 Okay, I'd like to call the meeting of the Finance Committee to order. I'd like to start with one thing that I should have done in December, but it's all the hectic thing I forgot about it. And that's just like, as you know, last fall we lost one of our long-standing members of the Finance Committee, Kenny Sims. And he had been on the Finance Committee since the 70s. And we had four people who were serving on the Finance Committee over the last few years from the 70s. Barry Ronan, as you know, passed away last year, or the year before. Ken Simmons and Dick and I. So Ken had been on for an awfully long time and, you know, I didn't realize half the stuff he did until I read his obituary. So I'd like to just ask for a moment of silence for Kenny. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, what we want to finish tonight is reviewing the rest of the articles on the Finance Committee. So we got the report handed out, or the proposed report. It's four pages. I originally had six pages, you know, with the title page and the members and all that. And then I decided to have a two-page introduction to a six-page FINGCOM report that was sort of silly and a waste of about 250, 300 pieces of paper. So I zapped the front two. So the prime focus is going to be on articles two, three, and four. And those are the school renovations. On articles five, six, we have already voted. And eight we voted. I want to re-vote seven. We'll get to that a little bit later. The prime focus right now is articles two and three. Now both of these articles deal with the Straton School. And the moderator has already decided that we will put them both before the town meeting and they'll both be discussed together. But then we'll go back and vote on each one separately. So right now I'd like to put both articles two and three before the Finance Committee. The amounts are all underlined because obviously we haven't voted on these. Both of these motions have changed about five times in the last two days as information became available. Article two was sort of separated because we have the bids in for article two. So that could get going sort of immediately. These are the modules. And then article three, that's still going to go out to bid. So with that, I'd like to turn the floor over to Charlie. We'd like to begin with this. Okay, Kathy, would you like to sort of give a number to the Finance Committee about how this all took place? Mr. Manager, sorry. From which point on? Well, what's happening with the Straton School and how it's going to take place? Oh, all right. Well, I actually began before the Parents Committee. When Alan Brown was principal of Straton School, there were a number of projects that needed to be completed. And I know that you were very much a part of that in terms of voting and supporting two different phases for updates to Straton. But clearly that was not entirely all that Straton has needed over the years. Straton is the last of our seven elementary schools to either be rebuilt or updated. And I know that there is a strong commitment in the community that that will happen. A parent committee was established a couple of years ago. And that committee looked into what it would take to bring Straton Elementary to parody with all of the other elementary schools. The committee went around to the other elementary schools, looked at floor plans, looked at all of the different features of the different schools. Parents met at Straton and also gave their input. This was discussed at school committee and the facility subcommittee and the school committee at large. We were able to compile a picture of all of that was necessary for Straton to be brought to parody with the other schools. Essentially, some of the central core spaces needed serious updating. For example, the nurses office and the library. The library was about half the size that it needed to be parody and also to be adequate for the school population there. The other issue was just the food service. I don't know how many of you have ever seen the kitchen at Straton. It's about the size of a walking closet. And the food was served in the corridor to students and they would take their food into the cafeteria. So they've never had a similar kind of kitchen that all of the other elementary schools have had. So in the design of what Straton needed, in addition to just doing a reconfiguration of the space, we also needed to be able to bring all the other systems that had not been done in the last two phases. The focus of the first two phases of the renovation was in the classroom wing. At that time we did the roof, we did wiring, the HBA system, and very importantly the windows. That was a serious need. So now the other part, which at one point we thought, well maybe this would be completely rebuilt, the other part which is the central space of the principal's office, the nursing, food, all of that is going to be updated and renovated. And the systems that involve the kindergarten, because the kindergarten in that part of the school, as well as the gym and the cafeteria are going to be updated in this project. So when we complete it, I believe with great confidence that Straton will be a parody with the other elementary schools and it will be a very beautiful and functional school. So that's basically a little bit where we are with this. Do you want any history on where we are with the modulars? I don't. Basically it's what we're dealing with with the construction of the school. So we would appreciate your support, certainly the community of Straton as well as the school department in moving forward with this project. It took several years to plan and we're hoping that we'll be able to begin construction this summer. Thank you. Charlie, do you want to hold questions until all the presentations are made and then your questions at that time? Thank you, Alan. I've passed out a draft. I hope it's the final draft of the capital planning committee report. I have not been quite as economical with paper. I noticed a couple of extra sheets that got printed here. I was doing pretty well until about five o'clock tonight when the first printing of this with the custodian came into my office, knocked over, cut the coffee over. My iPad, all these papers, etc. They start over. So anyway, we got it done. So as Dr. Bote said, this is the last of the seven elementary schools and the focus of the capital planning report is really on the Straton 2, what we call the Straton 2 project. There was a Straton 1 project a couple of years ago that did the work that Dr. Bote just described. And the capital planning committee felt that it was important to, because of the size of the project, the amount of money we were spending and the fact that some of it is going to be funded by exempt debt under the 2000 Rebuild Campaign to actually determine how we stand with respect to the original equipment of the voters to finish the second four of the seven schools on an original budget of $34.5 million. And so if you look at Table 1 in the report, you'll see the original $34.5 million, which was the number actually created by Al Tassini and myself. The original number that the school department gave us was even lower than that, but we thought we were putting enough cushion in there to cover it. But as time went on, it looked like we were a little bit at risk there. In any event, the one column there shows the price of the $34.5 million Rebuild debt exclusion as it's affected by inflation over the 16 years since it was passed in 2000. And the inflation numbers that we use in this whole analysis is the guidelines set forth by the DOR in how you treat debt experience over time. So there's a lot of rigorous analysis under this that's not shown in this abbreviated report. So the actual expenditures versus time are in those little boxes as you move to the right of the chart. And then on the right-hand side, you see the actual construction cost of nominal dollars and then the construction cost in $2,000. So if you look at it in terms of $2,000, we spent $42 million instead of $34.5 million in terms of $2,000. So at face value, this has exceeded the cost that the voters were told they'd be paying to increase their taxes. However, there's a couple of mitigating factors. And first, one of the reasons I should say the reason that this took so long was you may recall that SBAB, School Building Assistance Board, froze all reimbursements in the early 2000s and then it went out of business and then the MSBA came in. So there was a three or four year hiatus there where actually nothing happened. You see that gap in the middle between the Dowling and the Thompson that was actually about seven years. So along the way, we also learned from the MSBA that they were not going to reimburse the cost of the stratum or help renovate the stratum. So that cost had to be born entirely by the town and it's non-exempt budget. So what we did, when I say we here referring to the Finance Committee, the Capital Planning Committee and Town Meeting and the Town Manager, is in financing the Thompson, we didn't put it all basically into the debt exclusion. We funded some of the debt exclusion, we sold the Grosby School and took the revenue from that asset sale and we also took funds from the normal non-exempt capital budget, put them all together in a pool to pay for the $20 million of the Thompson School. And we've taken a similar approach to the funding of the stratum but in this case there's absolutely no reimbursement. We did get 48% or 50% reimbursement on the Thompson. So the actual debt excluded impact, tax increase impact on the taxpayers has been reduced over this 16-year period by Arlington funding some of the schools with non-exempt money and with asset sales and grants and things like that to reduce the exempt impact. So the chart on Figure 1, the cumulative exempt debt impact, actual versus anticipated, shows the cost over time and the blue line is the actual cost in $2,000, inflation adjusted to $2,000 and the red line is what was anticipated at the time considering that the first two schools were supposed to get 63% reimbursement and the second two were going to get 50%. As it turned out, the stratum didn't get any but we still have stayed within the limits on an inflation adjusted basis of the original debt exclusion. Then I think, you know, Kathy, I don't think, I mean she was, she could have been a little bit more forceful. I can't say enough about the way the school department, in particular Dr. Bode, led the stratum parents through a planning process and evaluation process to come up with what were reasonable and necessary changes to bring the stratum school up to parity with the other schools that had been completed. And I think, as my memory serves me right, this was a 12 or 18 month process. A lot of meetings, they had architects and technical support but they came up with a good plan and when we went to town meeting last year, we were anticipating that it was going to cost $10 to $11.5 million. There was a little bit of uncertainty there. So it turned out that the cost of the modulars at the stratum that had to be put in for the students to live in, to be educated in during the construction period came out, rose from $1.8 million to $3.1 million. That's something we learned about two days ago. It's one of the reasons why, as Al said, the numbers have been moving around this week. And then most recently today, the town manager advised us that the architect and the owner's project manager, the OPM, independently came up with cost estimates based on the architectural drawings and current prices in the marketplace, et cetera. And we have learned that there's a very high probability another increase of about $1.7 million. So both of these increases are reflected in the $15.793 million that you see at the top of table two, one page four. So what I'm going to address now is how this is going to be paid for. So we have in the non-exempt capital plan that's going to go before town meeting in April about $6.3 million of borrowing that's going to be funded through the non-exempt debt service. Last year, town meeting voted to support an initial $1,085,000 to do the architectural plans and move the project forward. We also said the total non-exempt debt year that's going to be carried out in the project is currently estimated at $7.4 million. And I want to caution that, as Al said, there's new information constantly coming in. We're hopeful that this is a conservative number, but you can never tell in today's environment. We have the ability to apply what we, the Capital Planning Committee, refer to as a capital carry forward. And these are unexpended funds on prior projects that can be repurposed, if you will, under the law and with the Votetown Meeting to another project provided that the funds are in the same category. You can't take, if you borrow money for a fire truck and it comes in less than the anticipated price, you can use that money for another piece of rolling stock like a public works truck or something like that, but you can't use it for a building because that's in a different bonding category. So the funds here come from about a million of it, about 1.1 million comes from the Thompson School Project and then about 500,000 or a little bit more than that comes from the Community Safety Building, which looks like it's coming in this last phase, it's coming in under budget substantially. So we'll have those funds available to apply to the strike. So the total non-exempt debt and capital carry forward contribution is $9 million. That means that we need to exempt about $6.7 million. In addition, the town owns an asset in East Arlington on Mass Avenue, it addresses 1207 Mass Avenue. The Board of Selectments determined that they will sell that building at some point in the not too distant future. It's currently being used for some activities designed or appropriated by the Board of Selectments, but it eventually will be sold, and we're anticipating it should bring in something under the order of a million dollars. So that million dollars can be used to reduce the exempt debt burden from $6.7 million to $5.7 million. So that's the background of how this is going to be financed. There are two articles in the warrant. One is article two, which is to award, to appropriate funds for the modulars that have to be put in for the students to use during the construction period. This is the, we originally put this in the warrant because then money really has to be spent first. If that money can't be spent right away, the project is never going to start in September. So as I mentioned earlier, that number in the recent quotations rose from an earlier estimate of about $1.8 million to $3.1 million. Part of the reason for this is that Arlington is not alone in its, feeling the effects of student population growth, and there's a tremendous demand for modulars in eastern Massachusetts communities right now, and the vendors are, you know, they're feeling pretty independent because their sales are pretty good. So article two is to borrow money or allow the treasurer to borrow money to fund these modulars at $3.1 million. Is it bombing? No, it's bombing. And then the total project is $15.793 million. We've already appropriated, under the table in article three, we've already appropriated $1,085 million. We're also appropriating this $3.1 million in the prior article. So there's a net requirement to appropriate another $11.6 million. $1.6 million of that, as I mentioned just a few seconds ago, is going to be funded by transfers from other projects. And the balance is going to be funded by debt, which is a total of $9.96 million. And about 3.2 of that should be, that's right, should be exempt. I'm sorry, 3.2 that should be non-exempt, and 6.7 should be exempt. And that 6.7 will eventually be reduced by the million-dollar asset sale. Sorry to be so fast on that. I'm not trying to move the shelves around here, but just trying to describe how we're approaching this. So I guess the, you know, I just want to emphasize one thing for the finance committee. I'm going to emphasize the same thing to the town meeting when we were at town meeting. And that is that figure one, the cumulative debt impact actual versus anticipated, says that the town of Arlington met its commitment to the taxpayers even over an extended 16-year period. First of all, in getting all of the schools renovated, even in the absence of support on the stratum from the MSBA. And secondly, keeping the exempt expenditures after adjustment for inflation in the same range, very close to what the original estimates of what that tax impact would be to the taxpayers. And I think if the town is going to act and is going to ask taxpayers to fund middle school, high school improvements, et cetera, it's an important message to send to them that their vote and their desire is both for assets and capacity as well as their desire to control their taxes are taken very seriously by the town. So this actually brings to a close the elementary school rebuild program that's actually started in 1991. You may remember the first project that we undertook was the building of the, rebuilding of the renovating of the Audison Junior High School or middle school. Actually at that time we were converting it from a junior high school to a middle school. And then in 1998 there was another debt exclusion and we did the first three schools of the remaining seven and then in 2000 the second debt exclusion. And the total expenditures to date under that program have been $98.8 million, just under $100 million. So with those comments, you haven't answered any questions but I asked that the finance committee would give them any support. The article's two and three. Adam, do you have anything to add? Very well. Okay, great. Okay, I'd like to open it up for any questions or discussion for the finance committee. I'm just curious of how you look into and how you decide between permanent construction and modular classroom. And if there's any savings one way or the other, short term and longer term? Well, that question actually is apropos of article four or five or whatever the next article is. But with respect to the to the stratum, the choice isn't putting something permanent there. I mean these are there because the school's going to be torn apart and renovated and the students have to go someplace. And as you know with the discussions about the pressure on enrollment, there isn't a lot of space in the other school buildings to actually move these children around. So it's a necessity to get this done. We suggested classrooms outside. That's a pretty tense, you know. I thought that. Dean? A few questions. So Charlie, on the 6.7 million dollars exempt debt or maybe on the total project, if we got into a situation where the project costs continued to rise a million dollars. I'm sorry, I can't quite hear you. I changed my question. So if we got to a point where the project budget continued to rise above the current estimate or we got to a point of, you know, the sale of the DAV doesn't materialize or whatever. Would the capital planning committee be looking, and you had to come up with additional ways to fund this? Would we be heading towards the exempt side of the capital budget or would we have to the non-exempt? This has to be approved by the DOR. I don't think we'd get approval to increase the exempt amount. I mean, they will have to evaluate this to determine how far their rules apply, okay? But, I mean, there might be a $500,000 to a million dollars worth of, let me call it, flexibility based on whatever their, however they assess the whole library of rules and regulations they have concerning this. I mean, we've taken this approach because that's just one way to analyze it. For example... So if I look at it like this... Can I just... Yeah, yeah. For example, we completely ignored the question of interest. And the DOR allows you to examine interest in addition to the capital. The reason why we ignored the question of interest was because the SBAB approached the first two schools in an entirely different funding way than the MSBA approached the second two. And the analysis just became so complicated that it was simpler to just do this analysis. But if you folded the interest in, okay, then we are probably way under what was originally anticipated. Because the interest costs actually turned out to be in practice much lower than they were in 2000. Right. So if I look at it though, you're gleaning from part of what you said, if I focus back on the 6, 7 million exempt debt required, you have effectively two... I'm going to call them cushions just in case we have some overruns. One would be the sale of the building, which brings us down to 5, 7, and the other one is the sort of half million to a million dollar squishiness. So we wouldn't end up in a problem if the cost went up a little more. That's right. That would be my guess. But if it goes up a lot more, or if it turns out that the DOR turns around and says, well, you can't do 5 or 6 million, you only do 3 million, which I'm not expecting, but I'm just saying as a what if, we would have to take the cost out of the non-exempt capital budget. And that means that you'd have to turn around and look at what other projects that are in there, and they would either have to be cut or postponed. Okay. And there's a five-year queue of people waiting to get their projects taken care of. Okay. And then when we get to the spring, I'm assuming because I think I leaned in here that you have the words 2017 in here. So when you do that, when the capital planning report comes out in the spring, and you do your 5% reconciliation for revenues, this is reduced. This goes into that calculation. This is absolutely, all of these numbers are in the capital plan in the spring. For 17. Right. We won't appropriate that because they will already have been appropriated, they will be calculated in the capital budget. All right. So we had, like the third question is, and Dr. Boatting might better to answer this one, but when you gave your presentation at town meeting, I think it was the second night of the spring, how many of you have moved the capital budget forward? There was a Stratton parent who spoke, and she was not particularly happy with the modular arrangement that was on the table at the moment. Are they okay now? Are they not happy? I'm sorry. If you remember, there was a Stratton parent that got up, and she had indicated that the modulars were at the time going to be, I thought she said at the odyssey. Oh, the parent from the Stratton. Right. Okay. My online was focused on. Yep. Yeah. These modulars are going to be located at the Stratton, actually Dr. Boatting can answer that. I believe they are. The short answer to your question. Historically, They're happier. Much happier. Okay. The whole community can be together. They'll be, it will be certainly not without its issues next year. But the original plan was to have the school divided into at least three different campuses. The biggest objection was having the fourth and fifth grade at the middle school, the fourth grade in particular. But as we went through the process, it became very clear this summer that to do that kind of dislocation in three different places could end up making it more difficult to make other decisions that were important to make about how we're going to deal with enrollment growth. So we went back to the single campus for all the modulus. And now in hindsight, it probably ended up being a good decision because given the way the modular classroom costs have increased, and most of the costs are in site development and building the modules, we probably are saving money by doing it this way. Okay. Got it. And then, Charlie, my last question that will round this out is between the various boards in town, the Capcom Planned Committee, Permanent Town Building Committee in the school administration, the town manager, whoever, right? As we look at the size of the school when it opens and then projecting enrollment and things like that, is there anybody who's saying right now that this school is too small and that we need a bigger school? Because I assume in other parts of town to start hearing... You're referring to the Straton. Right, the Straton. Is anybody raising their hand because... Saying that the school is too small? Right. We should be building a bigger Straton because this cannot hold some surging enrollment that everybody, but apparently us, knows about. I haven't heard anybody say that to me. School committee opposed? I have not heard anything along those lines either. In fact, when Straton is completed, we will have three classrooms that could be repurposed. They'll be used, but they could be repurposed for additional classrooms. In fact, there was a request from the school enrollment task force to look at the possibility of doing a redistricting of the town to utilize those three classrooms. So the answer is we would have still capacity there. And also, when we looked at the enrollment growth numbers for the town, and the most recent ones in December, we're not seeing any growth at Straton. It's quite minimal, 20 students. And in fact, two of our west side schools down in Brackett will probably decrease somewhat a little bit in enrollment. Our growth over the next five to 10 years will be on the east side of Arlington. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Bote, now, you're basically leaving the number of classrooms that are set up on the wing. The classroom wing is basically staying the same with some renovations. How many kindergarten classes do you have on the other side and how many will you have after the finish? We have three, and we'll have three. Those rooms will be renovated because each of the classrooms has a bathroom that all three of them need to be renovated. Most kindergarten classrooms have bathrooms in suite. As far as the classroom wing, there is not going to be any changes. Others are a little cosmetic. We did a lot of the wiring and the windows, the HBA system in the first two phases. What will change in that wing is if anybody's been in Straton, you know, at the far end of the classroom wing there was a gym. Straton had two gyms and it's had multiple uses over the years, but this is going to be the site of the library. And so that area where the library is currently will be, that area will be additive to the nurses area will have a conference room for the first time and then there will be the expansion of the kitchen that will be a serving kitchen, a big warming kitchen like all of our other elementary schools. As you know, the central kitchen for the elementary schools is Thompson. So basically that's the change. I can talk about other ones that might be having. Thank you very much. John. Charlie, you said that you thought that DOR would eventually DOR would eventually agree with this approach and find that there's already authorization for these 6.7 million. We think that there are a couple of ways to come to the same conclusion. So we don't think that we're far off. My question is how does that process work? When do you approach them? When are they going to rule on this? Actually, I think Rich, Viscay, the town controller in Adam Chaplain and Brian Rary for the Capital Planning Committee are scheduled to meet with them in the next couple of days. So it's not a, I don't know if it will happen this week or next week, but I think let's put it this way, the level of communication between Arlington and the DOR is pretty good. Thank you. And also the wording is passed by Bond Council. And so it's been hammered at. Other questions? Paul? How many classrooms, much of the classrooms is it and when does the project finish? I think it's 38 modular classrooms. 28 modular classrooms. And the students are supposed to be back in the school in the fall of 2017. There was a, there were three plans that the school department during this long playing phase came up with. Some of them had as long as a, you know, five-year build-out term. And I think the general conclusion of the school department and Capital Planning Committee, everybody was to get it done as quickly as possible to contain the cost and minimize the disruption, the academic disruption. Okay. Are there any other questions from the Finance Committee on articles two and three? Okay. Then let's take a look. Article two is for 3.1 million for borrowing for the modular classrooms. So the bids are in. So that's 100% from, without a, what is the will of the committee? Second. Second. Okay. Favorable action is removed in a second. Any discussion? Okay. All of those in favor of authorizing a borrowing of 3.1 million dollars, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Favorable action. Okay. Articles three. Again, we're looking at a total project of 11.608 million dollars for the 3.1 million dollars, which you just authorized, plus the million dollars, a 085 that was authorized last year. So that's the project. We're going to take clean out accounts for 28,959 and 1,113.73. The reason those are exact is those basically clean out those accounts. So the controller was always very happy to clean out accounts. And then the 499.268 is coming from leftover funds in the police renovation project. That would be a borrowing of 9,966,000 dollars. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Okay. Is there any discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the article three vote as delineated in the proposed finance report. Can you say aye? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Favorable action. An animus. Okay. Now, let's take the article four. Now, this has been sort of reworded about five times today. We were originally hoping to have a review of the school enrollment task force. Well, actually, let's separate this out into two things. Let's go into policy first and then go into the proposed financing. So, Adam, you were the chair of the enrollment task force. So could you give a home review, please? Good evening, everybody. So very briefly, the school enrollment task force met a number of times over the year, once in 2016, looking at a number of the enrollment issues in the district, but focusing on a recommendation for this special town meeting in terms of the capacity issues facing the Thompson elementary school next school year. What that resulted in was the recommendation of pursuing the acquisition of two modular classrooms to go to Thompson school for September of 2016. So that policy decision was for funding. And then, as Chair Tosti alluded to, there's been a number of discussions back and forth about how we would actually proceed with funding that. Do you want me to transition into that, or do you want to? Sure. So initially, we had talked about taking funding from what had been identified as surplus from the community safety building project that is, as you've seen, now being utilized to balance the stratton project. As this whole week has evolved and the stratton budget has been stressed by increasing estimates, we discussed today a scenario whereby we would move that surplus as to where you've seen it in the stratton budget, and that we would pursue an alternative funding strategy for acquiring or leasing two modular classrooms at the Thompson for next year. So the recommendation that the Chairman has put before you is that for this fiscal year, we would come back to this finance committee with an operating reserve fund transfer request to go to the school's operating budget to be able to actually pay the fixed fee associated with ordering two modular classrooms. And then any future lease fees that would be associated with those classrooms, whether we kept them for one, two, or three years, we would budget either at this spring's town meeting or in subsequent town meetings in future years to be able to pay the fixed fee associated with those classrooms. So we don't have a cost in hand tonight. The first thing that we're doing is asking our architect who's working with the modular vendor for stratton school to see if they can quote adding on ordering two more modular that could be placed at Thompson. If we get that quote, we will base what we ask the finance committee for and transfer based on that quote. If that quote is not satisfactory, we'll go through it. So I think that the view would be acknowledging town meetings role in endorsing this policy and putting a resolution before them, endorsing this approach to acquire or lease two temporary modules at Thompson for fall of 2016. I think the estimates serve looking at now for the modules for three years is probably someplace between four and $600,000. I guess the modular market has apparently skyrocketed a bit on that. So we would probably and this depends on the bids come back to the finance committee sometime in February and look for a transfer of something around $200,000, $250,000. Now, we have a million dollars in the reserve fund. We have not had any transfer requests so far and it seems at this point that we've got flexibility to do that. And even though this is strictly a finance committee decision, the article is before town meeting and because it's before town meeting, I'd like to ask them to support that recommendation and not just pull it away and say finance committee is going to decide this. So we're looking for town meetings support and I hope we get it so that's the recommendation that goes in there. The enrollment task force work is not done. We have to over the next couple of months the other side of the issue is looking at the middle school. The enrollment there also is growing and therefore we're going to have to look at various options on what we're going to do on that. Part of that might involve the renovation of the high school which we will find out I guess in the next week or so whether that's on the table and then part of that could involve the Gibbs which has all kinds of both positive and negative ramifications and so the enrollment task force is going to devote the next couple of months to that issue. In addition we're going to look at the enrollment task force look at the numbers from next October first. As you're probably aware this year the projections for by the consultant who was hired to project the school the projections were for 184 increase in students the actual increase was about 84. So it was 100 students off the consultant has come back in and updated his projections but before we undertake another significant renovation at an elementary school we want to see how those numbers come out. So there could be 200 additions primarily probably at the Thompson but we want to see more data for that before we start spending that kind of money. So that's where the enrollment task force is the school department will continue to look at the districts and the assignment of students. We wouldn't have to do this all except you know the spare classrooms are all in the western part of the town and the demand is all in the eastern part of the town. So the enrollment task force asked the school department to come back and look at redistricting and look at busing. They provided the enrollment task force with a great deal of information on whole pros and cons and this was the unanimous recommendation though of the task force was to go with modulars down at the Thompson to keep the Thompson school community together so the class that would have been bused to Pierce would have been the fifth grade class which has already spent two years being bused to the Straton so there was some I think feelings that that would have been too much. So that's the recommendation of the enrollment task force and I'll open up any other input from Dr. Vody or Adam or Charlie I'll open it up for questions. John Is it just a suggestion on my part who would present Article 4 of this U for instance, speaking for the finance committee on Article 4 I think it's a good opportunity to explain kind of a justification for the rationale by which we sort of increased the reserve fund recently and this is a prime example of why it's good to have the amount of money that we do have with the reserve fund and also to point out that finance the town is not voting money directly that this is essentially a their sign of the seal of approval if you like on our suggestion that the money turned out of the reserve fund I think if you explain some people I don't even understand where you mentioned about the reserve fund so I think it's a good opportunity to talk about the process that we've already gone recently in increasing the reserve fund that's a good idea I think we really worked out the presentation I would assume that the town manager would make it since he was the chair of the enrollment task force we started and get input so thank you Dean? so I guess I have a question for the chair so you talked about additional space but you didn't sort of touch on how long you thought that was going to work for next year and how long it was going to last do you think that gets us three years of breathing room, five years ten years at the Thompson how long is two modules getting us either I'm okay with either next year that's probably what they will get us the issue is that we've had three classes third, fourth and fifth grade that have been two classes two classrooms for that great I have a handout that's going to show all that part oh you have all? yes don't worry okay so next year, yes assuming that we're going to have four kidney gardens and we have a fifth grade exiting that has two classrooms we're going to need we're going to need additional two and that's what this is addressing but next year 16, 17, fifth grade is also two and so when they exit we'll probably also need two more at that point so there are decision points there are decisions along the way the task force is going to address those and make some recommendations as we go forward but as the chair has said there are some members that would like to see what the actual numbers are at Thompson over the next registration period well right but I think the one thing I'm trying to figure out is whether they were at the task force or not understand this this is not fixing the Thompson this is not fixing the Thompson this band aids enrollment growth at Thompson next year okay the modulus themselves could be the modulus could be there for three years the two modulars will be cited on the parking lot and having looked at the dimensions of the parking lot and the dimensions of modular classrooms without going on to the public sidewalk I think we can only get two modulars on that site three I don't think we have the length or the width to do three so there will be other issues involved in actually the siting of these modulars as we go forward so that was going to be my next question actually because I really don't understand what I want to know is so we put two modules there and then we start to realize that we have to do something like let's say an addition on to the buildings in the way of the addition or are we putting this in such a way that they're not in conflict with one another they would not be in conflict the modulars are going to be in the side parking lot the addition should that be where we move and frankly that is my recommendation is that we consider adding an addition on to Thompson that you could add on it's the classroom wing extending the classroom wing out what's the period of the of the lease if we take out $200,000 from the reserve fund is that covering a year is it covering I believe I don't want to answer that so what you've seen from the Stratton bids there's a fixed fee up front for beginning the lease period and then there's these payments on a monthly basis going forward so what we presume we'd be asking for is that fixed fee up front to order these modules have them fabricated and possibly even delivered before the end of the fiscal year and then we would budget these payments in FY17 and beyond so it just covers the period to the end of the fiscal year perfect thank you I'd just like to have on the table another factor that's pushing off discussions about permanent reconfigurations with additions and whatever is the disposition of your site is still uncertain and that could again change the population which we might know in a year or two so it balances between say Thompson and Hardy where the new students are going to show up that could be impacted by the ultimate disposition of your site it's just another ball in the air that emphasizes why do something temporary Chuck since the Mugar table I'd like to mention that I have suggested to the Board of Selectment and other parties in town that if the Mugar site is going to be developed we should be the town should somehow be negotiating with Mugar to get some additional benefit from it and I don't know what we have to give up or how we get there but some use of that space and perhaps a community center or something like that that could take care of the people that are using the Gibbs probably somewhere there's something that could contribute to this whole situation of enrollment pressure any other questions John Raise is a question that's sort of off the wall but you know that the whole business of school population is very uncertain it's a very large state of negation we call that a variation year to year and decade to decade with the how many students we might have in any district and being handed out and I don't know if it's really a huge surprise I mean the version 2 goes out to 500 students way out from the in 2021 if there's any useful thought can be made into the possibility of simply buying modules and keeping them on hand rather than renting so that we can move them around if we have to does that make any sense to define it in the current we're just looking at this sheet that Dean handed out there is such fluctuation that maybe it's a useful thing to buy modules and keep them in good shape and just move them from place to place if we need to is that a sensible thing to follow or is it a silly thing to think about anything like that no? how manager can probably speak to this because he's looked at the bids but a lot of the costs of modular classrooms are actually the set up of the siting of them I'm sorry I'm sorry it's not amplified it's not amplified I think it's probably ACMI I'll talk louder most of I should say most but a large part of the cost of modular classrooms is the siting of them because they bring them in prefabricated and site them there so it's setting up the foundations and hooking up the plumbing electricity and all of that so having done this years ago in another district I can tell you that we found that there wasn't a lot of savings moving around now having said that Belmont is doing something like that they've moving them around and that might that might work you can purchase modular classrooms and in fact I just recently learned of a place in Georgia where you can buy one for 200,000 price may be going up as everybody wants to buy them now but you could buy them and then but there's going to be always a cost with siting them on a new in new place Adam do you have anything to add to that I would second what the superintendent said that there's definitely a significant site cost that goes along with it but I think it is reasonable for us to do some further due diligence before we actually decide whether or not to lease your body so it's not okay so if you could when you come back to the reserve fund transfer request I think that would be a good thing to see it's almost like every elementary school should be built with a pad and a water and sewer and a bunch of cookups all the skulls they could be like campgrounds we bring the modules from school to school but it's too late now that that's all the schools okay there are any other questions on article 4 okay do I have a motion okay it's been moved and seconded for article 4 with the vote requesting town meetings support is there any other discussion so I handed this what I did here was the last meeting we had I had given you the 2010-2015 enrollment reports and then the superintendent's analysis of available space what I did here because I think we got flooded with a bunch of enrollment task force information I took the same I took the enrollment numbers for the McKibben report which for 2010-11 2015-16 his projection one, his projection two and then I layered in what I did in my own mind of the one man kingdom concluded where the classrooms for each grade and each school based on the monthly enrollment reports of the district issues and the reason I did that is I felt like when you put it on one page it captured the issue in what we're looking at right so if you go to the back and you look at the Thompson you see a 335 student school that has become a 425 student school along the way you know we were using 15 classrooms we're using 19 classrooms the big thing I point out here there are two things I point out the 2010-11 kindergarten is the 2015-16 fifth grade it's why I use those those two years if you look at the grade five and I think I said this the last meeting we have this horribly embarrassing classroom of 30 kids which I think as residents of the town we should not be too proud about and I think some of that is driven by funding but I also think it is driven by just having no way to put these kids so when we look at the Thompson I know we talked about them having no available space you could also say that they're minus one at the moment which is how I like to look at it because we had to squeeze the fifth grade together beyond that I think the other thing that we also need to sort of think about is a school built for 335 kids with 380 kids was built with a gym for 380 kids was built with a cafeteria for 380 kids was built for other common spaces for 380 kids and if these were you know as you simply look at it and 15-16 it becomes pretty clear that what happened is cohorts are coming in at 80 right and they're replacing cohorts of between 50 and 60 and so we know this is going to you have to assume if it's happened the last one, two, three, four years and you look at birth numbers in your childhood and that's likely to continue ripping it off and we can say to ourselves look realistically there's probably no difference between having 74 kids show up and 88 kids show up because I think under both scenarios you put them in four classrooms but still that's a big number compared to a school that used to bring in kids about 50 in a class and so I think and that was why I had sort of set out on what that question was just to point out that you know we have the two modules here fine it's Springtown meeting we fix next year's cohort of 80 that's going to show up but we still when the fourth grade is the following year have another problem we have another cohort of 80 so even theoretically even in the classroom spaces we're probably squeezed out in the court in the common spaces the following year we have this problem all over again and so as you go to the front page where the hardy is and I should have put them on the same page and you look at 2010-11 and you look at 15-16 you see the exact same problem except it's on a lag it looks like Thompson's like a year ahead of the hardy so this wave of students coming through and so while all the attention focuses on the Thompson right the hardy is going to have the same problem the following year I'm making that up good so the hardy has this problem just rolling right behind right and I bring this up not because I want to start you know propose something different or go against the enrollment task force but I just want to point out to the members of this committee that regardless of what we do I think we have to come to the conclusion that it's going to cost a bunch of money we're going to be digging deep for this one but what I'm concerned about is is two things one not coming up with a comprehensive solution and what I mean by that is the school committee had taken a vote for the addition of five permanent classrooms at Thompson which if you look at my thing looks like a good idea and then at the enrollment task force the chair of the finance committee and the chair of the capital planning committee proposed making the hardy and Thompson sort of one district which one member of the school committee just didn't like the fact that they were imposing on school committee policy and it was sort of a non-committal thing we should do that but what I'm trying to get at is voting to put five classrooms on the Thompson didn't fix the problem that's right behind the Thompson which is the hardy and and at the same time I had another hint I didn't hand out the problem is just all these kids you get these cohorts of 80s coming in here they start pushing up and they're going to push right into the middle school and we're going to take this middle school from 1,100 kids to 1,400 1,500 kids and we can barely fit them using the current whatever heck that fancy term is for how we do middle schools that don't look like high schools or whatever but we're sort of on edge for the educational model we use at the middle school and so pretty soon we're going to have to get to the point of adding a whole bunch of modulars in 18? 17? 17 so now we're going to put a whole bunch of modulars there if we do nothing what we have to do is put a whole bunch of modulars there um and so the concern I have and the reason I'm going to I brought it up last time, the reason I brought it up this time the reason I'm going to keep bringing it up until you guys hate me and we probably already hate me but hate me even more than you might already is um we have to we not only have to fix this but we have to find it in a way that fixes it all right and that's what kind of concerns me is we hear a lot of solution from a lot of the different groups I picked up in the school committee to fix one element of it but we got to fix it once right because the worst thing you can do and this is why I've sort of become comfortable with just the two modulars the worst thing you can do is keep building right and become more and more expensive right so you have to do this and so I think that becomes as a finance committee right the people that ultimately have to defend these votes and recommend these votes and and get beat on and things like that is you know we have to though we're not though we sort of given up some of our own you know statutory authority to the enrollment task force which makes which sense but we also I think have to keep our own watchful eye that you know that we have to make sure there's a balance here right that we watch out for the taxpayers so they're not getting stuck with this large bill for some reckless solution right on one hand but on the other hand we also have to stay vigilant in the sense that we can't um we can't come up with an answer that's just like we're not in crazy and wacky and creates a bad educational environment um for our children and so you know that's why I just wanted to bring this up I wanted to point it out um and just so we didn't get to a point where we sort of you know proposed it said too much was a great idea thumbs up all's well here and then we end up six months year down the road saying oh god this isn't all well we have a bigger problem so that's all I got for now okay thank you Jean this will be a continuing process uh Charlie you know I just want to make a couple of comments on Dean's observations I think uh thank you very much for putting together this uh sheet of student population um but you know I don't think I don't think it's fair to characterize the uh enrollment task forces as uh not trying to address the uh problem um but part of the part of the issue is that the total problem is not known in um committing large sums of money towards unknowns is not necessarily the best thing that we could be doing when we have some very serious knowns uh visible on the horizon and and those you know the I think the middle school problem is a much larger problem than the um the Thompson problem and that's um you know I I don't know what the school department or the town management's going to propose to address that problem but it's pretty significant and it's not too far away we can see it okay the the as uh as Al mentioned earlier the the initial population forecast made by the consultant turned out to be uh overstated and the question is next year are they also going to be overstated I mean I think we have to see see how the system turns out um I also would like to know that which which I noted at the enrollment task force that there is a an available capacity after the stratum is completed there's an available capacity in the town of somewhere between 6 and 11 classrooms that could be applied to the issue of reducing the enrollment pressure and there's a strong sentiment um on the school department a part of the school committee that we should be sticking with this concept of neighborhood schools and I don't think anybody on the enrollment task force is proposing to bus kids from one end of the town to the other but in fact today you know we are busing children in the Bishop district a distance that's equal to the distance from East Arlington to Lexington um and those kids seem to think they're in a neighborhood school so um the suggestion that Mr. Tosti made and I made as well at the you know Mr. Tosti right now um it made at the enrollment task force was that there are potentially what we call administrative solutions to this um to take some of the enrollment pressure off that could mitigate some of the situation could I emphasize could it's not clear some of the situation in East Arlington um one of them is that uh something that I don't know whether you mentioned a dean or I'll mention it but the the idea of treating Bishop and Hardy as a combined district that's to give some flexibility there but the other suggestion another suggestion was made is to um to do some redistricting throughout the whole town in not necessarily huge changes in the geographic distribution but if you look at the a map of all of the school districts if they if those districts got rotated 5 or 10 degrees in a westerly direction we would be redistributing students a little bit further into the area of town where in other words at the borders where the where the additional capacity is and taking some of the pressure off the Thompson and Hardy and um it's you know there clearly are political implications to that there are academic implications etc but I think these things need to be addressed by the school department in and um in trade-offs made between what permanent solutions will cost and what a redistricting solution might cost so um and I'm not saying that I have an answer but I just think they have to be addressed and I will say that Dr. Vody presented to the enrollment task force a couple of scenarios with these readjustments and it was clear that there's a way to get some additional um utilized capacity by doing something like this um and I hope that the school committee and the school department uh investigates this subject further in the future okay as they have promised to do um is there any other discussion on article 4 Steve I can't help myself after the in Dean and just hearing about parody and it's a terrible problem looking forward with when you only have two schools east of Pleasant street and and you've got growing numbers at the Hardy and I'll say this for the Hardy school because it was a renovation there's several classrooms at the Hardy that are well below the standard classroom size that you would see for a new school so so the ability for Hardy to absorb more students is much less than what it would be at other schools so when you start talking about numbers getting getting up high you get some classrooms that are that are 525 square feet which is way below um what numbers should be so I I know there'll be a thoughtful analysis of some real hard decisions um but but the need for modulars or or something to keep parody for we're really going to keep neighborhood schools if that's if that's a priority um we're going to have to make some tough decisions or schools are going to have to make some tough decisions we're going to have to vote on some tough decisions but it's not not every building is equal in terms of what they can absorb either there'll be a lot coming down the line including how do we afford Medman uh if that project goes to fruition and of course the high school uh the board uh board of the building authority is going to be voting on that uh I think next week and so that'll be another project on our on our quite so there's there's plenty there any further discussion on article four okay all those in uh motion has been made seconded for favorable action on our recommendation all those in favor please say aye aye opposed okay the minimums okay article five has been voted quite depart any article six uh has been voted for no action under this article I'd like to re-vote article seven for two reasons we just voted no action um this is going to be a select vote so they're going to be the main uh promoter of this so I'd like to change our vote to the finance community supports the no action vote of the board of select one uh and I'd like to vote a second time again because if you remember correctly our last vote 17 to 1 and when I talked to the individual who voted against it on the way out the door uh he said that after after that vote he realized he made a mistake and he was not thinking about exactly sometimes his wordings get a little awkward uh and so now he supports a favorable action so rather than have somebody get up on time to John Beading and ask why there was one no vote and somebody has to get up and explain how he made a mistake I think it would be easier if we just re-voted it um to the same vote but the a new vote so we can get a unanimous vote uh so if we're going to do that again it's the same vote no action but we're just supporting the select one uh we'd have to move reconsideration we vote that and then we vote favorable action on the uh finance committee supports the no action vote of the select one and no reconsideration okay uh John just a question we've already voted on no action on article 6 because it's underlined here I know it is and then Peter corrected my mistake uh I guess that we had voted no action on that article already uh so Peter is our keeper of the record so I always trust him uh okay oceans from 8 and 2 to reconsider all those in favor we say aye aye okay uh do I have a uh favorable vote on the vote as underlined so moved okay uh any questions same exact thing we're just changing the wording and re-voting all those in favor of the vote as underlined we say aye aye okay article 8 has already been voted as stated uh so that is the uh the report uh I'm going to go home make a couple of the remove the underlines and things like that I'll email that to uh to Gloria and to the select one's office uh Gloria will go down uh risking life when paper cuts uh and help stuff and get these out with the select ones report and the capital budget before it has to go to select ones office nine o'clock tomorrow too uh and that will be in the mail I will email a copy to Alan who will PDF it and send it out to the town meeting uh members so probably somebody told me 80% of the town meeting members are on the list so 80% of the town meeting members will have the report tomorrow uh I'm assuming the select one will do the same thing uh I'd like to uh sorry Paul uh just is there anything new about Minuteman I don't know I guess we have this thing about the Lexington vote um uh Wayland has any uh town meeting voted on the regional I have not heard I'll try to we are first I always love to be first uh I got conned into that's a strong word I'm I'm taking a sous chef to the breakfast meeting and tomorrow so I'll keep my ears open and see if I hear anything I intend to keep my mouth shut uh okay I'd like to remind everybody that uh Monday will be the special town meeting uh with any luck we can get through this fairly quickly um we will have a finance committee meeting at 7 30 in this room uh on Monday more on Monday night uh in case there's any last minute prices hopefully there will not be so I ask everybody to be here right at 7 30 for that now uh there's if it goes to Wednesday then we'll have another meeting at 7 30 on Wednesday night hopefully it will go one night the first meeting of the next meeting the finance committee after that will be February 1st that would be the beginning of our regular preparation for the annual town meeting you all have your budgets um either hard copy or actually you got both now uh and so I ask you to start meeting with yourself committees and meeting with the uh department heads and please uh get those to get those done as soon as possible um Gloria have you seen any of the warrant yet when does the warrant close 31st so that'll be uh 29th so it'll be next week from Friday okay so if you could try to get that as soon as possible and could you start clawing and not here setting up hearings for the directors uh and get that meeting um I need budget you know I need uh recommendations for uh your departments if you can get one done get that done um and uh so I don't have to cancel too many meetings uh in order to get this done my goal is to have the finance committee report recommendations done by the end of March uh and just to let you know ahead of time there will be no meetings uh the first week in April case anybody wants to go anyway um yeah um and that's it is there any other business okay I'd like to just for a second talk with Charlie Dick and Dean uh for a second after this meeting if there's no other business uh meeting is adjourned thank you very much