 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Hi guys. It's 233 p.m. on June 16, 2020, and I'm calling the finance committee to order and welcome all members of the committee directly p.m. I think is the only one who's going to be a few minutes late. We do expect the other members of the committee. I will be introducing as we go along, but I want to first start by putting up the agenda on the screen as we talk. So start with pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. General law chapter 30 a section 18 this meeting of the finance committee is being conducted wire remote participating. So we have to do under the requirements of the open meeting law is make sure that as I asked each member of the committee to recognize to let me know. I, they can hear me and they need to answer so that we can confirm that they can be heard also. So I'll start with Pat d'Angelo's. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. And I don't think Dorothy's here. And then we have three other members of the committee who are resident members and Sharon Pavanelli. Yes. And, and I'm not sure if they can hear me. I'm not sure if they can hear me. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure if they can hear me. I'm not sure if they can hear me. I'm not sure if they can hear me. All right. So we will start with Bob, And Bob, And Bob, And Bob, And Bob, And Bob, Bob, I'm going to just for a moment have the agenda on the screen so that everybody can see it, including anybody who watches this from home for your participation in the meeting today. What we're going to do is take this out of order a little bit. I wanna make sure that we get the two items that require the largest amount of staff participation and are new to the committee to come up early. So we will do the capital improvement plan, capital improvement program and the water and sewer rates. If everybody is agreeable to that is the first two items and then come back to the other items later. The other thing that I wanna note is item number five, there was a request to the energy and climate action committee to introduce themselves and their goals and what they see is a long-term budget needs that they might have. It's not regarding the FY21 budget. I made a suggestion to them that either one of the next two weeks before the FY21 budget is released to us or after we're done with the budget, but I didn't think that we wanted to spend the time on it during the budget discussions. They are not going to be participating today. The chair of ECAC was not available so we don't have a new date for that, but it will be rescheduled and I just wanted to point out what it was. So with that, I think that what I'm gonna do is get us back into general mode so that we no longer have anything for the moment on the screen. And since Amy Rasecki is also in that here now as well as Gilford Mooring, who are from department public works and oversee the water and sewer systems and they're gonna speak to the rates. I wanted to take that item up first if everybody's agreeable to it so that they can go on to do other work. So I'll start with our town manager. Paul, do you have anything you wanna say first about Water and Sewer Rates? No, I said last night that this is our presentation on the Water and Sewer Rates. Sean Magano and Gilford and Amy are all prepared and so I'm gonna provide support. I just want to note that our Water and Sewer Rates are well below the state median, state average, and also below most of our neighbors in our area. And while our increase is substantial, is sizable, 7% and 15%, our rates are still substantially lower than what you would see in other communities in our neighboring communities. Okay, so with that introduction, shall I turn it over to Sean to make the presentation that was planned and then we can go to questions from there. I think Lynn has a question. Yeah, I just wanna give you an update on Dorothy. They just changed their servers and so she's going to try to call in. We may wanna be looking for her in the attendee area. I'll keep an eye out, thank you. Yes. Yeah, right now she's not there but we will keep an eye out for that. So Sean. All right, I'm gonna share my screen in a second and go through some of the financials of each of the funds. I think the best way to do it unless you have alternatives is I'll do the water fund first and then stop sharing my screen and we can probably talk about the water fund. And then after that I'll do the sewer fund. Does that sound okay? That sounds fine. And just so that you know of course we all had a presentation on May 1st that we attended that was with Ted and Howard talking about water rates, how they are calculated and different structures for water rates. I do have that available to share screen on if people have questions that go back to that particular presentation but it's not intended necessarily to come up to that. Sean. All right, I'm gonna share my screen now. Think, let me get this going, okay. So I think it should be shared now and you should hopefully all see the first page. So this is the high level summary of the financial situation with the water enterprise fund. It's organized a little funny but I'll walk you through it just so you have a sense of what you're looking at. So you have what was budgeted for FY20 and what's been proposed for FY21 and then some projected out years after that. At the very top you have some revenue sources that are non-user charged revenue sources that are earmarked every year. And then below that if we were going to use any of the reserves to support the budget you would see an amount there but you can see we don't have that. We have zeros across the board there. Then we get into the expenses. So the operating expenses are dropping a little bit for FY21 and I'll explain a little bit more about that on the next slide. The transfer to the general fund is basically the indirect costs that the enterprise fund pays to the general fund for all the services that Town Hall provides to the enterprise fund. And that's just updated for this year. It dropped a little bit but nothing significant. Current debt is looking at the next year on the debt schedule for all the projects that have been approved from the water fund and just using those new amounts. Proposed debts, there is no new proposed debt for FY21 but that is where you will see a big impact in the out years when the centennial plant comes online and we start paying the debt for that. And then below that is capital and that's sort of like cash capital for JCPC for those of you who are part of JCPC. It's sort of smaller capital items that we buy each year from the enterprise fund. Improvements to the water infrastructure vehicles that support the water fund and things like that. And we'll look, I'll show you the detail of what supports that number. So based on the non-user charge revenues and then all of the expenditures that we're projecting for next year, that calculates a rate needed. And then looking at that rate needed, which for FY21 is 419, that's how we get to the actual proposed rate. A couple other impacts to note, if you look at FY20 and the usage, you'll see we're showing a usage down around 960. That's a moving target right now and this year is because of COVID-19 and the students at the colleges leaving much earlier than they usually do and even some of the regular programs that happen throughout the year. It doesn't seem like they're occurring. That number is much lower than what we expected. And so that's gonna create a possible deficit for the year for FY20 that we'll have to absorb out of retained earnings. And we're projecting a continuing impact into FY21, not as a substantial as an FY20, but we are projecting some impact in FY21 as well of, I think Mandy Jo called it the de-densification of the college and universities. I put that into word and I'm just trying to see if that was a real word. I don't think it is, but it sounds good. So I was gonna use it. So we're projecting about a million 100 cubic feet for next year. So with that rate of 420 for FY21, that basically gets us to balanced with the expenses that we're projecting. And I'll go through a little bit more about the expenses. So it is a substantial rate increase, but we have made several adjustments on the expenditure side and the water fund and even more so in the sewer fund to even get it down to that point of 420. And one thing I'll just note, you'll see down at the bottom, the retained earnings. So going into FY20, the retained earnings number was 2,062,679, which is roughly 45% of the budget, but we are expecting that number to drop by a significant amount for FY21 once we see the full impact of the colleges and the university and the students not being there. So this next slide is looking at the expenditures. So I'll start with personnel. Personnel is going up about $30,000. Those are the regularly scheduled increases for the staff that are paid out of the enterprise fund. Right below that is the operating expenses, and those are going down about 30,000. And that's a combination of some reductions in health insurance costs, an increase in the pension costs for retirement, and then an increase to electricity that Guilford can explain a little bit more about, but with the Centennial Plant, not online, it's our electricity costs are projected to come in lower. And then if you keep going down, capital is where the most substantial reductions are to the water fund. And there's a slide at the very end that gets into the detail, but originally the capital was projected approximately 200,000, a little bit more for FY21, but we have pared that down to about $83,000. And it's a drop of a little over $100,000 from the year before. And then debt, again, we'll see on the next slide, that is the next year of actual debt payments that we have to make. So this is a schedule of our debt. So the top half is the current debt. So you can see the runoff on that and when some new things are projected to go online. The big one down below is the Centennial Water Treatment Facility that if it goes as planned, the first year of debt payments will be an FY24. So aside from the impact of COVID, one of the other things that we are for our long range planning is we have the rate has to be able to support that debt payment by the time we get there in FY24. And we want to be conscious of keeping it artificially low and then having a huge spike when we get there, because that might be more difficult than a gradual increases to get to that point. And if you look at that summary sheet, you'll see that projected debt start to come into that summary sheet in FY24 and you'll see the cost start to rise. And then this is the snapshot of capital. So for FY21, there was originally a truck in there that we have deferred. The water system improvements, I believe was originally around 100,000 and that's been reduced. And the water system improvements, I believe was around 50,000 and that's been pushed off as well with obviously input from Guilford and Amy about being able to do that for a year. And then again, future capital borrowings, you'll see the well number four replacement which is coming up next year. And then ultimately the Centennial Water Treatment Facility, which is FY22. So just to recap, before we even thought about the rates, we looked at what we could reduce from the operating budget. We looked at electricity, we looked at staffing and we looked at the capital. And so we took out what we felt we could and then looked at what rate would be needed and that's where we got the 419. And so I will stop sharing the screen for a moment and turn it back to you, Andy. And you're muted still, Andy. Actually, it was a good thing I was muted because the police officer arrived with a book for me and my dog started barking when you were talking. But anyway, the one thing that I had is on the bottom of that first slide, there was the, I think the retained earnings equivalent to the reserves for the fund. And I was trying to get a better grasp of the amount that they were being reduced over the next, over the 20 and 21 years from the amount that we had started with. Yeah, so the retained earnings to start FY20 was the 2 million, 62,000. For FY20, there's still a lot of variables so this number could go up or down some amount but we do anticipate the direction is going to be down overall. We're thinking about a $500,000 reduction to that retained earnings for FY20. And a lot of that is dependent on the consumption that we get from the college and universities. March consumption was way down because I think they left about halfway through March, April and May continue to be significantly down from where they normally are at this time. And when your consumption's down, it's good for the water supply but it's bad for the amount that we can bill and the revenue that can be generated for the enterprise fund. And so I think Guilford can speak to this a little bit more. I think he's starting to see the production start to pick back up a little bit for June and get back to maybe a normal level but on the billing side, at least through May, it's down quite a bit. And so that's the cause of the reduction FY20 and for FY21, if we hit our projected consumption of a million hundred cubic feet, then there won't be any more impact on the retained earnings. It'll actually go up $12,000 which is relatively basically a break-even. If our consumption comes in under that million for FY21, then we could start seeing another situation where we have a deficit. If it comes in higher, then things could turn more positive but it's another one of those variables just like the operating budget that until we know the plans of the university and what that's gonna look like even the schools and other things going on in town, it's gonna be a moving target trying to pinpoint what our consumption is gonna be next year. Okay, I have one follow-up question on that but before I do, Athena Dorothy is now in the attendee group and can she be brought in? I can't bring her in as a panelist while she's on the phone. So Dorothy, you'll just have to use that star nine button on your phone to raise your hand and then Andy can recognize you. Andy, I'll try and keep an eye out for her hand raised in the attendee side. Okay, and the follow-up question I was gonna ask is do we have any guidance as to what is the ideal percentage or number to have for the retained earnings and at what point do we have to start factoring in a plan to rebuild? That's a great question, Andy. So I've actually been looking at some other communities and online about what the guidelines and the financial policies are around their enterprise fund and most that I've seen recently are around between 10 and 20% as sort of the minimum reserve level that you'd like to have. And many of them speak about if you have large infrastructure projects coming up in the future, even getting up above that. So ours seem to be in a good range where they are now, but it is something that we'll have to keep an eye on if next year's consumption starts to come in lower, we'll have to consider what we need a plan to rebuild the reserves going forward. Okay, because that reserve number has always been a difficult subject with one of our enterprise funds one that Guilford doesn't like to talk about too much, but it'll be a future item in any event. Athena, do we need to do something in order to, because we can't confirm Dorothy as being able to hear us and be heard and count on? Oh, I'm hearing. And that's, oh, you are. Okay, who do I do? Okay. So, I allowed her to talk, but Dorothy, I'm going to mute your microphone. And if you have a comment or question, then you can use the star nine to raise your hand. I raised my hand just to check in. You see, I did star nine and I raised my hand first. We can see it. Okay, so then you can mute me. I don't have anything to say, but that means I can hear you. Okay, great. So I let the minutes show that we now have all members of the committee present and Dorothy has now joined the meeting. So Kathy, you had to hear your hand up. Kathy, you're still muted. I'm doing it the easy way. I'm just going to hold the space bar down. I mean, it may, I don't know whether everyone did a printed copy of what Sean just showed, but it might be good to put that back up, Sean, because I have a couple questions on different lines. Okay, so Andy just asked one of my questions on the retained earnings. I wanted to know what the budgeted other revenues are because they're helping this. And I went back to last year's budget book and I didn't see them, but a lot of things in this. So it's right under budgeted charges from user charges. Then we get 210, 210, just one number. Where does that come from? Yeah, I'll let Sonya or Guilford speak to it. It's non-user charges, so it's fees and I think revenue from liens and things of that nature, but I'll let them speak to it. I can speak to that. It's connection fees, water liens, interest in lake fees, grants, if there are any, and miscellaneous. So you've pegged in 210 all the way across because it's kind of stable and it's hard to predict. Is that what's going on? Yeah, it's a placeholder. Okay, so then my other question, and I'll go from this sheet back to debt. The way you've got the rates coming up 7.7, I did the rate increases all the way going across and there's, well, you can see it visually here, you know, the 7.7 and then something like that again in 2022, then not even a percentage point in 23 and then a jump by 20% in 24 and then another jump. So I'm just wondering whether these are just tentative for right now is part of the question because there's a jump in one year. And then when I went and looked at the debt table when we're paying off the study for Centennial and Centennial starts coming online, there's a jump in the debt, which you'd expect but it's three times in terms of the debt payments. It's a multiple of three off of what we were paying before. So I don't know if I thought out five more years, are we back to getting 4% or something like that or do we have to have some more jumps as we're, you know, so I'm trying to think of it interactively with Andy's question that if we don't get lucky in 2021 and we pull down more of the reserves then we don't have anything to fall back on to pay the debt. So then we have to pay with the rates. So this is where I just added, I just did all the debt service charge and divided it, you know, like from the beginning to the end and that's where I get it was about a multiple of three. So we're up at a pretty hefty debt charge when Centennial comes along about a million bucks. So it's interactive with do we need to worry about the reserves so that we can smooth out the rate or do some of the rates need to go up a little faster in the first three years and then what happens to 26 through the other is it kind of smooth out there? I don't need to know exactly what it is. So I can speak a little bit to that. So the rate, so there's two rates if you look on this first screen there's the rate needed and then there's the actual proposed rate. So beyond FY 21, you can kind of ignore the actual proposed rate. That's gonna be the plan that we bring to you every year. The rate needed is the one to actually look at in terms of if these are the expenses and keep this trend going forward or whatever rate we, the council approves is we'll have to cover this amount essentially. So Sean, can you highlight that with your cursor what you're looking at? I think so. So these are, this is what is needed to break even in the fund going forward and this factors in the Centennial plant debt payments and the operating budget going up a little bit each year and things of that nature. So we can, the council can decide to space it out differently in order to have it be a more a smoother glide to where it needs to be ultimately to pay the debt for the Centennial plant. And down below, you'll see sort of a possible plan but that's again, it's just sort of our thinking at this point. And I think your other question was about the debt. So the debt spikes in the first year the way it's set up right now is it's sort of an initial spike when the Centennial plant debt starts to be paid and then it's gonna be a declining payment from there. So you'll see it spike in FY24 and then it'll start going down a little bit each year over the next to believe 30 years. So it should start to smooth out at that point unless there's other capital projects that pop onto the radar or other debt funded capital projects that are after that. And the debt, just to confirm, yes, yeah, 30 years for the Centennial plant. And some of it, like the well number four will be paid off even sooner. So when that drops off, the debt will drop off a little bit. And some of these other ones, I don't have the full payment but some of these other debt obligations will drop off at some point after FY26 as well. Can I just stay on this page because that was the other question I had. Well, you've put in 4% and kinds of interest rates for the new debt and you and I had a quick conversation a couple of weeks ago right now, you can do much better than that with municipals. I mean, I don't know what it's gonna look like over the next couple of years but a big chunk of this debt repayment is interest, not principle. So I did have a general question because I know that town always does it in a way that it's a declining payment and I'm guessing, but I don't know when we were in a period of high interest rates it made sense to pay the principal office quickly as possible so you could avoid if we're in a world, if we stayed in a world with 2% going out 20 years, would we ever wanna consider going out to a more steady rate each year because we're getting such cheap money? So that's a more general question but these rates compared to what one could get if you were going out right now are on the high side. So we may be on the high side with the debt projection? Yeah, we typically try to be conservative especially when it's something that's not gonna be borrowed for two or three years from now but you're right, if they come in lower then these numbers will be adjusted for the actual debt schedule and we can work with our financial advisor to figure out the most advantageous way for the town to structure the debt going forward. This is to give you an idea of what the impact is gonna be of these new debt obligations in the future. Okay, I have one more question but I'm gonna let others jump in because it's on a slightly different topic. Okay, Pat, you have your hand up. Thank you. Pat, I think you muted yourself by accident. I muted myself, I'm sorry. I'm looking at the impact on debt for Centennial on the $11 million and just in a general way, how is this going to affect borrowing on all of the other town projects? How do we, how are these balanced? In terms of, so there's a couple of things we have to keep in mind. The debt ceiling, I'd have to double check. I'm not sure if the debt of the enterprise fund is subject to the same debt ceiling that we have to think about for non-enterprise fund debt but even if it was, we were so far below that debt ceiling with what we were looking at last time that it shouldn't have a huge impact. Because the main thing was that we found out last time with the debt ceiling is that MSBA funded projects, the school related debt is not subject to our debt ceiling. So when you take the school out and you're just looking at the library, the fire station, the DPW potentially or potentially all of them, we were still quite a bit below the debt ceiling. Thank you. Sean, I'll add that a lot of these projects for water and sewer fall into the outside the debt limit. So they wouldn't affect the debt limit at all. Okay. Thank you. Kathy, did you have follow up? As Andy mentioned, we had the sort of an educational seminar months or so ago on different ways one could set rates if we wanted to, that we could have a residential rate versus a commercial rate where the commercial rate was set higher for major users like a UMass. So we could not hit the small businesses. If we wanted to consider that, I was wondering at the timeline, because we had offered to get Guilford some, here are some possible scenarios that we might be interested in. And he said, if we did that then he could generate a, if you did that, this would be the impact of it. So if we wanted to do something like that or decide whether we wanted to, when should we be asking, sending something to you so we could have a discussion in the event we would want it to apply for FY22? You know, or for FY23, you know, as the centennials coming on and rates are jumping up, if we wanted to protect residents, some, you know, homeowners a bit more. So I just need to know like, would that have to be done in the fall so that you could think of the next year? How much in advance? Actually, if you did it sooner, like once you set the budget in August and you resolve, stop all the budgets or resolve the 21 budget, you did it right then after that meeting or right after that time period, that would be to give us the most time to talk about it. So the earlier, the better. So I think there were, I'm not sure which other counselors were interested in some, so if we got you a memo that reflect more than just one set of ideas on, you know, we just figure how to do this, Lynn, you know, we could do it in a finance committee meeting and then we could begin that discussion then. I would suggest we start that in a finance committee meeting and bring it to the full council. Okay. I think that it would be better to start in the finance committee first so that it's not quite as wide a viewership. One of the things that I'm concerned about is that right now, universities in a very difficult financial position and whether our discussing this might cause them to make decisions that would pull them away from our water system, which would be contrary to our interests. The other. Yeah, it would be alarming. Right. Yeah. And the other thing that I wondered about with this rate discussion, and again, it's not something for today. One of the reasons that Ted and Howard had said that communities should consider block rates really is not geared as far as I could tell necessarily towards those large-scale users but it's really to all users to try and encourage conservation. People just watering their lawns excessively and having a financial consequence to that decision, which is a homeowner question, that aspect of block rates, we need to have an idea as to whether the state is going to require us to move to that kind of rate structure and at what point and what it would begin to look like so that we can gain some understanding of it in advance. I don't know if Gilford or Amy have any indication as to when we might have to start thinking about that. Thinking about what the state's going to require, no. I mean, I think we still have probably other year before we get our permit, but we are required to give UMass a projected water rate memo by January. So if we started in August talking about this, we'd have until January to kind of work it out so we could preview it with UMass unless we decide not to preview it with UMass at that time. That's why we said that the timing might also be that we didn't think of it for 22, we might think of it for 23 or 24 when the, and I'm partly linking it to when you presented Centennial, we had those earlier studies that the extra use, the increased size of UMass was one of the reasons we needed increased capacity for water. So they were, well, clearly if they weren't here at all, used in this quarter, but it was not just a marginal cost, but it was a fixed cost impact on us because we needed another plant or another processing plant, the way I think about that extra amount of their growth. I think about it that way, but I also think about it the fact that we were trying to protect one of our water source areas because if we didn't bring Centennial back online, we would lose our permitting for that section of water that comes from the Pellum watershed and it was protecting that water source was part of it. Lynn, you had your hand up. Well, I find this interesting, I have to say, I don't think you're going to see the university stabilizing for at least a year, whether or not they're going to see the projections of increased enrollments, I think is completely out the window, all of the assumptions they were basing that on are gone and I really don't believe that the numbers that you would be dealing with that are past numbers are of any use to us at this point. So until you get stabilized numbers, I don't see how you can do a model. So other questions about water because otherwise we then to switch to the other enterprise fund. Okay, Sean, I'm going to share my screen again. Okay, so this is set up the same, so I won't go through the organization of it, but same thing at the top with the other revenue sources. The sewer fund is in a little bit rougher shape to the water fund and that's because the consumption isn't the same level as what water consumption is. You'll see, I'll show it when we get down to it, but whatever water consumption is, sewer is roughly 85% of that because not all water that gets pulled out of goes through the meter, ultimately it goes down to sewer, it could be watering grass or doing something else where it doesn't actually return. So there's a little bit bigger impact on the sewer fund. So there is, we are proposing using some of the reserves from the sewer fund to support this year's budget to sort of a one-time bridge to get us through. And that number is 158,652. If you go below that, you'll see the operating expenditures, which are going down pretty significantly and I'll explain what that is. There's the transfer to the general fund, which is the indirect cost again for administration or for town hall staff. And that's also being reduced. We reduced that amount a little bit on what it normally is. Again, it's sort of a temporary bridge to get us through the next year or so. And the expectation is that we'll go back up to where it normally is, but when you see these are all adjustments that we have implemented first before looking to rate because the rate increase again is sizable even with these adjustments. Current debts going on with proposed debt zero, but you'll see the new proposed debts coming online in FY23. Capital, we did reduce a little bit as well. That's the cash funded capital, went from 120 to 100. So if you go down to the rate needed, the rate needed for FY21 is for 60 and that's exactly what we're proposing. Below that, so for FY21, for the water fund we're projecting a million hundred cubic feet for consumption and the sewer when we updated basically how much of the water consumption ultimately comes back through the sewer. That number was updated for FY21 and it's been pegged at 85%. And so that generates to 850,000 units of consumption for the sewer fund. So with that times the rate that will get us to a break even for FY21. The retained earnings for the sewer starting beginning of FY20 was 2,147,683. Just like the water fund, we are projecting a deficit in FY20 because of the consumption and the projected units coming in lower than what we originally had based the budget on. And but going forward, again, we project that to stabilize if our units, if the consumption comes in where we're projecting for FY21. So this is again the breakout of expenditures. So on the personnel side, it's going up a little bit for the contracted salary increases. In the operating side, it's going down quite a bit and there's a few things that make up that decrease. So there is a, every enterprise fund has an OPEB contribution that reflects the staff and their future retiree benefits and the costs associated with those benefits. And so similar to the general fund where we had to reduce the OPEB contribution a little bit, we are proposing a reduction of about 100,000 to the OPEB contribution in FY21. So I think it was at 150,000 to start and it's gonna be brought down to 50,000 for a contribution. And again, the hope is that this is temporary when consumption stabilizes, we can bring that number back up. The other large drop was the indirect cost. So you can see down at the bottom, right here was 377 and we lowered that by about $100,000 for FY21. And we hope that we'll bring that back up in future years when consumption stabilizes, but it's another reduction that we can make and we're able to absorb on the general fund side on a temporary basis. Capital was brought down 20,000 and I'll show what makes up that amount on the last slide. So similar to the water fund, this is the debt schedule. So we have our existing projects up on the top and there are two larger projects coming up in the future. The gravity belt thickener is projected to start. The debt payments are projected to start in FY23 and that's a $2.3 million project and the reuse water is $5 million and that's also projected to start in FY23. And there may be some additional revenues that come out of the reuse water piece of this that can help out in the future. I'll let Guilford speak to that, but this is the expenditure side of that project. And then lastly, the sewer fund capital. So I believe there was a truck here as well. No, I don't think there was, sorry. Guilford, you may have to remind me reduced here on the capital side. There was a truck that was taken out and collection system improvements were both at 100,000 and we cut those in half. Okay, so we brought it back down. Okay, thank you. So we did trim out, pare down the capital of the sewer fund just like we did on the water side and left just certain amounts that we feel like we're gonna need for FY21. Andy, I'll leave this up on the screen, but... Yeah, I'll actually leave it up for a minute. And so I was gonna ask you to do a couple of things. One is for those who are unfamiliar with how our enterprise funds are structured to explain what the general fund transfers are with the purposes and what it's compensating, how it compensates the general fund. Yes, I'll give a quick overview and then I'll let Sonya talk about the specifics. So all the enterprise funds receive support from different departments that are paid from the general fund. And so there's a calculation done each year for all of the enterprise funds to generate an indirect cost and meant to reflect the services that the enterprise fund receives, again, they're indirect because they're hard to quantify, but we do a calculation each year and the enterprise fund will make that payment to the general fund. And so in turn, it helps lower the cost in the general fund because it provides an offsetting funding source. Okay. And the other thing I was gonna say, go down to the very bottom where you have the gravity belt thickener. There's two right there, wait a minute now. There was one other thing at the bottom where you had a reuse water, that's what it was. To explain what those two large items are and when the commitment was made to them. Giofer, do you wanna weigh in on that one? Sure. So the gravity belt thickener is actually a piece of equipment that's in the treatment plant now. What the wastewater plant does is take the waste, it processes it, it discharges a clean water and then it also makes a waste, a sludge waste. There's a device called the gravity belt thickener which takes this sludge waste and thickens it to not 8% solids, 6 to 8% solids. And then that waste is trucked off to the disposal site. The belt we have now is well over 15 years old, it's about 20 years old. We've been having some problems with it so we need to put in another one. So we're putting in a brand new one and keeping the old one as the backup. So this is actually an equipment replacement, it's nothing new in the system, it's just a replacement of an existing equipment. The reuse process is a process that we've been doing with UMass for about 15, 16 years now. We just right now provide water to them and then they treat it in a treatment train and then they use it on campus. It was always envisioned that as this process grew that it eventually would come to the town to manage and that we would treat our effluent water and clean it up a little more and then give it back to, or sell it to UMass, not give it, sell it to UMass and then they would use it for the processes they want to use it for. Right now, they use this water for boiler water, boil water, feed water, they use it for chilling water and then a little bit of irrigation. So this is water that allows us not to use potable water to do things that we don't need potable water for on water side and allows us to save our potable water for actually those uses. And I'll just add that the interest rates, there's zero here because the decimal formatting was messed up but the interest rates for both of these is 5% in that projection. Then remember the gravity belt thickness something was done by the former town meeting is invoking a commitment, I assume they both were and we just don't remember the other. Well, the last town meetings voted the money for the engineering design for the gravity belt thickness. But so we haven't actually made the commitment yet on the equipment itself. No, we're still in the design process and we'll be done probably fall and we'll be ready to actually start installing, we'll be ready to bid it out in the winters for spring, summer reconstruction if we're ready. So we'll just come back to the council to authorize the debt. In this budget, well, in the full budget you'll get, there'll be an item for the debt, for the reuse and for the gravity belt thickener. Okay, so we can save it until then. For further discussion, I'm recognizing Kathy and Lynn as having raised hands, so Kathy. Okay, I think Guilford was starting to answer that as I read this page and look above for where you've said future debt. The only debt we see right now in terms of the rate computation is for the design of the belt thickener. We don't yet see, I'm trying to ask this as a question. Am I correct? We don't yet see the impact of the actual equipment and the reuse water. So. That's correct. And if we saw them, what year would they, given your planning cycle, when would they hit in terms of an additional debt in the sewer farm? What year would it be? We're thinking it'll be 23. It'll be at least a year and a half, probably of construction to get this installed. So it'll be 23 when the first debt payments probably show up. So then we should think of the 23, 24, 25 user charges needed, rate needed. Those do not in any way yet reflect this additional debt. So they will be higher unless we have a lot of reserves that can avoid it. Is that correct? No, it's not. Once we work out a, what UMass and this, well, what we're willing to sell and UMass is willing to pay for the reuse water, there'll be a new revenue stream from the reuse water coming into the sewer system right then. Would just be the gravity belt thickener that would affect the rate then? Correct. Okay. And that is not in the current rate yet. I mean, it's not current rate. It's the 23, 24, 25 rate. Correct. What is the thing that Sean just highlighted? Can I chime in here? Yeah, go ahead Sonya. So, Guilford, it was my understanding that the, that the debt was not going to come and play for the gravity belt thickener until 23. However, and it wouldn't show up in the budget until 22 as a borrowing authorization. No, it needs to show up in this budget. It needs to show up in the 21 budget. We'll be done with design in this year and we need to move forward. Okay, we'll show up this year. That's news. And Andy, what I'm highlighting is, so we do have the increased debt payments from those two projects projected here. So the impact on the rate, you can see an FY22 to FY23 when that new debt goes in, you can see the big impact on the rate needed. Now, if there's a new revenue source, once we figure out how much and what that new revenue source looks like, that will either, it'll either be considered a user charge or it'll probably affect the user charge side and we'll have to put a new line in here. But whatever that revenue is projected at will help lower what the rate needed is for everybody else. Sean, I thought Guilford just said the thickener equipment is not yet in these, you know, when I looked at that other sheet that showed new debt, it only showed the design debt. It didn't have anything called the thickener, the machine itself. As you look at this 646 right here in the total proposed debt service, that shows up right here. So both, so this does capture everything in the out years. Well, I think, I may have heard Guilford wrong, but I thought what he was saying is that neither of those are factored into our current rates because the debt hasn't begun. So our current rates don't reflect that debt, but the rate down here when we're kind of forecasting out into the future, this 555 out in FY23, this does include the estimated debt payments for those two projects. Lou? First of all, thank you for that clarification because I wasn't quite sure how I heard it. You said in the water presentation, and now I'm gonna ask the same question in the sewer. Obviously usage, et cetera, went down in March, but you said for water, it's starting to return to what will be a normal looking June, I gather is what you were saying? Yeah, Guilford sees the production side before I sort of see it on the billing side. So I'll let Guilford speak to what he's seeing in terms of June on the production side. So my question is the same for both water and sewer. How do they compare to previous Junes? So we build a sewer based on a percentage of water usage. So if water usage comes back up to what where our normal usage is, our billing for sewer will be back at that normal rate as well. So are we seeing an increase use on water and sewer? We are, we're seeing, we're back to normal, our normal production of water is about two million gallons a day, and that's what we're seeing, and that's what we base our billing on both those on. And that would be normal compared to last June? That's normal compared to a summer for Ramhurst, yes. Yeah, got it. Okay, and then my other question really also goes back to something you said with water, and then I think I heard it again here, and that is that you're paying less out of here than I was for retirement. I can't remember where, but it's because it's coming, the making it up from the general fund. So I'm just trying to figure out. Yeah, it's a little bit different. So this isn't the case in the water fund, but in the sewer fund, this line here transferred to the general fund, which represents indirect costs. Yeah. So in FY 20, you can see it was 377. We've dropped that down to 280. So we still are calculating the full indirect costs that the enterprise fund owes the general fund, but we're basically forgiving a portion of it on a temporary basis. And then once we get through this sort of temporary consumption impact due to COVID-19, we'll bring it back up to where it's supposed to be. So, and just one final question. It's really around our retirement of reimbursements and are we with these enterprise funds, are we in a similar situation as we are with the overall general town fund where we're actually ahead of many towns in terms of their payback? Yeah, the enterprise funds, I don't know about how we compare to other enterprise funds, but my understanding is that the enterprise funds have actually been funding their full ARC, which is the, I won't get the acronym right, but the annual required contribution or actuarial something contribution. They're actually funding what they're supposed to each year to keep the liability from growing even bigger. But this year, we're not funding at that water at least. In the sewer or not, and water we're keeping leaving it alone and sewer we're reducing it by 100,000. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I'm looking to see if there are other questions about what we've heard so far regarding the rates is if I don't see any, there's one other item. I don't know if you have it, Sean, I have it on mine, but if you have it when that is the proposed order for water and sewer rates. That I don't have, not readily available at least. Okay, I can take a look to see where I have it. And then maybe Sonia can look for it a little bit more quickly than I can. But okay, I think actually I did find it. So I now just need to get to the share screen and I can put it up just to see if anybody has any questions about it. So I think that it should be fairly straightforward order. And I just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that we had it. We do need to vote on it. We can vote on it today. If members of the committee are comfortable, it is not necessary because I think that the plan is for it to come before the council on the 29th of this month, which is the last Monday. But it's fairly straightforward order. So I wanted to have you have a chance to look at it and see if there are any questions about it. Andy, I don't know, did you share your screen yet? Cause I'm not, there's nothing up yet. And when you tried to do agenda, it never did show. So we just all pretended we were looking at it. That's interesting because I thought that I had done share and that we'll try again, but see what we can, if we know if that did it or not. It's working, it's starting, it's up now. Okay. So I'll just leave it for just a moment and see if there are any. So if anybody else can note notes that there's somebody who has a raised hand, I can't say that the moment. Kathy has her hand. Kathy. You're muted still, Kathy. Okay. My question is if we, when we vote on this, we still have enterprise funds scheduled for review of the budget for the FY21, the full budget. So this in effect sets the revenue stream for the fund and to both these funds. And so in this voting, are we accepting kind of the whole package on the rates, which I think the answer is yes. And then when we talk about this in July, are we going to focus on out years, different variations, so not go into how many trucks are there, things like that, because in this year they're wiped out. So I'm just trying to understand the interaction between this decision and then the time slot we have for enterprise funds in July. If to remember that we're in somewhat of an unusual year. Yeah, I know. Under normal circumstances, we would have had the budget to start reviewing by on May 1st and we would be doing it during the month of May. And then we would be here into June, setting the water rate and there would be after the fact. This year, you are correct. We are doing it in reverse order because we don't really have any choice. I wasn't questioning reverse order. I was just trying to understand what we will be talking about when we come back to this in July because we've had a reasonable robust. I have last year's budget book and it has a lot more information on how many people work on the fund, what they do, electricity costs are really high on operating these funds. We've got a lot of information in the budget book. So is that where we will focus in July? So it's purely, I understand why we're doing it in reverse. Yeah, we could focus on any questions that come up between now and then we can focus on. We'll have the budget books ready and available and updated and I'm sure that we can go through as well. Some of the data that's in the budget books on staffing and plans for the future. There's also information on goals and progress made towards those goals and future goals and things of that nature. So we can review a lot of that information. Okay, that was my question because in my mind we're basically setting the revenue parameters right now when we vote on the rates and then everything else is. And I'm partly asking this, as you all know, we agreed that we'd take some focuses and each of us taking an area of the budget and mine is enterprise funds. So I'm trying to reverse thing of what other questions will I have that won't have us just repeating what we just did, focus in different areas. Okay, that's helpful. Lynn? Yeah, a couple of things. The reality is we have to set these rates now unlike a couple of other things we've been able to delay. But I actually would prefer that we go ahead and move on these today and make a motion. I don't have the number correct up there anymore. So maybe Andy, you want to give me the words for the motion and it's to recommend this order to the council. The motion would probably be to recommend proposed order FY 21-10 what are sewer rates to the council for approval? I so moved. I second. So there's a motion that's been made in second. Any discussion on the motion? I just want to say I'm astounded that we've been able to figure it out this way and hopefully it will serve us throughout the year and we don't see any really serious deficit. I think that's a good work. And I had actually expected to see, I was doing how much the use had plunged. I expected to see, you know, 30% off or something. So it's down, but it's not the magnitude I had feared. So before we take a vote on it, there's one question that we've always still have Guilford namey present this. We had a lot of discussion that was very good on May 1st about water rates, block rates and different alternatives for rate structure. Do most communities have flat rates for sewer rates and are there alternatives, similar alternatives to the water rate that a council might want to consider in future years? Most places charge a flat rate for sewer. Places that do not charge a flat rate have a much more varied infrastructure in town where they'll have more industry or they'll have more different types of commercial bases that use water differently. And those rates are usually set based on the strength of the wastewater that is given back to the wastewater facility, where if you're a food processor and you add a lot of biological oxygen demand to the waste, they charge you more. And it's basically the strength of the wastewater that sets those rates. So it's not something that we would likely consider here. No, although there's been a lot of discussion about the fact that stale beer causes the wastewater system not to work very well. And considering we're a very high beer consumer, that might be something to think about. Yeah, but I won't get to decide who to charge. Is there any other questions or particular getting back to the motion that's now been made and seconded? So seeing no requests for comments, do any of our resident members who will not be voting have anything that they would like to say at this point to indicate that they would like reflected in the minutes regarding this motion seeing no hands on that. Then I'm just going to go through for a roll call vote as required because this is a remote location meeting. Hello, I just got muted. Oh, Dorothy. Sorry, I unmuted you, Dorothy, because we're going to do a roll call vote. Okay, well, I had done star nine several times. So I don't think that works. It didn't make my, I had done star nine four times. So I, because I don't know what you're seeing visually, but I'm just letting you, I'm just informing you that it didn't work. And I think I remember somebody else who came in on the phone in a previous meeting, maybe not finance said that it didn't work either. So I'm not sure it's a good system. But okay, so I'm unmuted for the vote. Yeah. Do you have questions you intended to ask? Well, I did, I did have a couple of questions. Number one, I'm surprised that the usage in June is the same as last June, because I've been reading that local water and sewer rates were getting much more use now when people in quarantine. So that's a confusion. I did want to say that I really like a lot of the way that the water and sewer are being managed, which is, I would say visionary in that looking to see what is available, what taking advantage of possibilities when they can still get them, which involves keeping that other client up and being aware of future needs. But it also also not trying to sell the old Fickner belt, but keeping it as a backup. So I like those conservative and yet visionary aspects, but I am worried about cutting the OPEB as much as you are because the answer that Sean gave was not that we're giving enough. It was, we're giving what was required and what is required is way too low to ever keep the up to date on OPEB things. And there's only some reason to not pay OPEB, like all those trucks that are being deferred now. So I guess I would prefer not to make that big a cut in the OPEB, but I think I got this hung up. You know, can you hear, you can still hear? I can hear you. I can hear you. Yeah, we're hearing you too. So do not, do not fear. I had these questions way back in the appropriate time in the, Well, one was appreciate the kind words that you had to say on behalf of those who were managing the system, but you did have a couple of questions in there too. One was, you said you were surprised about usage. In fact, just coming up in June, even with the university shut down because you thought that people are home. They're not going out. They're not going to work. They're, you know, they're, they're home. And I've been in many other communities. There's an increase of water and sewer rate because people are in their home rates or usage. I think you mentioned usage. I'm at usage. Well, right now usage is normal and it's because people are home and all the students are gone. Every year in May, the students leave and we're left with the population that's usually here the year round. So that's why we're pretty much at normal usage right now. Okay, but I, but you know, we have certainly been home using our own water and sewer way more than we would normally. So I just thought other people would be too, but was that, okay. My other point that I had really was besides I was appreciating the forward-looking and yet conservative practices, but was wanting to be a little more conservative on the OPEB because that's, the amount that you have to put in is never going to get you there. It's actually the minimum that you pay on a credit card. It's never going to get your principal paid down. Yeah, so coming from the finance world, you never like to cut things like contingencies and building for the future. So we didn't look at it this year because we do feel that this is sort of a temporary blip. Hopefully the consumption will recover and we can get back on track in the very near future. But so we still are making a contribution. We didn't cut it completely. Right. And when we do get it back up to where it is, again, we're not where it's supposed to be on an annual basis or it has been for several years and then we'll get it back there as soon as we can. Okay. But supposed to be is full funding. And I know that supposed to be is not always called full funding. It's just, there's a lot of practices in OPEB which are not really solid is what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean, it's a large liability that with most large liabilities you make a plan to fully fund it over many years. And so the RFI funds have been doing a good job of sticking to a plan. I just think this is such an unusual year that we had to be. Yes. We probably should have a full OPEB discussion as a part of the general budget discussion when we're looking at the FY21 budget as a whole. Well, the other thing we're in the process of getting our OPEB update as well we're working with our actuaries right now to get our liability revalued and all those reports. So we could talk about OPEB in the near future we'll also be able to bring you back an updated report. Very nice. Very good. I think that's really important Andy too because the practice since this is really paying it's putting money into reserves and the practice in the United States, I mean, we are still paying people's retiree health benefits where it's a pay as it's been pay as you go. So trying to explain what it is and what it isn't would be good. And to talk about what the corporate world isn't doing on this in terms of pre-funded for what the Medicare program itself isn't doing on this. You know, I just think it would be a good discussion just to provide a context for what OPEB is. Yeah. Yeah, it's a complex subject and it's one that's worth having for this committee because Mary Lou and Sharon and I having been on the prior finance committee had some involvement in that discussion previously going back to Sandy Pooler and but it's been a while and there's a lot of those of you who have not had that discussion is what is the long range plan? Because it really is in part balanced out against the retirement fund. And of course the other question is whether the retirement fund is not going to be fully paid as quickly as we had originally anticipated and have us to balance out. And that's a complex topics. So we had motion on the floor. Let's get on with it and then we can move into the capital plan. So I'm going to do roll call vote. Pat D'Angeles. Yes. Lynn Guzmer. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yeah. And I'm voting yes. So it's five to zero. And we have now recommended the order. So let's turn to the capital plan. So I don't know, Paul or Sean, you just want to jump in and describe it. So I can bring up the same presentation as of last night or I can just describe the plan. Essentially the recommendation for FY 21 was to put $530,000 in roads, $170,000 into sidewalks, $63,000 would come from other revenues and that would be used for downtown improvements. And then we would also have the chapter 90 money, which is about $800,000 if it's approved by the state that could be used for roads as well. Would it be helpful if I bring up that presentation from last night, Andy, or do we just want to answer questions? I'll let other people, if somebody else requests, Lois, we can just keep going. And Dorothy, if you need to ask a question and because we were having the problem with raised hands, say something verbally. I think it was my fault because I had left her on a loud attack. So I've fixed that. So the star nine function should be working again. Sorry about that. Okay. I'll share my screen, Andy, just to get the projects on the screen. So for those of you who were at the meeting last night or watched it, this is the presentation from last night to the council, which was then referred back to us. So as you can see, and if you've read Paul's memo, it's explained pretty clearly within the memo, budgeted reserve, and then the rest for roads and sidewalks downtime. So you're calling it downtime improvements here? Yeah. I mean, so we anticipate that some of it will be sidewalks but there may be other improvements to the downtown, like lighting and ride bicycle sharing and things like that. And this is the full plan. Andy, would you like me to pull up the order for this? In a minute, let's see if there are any questions. Just give a moment to get questions and then pull up the order that goes with it. Bob? Yeah, thanks. I just have a general question about the specific projects that are going to be funded. And the question is, how are those prioritized? I mean, I understand where the budget comes from, but once we have the budget, then we're gonna work on specific projects. And what's the process for prioritizing that? Is that the amount of the JCPC or is that done through Mr. Bachmann's office or Mr. Moreing's office? Andy, do you want me to answer that? Yeah, why don't you go with the John? So there's sort of what happens in a normal year and then there's what happened this year. So in a normal year, there's a lot of work that's done by all the department heads around their five year plans and the projects they want for the upcoming year, requesting for the upcoming year. They meet with the town manager and the finance office and we develop sort of a preliminary plan. And then that plan is presented to the Joint Capital Planning Committee where we look for their recommendation. And usually the requests outweigh the funding sources. So there is a prioritization that has to happen in order to get the request down to what we can actually fund. And so that does happen at the JCPC level in a normal year. And then that recommendation is made to the town manager and he has a certain amount of time to review the recommendation from JCPC. If it's in alignment with what he's hearing and what his vision is for the future. And then he'll make the final decision on what the capital improvement program looks like and what's presented to the town council who ultimately will vote on that capital improvement program. So in a normal year, there is some prioritization that happens before Joint Capital Planning Committee. Then there's a lot that happens during that point. And then even more that happens once it goes to the town manager. This year, there were only a couple of specific projects that were approved because the funding was so limited compared to what it normally is. It's about half of what it normally is. So the only specific projects that came from cash capital which is what we typically focus most of our attention on are roads and sidewalks. And the reason why we prioritize roads and sidewalks is because we know that no matter, for the most part, regardless of what happens with universities or our local elementary and middle and high school and with state home orders and things like that in the fall, which we don't know what that'll look like yet, we still can proceed with work on roads and sidewalks. And combining that with just knowing how high a priority roads and sidewalks have been for the town, we thought it was prudent to keep making progress on roads and sidewalks and not fall behind. And then so the rest of the money that was available after roads and sidewalks we put into the capital reserve fund. And for now it's gonna be there as sort of a safety net in case there's any urgent projects that come up in the next few months. And our plan is for the joint capital planning committee to get back together in the fall and potentially allocate funds from that capital reserve to specific projects. If we feel like things have stabilized in the local economy and things are starting to come back. If not, we may wanna keep that capital reserve for the rest of the year. So really there will be much more work done in the fall than what we typically do. We don't typically meet that early with the joint capital planning committee but since this is an unusual year we are gonna have to come back and revisit the plan in the fall. Kathy? Yeah, I just wanted to add to what Sean said which was excellent Bob, you would normally see lots of line items here, a truck, a boiler system. So in the JCPC report working with staff, including of course Sean was leading it, we set up some criteria for what would rise to the top for use of that reserve. And then Paul is put in charge of the reserve but he has to, my understanding is he would have to come to the council to be actually spending out of it. So it's both a decision making on what rises the top. So some of the things that were postponed or delayed were bets that they could be replaced but they could last a year. They weren't at the, it's gonna fail. So there were some potential things that are at risk. So that's the come back to it in the fall and this, people should correct me. This was, this is a one time way of handling it is what we were faced with with setting up the reserve fund by 22. We may or may not have the money that's projected here but we could start earlier and be back to saying here is the list of things that we're recommending. Yep, that was definitely the intent. Yeah, though I thought that the plan was is that Paul would report proposed expenditures to the council, but that it was not set up to require council approval to make the expenditures. Sonya can probably weigh in but I think what we had settled on is that because the capital reserve doesn't have enough specificity in terms of it's not targeted towards any specific projects that we would wanna bring into the council for approval for whatever specific projects need to be funded. And then we would report any of those expenditures to the joint capital planning committee in the fall to bring them up to speed with what projects have been funded from the capital reserve. But we do anticipate at this point that if we do need to spend from that capital reserve we would bring it to the council. And again, it would typically be on an urgent basis. So it's not something we necessarily are planning to do at this point, but that was the plan last we discussed it. Yeah, Sean, I'll add to that. We're actually required to go back for an appropriation with the council. It's just a budgeted reserve, kind of like a free cash that goes away at the end of the fiscal year. So you do have to go to council with an appropriation to spend it. But it's not a new appropriation. So you don't have to do all the public forums and all that to re-spend it. It's been budgeted for this purpose. Well, let's go, let's bring up the order because then we both can get it on the screen and I can ask my follow-up question on that just to get sure that we all understand it. I'm gonna bring it up right now. Does that look okay or should I try to fix the view? No, I think that's okay. Actually gets the whole thing onto one page. Then I'm gonna have to go back in the second look at the participant list, but I get to my point first. The order lists a capital program in the boxes that are in the table that's below. And it talks about equipment, building facilities, but it's all listed under facilities. Right, because it just rose in the fly box. Facilities is sort of a term that's been used in the past. That's not a great descriptive term but it typically covered the non-building, non-equipment projects. So facilities was sort of the catch-all for everything else. And that's what you did this year. Yeah. With last year in town meetings, there was always sequential votes on equipment facilities and buildings. Right. And then there was a listing of what was below, but I had been always under the understanding that the town manager, if there was an overage in one item and another item came in at a different price, then it never had to go back to anybody because it was just as long as it fit into the category for which it was appropriated equipment, building your facilities. I'll let Sonia describe that more. I know on the school side, we had budgets for specific projects. And if you came in under, then you would turn that back. You turn whatever was left over back and then that could eventually be re-appropriated. But I'll let Sonia describe that. No, Andy, you're correct. The way we used to vote at town meetings is we would vote three separate categories. And as long, and you would have a list under each category. And if one was over, costs more and one came in under, you had the flexibility to move that within those projects. Now we vote it as one number in all categories, which gives us even more flexibility. But what we are voting here is a budgeted reserve, which is meant for us to be able to go back and appropriate from something, if an emergent came from, it's a funding source. It's different than voting it to a separate project. Okay, so kind of see if I can figure out where the roads don't fit in under a specific, you didn't have a separate listing. Roads are under facilities. Everything is under facilities. Yeah, facilities doesn't mean, I mean, at least the way it's been in the past, it doesn't mean facilities. You would think, you know, facilities and buildings are sort of synonyms, but that's not the way JCPC has been done in the past. I stayed with the program. It probably should be infrastructure. How would other communities have dealt with it within their orders? Roads and sidewalks would typically be infrastructure. Okay, and then the last, I'm gonna ask one additional question, then I said, nobody else has raised hands right now. I thought that I had read on the MMA website within the past week, that the legislature is working on chapter 90 and that there's even discussion about a 50% increase. And... Yeah, I mean, last I saw was, I think the Senate, the Senate of the House did approve the increase, but it's not finalized yet. It's still gotta be voted by the other Senate of the House and that ultimately approves into the budget. So if that was actually approved in that fashion with a 50% increase, would that equal a 50% increase for every city in town or is there a formula that might skew that additional fund distribution? I don't know, is Guilford still in the room? Probably not. I am not sure about that, but we can get that answer. Yeah, because I mean, the only difference it would make is since we know we have to use it for a purpose, it would increase available funds for the purposes that we can use chapter 94. Kathy, you're muted. I'm doing it. Thank you, Andy, for focusing on this table. So since facilities is our code word for roads and sidewalks. It's not a new thing, just for the record, that's not... No, no, no, but what we all think is in that line is roads and sidewalks based on the table. Does this, since I also know at the JCPC discussion, the reason, the strong reason for breaking them out was that we can then start contracting in July and August and get some of this worked on when the season allows it. Does the town manager with this language would there be an ability to spend that line on a facility rather than roads and sidewalks or does this allocate it specifically? Because I'm looking over on the other side, the words, it says installation of replacement of equipment, repair, improvement of buildings. It actually doesn't ever say roads and sidewalks anywhere over here on the words. So I'm just wondering whether, given the unusualness of this year, do we need to in the B the order at least have the words roads and sidewalks, street repair, something there? Because installation of newer replacement equipment or repair or improvement of buildings or the repair or improvement of facilities. So that's my question. I don't think Paul would be spending it on anything else because the roads and sidewalks are so urgent. I can answer some of that. In the past, even in the present, whatever is on the JCPC, usually the breakdown of what our capital program is in the JCPC and it gets booked by that breakdown. So in our general ledger, it will get booked the way the JCPC report spells it out with the adjustment that Paul made, of course, with his recommendation. So you will see that under roads and you will see the other amount under sidewalks. And that, and we can only move money around to projects that were listed in the JCPC report. Okay. So it's not, we can't just spend it on anything else. No, I didn't think so. And it's, as you said, Paul's memo, JCPC actually spent somewhat less on the road sidewalk category and more on reserve, but his cover memo explained that he was going back to a 50% split. So that, that modifies the JCPC wording a bit, you know, just dollar a mouth, you know. And our auditors and the DRR, they go through all of this, they go through the reports and all of our financials have to pretty much reflect what the report said. So it's, there's not a lot of moving around. Okay. So are there any other questions that people have about the entire subject, including proposed order 21-05A capital program? I'm just going to unmute Dorothy in case she's having trouble again. No, I have no other questions. I think Kathy asked the ones I would have asked. Okay. One more detail. So again, this is not on a council agenda until the 29th. So if people want more time, they can have it. On the other hand, if you feel that there's sufficient understanding from last night's meeting and forum and from today's discussion to go forward, we could have a motion to recommend appropriation order 20 FY 21-05A to the town council. Lynn, I see your hand up. So moved. Second, the Angeles. There's been a motion that's been made and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? I assume that Lynn's hand being up is just because it was up from before. Lynn, did you have anything else you want to say? No, I'm trying to lower my hand, but I don't think I can. All right. Is there anything that any of the resident members of the committee would like to say before I do roll call vote regarding the motion on the floor? Seeing no request for comments, I'll go through the roll call vote on the motion to recommend to the council appropriation order 21-05A. So, Pat? Yes. Lynn? Yes. Kathy? Yes. Dorothy? Yes. And I'm voting yes. So again, it's five to zero. And we have recommended that. The other thing that was on the agenda as far as appropriations was concerned was that we still have the regional school proposal and we do have at least one order for that. There's actually maybe one missing, but Kathy, you had asked some questions. Sean, Sean had dumped some investigation regarding the funds that had been referred to in the presentation. Just a question of whether you wanted to explain what you had asked to the rest of the committee. No, he was terrific. Last time Lynn had asked some questions, we'd focused on, we heard about a bunch of different kinds of reserve funds, one for special ed, one for capital, and then a more general. So I said, could you tell us what's actually in each of them, you know, and was I missing any? So Sean checked with Doug and I can read them off and then what I could do is just forward the email that Sean sent to me to everyone so you have in your records, but the Capital Stabilization Fund has about $475,000 in it, the Special Ed Stabilization Fund has 98,000 and the more general emergency and other fund has 1.253 million, which is about 3.8% of the total budget. So I will forward that because I think it's good information for us to have when we're thinking of the regional school budget overall. So if you add them all up, you get to about 1.8 million, but two of them are restricted to only be used in only be used for capital and only be used for special ed. So there's only one general reserve, the way we would think of reserve that has literally been called that. Am I right to the extent the end of the year budget for the regional school districts come in under, that would be free cash or that would be where we, you know, when the final counting happens. Yeah, E&D is the general reserve that you described and that stands for access and deficiency and so that acts as the free cash for the region. So whenever revenues come in higher than they budgeted or if expenses come in lower than what they budgeted, whatever that difference is at your end goes to E&D and it has to be certified just like the town gets its free cash certified. There's a report that has to be done for the Department of Revenue and they ask for all this information and they check all the numbers. So it's pretty much identical to free cash just for a regional school district. Okay, any questions on that or other questions that people have regarding the region budget? There are three pieces to the- And it has your hand up, Andy. I finally did it. Oh, okay, Lynn. So, Andy, can we just recount when the other town meeting or when the town meetings are for the three towns and what we know about them? We know two of them are the last Saturday of the month, it's the 27th. Okay. That's Schuetsbury and Pelham. And have you heard a date for Lugert yet, Sean? I have not, but I'm gonna look it up right now and see if there's anything about it. Yeah. They post something on their website because I talked to their select board chair, but that's been several weeks ago and they had not as of then. So this says that their annual town meeting is June 20th at 9 a.m. outside of the Leverett School. So they have scheduled. So they're going first. Yep. We're scheduled to vote it on the 29th. So we could make recommendations at any time. I did see a proposed order for the assessment method. I'm not sure that I saw a proposed order for the appropriation or budget approval. Well, I've got it right here. Andy, I'll share my screen again. Yeah, all three of them are together. You just need to scroll down. Okay. So this first one is the assessment method. I'll come back to it. The second one is the budget itself and the last one, depending on how the finance committee and the council want to proceed is the debt authorization. And I'll go back to the top. So let's actually go to the second one for a second because I wanted to make sure. So this is the one that's the budget approval. Yep. So we don't actually have an order that appropriates the funds in the dollar room. Is it involved here? Yes. And this outlines the total budget for the region, but also the Amherst share based on the assessment method above. It's got it in the second line. It's pretty small, but it's sitting there. I can make it a little bigger, sorry. And then the third one is good on the capital. Yep. And the third one is the debt authorization for what the school committee approved for capital for next year. And this is the one that we do nothing we're bound to it anyway. Yeah. So if you don't act on this within 60 days of when it was voted, which was May 26th, then it's considered to be approved by that town. So if none of the towns act on it, then it's approved. So we can either approve it or do nothing and either of those have the same function. Right. And this was reduced quite a bit from their original vote. So my understanding is this really kind of represents their highest priority for capital projects. Okay. Questions from the committee. Go back to make sure that I can spot any Lynn. I guess, Andy, this just goes back to that question of, do we want to be voting before the other town meetings? So the council, the council won't be. Yeah, the council would be holding off unless we move to the council vote to a different date. No, we'll keep the council on the 29th. Yeah. There's no reason because there's nothing binding. We haven't bound the town if the finance committee makes a recommendation beforehand. The difficulty we're going to have is that through the town meetings, if we want to wait to see what the town meetings do, the finance committee won't necessarily be meeting between the afternoon of the 27th and the evening of the 29th. Right, because we're meeting on the 23rd, so we would still be before two of the towns are meeting. Or we could have a quick finance committee voted at six o'clock on the 29th. Yeah, I just want to throw out there that we were kind of hoping that we wouldn't have to have a finance committee meeting next week so that we could get through the budget book since we voted the sewer rains already and we don't really... And it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't, I always kind of come back to this. I don't really know if it matters because every town's gonna be voting on this exact same language. This is what the school committee approved. So whether you wait to see how they vote, you're still gonna have to vote on this language. And for this language to get modified, the school committee would have to change what they, you know, what they're gonna give to the towns. So I think that the only thing that would cause us to even consider the result would be if one of the other towns, we happen to know, voted no on the assessment method. And then required us to go to the statutory method would that cause us to do anything different? I don't think it would, again, if that happened, the budget would essentially fail because the school committee voted specific assessments and that's what you're voting here. And so if they were to switch methods, the, you wouldn't be voting this assessment amount. It would be something completely different. And again, that would have, the school committee voted, to my work, you know, they did it the same way they've done in the past, which I believe they did, they vote a specific method when they vote the budget. They say, this is the budget and this is the method that we are approving. So essentially the other towns don't vote whether or not to do the statutory method, they vote whether to do the alternative method. And if that fails, it goes back to school committee. And you're not picking up any waves out of any of the other, any of the three towns. Not for this year. I mean, all, when with the COVID-19 and the level funding of the budget, I believe all the other towns ended up even better off than where they were before because Amherst assessment was brought down to the level of what it was prior. And for the other towns, I believe that dropped them all even more. So I haven't heard anything for FY 21. And I believe, you know, the one town that sort of set out some guidance, I believe Shootsbury had set out some guidance of a certain level of reduction that they were expecting. And I believe that the assessment that they are voting on satisfies that guidance that they had provided. And we should go ahead and move. Yep. Do you want me to go to the top, Andy? Do you want to do separate votes or do you want to do them all three together? I was wondering if we could do them all three together if there's a way to word it to, because they're all under 2103, aren't they? They are 2101. 2102 and 2103. Yeah, last one, 2103. And they all had separate numbers just like last year. I mean, we could, I can make an amendment if you want. Yeah, we don't need to. I think we can, we could probably do a vote in a single motion that whether the finance committee recommends to the council approval of orders 21 FY 2101, FY 2102 and FY 2103, that could be made as a single motion. I'll move. So those motions are second. Second. Second. Okay, there's motion that's been made and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion? Any comments from members, the resident members of the committee before we vote, seeing no request for recognition, I'll go through roll call vote. I'm just going to do it in the same order that I did it before. Pat? Yes. Lynn? Yes. Kathy? Yes. Dorothy? Yes. And I'm voting yes. So it's again, five to zero. And I think that takes care of the three orders that were being presented. And I therefore just need to go back for a moment to the agenda, which I'm not at the moment sharing. So to see if there was anything else that we had wanted to talk about, there is no public to have public comment today. One thing that we didn't list, if we're not going to meet next week, then there's two consequences. One is that I have to notify ECAC that it's not an available week and I will be willing to do that. The other thing that I wanted to just mention briefly is that we had assigned to have people be prepared to ask questions when the budget came forward to spend a little bit more time on each section. And I'm not going to name names or point to anyone, but it's come to my attention that somebody already jumped the gun and asked questions based upon the FY20 budget and that hadn't been anticipated. And I think cut the staff on surprise because it wasn't an anticipated method. What we were really looking for is to, it went to everybody to keep going forward. It was helpful, I'm sure, to the individual that they were able to get some understanding. But what we were trying to do is be efficient, as efficient as possible with the meetings that we're going to have with each department had to have one person who is gonna at least have gone through the budget in detail, really understand it and really be prepared to ask good questions at the meeting. I don't, this is a question for Sean and Sonia. If somebody has developed questions in advance, is it better to send them to the department heads through you in advance or should I wait till the meeting? Yeah, I would encourage you to, if you have your questions or first round of questions, yeah, you can send them to Sonia or I and we can make sure they get to the department heads. I suggest in advance that they'll just, it'll give them more time to prepare a robust response to whatever the question is. So yeah, I would suggest if you have them in advance, get them to us and we'll make sure the department heads are thinking about them. Okay, Mary Lou had done a little bit of a memo and I don't know if they got around to everybody. Mary Lou, you have your hand up. I think it is also important that any questions we submit to Sean or Sonia that they also go to you. So you know, I know what's out there, what's going on. I think that's really critical. So I'm going to put forward that suggestion. Okay, thank you and I appreciate that. So why don't we do that, but let's make sure they go to all three and then Sean and Sonia can determine whether they have answers based upon their own knowledge already or whether they need to forward it to the other staff who might be helpful in answering the questions. But if you do have anything that's available in advance, what's going to happen of course is that by 29th we're going to get the budget book that will come from Paul at the council meeting on that Monday. And then at that point, we'll be able to go through the FY21 budget book and tailor our questions very specifically to that budget book. And we all know the schedule. It's been posted and so if you're trying to get it in advance, those who are on the first day have a little bit of a tighter timeline. Tuesday is just general questions and that's because it's so quickly after that there's no way to prepare for do the kind of preparation that we're talking about here. And of course, as always, every member of the committee should be looking at every section of the budget and be asking questions about the budget. Any questions or comments about process beyond that, Kathy? Just I'm looking at the schedule so that right after Paul gives us the budget, the next day June 30th has elementary schools and libraries. So that's going to be the people focusing on that. That's going to be the tightest tournament. They will have just gotten the budget the day before. So we are focusing on two areas that day, correct? I'm just confirming. That's what's listed on my piece here. That's actually an interesting question because when it was done, it was done with the thought that the budgets have already been submitted to the library trustees and the school committee and therefore are available already. Will we be getting them before the 29th? Are you asking me? Yes. If we can make them available sooner, we will. It is sort of an unusual year where we are kind of crunch time right now trying to get them together and get them reviewed and by everybody that needs to review them. So if we are able to get them out sooner, we will but it will depend on sort of our process as we go. Because Mary Luke can help out with this. In prior years, what would happen back in the town meeting days is the school committee would approve the elementary budget or the library trustees, the library budget. And that was well in advance of the town meeting. But of course, the difference was it didn't go through the town manager. Right, that's correct. And you could do that. And that was very helpful. And as I'm looking at this schedule for July, are there any departments that are fairly easy to look at and ask questions? I would say getting the school budget on the 30th isn't going to give me any time to look at some of that information. That's a heavy budget. And the library is also. So are there any other departments such as, on the seventh, you have scheduled the enterprise funds. Is that something that's relatively easy to talk about and ask questions? And are there other areas of the manager's budget that could be kind of first on the finance committee's agenda? And then the ones that require more questions come later? The one thing I'll just add is that we have sort of coordinated with department heads already on what days they are going to be presenting to try to make sure that everyone's available during that time. Because again, we're not usually doing budgets in July. So it's typically time when department heads may take a vacation or make some time off. So as of right now, we do have all the department heads lined up for their days. If we were to change it, we'd have to go back and make sure that they're still available. The question that I started with actually is, if the library trustees, and I'll use them as an example, have approved a budget, even though town manager hasn't signed off on it to include in this budget, is there a reason why it could not be made available to us as the budget submitted by the library trustees because they will have done it in open meeting? I don't think so. I'll let Sonia weigh in if she knows of anything, but same thing with the elementary schools. I probably should know this, but if the elementary school committee votes their budget, somebody can start looking at that as soon as they vote their budget. So those are all public documents when they're a pre-shared at those meetings. So we leave it as a request since Paul is not in the meeting any more at the moment, make it a request and if Paul has no objection, do it. Yeah, no, we can. No. Okay. Okay, I'll contact. Well, no, let, Sean will take care of it. Yeah, I'll talk to him tomorrow and just, you know, I don't expect that he'll have any issue with, again, just sharing those documents ahead of time so people can get a head start and I'll look at those. What is, do you know the date when the school committee is voting that budget? The school committee? Yeah. I can look on their calendar. I was wondering if they already did. I'm not in that world anymore, but let me, I will find out and just find out the date. Again, they may have already voted it. Normally region elementary schools always sort of voted around the same time, but I'll double check tomorrow and I'll let you know. Andy? When did they have to present it to the manager? They would have voted it before they sent it forward. Yep. Yeah, once they voted it sort of automatically gets sent forward to the town manager. And there is a requested date that for submission to the manager, the council actually established the date because it's part of the charter. I just don't want to recall what it is right now. The only question I have is, can we begin doing this if, so we're suggesting we could look at it before the council has actually transferred it to the finance committee. I don't think that we, what we would be looking at is a document that has been approved by the school committee and by the library trustees. It is not something that we're looking at that is being officially referred to us. We're looking at a document that others, that another body has approved. And if there's a variation, so then we'll have to deal with it. However, in reality, there is going to be no variation. Okay, so it looks like from the calendar, then I'm looking at Andy, that finance committee, let me see, that it already went to the council and it was referred to the finance committee, the region budget. No, not the region budget. We're talking about the elementary, the elementary and the library. Those would not be, those only would get to us officially through the town manager's budget under this current form of government. In the prior form of government, they went directly to the finance committee, but that's not where we are anymore. But I think Sean understands what the question is. Yeah, I don't see it. And again, once they're discussed at the schools, for example, once it's approved by the school committee, whether it's been referred or not, you sort of, it's there. We can look at it to see what the school committee voted. Okay, Lyndon and Bob. Sorry, spoken. Bob? Yeah, I just wanted to know what the timing is on when the manager's budget will be available on the 29th. Is it after the meeting, prior to the meeting? I think we typically try to send it out at least a little bit before the meeting as a PDF so people can start looking at it. So we'll talk to Paul today or tomorrow and try to find out what he's comfortable with in terms of timing before. But I anticipate it'll go out at least a little bit before the meeting so that people can start taking a look at it. Okay, can I request that it be sent to the three resident members of the finance committee because we normally don't get information that directly, thank you. Anything else? Because if not, I think that we... Sharon. Hello? Sharon. Can I also, will there also be paper copies, hard copies of that available or sent out? Of the full budget document? Yes. I think we stopped doing that. Sonia, what was the, what happened last year? We got hard copies. You're gonna get hard copies? Yeah. I would like a hard copy if they are available. Me too. Okay. Me too. Trying to save money with binding, but we'll consider it. Yeah, I think they were produced in a much more limited manner and they weren't in three ring binders anymore. Okay. If I recall. Yeah, no, that's why I did the visual. It's got this simple little thing that if you open it too many times, it falls apart, but it does work when you're not opening it all the time. Okay, Sean, you get to tell Holly. Okay, anything else because if not, then I think that we have actually exhausted the agenda and have no reason to meet next week. I will notify ECAC accordingly. And then did I just see you or talk to you for a couple of minutes after people leave? Yeah, or you want to just call me on the phone? I have another meeting coming up really fast. So this is easier. Okay, we can do that. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Are we adjourned? So I think the meeting therefore is adjourned and it's a 440 PM and we're adjourned.