course and then take an online test, which is it's almost impossible to fail because you can just keep going back and you get it right. But it's something that we're all supposed to do. I see that Michael Mason has joined us. Hello, Michael. Good evening. Good evening. So if you remember, if you all remember what you're if anybody remembers that they have to take an ethics course because they didn't take it last year, then, you know, please go ahead and start on your own. But meanwhile, Liz will. I mean, I mean, Tara will come back to us with. So, Michael, how are things over at APS? Very good. Good. Good today. We're doing very well over here. And working along on budgets and working on the updated COVID protocols and whatnot, hearing that from the governor and trying to figure out what we're going to do next. That I know of Shalene just mentioned the governor announced that no more masks in school as of the end of February. You know, they're letting them the mask mandate expire on February. Yeah, yeah, that's good. I suppose that means that this is Shalene. Hi, Michael, it's possible that Arlington will choose to continue wearing masks, but it just means the state is not mandating it anymore. Is that your take as well? Correct. Correct. Yeah. Baby steps. Yes. Leave it to the local municipalities to determine how to best handle it. Right. So I don't I suppose Charlie doesn't want to comment right now on how soon this committee will be back in person. I can't wait, actually. I mean, I'm really looking forward to it, but I don't know what our town regulations are right now. And and I don't know. I don't know what the status is. Oh, maybe Annie knows this. The status of the of the discussions about having semi remote meetings or or, you know, meetings that have both in person attendance and remote attendance. Is that so the committee produced its near term report for the select board and sent that set of recommendations to the select board, which I believe was reviewed this Monday. And they are definitely recommending that we maintain hybrid meetings. There's been a review of what spaces and what kinds of technology would go in those various spaces to facilitate what kinds of meetings based on sort of what committees use, what rooms. And then there's also some recommendations regarding how to produce equity in a remote meeting. So I would suggest that perhaps we could get if I can get that report to Tara, she could distribute it to the committee members. That'd be great. That'd be the. It it's not without cost, but we believe that our funding can cover the capital investment once it's determined exactly what that is. But it would require some staffing and training of people running committees to learn how to use the equipment. So. Good. Well, it's relevant for us. You can get that report to us. That'd be great. Dr. Holmes, I see that you're on here. I just saw you a minute ago. There you are. Good evening. How are you? Good. How was everybody? We're pretty good so far. It's early, you know. So Dr. Holman and Mr. Mason have joined us and we're I think I can speak for the entire committee. They were delighted that you're here this evening and thank you for sending out an advanced copy of your presentation. It looks very interesting. So I think without further ado, we'll pass the baton to you and you can proceed. And Tara, are they enabled on the screen share? Screen share? Yes, yes, they are. OK, great. So Dr. Holman, please go right ahead. Fantastic. Thank you all for having me. Good evening, members of the finance committee. You should be able to see my screen. And I get a thumbs up if you can see it. Yes. And Mr. Mason, the chief financial officer for the public schools and I are happy to be here and to give a little bit of an introduction to some of the things we have been up to this year. And for me to have an introduction to all of you, which is wonderful, I really appreciate the invitation. We won't go into the details, obviously, of the proposed budget for this year for the schools. We'll be back later and you all can ask us questions about that at that point. But I think some of our goals for tonight are just to introduce and describe a bit about the entry process that I've gone through and getting to know members of the town. Some of you, I've had the opportunity to meet some of you even face to face, which is great. Some of you via Zoom. I also would like to share some of the things that are driving and informing our next steps for resource allocation for the district. In my first seven months, I've learned a lot about what it is that our priorities for our families, for our students and some of the directions we need to go next. So I'll share some of that, share some operational data that are also informing our next steps and answer any questions when we're done. We'll move through slides quickly so that we can get to questions that folks have. So I'll start with an overview of my entry process. I started on July 1st, twenty twenty one in the district. I'm coming from Waltham where I was the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction and I engaged in an entry plan that had three phases and now we're looking into phase four, which is the fun part where we get to use the findings to look ahead to what's next for the schools. The phases really started actually in February of twenty twenty one. The school committee gave me a wonderful transition contract that allowed me to begin engagement while I was still in my former role so that I could get to know the community a little bit better, get to know my administrative team and work with Dr. Bode on a smooth transition, which was very appreciated. In phase two, I spent a lot of time doing meet and greets with town leaders, community stakeholders, doing some planning for fall twenty twenty one. We had an interesting start to the year because the Delta wave was hitting us and we needed to make sure we had a comprehensive plan in place to get all of our kids back in the schools, which was very successful. And we've enjoyed having everybody back in person. And then in the most recent phase this fall, I've been spending a lot of time out in schools, a lot of time with faculty and staff and families doing listening sessions and focus groups. We've done some surveys for students and families. And I've been sort of wrapping up my entry planning process. The next step, I'll talk about a little bit more in a few minutes, but it really is about looking forward and making sure that we're integrating the findings from the entry plan into the work that we're doing to lead the public schools. So I'd also like to share some of the district improvement goals for this year that have been driving my work as the superintendent early in my entry process. We really became committed as an administrative team to building a collaborative and equity focused leadership culture so that we're all sort of speaking the same language about what we expect to see in our schools and in instruction and that we understand what it means to make decisions that foster equity for all of our students and that reduce access barriers to resources for all of our students. Another goal for the district this year is to improve and streamline transparency, sort of using data to make sure that we're explaining why it is we're making particular decisions to improve family engagement and communication. And part of the process of this has been making sure that we're ready to communicate any swift changes to COVID-19 guidelines or protocols or testing programs, which have really occupied a lot of our attention this year. We've got a little bit of feedback. Sorry. Can everybody make sure they have their microphones turned off, please? Including me. And then the last district goal is for this year is to make sure that we're supporting a safe and supportive pandemic return and recovery. Like I just said, our attention has been stretched across trying to be proactive and making sure that we're reacting to changing policies and procedures that are coming from the state, from Mass Department of Health and in collaboration with our local Department of Public Health. I think we've had a really successful year. We had the highest pediatric vaccination rate in the state in November and December, which was very exciting. And it's a testament to the collaborative relationship that we have with town departments and something I've really enjoyed since I came to Arlington. So I want to talk a little bit about what we're seeing in our academic in our academic outcomes. And these things are things that really will drive some of our decision making around the budget for this year. A big one is that we notice that we do have an impact from the pandemic, particularly and what I'm showing you here is math, but really it's across academic subjects when you look at the results from 2019 to 2021. So on the graph here, this on the left, you'll see the results for grades three to five in blue, grade six to eight in red, and then grade 10 in yellow. And then this on the left of the three bars are 2019. And on the right, the three bars are 2021. We didn't have a 2020 year for achievement because we didn't take the MCAS that year. But what you'll notice is that from 2019 to 2021, our students in grades three to eight had a slip in mathematics. In ELA, we held pretty stable, which is great in terms of achievement, but we of course want to see our students improving. We definitely don't want to see them slipping. And so we know that there has been a relatively significant impact in mathematics on student achievement, especially in grades three to eight and that that's going to continue to be seen throughout their time with us into grade 10 and beyond. So we want to make sure that we're allocating resources to support intervention so that our students can make up for some of the lost time, particularly in mathematics. And then on the right hand side, what you'll see is something else that we look at quite closely, which is the achievement gap between our students in this particular graph. You're seeing our students who have identified as black and our students who are white in red. Our students who are black, their achievement is represented in blue. And you'll see that that is a gap that is present, not only present, but also growing. And so we want to see those lines come together over time and also both of them to go up. And so it's concerning to us when we see those trend lines separating more over time and going down. And so those are things that we look at closely across every disciplinary area, across multiple years, across grade levels and do a lot of analysis around at the start of the year that helps us inform our planning and our priority setting as a district and also for our school improvement plans. Something else academic that we're noticing, this is ELA performance on some of our formative assessments that we do. And we did formative assessments in 2020 because we didn't have the benefit of doing MCAS so we could monitor those scores. And so this chart is showing you the fall 2020 assessment for grades three and then four in this column and then grade five. And it's showing you 2020 compared to 2021 for our young learners in multiple domains of literacy. So I'll explain this a little bit slowly because there's a lot of information here. If you look at fall 2020 and 21 in the yellow areas, you'll see that there's an impact from the time when students were in hybrid and remote instruction in fall of 2020 to fall of 2021, students in the same grade were noticing a slip there. And particularly in areas of vocabulary and comprehension of informational texts. And then a little bit as well in phonics for these two earlier grades, third grade and fourth grade where we expect those phonics skills to begin to be pretty solidified. And so this gives us some level of concern with regards to COVID impacts for sure. But also when we look at curriculum because we wanna make sure that we're setting our students up to build vocabulary and content knowledge over time and setting them up to be able to critically read informational texts over time. And so some of the things that will come out of these data and our planning in the next several months is a continued look at foundational literacy and what ELA curricula we're using so that we can make sure we're using the best curricula that aligns with what we know about how students learn to read. And so that we're making sure we have the intervention services necessary to bring some of these slipping areas from fall 2020 to fall 2021 back up. And then when it comes to mental health we all know that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a pretty big impact on people's mental health and wellness. That's no different for our young kids who have had a very disrupted several years. Little kids, one of the things we know about them is that they thrive on routine. They thrive on knowing what to expect. They thrive on stable connections with adults who they trust and who show them care and love. And so when we have as disruptive of the last couple of years as we have had we expect to see elevated or even clinical levels of things like anxiety, depression, worry, concern that get in the way of students being able to learn. So this is intimately connected to what we see happening academically. What you're seeing here are results for our elementary school students on a mental health screener here on the left-hand side. This mental health screener asks students questions about their levels of relative worry. Worry is something that young students can express or understand as something that happens until we ask them a series of questions on the Penn State worry questionnaire for children which is what this stands for. And that questionnaire sends us results about whether or not students have an elevated level of general anxiety or whether they have a clinical level that requires immediate attention and intervention. We respond to all students who show an elevated or clinical level but we don't quite have the staffing required to respond at the rate that students reported and elevated or clinical level in grade five and we just did the grade four assessment recently this year. So thinking through to next year we wanna make sure that we have the resources necessary to respond when students report such high levels of general anxiety and concern for us. At the middle school level similar towards sorts of mental health screeners demonstrated that our middle school students are doing a little bit better with regards to elevated mental health challenges but there are still a significant number of students obviously who are presenting with clinical or elevated levels of mental health anxiety or depression. We've also had 251 instances of meeting to refer family, staff and students to external counseling services this year and we're looking into various resources that will continue to support SEL and mental health that are listed here including partnerships with collaboratives and outpatient services and continued screeners and assessments to make sure we're tracking and responding to mental health needs. So with all of that said on the educational side of things I'm going to rely on my operational guru in the district and have Mr. Mason talk to you about some of the things on the operational side of things that are driving some of our budgetary considerations for next year. Michael, are you there? Yes, I am. Thank you, Dr. Holman and once again, thank you Finance Committee members for giving us opportunity to speak with you this evening. Our operational priorities also include a student enrollment and what we anticipate for students that we will need to serve over the upcoming years. So in what is challenging about the enrollment is actually predicting enrollment after the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, it was simpler to project enrollment because it was consistently growing. The district saw consistent enrollment growth since 2008. From 2008, the district was around 4,756 students and the peak before the pandemic, the district hit total students 6,128 students. So if you're keeping count, I know some of you guys are math people in here. That's about 1,372 students that the district grew over the blood in your period which was close to 30% growth over that period. However, as you can see from the chart as well is that the district's law students in fiscal 21 which was during the midst of the pandemic. However, we've begun to recover that enrollment which you'll see is around 5,792 students in district only that does not include out of district. And what's difficult about projecting this is that currently our formula would project lower numbers than our current enrollment which you'll see that we're seeing around 5,931 in district. And that number is higher than even our contract vendor projecting projection lower than our previous contract vendor who did the production prior to the pandemic. You can go to the next slide. Our other operational priorities are revolving around salary and per pupil spending. So feedback we've gathered from our school committee members, parents and staff throughout the district is that we need to increase and make our pay more competitive to our comparable districts. So you'll see that the chart on the left it says APS teacher and paraprofessional pay relative to average. It shows that as a result from a salary study that a contract vendor conducted for the town of Arlington using fiscal 20 data. So Arlington and other municipalities that are in the town manager 12 that is compared to and our teacher compensation is up to 5.5% lower than the town manager 12 average. Another group that's substantially below is our teaching assistants or our paraprofessionals which are up to 41.4% below the town manager 12 average. What this chart doesn't show on the left is that there are other pressures as well that are communities that are geographically close to Arlington that we are also substantially below and a lot of our staff do compare us to those districts and leave sometimes our district to go to those communities for higher compensation. On the chart on the right, it shows our per pupil spending averages from fiscal 16 to fiscal 20. And the trend continues from the chart on the left is what shows that Arlington public school spending is below per pupil the town manager 12 average. And that's one of our concerns and one of our main priorities to look at how we can support our students greater with funding that we currently have. If you can move to the next slide and our last but not least in terms of operational priorities is that the Arlington high school project, we are about to finish the first phase of that project of the four phase project. And so what you'll see is the picture to the left on this slide was taken last fall. This is the picture of the Massachusetts have main entrance. I'm sure many of you have seen it and includes a view of what was an unfinished discourse lab. And then what you'll see is the picture to the right is a picture of our student council at the high school in that finished discourse lab. And so we're excited to open up the new performing arts and steams wings on February 28th, which is part of the first phase. However, there's still a lot more work to do. We have a phase two, which is a much more complex phase of the projects is quite a work to do with the concerns with the moves in the temporary phase of the project and the upcoming phases. Thank you. All right, so just to wrap us up, some of the things that we have that are coming up for us, we are in the process of getting started with a district wide equity audit that's going to help us take a look at everything in the system from our hiring practices to like how we think about facilities maintenance, all the way to curriculum and instruction and professional development and give us a lens on what some of the things are that we can do to improve equity for our students across the district. We are also in the process of launching an inclusive district strategic planning process in the partnership with and resourced by the Arlington Education Foundation. We've received a wonderful grant from them to help us bring many community members in across stakeholder groups to help us build out what our priorities will be and what our mission and vision will be. And whether or not we wanna update the one that Arlington Public Schools currently works with or if we want to have sort of new visioning of what our post pandemic schooling experience should look like for students. That's what that group's going to be doing this spring. We're going to continue assessing our facilities needs as enrollments level off in the coming years and making sure that some of our beautiful and new and added on to schools continue to be that way. And we're looking forward to continuing to collaborate with town officials to make sure that we're providing students, families and staff with what they need and planning for what we know will be a future override campaign. And we're continuing assessment of student learning as we always do and keeping an eye on the mental health needs and learning impacts based on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which it's looking like is things are getting better. So we're really appreciating that. And that is all we have for you. I will stop sharing my screen. We're happy to answer any questions that the committee has for us. Looks like Jonathan Wallach had his hand up first. Thank you, Dr. Holman. That was really a very interesting and inspiring. Jonathan. Thank you, Charlie. And thank you, Dr. Holman for that presentation. I was wondering if you could actually share your screen again. Sure. Because I noticed that the enrollment slide was a little different than what had been distributed to us. Could you just explain the two stars, Mike? Yes. So this slide, I'll restate that this slide is a slide in district enrollment only. And so what you'll see is I highlighted two numbers. Every year we submit to the State of Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education our student data. And we certify that data and it's certified as of an October one day. So the 5,793 figure that you see, that is the actual October one certified date. However, after October passes, we're still open for business. We still allow students to enroll into our schools. And our current enrollment as of January 25th, 2022 was 5,931 students, which is substantially higher than the certified numbers in that state. And what was the peak in FY20 there? So the peak, yeah, so the peak was for total students which would exclude, what this number excludes is out of district students. So what I spoke about earlier was the number was 6,128 students, which was total students. Special, the out of district students at that time was about 108 students, so there would be less of 108 students, so it was about 6,020 students that were in district. So is it fair to say that enrollment has pretty much bounced back to where it was at its peak? I'm just looking across the two from the star to the peak on the curve there. Yeah, I mean, yes, we're close to bouncing back to where we were before the pandemic. Great, thank you. Shailene. Yes, thanks. Hi, I was struck by the equity graph and I'm assuming that the difference between white and black is representative of other underrepresented groups as well. Like you're just giving us some basic data to look at. So part of me as an educator wants to know what about other groups? Are they also declining? But my question, I'll let that one go because we're trying to focus on finances here or implications for resources. My question is, it seems to me in looking at this, you're gonna be making plans soon for how to mitigate these effects. I mean, it's not a surprise that there's an impact from COVID in making plans to mitigate the effects. Do you think you'll be doing more of the same services? Is it just a matter of more students needing services or will you need to add other kinds of services we haven't offered before? So I'm thinking of summer reading services because you are showing us language arts. So my question is really, if you know already, maybe you don't know yet, if it's a matter of just more volume of students needing services or whether you think you'll need to offer other interventions. And then the follow up question, I'll just put it out there is whether there's similar data about math. Oh, I guess we do see math on the left, but okay. So go ahead. So this one, yeah, this one is math. I can say, yes, we do see similar trends in terms of gaps with students who have IEPs with students who are high needs, with students who come from low income families. Interestingly, we don't see the same gap in particular with our students who identify as Hispanic. That gap actually has been closing and so that's worth us investigating further and finding out why, what's been successful in those cases. I'll stop sharing here real quick. The, what I do think is gonna be important and this is something we've been talking a lot about is that if we continue to do more of the same or more, like just sort of add it, continuing to add services on without doing an assessment, which is why the equity audit's going to happen of how we're structuring those services and how we're organizing ourselves with the resources we already have, then you really risk actually making the gaps worse. And so what we're gonna start with is that assessment of how can we reorganize ourselves? And this actually is a good way to sort of fiscally think about resources as well. How are we organizing the resources we already have to make sure they reach the largest number of students? And this is really important that we're not pulling students out of core instructional time or denying them access to what their peers get access to because we're offering them these additional services. Because when you do that, you exacerbate the gap. You make it worse because you're denying access to something that students should otherwise have. And so step one is to really assess how we've organized ourselves. And if we need to do restructuring to do some of those things, that does take resources because it takes people's time. It takes a lot of conversation. Oftentimes those changes are the hardest ones to make. It can be easier to slap additional on top of what exists and harder sometimes to restructure what's already there. But we know that that is probably going to be the thing that is most likely to close the gap. So we're starting there. Right, and then with, sorry, some short follow up with that, what have we heard is a hiring issue throughout the whole country in all sectors. I'm assuming part of your resources is people and are you finding maybe you haven't tried to hire yet but like is that an issue for APS is finding the people resources to fill these needs? Absolutely. One of the hardest areas to hire in right now is special education, which is where some of our greatest needs exist. And so if we can make the resources that we have better and stronger instead of trying to seek out resources that are extremely hard to come by right now, then that could be a better source of our energy. And by better and stronger, you mean training the staff you already have. Professional development, reorganizing staff we have so that we're utilizing them effectively and making sure that students have access to the providers that they need. Yeah. Thank you. That's it, Sheree Lee. That's all for now, yeah. Okay, thank you. Daryl. Dr. Harmon, thank you very much for the presentation. I was wondering if you could share your screen again and go to this slide. I think that it was the Penn State Wari questionnaire. Yeah. So one of the struck me is the wide variant that appears to be in sort of the extent of Wari, I guess, is that the metric in arranging from Brackett, which I went to in grade school, at 38% all the way up the Dow on that 58%. So one, are these numbers concerning to you? And then two, is there an easy explanation for the wide variants? First, yes, these numbers were very concerning to me and to our principals and to our service providers in part because when we do a screener, it's imperative that we respond to the results that we get and that we have an intervention ready and in place. And we weren't expecting the levels to be this high. What we see from Brackett is actually what you might expect the levels to be. With young children, they are always gonna have some level of worry about school, about their experiences at school and at home. And to have approximately, really 38 still pretty high, but to have approximately a quarter of students who are demonstrating some level of needing additional intervention in this area is not very uncommon. The range up to like 58% or up to half is something that made us think, okay, we're not able to respond to this just logistically in the way we might in a normal year. And so we need to think about it holistically. How are we responding to this in every aspect of how we engage with our students? How are we responding to this during a math lesson, for example? How are we recognizing when students are experiencing a heightened level of anxiety and being able to better notice that as educators? So those are some of the conversations that are happening now. So that we're not only responding to this in the way that we might typically, which is to give students counseling groups. What is important to note here though is that we have programs for students, special education programs, specifically at some schools. Downland is one, Hardy is one. We do have a program at Brackett, but it's being phased over to Hardy. And we have one at Pierce and another one at Stratton. And particularly at Downland and Stratton, those special education programs, which are substantially separate programs, are programs where you might actually expect to see some of these elevated or clinical levels of concern amongst those students. And so that could be, and one of the things that's impacting the variance that you see between schools, we look at this up against other data as well. So does this track with academic data? Does this track with survey data that we do comprehensive surveys with our communities and ask our parents to give us feedback? If we see a trend somewhere, is this trending with regards to school climate or parent engagement with us or other things that we're seeing so that the school can build priorities around this proactively for next year? So that's one way that we respond. But yeah, the range was surprising. The response needed to be adjusted. We actually hired in an additional coordinator for services during the middle of the school year so that we could respond to this, who we plan, and we plan to keep that roll on for next year just so that we can continue to coordinate the response to things like this. And we're considering using some of our ESSER dollars, our grant money that comes from the state for COVID response to add some social workers over the next couple of years, just so we have a heightened number of providers who we can send students to when we have results like this and we have a response plan for that. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Daryl. Al Tosti. Al Tosti. I apologize for not showing my face for some reason. Zoom seems to have knocked out my camera, but could you go back to the enrollment numbers? Mm-hmm. Now, I just was a little confused by what you were saying here. In 2019, I guess that was the peak year. You said there was 6,020 students not counting out of district. Is that correct? That's what? Correct, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And how many out of district students were there at that time? There should have been around 108 students if my memory serves me correct. I cannot. Okay. Now, do we know how many students were in January of that year as opposed to October? Not at this moment. But there are snapshots that we do submit to the DESI, which occur actually in March and then again in June of that year. I could pull those numbers up, but not at this very moment. Do I have the answer to that? I just wanna make sure we're doing apples and apples. And the other question is the 5,931, is that include out of district students or is that just in? That is just in district students. Okay, so the 6,020 and the 5,931 are just in district students. Correct. Okay, so we're about 90 short of what we were at that time. Would you usually gain students or lose students from October to January in a normal year? We do normally gain students throughout the year but not the level that we gained this year. Okay. So if you could maybe shoot us an email what the January 2019 or 20 peak year, I'd appreciate it, just, you know, so like I said, we have apples and apples. Could you put up the salaries chart? Of each of these, where are most of the teachers? Most of our teachers are in the masses and the masses 15 range. So are you thinking 50, 60, 70%? I would say probably closer to 50 to 60% are in the master's, master's 15 range. Okay. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Al. Anybody else have, Shailene for the second time unless there's somebody else who's got their hand up that hasn't been recognized. I think John Ellis, did you have your hand up before? I took it down, thanks. Okay, Shailene. Yeah, thank you. Actually, stay on this slide because my question was also about teacher salaries. It looks like you maybe do this assessment of the other 12 towns every year. If you do it annually, totally understandable that it wasn't done in 2021. When is the next time you're planning to do that look across towns? And then my other question is whether you feel like there's been a loss of teachers possibly due to salary. I know that's hard to guess based on exit interviews or something but are we losing teachers to other towns? So this is based on a town salary study that was done in 2020. It's not a yearly thing. We do like they had to have a vendor come and do an analysis of all the salaries across these communities in our community. And it's a pretty comprehensive process. I'm not sure. I don't know Mr. Mason or Mr. Foskett. If you know when the last time we did something like that was or what the typical cycle is for that. I believe it's every three years they do this salary study. Okay. So speaking to, do we lose teachers due to considerations around salary? I think it's more common that we lose candidates during the hiring process. And I've been here only seven months but I've witnessed that happening. Where they have multiple offers they may be weighing and salary plays a role in their consideration of whether or not to come to Arlington. And that yes, certainly when you don't have as competitive of salaries and another opportunity opens up in a community where you may be paid more that that can be compelling to some educators. It depends on things besides salary of course. And we try to have very good working conditions for our teachers and that does keep a lot of people in Arlington. We have very good retention in Arlington and that's a testament to the strength of the system. However, it would be lovely and it's really important for diversity hiring actually to have very competitive salaries because it is extraordinarily hard to diversify the teaching pool particularly when we're neighbors with communities like Cambridge and so close to Boston for us to hire diverse candidates when we don't have as competitive of salaries. And that's been a major priority stated by members of the community. Thank you. George Kosher. Thank you. Thank you for a great presentation Dr. Holman. Very much appreciated. Could you quickly comment on what the issues in terms of achievement and mental health are at the high school level? He didn't mention that but just is it comparable to the lower grades or is it perhaps less or more? What I will pull up if we go back is what you'll notice on this slide that you're right. I didn't talk about it a lot. There's a lot of grades three to eight but if you look at grade 10 on the math achievement it was pretty level from 2019 to 2021. And that's been true for the data we've looked at for the high school is that it's been fairly level in terms of achievement. What does not stay level is mental health needs. We actually have seen a pretty significant surge of mental health challenges amongst our high school students this year. And that is as an educator I can say that's relatively attributable to the fact that during a really critical phase of their development particularly for like this year's ninth graders, a stage where social interaction is part of how their brains are developing. And they've been denied a lot of that that we're seeing more students who are at a particularly clinical or very elevated or crisis level of mental health challenge and needing more counseling services needing more referral services available to us so that we can make sure we're addressing that. And more parents coming to us saying I'm really worried about my child's ability to engage. So that will over time have an impact on things like academics. But also because these kids were through a lot of their academics by the time they reached the pandemic we're not seeing the same kind of pandemic slip for them in terms of the academics just on the mental health side of things. And last question is I presume you expect to adjust the enrollment projections. And I'm just wondering when you might be doing that and is that going to be another outside consultant or whether you might possibly try to do some of that in-house or just it's a tough thing we appreciate, but it drives the finances. So I'm just curious if you've had a chance to think about that. Mr. Mason, I'll let you answer that one as the person who does our internal projections so beautifully. So I normally do these projections annually. I do intend to do another one this year but it does not get reported to the town or as part of any kind of financial planning for the town. We won't do that until the following October which will then true up our actual enrollment numbers. So if these students will be enrolled in October one of next year we will then be counting those students then and then we'll be considering them in the formal projection going forward to keep using the apples to apples comparison of using the October certified numbers as our data points. And if you find that this year's jump from October to January really is uncharacteristic do you know if you're gonna need to try to adjust for that next year or is your guess at this point and pushing on you a little bit but these numbers matter is your guess that maybe that jump might go back to historic levels and I understand we'll know more in October. I'm just curious how difficult this is all looking to you at the moment. Based on you know when I first initially looked at the decline from the pandemic and looked at survey data that was sent to the families of exited students it was apparent that students were gonna return at later times as families felt more secure in what we were providing for safety protocols for due to the COVID-19. I think that's what we're seeing is that families are starting to return and feel secure about that. And I think we'll start we'll still see some other students return even in next year's school year because some students went to private schools and they're waiting to wait to the next grade change or school change to bring the students back. And that was also indicated in the survey. So I do believe that the same unprecedented exit of students leaving at the start of the pandemic we're not going to see a normal historic reduction of students because of the students returning but normal we're going back to the normal progressive enrollment that we had prior to the pandemic. Thank you. Ian Carmen. So as we, as I think we're sort of winding down right now. So I really have more of a comment that I'd like to or observation I'd like to share with the committee as one of the three people that that reviews the school budget. And the observation is I would say I've been as an observer during school community meetings on YouTube or ACMI and whatnot in the budget subcommittee. I've been very impressed with Dr. Homan's approach towards taking over as superintendent. And the thing I've been most impressed about and you all got to see it tonight is that she immediately recognized that we have a structurally sound district that does have some issues that need to be worked on but it's structurally sound. And so in her work moving forward she's gone after the problems, right? Like I think sometimes when you take over in a leadership role there's this idea that you're just gonna blow everything up and imprint your mark everywhere and she's really had the wisdom to not do that. She's had the wisdom to assess where the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are. And she said, look, these are strengths. I'm not gonna break them and these are problems and we're gonna deal with them. And that's been great. I mean, it's really made the transition smooth. It's been, I mean, it's been great. Now, that being said, not everything is perfect, okay? Because she does refer to me in emails as Mr. Carmen and for you all know me and you've now seen how great she is and for her to dignify me with that title. I'm going to convince her that I am Dean and she is Dr. Homan and that's how it's gonna be. It's gonna take the whole year. It could probably take next year but the more she gets to know me the more she'll understand it. So thank you. I'll call you Dean when you call me Liz, Dean. Under no shirt. When I met Dr. Homan I told her there will never be a circumstance while I will refer to her by that name in any forum. So there we are. Dr. Homan. Thank you, Mr. Carmen. We appreciate your comments. I appreciate Mr. Carmen, thank you. Thank you. Grant Gibbon. Thank you, Charlie. Yeah, I had a question about the need for counseling services and is there any connection or use between the need and the, are the Arlington Youth Counseling Services that we have here in town? Yeah, we have an agreement with them and we do refer services out to them pretty routinely and we actually have them come in during parts of the school day as well. So they offer great services that we use to supplement often with our students and families. Very good, thank you. We take advantage of as many partnerships as we possibly can. Other questions? Well, if I may, Dr. Homan, I have three questions. And one is going back to the slide that had the different grades on one side, the equity on the other. And I think there was one slide that had five years as opposed to just a couple of years with respect to COVID. And there was a decline, that's the one, yes. There was a decline of achievement starting in 2017, going up to 2019. I'm just wondering if there's any, does anyone have any reason to, or any suggestion as to what the reason for that might be? I think, you know, this is, yes, you're seeing a little bit of a decline. I mean, I think it's important to take a look at, so overall, this is actually pretty stable in part because if you look at the scores and achievement for our white students, you go from 508.4 in 2017 and this is their sort of like raw scale score on MCAS to 510.7 in 2019. There's a slight increase from 2018 to 2019, but then there's the dip in 2021. So you're seeing the pandemic impact sort of pull that line down, whereas it was stable up until then. And it's relatively stable like from 487.3 to 487.6 is actually a slight increase for our African-American students from 2018 to 2019. And then it gets pulled down by the pandemic. So what we'll watch for over the next few years, like we will always look at multi-year forecasts for performance and we do this in, so our admins analyzed all of this in preparation for building their school improvement plans over the summer. Next year, we're hoping to include teachers in that institute so that they're part of the planning and priority driving. We also include school councils in this so that they're looking at this data and they're saying, okay, we really want the schools to focus on this problem area that we see. But what I think is the number one thing to pay attention to over the next few years and that I'm really hoping we'll have a big impact on is the difference and the rooms and space between those two lines. And we make this exact graph for all sorts of different focus groups of students. And I try not to call them subgroups because sub implies below. And really it's that we need to pay attention to what particular groups of students need and make it a focal area. And schools need to say, we're going to change this about how our students are performing. But yeah, it's a little misleading on the five-year outlook only because of the impact of the 2019 to 2021. It sort of pulls that line down a little more than is accurate. Thank you. I can see now that if we cut off 2021, those two lines would be almost flat, so. And flat's not great. We'd like to see them go up. I understand, but I'm just saying that the, so the second question has two parts. And this year we're seeing an increase in the enrollment at Minuteman and the assessment that we're getting from Minuteman. So what is your view of the impact of the new Minuteman High School on our enrollment? And what do you think the impact of the new high school is going to be on our enrollment? So any question? So for Minuteman, I'm new to being in a system that has a separate regional-locational opportunity for students and that I came from a district that had an embedded regional-locational program in the high school. And I think there are some things that are shifting and moving about Minuteman. It'll be kind of hard to project what we think the impact of that'll be. For example, they just turned over leadership and so that could have a possible impact in the out years on enrollment. They have not, we have not been able to restore some of our programming with Minuteman that allowed our students with disabilities to participate in regional-locational education, which actually was pretty disappointing to us. We would prefer to be able to offer that opportunity to our students with IEPs. I think that it's easier for me to comment on the impact of the new high school on enrollment in that as we are, some of the bump in enrollment that you see on that graph for January, a large proportion of that relative to like all of our schools where that enrollment was seen was actually at the high school. And so what that is coming right as we're about to open phase one. And so we anticipate that we will see a lot more enrollment at Arlington High School as this new state-of-the-art facility opens up that will probably realize some of that enrollment at the high school for next school year, but that we may even see more of it when phase two opens up in the fall of 2023. So that we're watching that closely but the projections actually do account for an expectation that secondary enrollments are going to increase for two reasons. One, the new high school and two, the fact that enrollment groups that were really like new classes that were really large at the elementary level are now moving through the audits in and are headed into the high school next. Thank you very much. So one more time, I guess to ask, are there any other members that have questions for Dr. Holman or Mr. Mason? Well, I don't see any hands. So Liz, I'd like to thank you very much for coming tonight, Mike. Thank you for coming. It's been a very great presentation and we appreciate the time you took to answer all of our questions. Thank you. We very much appreciate the invitation. So thank you for having us. It's been fun. Thank you. Let's see you again soon. Yes, we look forward to it. Good evening. So the next item on the agenda are budgets. And I think first we have David and Sophie. Okay. If you, the first budget I'd like to address is our own budget on page 17. Alan, if I could ask you, Alan Jones, could you put the budget page up on the screen? In this budget, our own budget is, it's basically we have a change, but not a change. As you all know, we give stipends out to the chairman and the vice chair people and also to the recording secretary. Well, that position has been taken over by Tara, our new executive secretary. So that portion of the stipend of $450 would be added to her salary. And that's about the only change that we have. If there's any other questions, Charlie, if you want to expand on anything on the finance budget or are we okay with this? I think the amount was 550. I'm sorry, 550, but did I say 450? Yes, it's 550, thank you. I don't have any other questions or comments on the salary side. Do you want to look at the expenses? Well, the expenses that we have is one line. It's one line, so that's where I'll sit at the end. There's no change. There's no change. So with that, I'd recommend that we accept as presented in the budget book, budget for the finance committee. I think so, it's been moved and seconded discussion. Questions, anybody sees any hands up? I only can see five people here. So okay, all right. Then seeing that there are no questions, it's been moved and seconded. So we'll take a roll call vote on budget number one, then come. So Grant Gibbian? Yes. Shane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Mikhaili? Yes. Brian Beck? He's not here. Arif Badaria? He's not here. Sophie Bigliazo? Yes. Jonathan Wallach? Yes. Shailene Pocrus? Yes. Darrell Harmer? Yes. Annie LaCourte? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. George Koser? Yes. Phil Keller? Yes. Al Tosti? Yes. Juan de Nascimento? Yes. Christine Deschler? Yes. Ian Carmen? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. The vote is unanimous amongst the members that are present. Okay, go ahead, David and Sophie. The next budget we're going to ask them to put on hold until the 14th, and that's the selectments budget. We've met with the people, the staff of the Board of Selectments, both Sophie and I, and we went over a line for line. And there's a couple of questions that still we feel need to be answered pertaining to that budget. So if we're going to pass on that tonight, so we're not ready to present it, and it's full. Okay. So you have to negotiate that with the Executive Secretary. I already have you on for the 14th. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Town Manager budget. The... We... Sophie and I met with Sandy and Julie today and went over the town manages some... Well... Is David for you? Something's happened. David occasionally, his occasionally freezes he had warned me. So if he's... Do you want to see if he had freezes or you... I mean, each year doing it. Anyway, that's... David, we lost everything you said. You did? Yes. Okay, well, then we'll start again. I don't know why, because I'm fine. It's on the town manager's budget. Sophie and I have met today with both Sandy Pula and Julie Wayman, and we went over the town manager's budget. And Julie takes... Not Julie, Sophie takes copious notes. So any questions that you folks might have on this budget, she'll be glad to help you out in the answer. We've tried to address some of the concerns you've already expressed. And one of them was the town manager's new contract in reference to would there be any transfer of funds in the future for that contract? And the answer is no. As was pointed out today, that contract, actually his new contract, he takes a little less in salary than he had been receiving. And the one will put a note, and I've asked Alan to put a note in the finance report, the town meeting, that the stipend for housing allowance has been discontinued in his budget, his contract. Sophie, do you want to add anything, Sophie? I think so. Do you have any questions? I'm sorry. I have a question. Do you know what's in that 24,000, just about 25,000 in the other benefits? Do I know what makes the other benefits? Yes. The 20,000 reduction is apparently the housing allowance. That's referred to. It was around 24,000 for housing. They have, I do have a copy of the manager's new contract. And in the contract, that's where I've got this percentage for the raises each year of 1%. He also has this deferred compensation plan that he's always belonged to. And there's also money for different things that he belongs to different associations. And I'm trying to go through a page for page. But just a long-term disability insurance reimbursement and things of that nature. So it's pretty, the contract is pretty standard other than the fact that when I say stated compared to previous contracts with the exception of the housing allowance being taken out of the contract. And that's a three-year contract. Thank you. Any other questions on the salaries in the town manager's department, which is up on the screen right now? Micaiah. I'm just curious about the, there's no maximum listed and I'm curious if you know the history behind that. I think I can answer that, David. This is a negotiated agreement. He's not in a class. Right. It's a sort of a arms length negotiation, which you hope between him and the board of selectmen every year or every three years. Every three years. And they have to notify him if the intent of the select board that they're not going to rehire him, they have to give him so many months notice before that six months. And there's a compensation plan built in to the contract of that as well. Should they not decide not to rehire him or there's another part of the contract that says should he choose to leave, he has to give a minimum of 90 days notice to the board of selectmen. Things of that. It's standard in the contract. Kayleen. Thanks. Just a quick question about the renegotiating contract with the removal of housing allowance. Is that a standard? I'm just curious, like, is that a standard thing that's happening across towns or Arlington's budget? And that was a way to do it. Well, again, if I could, it's contractual. So three years ago, they negotiated and they put it in his contract and three years later they negotiated and all parties have to agree on this. He took it out of his contract. I think it's fair to say that the, it was originally put in there because he had moved to Arlington from somewhere else to be in the town. And the cost of housing here as you, as we all know, is significantly higher. In the interim, the manager moved to, I think it's Norwood. So the compensation for the increased costs of Arlington housing went away. So we could expect this for the next two years at least because Adam's going to have a three-year contract now, but then in the future, if a new contract were negotiated, we could see a housing allowance come back. Yes. Yes. Okay. I think that's a good point. I think I'm back. Some things that we don't even realize. Thank you. Any other questions on the town manager budget? I can only see a limited number of boxes here. So speak up. Okay. So, so hearing them, I'd like to make a motion that we accept as written in the budget book. The 23. Physical year 23 budget for the town, it's been moved and seconded any further discussion. Okay. I'll take the roll call vote grant. Yes. Jane Blundell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Hi. Same. Sophie. Yes. Jonathan wallet. Yes. Yeah. Stay with us. Shaelee. Hocus. Yes. Darryl. More. Any look for it. Yes. Alan Jones. Coach Cozer. Yes. Bill. Yes. Al Tossi. Yes. Juan that Nascimento. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yeah. Dean Carmen. Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. Thank you. The vote was also unanimous on, this is budget three, right? Yes. Okay, go ahead, David. Okay, now we'll go to page 58 for the town clerk's budget. And I was wondering if my partner wants to present the portion of this budget. I think I'll let you go for it, Dave. Okay. So if you and I met in, we had a long conversation with the town clerk, some of the questions that were asked at our previous meeting was what was the situation with the investigating changes in modernizing the town clerk's office. And there was a committee set up doing that in conjunction with the town manager and I think Sandy Poler and some other people as well. They're in the process, my understanding is hiring a consultant to look at that. But there's a lot of things going on on the clerk's office and it's been very busy and there's also been a personnel turnover in the clerk's office as well. And plus a town clerk is relatively new, as we all know. So anyway, they're working on that. They're also on the side note, under the town clerk's responsibility is there's an election committee that was voted in by town meeting. That committee has done some recommendations and that committee is due to expire at the end of this coming town meeting. They're the ones that have proposed different things like the rank choice voting and stuff like that. So the clerk's office has been very, very busy. In addition to that, the clerk's office has taken over the responsibility, total responsibilities in the budget for the election. So, and they've done some juggling, if you will, for putting some of the things in their proper categories as far as the budget goes. So I'll go through that. You'll notice that salary in wages line 5100, there's an increase of 10,003. That has to do with personnel. That has to do with some of the cost of hiring people for elections. As far as the staff in the clerk's office, they operate now with the clerk, assistant town clerk and two other people in the clerk's office. And does the overtime budget says the same, advertising does an advertising, if you line 5201, there's an increase of, let's see, increase of $1,000. So, advertising in the clerk's office, and in a lot of the other departments, especially zoning and redevelopment, the advertising has gone up, things that have to be advertising along the way. And what the clerk has done is she's tried to narrow the wording in some of these things that have to go into the local newspaper. And she's been allowed to do that rather than making a show out of statement about certain things, which actually is a cost savings. So, one of the things that were eliminated, it was $150 on election night spent for an IT person from data processing department would stand by at the election night on any election and that $150 has been eliminated. They don't need that person anymore. So, that's another little change. With that, I'm just gonna turn it over to you folks that you have questions and see if Sophie and I can answer them for you. Ellen Jones. Well, first, David, I think the advertising budget decreased significantly. Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah. The light, it actually decreased. The reason why it decreased is exactly what I said that she's been able to shorten the wording in some of the stuff that was into the newspaper. Okay, the question I had, you mentioned possibly hiring a consultant to look at efficiencies and such. I don't see much in a way of expenses for that. Is that funded? Is that serious? Well, again, it's a work in progress, Ellen. So I'm not sure at what point they're gonna ask for that. Okay. That was a warrant article here. Yeah, it's funded under a warrant article. Okay, thank you. Thank you. And then the last question is a $7,000 reduction in printing licenses. We took notes on that. What was that? Yes, so the bulk of that was because that's where they printed the ballots that was the cost used for the ballot printing. And the clerk has really done effort in is to make sure things are being spent in the right categories and reported in the right categories. So that's just a transfer. I think if you look on the election, there's probably an increase in printing ballots. There's, right. Okay, because it looks like the actuals in the previous years were actually significant higher than 8,000. So I was wondering how it'd go from 15,000 to 1,000 in two years. If that's real. Yes, so she's, the explanation we're given is if you go to the next page on election expenses, there's a new expense that wasn't there before, printing ballots that had zero before. And obviously there were expenses for printing ballots. They would just never put in the right categories. So now there's this 20,000 here for that. In the thousand that's left on the other, that has to do with the dog tags, for example. Thank you, that totally explains it. And another note that I found interesting, apparently she's been working extra hard on coming up with a policy for dog kennel license in the town of Allenton. And that's your first glance to say, well, what's that? I guess the state has a lot of say in that. And so she's been working that with another working group on a kennel license for the town of Allenton. Presently there are no kennel licenses issued in the town of Allenton. They were at one time, but none presently. But she's working, she kind of smashes up and working diligently on this new policy that we have to have. So that's it. So if, again, if anybody else has any questions concerning this. Christine, definitely though. Christine. Yeah, I just want clarity as to the reasons the clerk is giving for not as of yet hiring as consultants that we appropriated money for last year. I wasn't following what it was that you were saying and why it didn't happen yet. I hear what you're saying, Christine. It's this working group that was formed with the, like I say, along with the clerk, the town manager and the deputy town manager and others. This work, that's why I said this work is in progress. And at some point, yes, the money was appropriated last year and at some point they will be hiring a consultant. But they haven't gotten there yet. That's our understanding of it. I don't know if that helps you or not, but that's our understanding. I guess I'll just say if there's a modernization working group, do we really need a consultant or vice versa? But I guess I guess I'm going beyond the scope of your budget, David. Again, on your concern, I know that when we discussed that article last year amongst at the finance committee, just what you said, just what you asked was said then too. So but town meeting did vote that money. I would add maybe too. So she did specifically say that they're in the process of hiring the consultant. I think she also referred to the fact that some things, such as the rank choices are still stuck at the state level for approval. So they're sort of stuck on certain things without being able to move forward until they get approved at the state level. Al Tosti. Yes, thank you. This question is not, well, it's partially on the budget. It's the town clerk salary. Just doing a brief review of the other small department heads, small departments, I didn't quite say that correctly, but small departments, the department head, like say the human resources or the assessor's office, which are about the same size, the department heads make a lot more money than the town clerk. And this is not something we could do on this budget right now, but we're talking $97,000, $98,000 for the town clerk and both the human resource and the assessor make between 125,000 and 130,000. Used to be many, many years ago, we tried to keep the town clerk and the treasurers about the same because they were the two elected officers and there was nobody else to fight for them except us. The treasurer was going off and now they'll make 125,000 to 130,000. But maybe at some point, we should be looking at the town clerk salary, especially now that a whole new section has been delivered to this person's hands, if they're responsible for, I think she is, the town clerk's position is woefully underpaid. If I could just add to that now and there's also a move, a thought process going on to taking the elected position of town clerk, like they've done with other positions and make that a non-elected position under the responsibility of the town manager. So that's also being investigated. So with that said, there might be a situation where you'll see the salary of the town clerk if it goes to an appointed position that that salary would definitely increase at some point down the road. I'm just, you know, whether if that's gonna happen, I don't know when it's gonna be a year or two down the road in the meantime, she's our most underpaid position. So anyway, I just raised the issue. Very good. Thank you, Al. I'm sure the taxpayers appreciate your recommendation for increasing expenses. Thank you. Shane Blundell. Thanks, Charlie. Odd question. What is this appropriate in the eight hour sevens for stenographers? I guess 8,000. What do we need? What is that role? Town meeting. The stenographer is, that's the role of them. They hire to take the exact minutes at town meeting. Thank you very much. Okay. Sophie, you have a question. Well, I wanted to add back in just to clarify something regarding the move of the elections. So it became clear to us actually in our discussions with the select board meeting that elections were originally under the town clerks, which makes sense because that's where voter registration and everything is kept. So elections are under town work and they were only taken over by this left board I guess as a viewer when there were difficulties in handling the elections at the historically somehow at the town clerk's office. So it just taken on as additional work for the staff for the select board. And now it's just being transferred back to its original location at the town clerk's office. Yeah, you're correct. So if I remember, that was years ago because it's been under the board of selection for quite some time. But you're right, that's what the, at one time it was under the responsibility of the town clerk. Christine. I, this may be a little bit beyond the scope but I just want to follow up on what Al Tosti was talking about in terms of the clerk's salary. I have noticed that there's at least one other department head that I've thought her salary was lower than I would expect. And that was the library director who has a very huge staff who's responsible for two facilities. She's both public facing and town facing. She reports to a board of trustees as well as friends group. And I was surprised at what her salary was compared to other department heads. I don't know if we have a role, the finance committee has a role in reviewing this but in terms of an equity standpoint I do think this is an important issue that if we don't keep it in mind, if we don't look at it, we should prod other people who should be doing this. So I just want to throw my two cents in on that issue. Thank you, Christine. So let me make a suggestion on Makaya perhaps you can discuss with Karen Malloy, the human resources director, the issue of both the clerk's salary and the library salary as you know how that fits in comparison to other towns and other departments. I mean the one issue is that in either of those cases, if we lose someone because of the salary compensation, that eventually costs the town money in recruiting and any losses and service delivery that result from those positions not being filled. So I think bringing it to the attention of the human resources director and at least can get a conversation started. Anial Court. Well, I was going to make a good comment in response to your good comment about the taxpayers Arlington and perhaps I should not do that given that you've just recommended that Makaya discuss it with human resources. Well, you can make a good comment if you like, if you would like to make a good comment. I'm looking to do it for my own emotional satisfaction. Exactly, right. Okay, I just thought that the, well, nevermind, we don't need to digress there. So any further comments on the clerks or questions about the clerks budget? I just wanted to make just a quick, the employees in the clerks office are all union employees. Well, we lost you again, technology. David. Yes. The last word we heard you say was union employees. And then you, we lost everything you said. Well, after that, there was a lot of bad language. So I'm glad you didn't hear it. This computer of mine is just fading out on me. The four employees in the clerks office are union, union employees. They all were by union contracts. The employees in the selectments office do not, they're not, they're non-union. Just to give you some people that have an interest in that. Thank you. Okay, with that. Any other questions for David or Sophie on the clerks budget? Al Tosti's got his hand up. Does that include the town clerk, David? No, the town clerk is not union. It's just the assistant town clerk. And the other ladies that work, they are union. And there's two different unions there. The assistant town clerk is in a different union than the other three. A different. Okay, we lost David again. We'll move on. David, can you hear me? I think I'm back. Now, what I'd like to do is make a motion that we accept what is written in the budget book FY 23 for the town clerk's department. There a second? Second. So it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Okay, I'll begin with the roll call vote on the town clerk's budget. Grant Gibbian. Yes. Jane Blundell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Yes. Makaya Healy. Yes. Sophie Migliazzo. Yes. Jonathan Wallach. Yes. Shailene Pocrus. Yes. Daryl Harmer. Yes. Annie LeCourt. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. George Kosher. Yes. Bill Keller. Yes. Alan Tosti. Abstain. Juan de Nacimento. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. And David McKenna. Yes. Okay, we have four, seven, 16 in favor and one abstention. So the budget is passed. Okay. And the next budget, Charlie, would be the election, election budget. On page 60 of our budget book. Go right ahead, David. And you'll notice that the salaries and wages, that is, because they took over the expenses as far as the people that worked the elections, that's in that line. It gives you a $181,995 for FY23. That's three elections for that fiscal year, starting in September. And we do not know at this point, we do not know what the state's gonna do as far as early election. We assume they're gonna have it, we just don't know for how many days at this point. In line 5208 rental buildings, there's no more, they used to rent the Congregational Church up on Park Avenue for prison 20, and they don't rent that building anymore. And electronic voting equipment, that also includes the clickers at town meeting. And my understanding is that that's, I think the contract is up on that, I believe, or it's gonna expire. That pays for the click. Another thing to sort of side note for capital expense, the town clerk is going to, well, she's put in for, they call it the voting pads. I don't know if you're familiar with them not, but on early election, people would be sitting and they had a little pad and you'd give your name and it was like, it's a way of signing in to vote rather than the old way of the voter list and someone taking another two-pencil and drawing a line through it. She's put in for that 17 more, one for each precent. And that's in the capital, she's put in for that. So under the electronic equipment and also for the clickers at town meeting. Yeah, so I understand the difference then in the electronic voting equipment costs and I understand the printing costs. The other purchase services, looks like that budget is increasing with about $10,000 and comes a little closer to matching the actuals. Any idea what's in that category, Dave? Sophie, did we take notes on that? We did. So this was, I'm sorry, Annie, blind number is five, two, three, six, right? Five, six, three, six. There were two aspects. One is it's a consolidation that now includes the cost of the constables for town meetings and elections that are required and those were not in that bucket before they were elsewhere. The other item is $3,000 for an accessibility for the blind to vote by mail. They had to hire a specialized company now that allows this requirement for accessibility to vote when blind. Got it. Any other questions on this budget? Uh-oh. I see any hands up. Yes, Shane. Thanks, Charlie. Just something to try and understand. So the reverberation and salaries and wages every year that's because the odd year FY budget has an even year calendar year. So we have a state election. I'm just looking, because I'm looking at 2021 versus 2023 and it's a difference of like $45,000 is there, I get that it fluctuates but like why does it, it's a lot bigger than our last election. In 2020. Our last election, we only had one election, the town election and in the budget cycle. We didn't have a budget. We did ask her, I asked her specifically that question and she said part of what we're seeing though is the inconsistency prior to her arrival that being paid out of different buckets as well. So you can't really compare, you can't be sure of that over. Okay, thanks. Hey, Leen. Yeah, on the tablets, the electronic voting equipment by some sort of iPad it sounds like where you sign in yourself instead of a volunteer signing you in and another volunteer signing you out. Have we piloted that or is this $10,000? It looks like, I don't know, $10,000. This amount of money, is it to pilot this or is this like an investment? Shane, I mean, we've used these in early voting the last two times. So it's already been piloted if you will. So now what the town clerk wants to do is to take and put them in every precinct for every election. So it'll be one per precinct. So instead of having, you'd only need one person to operate the little, the pad and somebody comes in gives their last name and the keys right up there what information they need. So it reduces the number of volunteers needed? Is that the general idea? In the present setup, even now as we speak the total number of workers at an election on a regular election, not the early election that will be decreased already. There used to be eight, now this is good. When I asked it for the next coming election which is our town election, there's gonna be a warden, a cleric in two inspectors versus four inspectors and she might have an, what they call an orthodontic come in just for cover for lunches and supper. So that would be a decrease of public home workers. One more addition to that particular line, five, two, two, one electronic voting equipment is she specifically also mentioned that annual fees for some of the equipment were previously paid out of other buckets as well. So what we will now see going forward is the annual fee that we pay on equipment covered in this bucket. Thank you. Michael Keller. Yeah, David, I still got a question, I guess, on the printing ballots. There's a new item, there's a new amount of $23,000 for fiscal 23. And is that replacing, is the printing of the ballots replacing something that was previously done electronically? No. This was a, it's actually several things. So it takes that print ballot that was previously on her other budget, it's also going to include postcards that she has to send out now that there have been changes in precincts, notifying people of the changed precincts, postcards for being able to register, to vote and various mailings like that that are increased costs this time around. So it's not just the ballots, it's also all these other little postcards that have to be mailed out. Okay, so there's a lot of these reports back to the town clerk office budget because they're all over the same roof, correct? Another thing I want to bring the attention of the finance committee, one of the things that they've been looking at on voting purposes is if, do you remember when we had the boards, the panels around town telling you when the next election was and whatnot, and they used to be one for every precinct and eventually they took them down. Well, there's a proposal to bring them back in a different form, but to bring them back. And they would, if they were able to do that now, they would definitely cut back on the advertising for future elections. So that's another committee that's being formed to study that. A lot of committees being formed. Thank you, Dave. Okay. Any other questions on the election budget? Charlie, if I can just make one more comment that I found interesting, which is we actually get some money back on these elections, but it doesn't show up in any of this. So we get, let me see if I can, sorry. When there's early voting, the time period, so salaries from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. actually get paid back. The state pays the town back for that, but it ends up going back. So Sandy explained to us today, it goes back into, it goes, the town clerk has an account, but we don't see that money gets paid into that she can then use. And some of it also goes to the general fund, and all of it goes to free cash if it's not used. So there is this money allocated for salaries, but we do see some reimbursement, but we just never know how much. So they budget the totality here, presumably some of it comes back. Thank you. Christine, you have your hand up. Yeah, Sophie, what you just said, the clerk has a separate fund into which money goes that we don't see? Well, because they don't budget for it, my understanding is that there's this account where the reimbursement goes that she can use. Christine, if I can help you out on that. It's just, this is relatively new and it has to do with early voting. And the majority of the money is that come back and the state goes into the general fund. But there's other monies that we just found out about talking to the clerk. It's a special account set up and it goes from the state to the clerk's office that she can use, I assume on early voting only. Can we get a report on that? Can we get figure, can we find out how much is in that fund and how much has been spent on that fund? Well, here's the situation. That money as we're talking about it now hasn't come yet and they don't know at this point, you never know what the dollar figure is until the dollar figure is received. So that that's where we stand at this point. Now that might come later on, who knows. But in the past, in the past when it was just money coming back from the elections, you would go to the general fund, they never knew when it was coming back and they never knew what total dollars it was. And it fluctuates from election to election. But has money gone into a fund for the clerk's office yet? I was probably, to answer your question, I assume so from the, not the last early election but the one before that. And then some of that money went into the next early election. And I think some of that money they were able to use by the voter pads that we've been talking about. They bought three of them for that early election. And I think some of that money was used for that, I think. Well, I'm fine with bringing this budget up for a vote tonight, Charlie, but I do think that we should get a report on those funds. How much has the clerk- Okay, well, what I'll do- What the expenditures have been that we bring up there. Yeah, I think the best place to get a response on that, David and Sophie would be to talk to Eda Cody and the town comptroller. And she will have records of that. Al Tosti? Yes. Yeah, I've been listening to everything and I just haven't quite gotten to why this budget is so much of an increase. I'm gonna talk in 236% increase in the budget. There's three elections that I know of. The primary, the regular November in the town election, which was the same as 2021, is there something specific that would account for a $120,000 increase over the last, over the last time we had a three election here? Well, what Al was added to the mix is this early voting that at this point, we don't know how many days it's gonna be. The last early voting we had, it ran, the primary ran seven days and the regular election ran 14 days. Now that was the presidential election. Prior to that, it was, when they first started it, it was eight days. So we don't know what the state's gonna do in reference to the general election for the state of Massachusetts. How many days it's gonna be for early voting for the primary and how many days it's gonna be for the general election. So with that, there's gonna be money. I believe there has to be money for salaries if they're gonna do that. So some of this is, at this point, there's an unknown factor as far as what's gonna happen because the state's always the last to tell us what to do, what not to do. I would add also, my understanding is the years we should be comparing are not the ones actually on here but more, for example, 2019, which was the last time there were the numbers of elections batch maybe. So this is a situation where the salaries and wages will fluctuate based on the number of elections. So it's not fair necessarily to compare year to year. So if I could just make a comment Al in your, to your question. So the 2023 salary budget compared to 2021 is about $45,000 higher, okay? And I'm assuming from what David said, that has to do with the number of elections. In addition, because of transfers of the printing budget and the increase in the electronic voting equipment, it looks like compared to 2021, there's a $40,000 increase. So those two numbers add up to $85,000 or $90,000, which is almost the entire increase from $159,000 to $246,000. I don't know if that answers your question, but that's the source of the change. Where were the ballots printed before? Where was that number? That was in another budget. It was $15,000 in the clerk's budget. Can you go back to that clerk's budget, Alan? So if you look at five to two eight printing licenses was $15,000 in 2021. And this now they're talking about $20,000 with I think an additional election plus early voting. So it's not entirely salary or it's rational. Let's put it that way. The problem is that the number of elections varies in these different years. And as Sophie mentioned before, they meaning the town perhaps wasn't allocating these expenses into the right buckets. Okay. Okay. Alan Jones. Thank you, Charlie. I was wondering if I could suggest this is a budget. It's got a fairly large salaries and wages, but there's no breakdown of it. You know, without delaying the vote, could we request a breakdown of what's in the 181,090, 995 and maybe the previous years to see exactly. That was my question to today. I asked, or yesterday, specifically, and my understanding is it's really just election workers and poll workers. So is that, that table doesn't exist. Does the police detail come from that also? That I don't know. Yes. Yes. And he also mentioned that the number of inspectors was going from four to two for precinct. No. Things like that. So let me make a suggestion if I can. I think we should postpone this budget. I think that if you have a discussion with Eda Cody, you can probably get the breakdown of those expenses in 2021 and 2023. And I think that will answer the questions that are raised by the members. Okay. Does that agree with what David? Oh, absolutely, whatever the committee wishes. We're still in the process of meeting with other people as well for budget. So we're around the town. So we'll check in with the Comptroller. And if you could just call her, she can, she'll. Yeah, tomorrow when I, I have to go to, we have to go to town hall tomorrow. So for another. I think she may be in the old central school building. Is she in there or is she also at 23 Maple Street? I'm not sure. In the central school. Central school. Again, I'll be right at the tomorrow so we can ask it. If you could, Sophie, have you got the questions? Have you been taking notes on the questions? Yes, I have. We lost David again. Okay. Is there, is there another budget, David? Yes, I think he was prepared. I think we're prepared for the zoning board of appeals as well. Okay. Yeah, yes. Thank you. The zoning is on page 75 in the book. And if you folks remember, when we had the town manager in last, last time that he explained what was going on with the zoning and appeals and the change in the budget is the fact that they're looking for a full-time employee. They presently have a pot time employee. So they're in the process of hiring a full-time employee because the workload has just dramatically increased in the zoning. So with that, I'll recommend that we accept the zoning budget as printed in the budget book, if 23 budget book. Are there any questions on the zoning board? Yes, Shane. Sorry, basic question. Thanks, Charlie. Can you just remind me like what the scope of the duties for the ZBA are? I know what the duties are of the clerks position in the zoning. What the zoning board does, it's not my expertise. I've never had any to do with zoning. So if someone could help me out here, they have to have hearings that they go through the re-revelling board. Sophie, you can, I know you have some familiarity with the zoning. Well, I think my basic explanation would be it's the board that oversees sort of applications for special permits for variances. If there are any complaints and just with the building inspector's office, 40B housing, anything that's related that needs permits and anything zoning bylaw related, that's the board of appeals level. After you go through the development board to extra permits, if you can appeal it, building inspector, if you can appeal it, it's that upper level. And from there, you would go to state court if you're not satisfied with their decisions. Thank you. Any other questions on the zoning board? Okay, we go ahead. Did you make a motion, David? I did. Okay, is there a second? Second. Seconded by any of the court. So any further discussion? Hearing no further discussion, I'll take the roll call vote. Grant Givian? Yes. Shane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Natalia Haley? Yes. Sophie Migliazzo? Yes. Jonathan? Yes. Shailene Pogritz? Yes. Sarah Harmer? Yes. Daniela Court? Yes. Allen Jones? Yes. George Kosher? Yes. William Keller? Yes. Allen Tosti? Yes. Wanda Nacimento? Yes. Christine Deschler? Yeah. Dean Carmen? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Madam as well. The zoning board repealed the budget. The next, do you have any more budgets tonight, David? No, no, that's it for Sophie and I for tonight. And well, thank you for doing all this work on such a short, short period of time. As Sophie and I have been on an adventure. Okay. So the next is the reclassification plan and human resources. Makaya, are you prepared for that? Yes. And I will try to entertain myself so that we can all stay awake. I promised everybody that we would go to bed early. So, or at least at non-time. So the HR budget's on page 30. And if you wouldn't mind, please point that for everybody to see. I do miss being in public or being in person because I'm sure you can probably hear my computer fan and all kinds of technical stuff. So I apologize if that is a distraction. Okay, so we can walk through the line items sort of like Professor Sandy. And so they're number one, I think there'll be a little change in salary and wages and the longevity. They did have a person that was promoted to another department. And the person that replaced that replacement went to a lower step. So that's the very small change right there. So number two, longevity. Generally speaking, longevity is just, is simply a bonus for the years of service and how that is a lot that came about from town meeting. That's how the manager schedule, the M schedule follow that rule. And it's usually a percentage after five years of service. But for the most part, it's an allotment dictated by respective collective bargaining agreements. And that can vary from percentage to flat dollar amounts. So depending on which, whether you're union or non-union and what group of employees that you're in. So if ever finance committee or we wanted to make a change to that structure, it would need to be bargained away. So it's just a system that the director said that she inherited. And this is not unusual again among municipalities. A lot of people do these steps and longevity. So just background for myself again, as I was reviewing my notes from last year and then for any new person that needed that. So if you look at the longevity number on this first page and you flip to the salary side, you'll see that the total matches up. It's $7,850 and the difference there is based on the steps from the salary. So number three, the in-state travel. So that's the director's mileage reimbursement to a conference that she attends. She put it at 250. And no one has been traveling very much for the past two years. So we may want to revisit that and make some modifications depending on what happens this year with this conference that she goes to a Massachusetts municipalities association, a personnel or something like that. So she just wanted to be conservative and put that in. The training budget, you'll see that it is again $50,000, it's used half over half of the budget is used for facilitated training with the National League of Cities, the NLC. There's about 75 people from across all the town departments, leadership from the police, the fire, middle management department heads that attend these trainings. And really in order to be a competitive employer, this is what the managers need to do is to learn how to educate about a diverse working place to become sensitive science to the issues that we're all talking about and to just have the skills and the comfort level to be able to navigate these conversations. So there's a very powerful benefit of being involved with this National League of Cities. There's two other components to this budget or to this item here. So this is also where she pays for civil service exam promotional assessment centers. So this is what the school committee was presenting on. And it's basically these assessment centers, it's an intensive interview process that allows them to, that is administered by a third party vendor, that's how the state dictates that. And so they can learn more about the interpersonal skills about their public speaking skills, about conflict management skills, just additional set of skills for their candidates outside of the written test that is normally handed to them or at the list of candidates that can hand it to them. And then the third component of training is this three year benchmark study also that was referenced tonight. And that looks at 100 schools and 12 town communities to see where Arlington stands up. And again, that is a three year process. We started in fiscal year 14. So if I can do the math, but 17, 20 and 23. So this June is when the HR director will restart this process. And she said that not only will they spend this money, but she anticipates coming back to request for more appropriation. Office supplies, so that's, you know, the original appropriation is 2,500. Last year, FinCon gave money in the capital budget for certain modules and munis to go paperless. And so all of their personnel transactions are paperless and all of their onboarding materials are all digital. But again, we can revisit this in 2024. And I can tell from the school committee that their presentation that they get along with the town employees a lot because they're using a lot of the same language. Like this isn't normal years, we're not in normal years. So the HR director just wanted to be conservative and put that in. But again, we can revisit that just as we're moving into more of like a Zoom and technical space. So the number six, the other purchase services is 3,700 and the expenditures are a few things. So if they like to, you know, for example, the chief information officer when they were posting for that position, they were posting to affinity special websites like women in technology or black and Latinos in IT. So those sort of outside of the traditional realms of advertisement for positions, the money will come from that. And all the pre-employment physicals that they do for the town, they kind of gray bill the departments and then so money flows in and out of this department. Offsets, this is again, this is the magical land that Sandy lives in. And so he asked the managers for, you know, what they're spending on health insurance for all these different employees. And so that is pretty standard. So yeah, the health insurance and the physicals for about 2,000 contracts come from this area. And if I get any of this wrong, all of you senior seniors can correct me please because I'm learning this as well. They do have three full-time and one part-time person who's at the course. And so they have the second largest budget behind the school department. They have a 20 million health insurance budget that the benefits administrator, you know, wire to the GIC every month, $2 million goes to the GIC. And then they kind of manage the budget between the town school, the retirees and just multiple health insurance and money comes out of there. So I think that's what I can speak to. Does anyone have any questions? Any of the work does as Christine does. So Bill Keller, so let's start off with Annie. Yeah, so you mentioned it's glancing the Makaya, but just because I'm doing the health and human services budget, I wanna double check. Are you saying that part of that $30,000 is DEI training? The NLC, yeah, I believe that's how they would treat. So the sum of the National League of Cities training is DEI, Federal City Equity and Inclusion. Okay, great, thanks. Yeah. Excuse me, if I could just interrupt or read a comment, Annie, I think also some of this training is that department managers have to be compliant with different personnel and management standards. So some of it goes for that too. Yeah, yeah, no, it's clear it's not all that, but I'm going to be looking at the DEI director's budget as well and I just wanna be clear that some training in that area is in human resources budget and other money is being spent on more intensive programming, I believe in DEI. And so it's just a crosstalk for when I meet with Christine. Christine? I believe I will be meeting with Christine on the whole health and human services budget. I'm still waiting to hear back from Christine. No, I was asking, you finished, that's going to Christine Deschler. It's late, don't worry. This is all on me because Mackayde's is a really detailed and thorough explanation of this department, I really appreciate it. But did you say that she expects to spend the full 50,000 and more on training? I guess, and if that's the case, why is she just asking for 50,000 and not what she's actually expecting to need? That is a fantastic, as soon as I said that, like I was reading my notes on and you were the one, I don't know, I can ask her, thank you. Or the alternative question is where does it come from? Yeah. Christine, is that all you had there? Yes, that's all, thank you very much. Thank you. Bill Keller. Yeah, I know it's getting late, but I noticed something, it may just be a technical thing or a misprint on the budget. The offset is 14,000, I'm sorry, 18,495 dollars. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. So when you go to get to the total for human resources taxation total, the offsets used there to bring the total down to 364,283, following, right? So the offsets used up above 18,495, but it also looks like it's used down below when you're adding up the totals on the salary detail. So if you go to the far right, the salaries comes up to 326, 328, but it's reduced there by the offset, the 307,833, so shouldn't the 2023 budget up above be 307,833, not 326, 328? Shall I read you? If I can comment on that, the number that is used up here is always the total of new pay, which includes the base and step. It's kind of funny. Then longevity, the 7850 comes up as a separate line item. And then the offset, even though it's reduced from salaries down here, it comes off the bottom line here. It's the way the manager's budget book is, but it's consistent across all the budgets. It is confusing. So when you look at this number, it should match this number. Yeah, 326. I don't know, I got a problem. I just see the offset of 18,495 actually being used twice. It's not included in this. The offset is not in the 37085. If you reduce that by the offset, you get the 298,590. Well, I'm going all the way to the end, Alan, to the total. To here? Yeah. Right, and this never shows up up here. And the three should. So the 326,328 is this, and then the offsets down here. If the offset was up here with salaries, where it probably should be, then it would match the 307,833. It isn't that way because they want to capture the actual salary totals. And if you subtract the offset from it, it would not be the actual salary. It would be actual salary minus the offset. So that human resources salary total line represents the total human resources salaries. It doesn't represent the offset. Okay, I think we're wandering here. Yeah, it's confusing, Bill, but that's just the way. I think you'll find it's the same thing on all the budgets. I've never seen it used twice on the same budget. Yeah, I think it has. Yes, you have. Very good, thank you. Okay, are there other questions on the personnel budget, human resource budget? Okay, I don't see any other questions. So would you like to make a motion, Makaya? I would like to make, let me see if I have the words. I'd like to approve the budget as it is printed here with, is it appropriate to say with the contingency to go and ask for answers to those two questions? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Second. Thank you. Okay, is it moved and seconded? Any further discussion? Okay, let's take a vote. Grant Ibn? Yes. Shayton? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Taya Healy? Yes. Sophie Migliazo? Yes. Jonathan Wallach? Yes. Shailene Pocrus? Yes. Sarah Harmer? Yes. Into the court? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. George Kosher? Yes. Bill Keller? Yes. Al Tosti? Yes. Juan de Nascimento? Yes. Christine Deschler? Yeah. Dean Karman? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. Okay, thank you very much. That's the unanimous vote. So I gather you probably don't have any draft of the warrant article on the reclassifications. Taya? I do, but it will take longer than five minutes. Okay. So you have the actual detail that we're going to the warrant? Well, I went through it and I submitted it as, I submitted it to the committee for us to go over. Okay, yes. No, I understand that, but I mean, normally, okay, we can talk about it in another movie. That's good. So it's 9.55 and I think you're right, it'll take longer than the five minutes. Yes, David. I just want to bring the attention to you. And the clerk in the election budget, I neglected to also mention the registrar's budget. So we'll do that next time. Okay, thank you. Okay. Well, we did quite a number of budgets tonight. Thank you, David and Sophie, and thank you, Micaiah. Any other subjects anybody wants to bring up before we sign off this evening? Yes, I have a draft of the, an updated draft of the budget schedule. If anyone wants to look at that together, I could also email it, but I can kind of put it up now so we can take a look. Can everyone see this? Oops. Can everyone see this? Yes, I think we can. I would suggest that you send it out. Just send it out. Yeah, maybe you send it out. Okay. There's a little detail to figure out just by looking from the screen. Yep. So we didn't approve any minutes tonight. Let me suggest that we'll do the minutes, the first thing in the next meeting. I have, that means we'll have three nights worth of minutes to review at the next meeting. Any other subjects or questions this evening? Thank you very much for your patience and attention. And I think, Dean, if you talk to the school department, I think you can tell them that we were delighted with the presentation tonight. Well done. Okay, thank you. Can I, a motion to adjourn? So moved. Okay, I think it's unanimous. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Good night. Good night.