 Okay, so it's now 7 30. I'd like to call the meeting to order To mute their microphones if they may please if they can So my name is Charlie Fosca chair of the Iraqi finance committee Permit me to confirm that all the members or We still have some echoing going on there Grant Givian Shane Blundell yeah John Ellis The Kyahee Lee yeah, Mary Margaret. I'm here Arif Padaria here Jonathan Wallach here Brian Beck Peter Howard yeah Shaylene Pocrus Darryl Harmer here John Dice. Yeah Ellen Jones Here any record here color Altos tea here George Cozer here Christine Deschler here Dean Corman here David McKenna here Okay, so we have a quorum meaning is called to order Liz Diggins you're here. Yes. I am We have an open mic somewhere. Oh, sorry Charlie. That's probably me. This is Shaylene Pocrus Actually Peter Shaylene's here This open meeting of the early to finance committee is being conducted remotely consistent with the governor Baker's order He's an executive order of March 12 2020 due to the car save of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of COVID-19 virus In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus We've been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law To have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location further all members of the public body of public bodies are allowed encouraged participate remotely The order which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as Reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the liberations of the meeting Ensuring public access is not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to edigginsattown.arlington.ma.us.com For this meeting the Arlington finance committee We are convening by a video conference via zoom as posted on a town's website identifying how the public may join in comment Please note the meeting is being recorded and some attendees are participating by video conference Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording Supporting materials have been provided members of this body and are also available to town's website unless otherwise noted The public is encouraged to follow along with posted agenda Unless the chair notes otherwise. We are now turning to the first item in the agenda Um before we do so let me Cover some quick ground rules the chair will introduce the speaker on the agenda And we'll get down the line of uh members to see if there are any questions following Speakers comments, please hold until your name is called Please remember to mute your phone or your computer when you're not speaking And please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes For any response, please wait until the chair lead yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking If members wish to engage in colloquial members, please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself Finally each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. Thank you very much Okay, so peter the first uh, let's see, you know, maybe I have some comments Okay, yes, I have some comments Before we do the minutes, I emailed out today an update to that APS analysis that I provided last week Turns out that in my fiscal 22 numbers were slightly off. I was using a somewhat dated five-year plan uh, I corrected Made two corrections and the version I sent you I think is now up to date my thanks to sandy pooler for catching those um I also sent out a notice from um From the department of revenue regarding a covet funding data. There was a spreadsheet and there was a narrative You know, like a like a adobe document The spreadsheet has lists of all the funds that various municipalities are supposed to be expecting to get Um from various government sources And if you look at the line for Arlington, uh, you'll note that on the far right hand corner or far far right hand edge. Excuse me It's anticipated that Arlington's going to receive 36.7 million dollars of covet funds Unfortunately, I couldn't find in that document and maybe I have to go to another website, but I couldn't find any Um rules as to how that money is distributed and how it can be used Um, the last time I spoke with uh adam chaplain about that he said he didn't know and the government had not released these restrictions It's he anticipated that um the town Municipality the municipal government of town may um May get somewhere on the order of two to three million dollars of that funds if we can demonstrate that uh, we have Unreimbursed covet related losses and revenue Outside of that, it's not clear exactly what the funds can be spent on or how One category has to go to private citizens residents Uh non-profits And uh businesses small businesses that have been injured by covet and another category has to be spent on On infrastructure certain types of infrastructure So these things are just unclear at this time and um, but I would say that I don't personally I don't expect that the city the town of Arlington as a municipality is going to get A substantial portion of that 36 million. It doesn't say that it won't benefit the community as a whole it likely will um on On april 14th the houseways and means committee is expected to put out its revised budget and That should sort of give us a very good idea of what our state funding is going to be for fiscal 22 and um That that'll also enable us I think to move forward for a final uh plan for The the town of Arlington's budget and then on uh friday That's the 16th, I think There's a eight o'clock in the morning is a long range planning meeting where the Long-range plan will be updated based on the latest information that we have So those are just some updates that I wanted to mention We will go through the minutes and then um, is grant here Yes, grant gibbian is here. Yes. He is um We will go through we make another grant give me an issue in here. We'll go through the water sewer budget. He had some uh Respond we went through the budget Last week, but there was a number of questions that we wanted to address and uh I believe he will have the answers tonight Peter minutes Thank you. Oh my god So several corrections to the minutes as as uh circulated for comment All the minutes of the last meeting which was on april 7th I've incorporated those into the in the draft minutes I move that they be accepted as corrected Is there a second? Second So it's been moved in second to accept the minutes As uh corrected. Are there any comments or questions? Okay, grant gibbian I I Shane Blundell Yes, John Ellis Makai Haley. Yes Mary Margaret. Yes Arif Padaria Yes, it's not too loud Yes Brian Beck Not here Peter Howard Shailene Pocrus. Yes Daryl Harmer Yeah John Dyche. Yes John Jones Yes Annie LaCourt. Yes Bill Keller's not here Yes George Cozer. Yes Christine Deschler Dean Carmen. Yes And david McKenna Yes Minutes are unanimously accepted as presented as presented in an update So um The next item on the agenda Is the water and sewer Responses Grant Yeah, I'm going to um Have to apologize ahead of time if we don't want to um To wait, but I'm not exactly organized to get them one in a row. So I'll have to cherry pick Unless you want to go on to something else and then come back to it. Well, let's let's try to get this out of the way. Okay Um I got all the papers here and printed out. So just bear with me a moment here the um Okay, uh Well as we go, uh, I have the water fund sewer balance Hey, and that is um Five million seven nine nine Eight two nine What is that? Are they I'll repeat it peter um the number is Five million no, no, what what what is it? Oh It's the balance of the enterprise fund all the balance. Thank you All right, sorry While I'm at it, um, there was a question that uh Hadn't necessarily been asked but I took opportunity to ask it myself because I was a little curious about it Jumping around a little because these were asked of different people. This is a question I posed to ita along with the uh, which gave me the fund balance And uh, that was the um had a question about the overtime Uh, the salad the overtime salary for the water sewer I'm sorry the water distribution service Uh, my question was uh, what was the trend of it because uh, no one had asked this But I wanted to take the opportunity to ask it The trend had apparently in the last couple of years the budget trend was uh trending up Um every single year so I inquired about it And it turns out that the actual 10 year trend of actual spending of this is overtime um does in fact fluctuate and uh Is not even wasn't even the highest uh in actuals for spent that year Um, so over a 10 year span the overtime budget um is within uh within reason Uh, and is lower than has been in actual actuals lower than has been in other years Peter I'll help you summarize that that again that was my own question that um, I wanted to pop out um Charlie bear with me. I gotta get something off the printer. It's easy to do that to read it All right. All right. Thanks for bearing with me um, so the other questions, um somewhat Um, indirectly budget related Um, let me first one off the top of my head sand has to speak with sandy There is no, um, with the exact wording but no liability uh To speak of with the cso's um And on the separate meet separate water meter I guess I have to come back to that one It's in a different email Okay, so Charlie the answer to you there is no, uh, no liability liability on that Um, nor is there for the water sprinkler either. I'll get the exact wording um, the two tiered water system has just been discussed as no, uh No plans to implement it It hasn't been implemented. Okay. Thank you Um, let's see the next Two items one was involving dean's questions surrounding Um, unaccounted for water Uh, dean I'll forward the email over to you as well because it has some exact amounts I'll forward it to the committee as well whenever chance um Again the unaccounted water Um Way that the dean had asked me was what were the gallons purchased from the mwra? um, what was distributed by the town and um Some other important water meter questions that he answered um, so I asked who was the total amount of water from the mwra and uh, the amount purchased was 1358 Um Yes, mg now that would be megagallons million gallons, right? Yeah um So 1358 0.03 is the exact amount um, and the total amount that was charged to residents Was 972 98 972.98, which is 97 nine 973 megagallons And here's the important thing that we haven't included um Is that the 65 0.43 megagallons CEMU And that stands for confident Confidently estimated municipal use That's a nice catch-all term that they use Um to say it's used by the town, but it's not metered um, this is things like flushing water lines um He lists water main breaks um How much is that correct? um Again, peter i'll forward it over 65.43 megagallons Thank you All right, so let's see. What would that be 28 and 53? So about a thousand 1037 so it's about 250 some odd megagallons that Aren't accounted for in either one of those I see So those are the answers to those to the water meter volume questions I had asked back another question And has not been responded yet and that is the question about the um Buildings being metered which of the buildings like the town hall and the high school etc Are all of those metered? And if so, how do we count for that? And uh, haven't gotten an answer back on that one um in terms of water meter replacement Uh, didn't get a copy of the project plan At least not yet um Did have some information back. There's a proper approximately 12,500 water meters in the system Mike says he's replaced 9,250 of them plus or minus and approximately 3,250 3,250 Meters to still be placed in the system And in terms of time frame they're planning on doing this work for the next over the next three to five years And it's currently being performed by town staff one of the things Mike points out and this is um Because performing this work with town staff Uh, it takes longer. There's some benefits in terms that's less expensive And uh, Mike points out it allows them to have a better, uh, working knowledge of the system He also points out that all meters won't be the exact age So they will not all need to be placed at the same time in the future Kind of just like replacing water pipe um So I believe that's the water meter questions that the dean had asked um Again sands for um water meter project plan Um another item that I had asked Mike, uh, it's a question about um Using the enterprise fund uh, the plan the Question was posed by dean as the plan at one point was to use some of this cash to fund the dpw yard project And the question was is this still the case? And uh, Mike's answer was we do expect to use reserves To help fund the facility project Oh Fortunately happened to have the uh, sandy's email in the same pile here um So the question that I posed to sandy was about the, uh Um the potential liabilities that we've already talked about And also the cost allocation study, okay Um charlie if I want to return quickly to the water and sewer Two-tiered system Um, and I can forward this to the group But the two-tiered system is both a policy decision and the technical decision um sandy points out so it's Um quite a bit and take quite a while to get that worked out is the essence um He's also not aware That there are any state changes. There are any changes in state mandates Um about how they bill Now to the cost allocation study So half it was answered in two parts A lot of these had to go a little back and forth um Yes, the cost allocation study was done a long time ago. It was done before Went at least when flanagan Deputy flanagan was the uh system town manager um And uh essentially It's not um There isn't any plan to have one done Sandy can't even is having a hard time just finding it So he's willing to commit Uh to have another one done as to how often they're done Um, I guess they're done when um His words when the information needs to be updated Okay, so I think that answers Is anyone aware of any other questions that have not been answered? Am I not broadcaster? Sorry, grant. I was speaking to the muted microphone Uh, okay. You know, I completely understand I uh I am aware that uh in the annual audit powers and solven does some verification of the uh The cost allocation system. It's not it's not a complete Study from the grounds up, but it does get sort of tuned up every year or so Um, any other questions for grant? I think the only thing that's missing here was uh not getting the project plan on the meters. Did he say he had one? Didn't say anything. Uh, just told me the numbers Okay So, um I think the motion is in order to question charlie. Yeah, go ahead. You guys grant um The the the numbers you quoted about amounts of money Water that were was distributed and metered and all It sounded as though an awful lot was unaccounted for in other words an awful lot of the what was uh uh metered uh Was was a lot less than uh the amount that the town supplied. Am I right about that or not? Seems to be a bit of a discrepancy. All right. What was it 237 mega gallons? Or something about the judges did off the top of my head. Yep. Yeah, what's great. What's the percentage? uh Gotta calculers It's hey what 20% I calculated about 24% Yeah, yeah, mr. Chairman. Can you make a comment on that because I asked for the information That does seem like an awful lot It does so when I joined the finance committee and originally asked this question The loss was 40% and um The then dpw director said that we had this the loss was occurring because we had these really old Pipes and they were like clay and things like that and water was leaking and it was bad And that was why we had to redo the the piping systems So every year that I asked for this information what I find out is that number is going down And I asked for it because I've often believed that replacing the pipes is what's stopping it from going down As what's causing it to go down and once we get rid of all these old old hundred-year-old pipes It will then be at like a more manageable level Well, that sounds good. Thank you any other comments on the water sewer budget or the questions that grant research So I have a comment. Charlie. Yes. Yes. This is a reef. Yeah. Thank you. So it's 24 percent gone down from 40 percent, but 24 percent Is still very high What is being done to I mean shouldn't it have gone to zero by now if it's when you joined? I don't know how long ago De-injoined but let's you know, whatever number of years But are we just accepting the fact that it's 24 and we go by our business or we are going to I mean, can we understand what is being done to help alleviate this and bring it down to zero Let me ask grant the question That's a corollary to your comment grant does the The difference include or exclude the The municipal consumption that you spoke about before the unmetered municipal consumption I don't know the question hasn't he hadn't responded to that Now again to be fair this he answered the questions Oh about four hours ago. So I shot the question about the Buildings back over because it was in fact they So I don't know which which section they go to if they even go to any of these sections If they're just also bundling to the unaccounted But then again, there's that I think the question that you know, I have with this Um and a reef kind of kind of points it out to to a degree is what if it's a labeling thing because the CEM you that's um That should basically be I mean if they covers water main brakes Well, then we do we adjust the estimate? Whatever the estimate. I mean, how do we estimate that what the what the brakes are so You know, sometimes we're putting stock in this number, but I'm not sure I'm Confident about well, I don't know what goes into that number including the municipal buildings so, um I don't think we're going to get it and the answer to that tonight or any time in the near future the town does have a Of a program where every year we replace About a mile is it a mile of about A mile of water and sewer infrastructure in the roads and they try to coordinate that With these with the road programs they undertake to to uh repave Roads and sidewalks um now I can tell you that About three years ago four years ago. They they repaved My street and they replaced the water and sewer Um, so that would have been about 2018 And the and the last time that that road was repaved was uh, was 1978 so, um That's about 40 years So this is not something that is going to you know, when when dean says it gets better every year It's getting better at the rate of you know, two and a half percent a year or something like that It's not going to get better 15 percent overnight one other Thank you, charlie. One other comment or Factoid as it were I'd asked mike rottemacher about Status or how progress was uh during the pandemic year Uh, and did the pandemic affect anything about replacement and indeed he said that there was no, um They did not get a water sewer project completed last year Uh, they're planning on he says doubling up this year Okay, so, um, I think If there are no more questions Emotion would be in order to take this matter off the table and then vote the budgets Is is is there a motion to that effect? So moved Is there a second? second So it's moving the second is to take the water sewer budget off the table Um grant gibbian I dame blendell Yes, john ellis yeah kaya healy yes terry margaret yes rief yes tony walloch yes brian vex yes bieter howard yes dailene pokers yes eril harmer yeah dice yes jelon zones yes annie lecourt yes bill keller yes george kosher i'm sorry alan yes yes and george kosher heard you say that's pristine dechler yes dean karman yes and david yes so the motion has been taken from the table so we can now take a vote on the budget as presented now did you make any modification you had your your worksheet your separate worksheet up there last week your consolidated worksheet at the last meeting now did you make any changes to the budget as presented by the manager no i didn't okay uh the the handout from last week is different than the one in the manager's budget book okay that's what i knew there was a change somewhere at the numbers 23588928 did you put that up uh alan on the screen yes it's a revised budget after the health care so it isn't the same one in the budget book okay total water distribution system so this is an enterprise fund and the uh the um its balance the revenue is uh equal to the um to the expense and i don't see oh there is a transfer from the general fund of 1.85 1.845727 million that's the debt shift that's uh that's a conscious um um policy to town is followed to provide some tax benefits to citizens uh under the under a prior tax regime and that number as uh was pointed out by uh grant last week is declining because the select one made a policy decision to to cease that practice and they're doing it on a gradual basis so uh grant uh do you want to make a motion on this uh balanced budget sure thank you uh charlie uh i move that the uh committee approved the budget 23 588928 there second second so it's moved and seconded is there any further discussion on the water sewer budget okay seeing no hands raised hearing no voices grant gibbian aye jane blundell yes john illis yes kaya yes uh mary margaret yes carife yes jonathan yes brian beck yes peter yes dailene yes darryl yeah john dice yes ellen jones yes annula court yes bill keller yes ellen toasty yes george coser yes christine dishler yes the dean karman yes david mckenna yes thank you the vote is uh unanimous on your budget as revised uh during the presentation or revised budget as presented by uh grant gibbian okay um the next item on the agenda is the report from the education working group and the education budget so um i'm gonna leave it open to discussion as to whether or not we should try to vote this budget tonight or whether we want to wait until um after the meeting of the long-range planning committee on friday and um but we can we can leave that discussion uh for a little bit later and um let me ask um oh here we go we have um the working group with a presentation so um shaylene shon uh shane and uh dean go right ahead all right i will i will start off if dean advances the slide dean's screen sharing for you um we decided to throw together a few slides here and um we'll we'll move past this one in just a second and i'll point out to you that you'll have access to these slides and just to know that in these slides you have easy to reference links to related documents including of course i think you all know how to get to the superintendent's proposed budget um but also the presentation that um michael mason made to us i might have that date wrong it might have been on the 25th of march but whatever it was end of march and then um the charlie's memo that went around to all of us and his oh the presentation he made to us and uh the five-year draft budget plan so you go ahead you can advance now dean i just put those links right in there because i found that as uh shane and dean and i were we met with each other and then we met with this school finance subcommittee um the school budget subcommittee uh i found myself referring to these documents so i thought why not throw the links in there so you all can reference them as well if you need to um so when the three of us met and then uh also met with this school finance sorry the school budget subcommittee um we we came to some conclusions of things we wanted to just highlight for you um before we got to it just we wanted to call to call to attention these highlights that we think show some um um key ways that this school committee and the school department are really showing that they are willing to work with us that these are things that we've accomplished in this session so um the net new student um funding increase that had been planned for fiscal 22 um was decided uh it would be returned to the reserve fund and in a similar way the um the unit number that is used in that formula it was we reached a common understanding that it would be moved back to the 2019 number which is a lower number so that was good it was also decided that i think we went over this before i just we're just re highlighting this for you all um that we would return surplus funds to the general fund i might be misquoting this i think that's around six hundred thousand dollars and then also um this next point and then the one on the next slide are about the pandemic we really can't talk about anything without talking about the pandemic these days but we think it's notable that the school committee is is really the the school department and the school committee are really showing um you know their their willingness and their um attention to being responsible with the funding that they they have on hand in that they were able to put together a remote academy which just incidentally my own uh two of my children have been attending the remote academy which means they are completely in my house all the time for school they don't go to the school buildings at all um and our school department was able to do that with no additional funding that in their fiscal 21 budget um so dean if you go to the next slide i kind of wish these two bullets have been together because the next top of the next slide talks about something related to that um that the for next year in school year 22 23 with the fiscal 22 i'm sorry school year 21 22 with the fiscal 22 budget the administration already has plans in place to do uh you know to remediate uh for remediation because they already know that as great of a job as they did with hybrid and remote school there's going to be a need for remediation and um they they've got plans in place to do that with the funding that's in place so um there's been some talk about what was committed with the 2019 override we reviewed that we being shane and dean and i and um we could dig further into this we'll get we'll have time for questions in a minute i'm just doing the highlights here um we believe the three of us believe that all of the funds used in from anything that looks moved from special ed to general ed is still under the uh title of closing the achievement gap that um that is uh was a big promise to taxpayers closing the achievement gap and that um yeah that voter expectations are being met in actively being met it's still being met um it's a big job to close the achievement gap and the final point that i will make before i turn it over to shane is that um i'm the one that bolded this because when shane when dean pointed this out to me at our last meeting i wanted to i wanted to like you know pop a bottle of champagne because i think this is a big deal i don't know maybe everybody else already knew this but um this um you know coming soon to to your town cliff that we all knew was caused of the override was originally reported to be 17 million and i i think sometimes when people hear numbers like this they think okay well that's a big number i hope that's not true and um now it's projected to be seven million you know this um we promise we won't have another override we'll talk to you in 2024 and as a taxpayer that's you think okay 2024 is a while away maybe we won't have to maybe it won't be that bad and well i don't know it's looking like it's not as bad so like that's that is a positive message to get out and i think there are a lot of positive messages this isn't the only one um i'll turn it over to shane to to summarize the rest thanks thanks shaleen it's our sophomore effort for each of us so it's our second presentation and really really excited uh and both his parents and to jump into the school budget very important so um there's a lot of numbers on the screen here but i think um you know what stood out to me and i think and dean was really helpful in sort of explaining and sort of we had shaleen and i had the benefit of his wisdom and experience in this but i think the two numbers that like stand out and contrast to each other i think on the bottom right right we have an annual increase of about 6.4 percent i think per year over the last 10 years which is a big increase right and this is a big part of this the town's budget um but i think as many of you know and some of the newcomers have learned right is you know we've seen explosive growth in that school enrollment i don't think anybody would be surprised by that you know i know as a parent myself it was really desirable to live in the town of arlington because the school had a great reputation and i think lots of people have recognized that um but i think if you look in the top let's see here when the per pupil spending however has only increased by about two uh 2.3 percent right so just um just want to throw that out there for the group and just sort of just that's an important number and i think i don't know this is anything else we can move on i think to the next slide so i think you know another thing that dean had explained to us and and again sort of some of the history is that and for the new members as well uh you know there was i think a sort of an agreement across the town uh because they saw i think that the enrollment was increasing and there was a real desire to sort of codify sort of a policy and i think this is sort of the codification of the policy that we have today and i think as i understand is what the school you know the school committee when they spent you know and have the public you know their budget this is what they were operating under and as sort of saline explained right we have that last bullet there we're closing the achievement gap and that's really important right you know we're doing it as a town you know we just passed an overhaul of the statewide of the student funding formula um which was really important and i think also just sort of sort of just sort of setting a little bit aside of from the finance part of it but i think again as saline said like we've we've in the pandemic we've had a lot of challenges and students i think who are facing those problems before in some cases you know it might have gotten worse so it's really important i think in this budget to continue that commitment um and so yes this was a part of the override so i think um i think i'm ready to move to the next one dean thank you um um so there's a there's a lot a lot there a lot to read and we'll certainly we will share this with you afterwards um but i think what i you know what we agree as a group at least the three of us and we hope i think that most people you know what we'll have a discussion about it is that you know six percent per year is a big number right again it's the largest budget in the town it's not sustainable um so i think there was a constructive process in the past um you know and again i thank dean for educated reassuring about this but you know there was a constructive process in the past and it was across you know include this committee um sluck board school committee town management and i think i i think it's you know for the next starting for the so the next budget i think it's like i think we should revisit this i think the formula is an important structure sort of it sets the the foundation right sets expectations for not just sort of the town officials but the school committee but also for parents and i think you know again moving to sort of that last but bottom component there we think it's it's time i think sort of for the future to sort of you know the formula should not there's nothing that says that the formula has to be set in stone i think we should have a real frank discussion about it um and you know we still have have a deficit it's it's much smaller i think we're really pleased to see that but we think that it is prudent to have have that discussion for the future and that's just sort of the editorialize at the end you know it's been an extraordinary year for the schools and i think we're all grateful for you know the time that our school committee has spent on this and the teachers and personnel and you know so many other staff so um that's um that's the rounding out my part of the presentation so i think is this dean is this you or oh i guess that's me all right fine so um so so we have two recommendations um for this evening the first one is um we do believe and recommend that the finance committee should approve the education budget of 80 million 104 634 is printed in the fy 22 budget book but we also do believe that um based on a number of factors including you know the work that charlie did and some some other people have done that it really is time for key stakeholders to review the to rebuke review education funding for fiscal 2023 and beyond um review the inputs the metrics and and start coming up with the with the next generation of of how we're going to move forward um and you know i think we had said on that on the slide before you know when you go back to um i think it's like 2015 when we had the macabre study which talked about school enrollment it was forecasted that we'd be starting to slow right now and we are starting to i think slow right now i think if the pandemic didn't happen we would have seen the the natural slowing and um as charlie said as well um you know charlie showed there's some you know we we could thankfully be at a point where special education is starting to slow and and we recognize all that we think that's all like great work that people over the years um have brought to the discussion but what our view is we should be able under the same process that we've always had is to have the town manager and the superintendent of schools have some preliminary discussions they move forward to bring in other key stakeholders from the finance committee the select board in the school committee and then we can have a real discussion on on what school funding looks like for 2023 and beyond um and then i will say you know we we we met with the um school committee's budget subcommittee today we told them about these ideas um they were they were open to the idea of of having meetings and discussions um about about the school budget and talk about how we are going to move forward with with education funding in the future i don't think that they did not commit to reducing it but they said yes we we've been operating on our roadmap for a while there's some you know salient points that have been raised and and i would be time to really take a deep dive on it so um these are our two recommendations thank you it's out of motion dean do you need a second oh i well i figured charlie would want me to do them one at a time right i'm just going to wait for the chair to give guidance thank you and chain and and shaley thank you very much um excellent report clear concise to the point so um do you want to make a motion dean or uh what's your preference here i'd like to make the first one so i moved that the finance committee approves the education budget of 80 million 104 634 as printed in the fy 22 budget book second so it's been moved and seconded discussion so charlie i'm just i'm trying to get uh i was losing the uh go ahead okay sorry i'm in the car so i can't uh do the picking off the hand but um um so my comment is that while they're willing to listen and uh and the school cool committee is willing to listen and um all that they are unwilling to make any changes to the current budget and again i'm going from memory but um you know the number of new positions or the odd positions etc all of that included in the current budget correct which they are not willing to change is that correct my understanding i'm again i'm in the car so i'm not looking at papers but uh so they're not willing to make any changes to the current budget which includes this enormous number of additions in my my words my enormous number of additions of FTPs grant given when the number of students has decreased but just to clarify there is that is that the correct uh is that the correct understanding but um they're not willing to make any changes now but perhaps i would say engage in discussion so yeah so i would say the edge of that question is the school committee is is the school committee believes that they should continue the exact and hear you sorry can you hear me you have to get closer to your microphone yeah can you hear me yeah better yeah the school committee i mean the school committee's position is that all of the school committee view is that all of the positions they're all ideal what you're saying yeah can you turn off the volume please i think it's up can you hear me i mean you were louder before if something happened you were louder yeah all right how about now nothing how about now i'm like yelling can you hear me now it's still about the same how about now can i hear you fine i i can hear you fine on my side yeah i'm i'm okay too all right can i keep can can everyone hear me now yeah it's fine we'll just turn up all right so i will talk i will talk louder but um and the school committee's view is that in 2019 we we had an override campaign which um dan don len cardin and i co-chaired and as part of that override campaign we had a very specific list of positions that we were going to add under an umbrella of closed the achievement gap the finance committee reviewed each and every one of those items in detail and this was going to be net new spending and so it is their view that the they are going to continue spending the money that 75 percent of the voters authorized them to spend in the manner that they told 70 the voters they were going to spend it can i give my follow-up to that is just that thank you sir um so my follow-up is that they had agreed at that point in time um but a lot of changes as you well we all well know so i'm just surprised and uh i'll leave it at that that they are unwilling to modify based on the current times that any reef yes sir thank you for the time thank you any any record yes so i have a couple of questions and then a couple of comments so my first question is are we really adding 40 fte's in this budget dean i mean i know because we're also reducing some it's uh so what happened was last year the school committee deviated from the achievement gap plan to fund positions within the remote academy and other pandemic related things this year so well now that the pandemic is sort of not behind us but now that everyone is back to school they're essentially removing those positions and adding back the plan that they were going towards now the reality is 20 of those teachers or so are just going to move to different schools like in positions they're not going to just add 40 people right so we're not adding net 40 new people like people who have to be oriented on day one here probably no that's high that would be a lot something less than that yeah okay and then my i guess my comment here is um there's a couple of things going on first of all the school committee was given i believe i think this is traditionally how this happens a number that is the amount of money that is the general fund allocation and then they've budgeted it so if we needed to reduce that allocation i'm not sure why we didn't do it sooner and you know we have policies that apply when we say the budget needs to be reduced that that affect both the town and the schools for equity's sake um so i think it's important that we pass this year's budget as this year's budget i also think we made a commitment to the voters you know in the 2011 override we made a commitment to the voters that we would spend an additional 400 000 a year on road repair we have not rescinded that spending because of the pandemic so um i don't understand why we're talking about rescinding the or even considering the possibility of rescinding any of the spending commitments we made on the school side all which were necessary in order to um i don't know deal with it the deficit that we don't yet have i think it's reasonable to consider the possibility that we need to begin some negotiations and thinking about this um uh for the second vote that dean is going to recommend i think it's reasonable to consider the possibility that we need to think really hard about how the five-year projection works and the way that it affects our decisions because the amplitude of the deficits is getting larger and we need to think differently about how we're going to approach that but i don't think we should be doing that by making spot decisions three months into the budget cycle um when um we haven't looked at the overall budget in the same way so that's where i'm standing i'm voting in support of um the school budget thank you thank you annie back to the screen here john ellis oh sorry christine deschlers next john christine i don't know if anyone can answer this question but has the achievement gap been closed since the since the override no it's gotten worse because there's a pandemic and there's significant learning loss where the metrics for that what are the metrics how are we judging whether the achievement gap is increased or decreased does anyone know that so what we're what the what the school department is doing this year is they're spending a lot of time talking with their teachers to say well you know what what's going on compared to current year prior year things like that so you see right away like i have kids that are back to back in school so i have a sixth grader and a fifth grader and i can see that my fifth graders classroom this year is going a lot slower than my fifth graders last year i mean if you have school children and you you're going through your second kid a third kid in the school you're like man we're way behind like this is crazy um and so we know that they're slower and we know that there's a gap right now um and then you can you can look at like learning that and even they're going slower they're going shallower we see it all the time they're not going as deep on things because the kids are in school when they're hybrid for two days and they're out for three and so you know you compile what you see from from the academic programming versus prior years and then you get feedback from the teachers on it and the teachers will tell you that they're looking at these kids versus their prior kids and they're behind is is there any i'm sorry charlie but my follow-up question is there data objective data rather than just um well well yeah i mean it's objective if you if you covered 20 chapters of a book last year with your class and you only covered 10 chapters or 15 this year that is objective data i i think we i think christine's asking if it depends on the pandemic um this because this question gets asked all the time how do you know if you're closing the achievement gap what even is the achievement achievement gap and the truth is there are many dimensions to it you can look at achievement across socioeconomic status um i mean i think that's the most the most commonly referenced achievement gap if you control for certain things how are students doing relative to one another if a student has a learning disability and another one doesn't are you serving both students are you making sure you're serving the students on both ends of learning abilities and um arlington has done any number of things you know the ace program which expanded and then shrank and ace was for students on the gifted end of this of the spectrum um so yes there are metrics uh i believe they're on we could go dig into the arlington public schools website and find them i but i'm almost certain that the department of elementary and secondary education requires reporting on these things um and i i wish that i could rattle some of these statistics off because i actually work in the field of education um so i am the sort of person who if given a couple of hours could go dig these things up for you so i i'm certain that the data is there and i think that the aps would be probably happy to give us an update if we had the time um but i think for the purposes of the finance committee it's it's enough to know that that i am in the field of education and i'm like yes there's data and i'm confident that aps is is doing its job because i wouldn't send my kids to these public schools if i didn't believe it um and i'm almost certain the answer is the achievement gap is not closed yet yeah our problem though shalene so so i should say part of the problem is we started down the path on the new override camp out in july 1 of 2019 so our first measurement time for saying whether we made any progress would have been when we took the m casts in april and may of 2020 so school was dismissed on march 13 for three weeks to um what did we call it stop the spread three weeks to stop the spread and then we didn't go back until september and now our next bite at the apple is going to be um this year's m cast which i don't know if we're gonna have and so yeah i mean i i know it's i know it stinks when like we say a pandemic was tough and it wasn't it wasn't it was hard on schools but that's just kind of how it is okay thank you uh shalene and uh thank you dean uh john ellis christine are you finished with your questions um i don't want to go too far afield here and take up too much time but i do have a question for shalene because she seems to be um fairly expert in this or certainly way more than than than me um not to diminish the importance of the public school system in addressing the achievement gap could we also be is also another way of addressing this is helping families outside the educational system itself definitely it in fact the research shows that one of the most important things that affects students as they launch into adulthood is home environment and well their home environment and their school environment are um they they complement each other so you almost can't separate the two so absolutely yes your instinct is right on there um but it but that doesn't mean it lets the schools off the hook so absolutely that that's why we also have to have affordable housing and we have to pay attention to continuing to offer school lunches i don't know if you all know this but um throughout the pandemic um our school lunch program has continued even though even when even when no bodies were in the schools we were offering food to students just as one example of that kind of thing of where it is important to educate the whole child and the whole family and yes so yes absolutely it does that answer that question i mean again it's the sort of thing that we could have a we could have a lecture series on thank you in her head yes because annie also knows a lot about this thank you so it sounds to me that we're concerned about the achievement gap it's not just funding schools but funding providing funding for other areas of of the town it is and that is part of why why you've been hearing social emotional learning with regard to the schools as as we evolve as a society we've been figuring out it's not just the textbooks and how many chapters you cover it's the whole child which involves mental health right we are charlie one of my favorite topics i'm muting sorry i'll shut up no joey thanks thank you christine uh john ellis thanks um annie had asked about full-time positions i just looked at michael mason's report and it's 12 12 new full-time positions in this budget so i don't know where that 44 number came from well i can provide you some clarity on that john in the in the in the budget book at the last section there's a position control chart and fiscal year 21 the budget budget number people was 958 and they hired up to 1024 so that's about 60 some people 68 people or something like that 66 people and then they plan to go in according to that table in the in their budget to go to 1044 in 2022 so in addition to the 66 above budget in 21 they're adding another 20 net 20 now that that's they in an earlier section they talk about adding 40 but he he also pointed out he was doing you know 10 reductions of some sort 10 eliminations so the so the net change is uh you know if you if you take from the budget amount for 21 they're they're actually they're going up about 60 plus 20 about 80 people why does his side 12 say fiscal 22 just to provide proposed additions and it equals i don't i don't know all i know is i'm telling you if you look in the budget book that we that i sent out to you and that he sent out to you it's what it's what the school committee approved okay so i'll put that question aside but maybe somebody can answer later why slide 24 says 12 people and you see a number that's much more so the question that i wanted to ask was when michael mason gave the presentation it appeared as if um the extra money from the special education fund had been spent on maintenance i think i remembered him saying that it spent 900 000 on maintenance and well that hadn't been in the budget but that they had this extra money in um and that special education fund is is my memory correct because what was presented tonight said that the special education fund was used for was in the achievement cap well i think in in his presentation he had two two years in which there were special education surpluses and um some of it i don't remember all the categories it went to but the bulk of the surpluses in one year that the operations and maintenance was 900 and some thousand dollars in the red and the other year was 855 thousand i think so um some substantial portion according to what he reported did go to operations and maintenance okay that was my memory and i'll make my comment um you know i was supportive and i'm supportive of the override when we voted as a committee i said i i would have liked to stay in the school maybe even asked for more because there were needs that were not being including social workers in the elementary schools but having said that i'm uncomfortable seeing budgets that at least on the surface appear to be transferring money from a fund for special education to things like maintenance when we have our next override there'll be some percentage of people who will vote yes no matter what and then there'll be some percentage of people who vote no matter what and presumably the more money we ask for the bigger percentage of people who will vote no will be and then there'll be people in the middle and the people in the middle will decide the election and they're going to make their decision based on how much it is and whether there are good arguments for or against and the last override we had a lot of really good arguments for there were no math coaches in the schools we needed math coaches and people of Arlington voted yeah we should have math coaches that makes sense and there was no coherent objection to it other than you know maybe objections about uh long-term fiscal health but that was not persuasive so i think the job of the school committee a job of the school committee and the finance committee and people who will be marshaling support for the next override is to make sure a there are good reasons to vote for it and no good reasons to vote against it and i think persuadable people doesn't have to be a good reason or strong reason but if people get the vibe get the feeling that that special education fund is being used for totally different purposes and that it's being used as kind of a slush fund to pay for other things then that might be persuasive to people and i think that that needs to be addressed and i think it some of it is in semantics i mean i'd like that you said it was used for closing the achievement gap you know i would like to hear the story that that fund is being used to you know bring social workers into school and that means that we send less people out of district and so the fund is actually benefiting all of Arlington and yeah we recognize that we're not really using it for its intended purpose but you know in the end we're sending less people out but i think there's a lot of messaging and massaging and maybe changing of formulas so that it does not there is no appearance that this fund that's it for one dedicated thing is being used for some totally different thing that's all more common Alan Jones thank you charlie i'm just one first quick request for information i for those of us without children in the school system i keep hearing achievement gap and i have no idea what it is i it's five times in the school budget but there's no definition of it so just i just please for my benefit i'm asking for shaleen or somebody to tell yeah send me an explanation of what the achievement gap is and is you know using the peter drucker rule if you can't measure it you can't improvement uh if if there are some numbers those mcass scores or whatever you know how how is it measured so we know whether there's an improvement or not but the main question i had uh on the slide in the presentation about achievements if i recall it reduced the f y 2024 deficit from 18 million i think to seven million you know call it over three years so call it like three million a year or whatever it it's it was unclear to me what changes actually resulted in that and i was wondering if if somebody in the subcommittee could sort of tell me you know one of the things that happened that saved three million a year for the next three years to sort of you know in a broad sense um can i take the first question and dean takes the second question the first question i'm not even going to fully answer because i don't even think alan was expecting an answer tonight it and i wasn't but i think it's probably better to put it out as a memo to the finance committee of like i could put together a primer on what is the achievement gap and how do they measure it yeah thank you and that's exactly what i'm looking for and then dean's gonna have to answer your second question because i took it on faith when he told me that really i thought you could do a great job i have one comment if if you could when you do this shielding when you do this memo which i think would be very instructive can you cross check that memo with make sure it's the same definition that the arlington public school system uses yes absolutely in fact if i find that there's like a general like a general definition and then arlington has its own version i will include both thank you i sort of quickly searched the the school website and the school budget and i just didn't see any definition so that'd be great dean yeah so when we went out to the override um we had um an fi 29 and the 2019 report to tom meaning we had two five-year plans one with the override one without the override if you go to the one that says passing a um if you pass this 5.5 million override this is what will happen right and in the out year fi 24 it shows a deficit of 17.8 million the two large drivers are revenue of 108 so we had revenue of 185 million and we have um fi 22 24 expenses of 203 million dollars um what's closed that is is two directions the revenues have about exceeded so the original projection was what let's say 186 the projection is now 191.5 on the expenditure side the original projection was 203.4 million and the current projection is 199 million and so it is it is a combination of revenue better than we thought and um collective fiscal discipline from all involved stakeholders okay so about and i don't know how much that's from the school system but something sounds like less than half of that reduction was based on changes to the school budget and a lot of it was based on changes in revenue increases in revenue well so the revenues always well so it's always kind of interesting right because um our right so we talk about how the school budget stresses our expenses but then we ignore the fact that like we get higher amounts of state aid because we get it certain amounts of our state on a per pupil basis yeah um and then we talk about how we had the good fortune of having new growth um how we have new growth that's you know above projections and then we don't rationalize that people who are adding on to their house are usually people who've moved in and have larger kept growing families right so like it is well i'm not saying that that makes up entirely for the amount of school spending they they they go hand in hand i mean yeah they cost us a lot of money but there is some makeup on the top line and that's why i say it's an achievement okay could you do me a favor and send me that 2019 long range plan just so i know what it is and i can compare it to the the latest one and and and you just reminded me of something whether we've projected the reduction the 278 reduction or something in next year's chapter 70 but that's a different discussion but yeah if you could send me the 2019 spreadsheet you're referring to and i'll compare it to the current one and i can see where the changes are the result of the 10 million dollar difference yeah most of the change most of that change was chapter 70 increases and in school 21 the school we did not increase the school budget oh sorry how about putting that up i was putting something else up child in school 21 we did not increase the school budget by the amount that we had originally planned we originally planned um $600,000 and i think we only increased it $140,000 and but that increase uh that increase is now planned for uh 22 and 23 we went from 800,000 to uh 103 oh right yeah i'd really like just to put the two long range plan side by side and and and see what's driving that 10 million dollar difference yeah i think the other thing ellen i'll just circle back on what she on closing the achievement gap so as i put up for the committee um to sort of recall people who are around back in 2019 so this schedule of of net new positions so so let's just sort of back up so for years the finance committee including myself would tell that uh tell the school committee that they didn't have a multi-year strategic plan and they weren't thinking long term and this was problematic and they kind of need to get their stuff together so in 2019 they came back to us with their stuff together and they gave us this sheet which i now have up and if you look at it it sort of has a bucket so these are positions that they were planning to add for enrollment growth um this is the request the fte the dollar funding in in different years and then when you get to pass the first page you get to improve instruction for students as a bucket and then close achievement gap so these were the positions with descriptions that the school committee said if you pass this override um we will add these positions to the um to the to the budget now i will jump ahead and sort of ask the next statement somebody's going to say is how closely are we monitoring the addition of these positions and the school department's accountability towards the achievement gap plan um i would say we are doing our best the pandemic threw it into flux and that is like further reason on the second motion that i think after we passed the school budget we most certainly need to have a group that looks at all of these things and sees where we are like it because if we if we knock all these off that would be great thank you D um thank you alan is that the end of your questions uh yeah i'm just you know a flip you're going through a slide real quick doesn't help me much but i was i'm you know looking forward to shaylene's memo on it and and the spread the 2019 spreadsheet from dean thank you thank you uh alan so the next question is uh grant gibbian yes thank you trelly um so i appreciate what john pointed out john ellis pointed out and um i do have a question about this is what um mechanism is in is in place um pertaining to the using spend money let's say for operating um expenses um when this happens how do we know about it i guess is there some i feel like there's an insanity process going on here um this can keep happening and and what's the what's the check point is there some sort of mechanism for when this has to happen that they initiated transfer or i guess i'm kind of no so so so all of the mechanisms that we've talked about the three and a half the seven the tranches on the achievement can happen things like that none of those have any basis in law those only have basis in the long-range planning committee of the town of arlington um and so that's that's like how the budget has been that that's been the structure right it's kind of like on the town side where we give the town manager 3.25 percent and whether he needs it or not he he takes it right and the school does the same thing they get this money and you know they take it um and and once the way that the what does the law does say and what the statute does say is we we are only allowed to appropriate and vote up and down on a lump sum money for the school department to spend once they get that money they then are the custodians of those funds and the caretakers of those funds now i think what's what's important is um um the school's committee's budget is then um overseen by their budget subcommittee and um so budget subcommittee is three people it's kirstie allison amity as chair she's been chair for a long time it's len cardin and jane morgan um they meet in public sessions they do not meet in private sessions so it's a company that it's a company it's a committee that has to meet in public session and um for the longest time and it probably long predates me um kirstie has always sent out an invite first to dick fanning and now to me to join the meeting and not only am i allowed to join and watch it and know when it is i'm actually allowed to speak i can't vote but i can speak and so like anytime these issues come up like like a lot of the documentation that you've you've seen this year as a committee about special ed dollars and expenses and and things like that have come up because we go over it at these meetings and we talk about it and we say like okay what's going on here what's going on here why are you doing this why are you doing that um and it's interesting because i i would say that um like len and kirstie and jane are probably just as tough on school administration as i am at times and like sometimes i'm like wow they're much tougher than me um and we just kind of work through these processes like you know i think the meetings are like every two or three weeks and then somehow in the intervening weeks kirstie and i talk or jane or i jane was chair this year and i talk and we just you know we we we work through the whole year so i there's never been a moment where i feel like there's something in the budget that we didn't know about or it just magically popped up um we understand their rationale their logic and and why they're doing things and then it translated this year since it was such a big year to like the way i was able to communicate or chilling chat every but communicate to the full committee thank you dean uh alan would you put your hand down please grant go ahead do you have another question yeah another follow-up on uh on that um so if this kind of reminds me a little like the snow and ice budget you know where they don't need permission to use it but if we found out that they used it to repair a road we might have an issue even though the road needed repairing um so i guess the question not to go back but so did this on the call it a discovery about um uh this bed budget being used for some sort of maintenance purposes was that brought up in these meetings that uh that you have or i that sounded like that was something that was kind of that that one of the committee members the chairman kind of threaded out from the info i didn't realize that had been discussed in the meeting and had been okay yeah we talk about i mean we talk about i mean even in um the school department cfo provides a budget to actual at every single one of their meetings like every single one of their meetings um and so yeah as these things are coming in real time we see it or i see it because then in addition to go to the budget subcommittee i watch every single school committee meeting so we know when these things are happening and and i don't remember off the top of my head what like different different things are are about but like i i can give you like a perfect example right um and it's not this year but it's the one that i always remember is um you like the um the high school has an antique elevator right and you think things are good when they're antique but they're not good when they're elevators um and years like several years back their antique elevator broke and it was down for months and and they had to fix it with their own budget and so like you have to come up with the money to fix this elevator right and they kind of work for different sources and inappropriate money move things around and and that's what that's how it goes like and and there just happens to that that happens a decent amount with these budgets like you know they're they're managing the enterprise they've got some challenges and they and they they they deal with them as they come up i have no doubt that there's challenges in doing it and uh no doubt that maintenance expenses have to be paid and understand that you provide an example from last year or a couple of years ago but let's talk about this time did we know i mean was is there a mechanism to notify or to say oh yeah by the way this budget we actually spent this much from the spend budget on through the maintenance is there any did that happen this time were you guys aware of that this time yes so every month okay so one of the challenges we have here is like i think what the committee is used to right is that the town we're used to the town budget right and in the town we get a budget and then they don't spend it in their buckets but they never tell us they don't spend it in their buckets for two years and then we kind of complain about it and then we move on what's different on the school budget is every month it's the most transparent budget in the town every month i have a budget to actual so i as as my sub as our subcommittee we know exactly where the school budget is right now okay which i'm guessing makes us the only budget in this finance committee that we know where it is right now um and so yeah when when they start over and under on a line item we hear about we see it and it's like usually the very first question i'll ask which is why is this up why is this down now most times i should point out the overs in the underage that i bring up those aren't done at the budget subcommittee those are done at the full school committee in public session and so the usually i don't ask a lot of questions because they're asking it right away is they're like wait why is this number up why is this number down and so yeah we we know about these things as they're happening or the everybody knows if they're paying attention to the meetings didn't seem didn't seem like it had been previously you're asking the same question again grant i mean is there a different question or no you're right i'm asking the same question again i was looking for an answer i i agree on both your points for first it was the same question and second you didn't get an answer i have an answer um the next person on the list is annie thank you so you have to understand how special special education works special education has to be provided according to state law if a child has an iEP and it requires spending on a particular program or if they need an out placement into a residential school or whatever they need the school committee has to pay for it regardless of what the SPED budget is and for the first six years that i was on the board of selectmen the SPED budget was eating the general education budget alive because we did not have a differential in how much money the schools got for their SPED budget they got there four percent that was it that's the history okay we determined we needed a different differential we didn't get the nine percent that we thought the expenses were actually going to go up but we got seven percent in the plan that we issued in 2011 which is the plan that we're operating on now so what's happening here now is the opposite so i think if it's okay on the way down it's okay on the way up okay but no they don't have perhaps meeting that SPED budget but we do the same thing with health care okay if we're budgeting five and a half percent on the town side for health care okay and our health care doesn't cost us five and a half percent then the town manager is free to spend that money but if we budget five and a half percent for health care and it costs more the town manager has to cut something else mid-year because he's got to pay for the health care just the way the same way the school committee's got to pay for SPED okay so that's how that works grand well if i may thank you annie that's SPED but not maintenance but that's fine i i'll i withdraw the question i i understand you answered this question thank you thank you grant would you put your hand down please thank you okay uh annie did you have anything else you wanted to add i just wanted to clarify that sort of bigger picture of how this all works okay thank you uh any other questions uh on the matters that have just been discussed yeah i have a question john i was under the impression that the school population had decreased to some extent it was projected to continue to decrease am i wrong about that or is that the case um so from 2010 to 2020 the school population increased about 20 to 25 percent so i think it went up like um 1100 students i have a radio it went from 4970 to 6100 this past year it went down i think like 270 students so we were projecting an increase of like 150 and it went down 270 so what was the number charlie 287 287 so at my and i think mike mason put the slide up um at her meeting so in the fall i had talked to cursey and she had asked mike mason to do a real deep dive into the cause of students what caused students to leave and um and he he went really deep like he went up and he didn't just try to figure out the net of 287 like he even said well these kids graduated and these kids the finance committee has all that information i sent it out to them yeah okay so that's that's it's down 287 the projection is they will all come back next year but also that's not i'm sorry dean that's not true the project completely true no it's 100 percent true i'm sorry he identified a third of those people that had left the country and they weren't being projected they were coming that they were coming back yeah no no you're conflating the issues um we think the school department thinks that they will get the 287 back as a combination of new enrollment and people coming back the people that left the country in the state they've identified as visas so those are those are students like parents kids who are going to grad parents their teaching universities are going to grad school and whatnot so they think they'll get back to the 287 next year they don't think they're going to get back to like 450 they're not going to get the 450 increase that they thought they were going to get this year well um have they then uh in terms of hiring a new fte's uh accounted for what you're talking about just now yeah so that's why we um that's why we took the 1.1 million dollar increase and we put it into the reserve fund and they're and we're holding it there because we're we're we don't know with like with certainty what the enrollment is going to be um the belief is down that now that we're back full time that people who chose um home school and and other all educational alternatives will come back and so if if they come back up like less than the 287 we're not going to release the 1.1 million other reserve fund if they come back more than the 287 we're going to start releasing it to cover for those net new students okay thank you you're welcome john thank you any other questions okay i think i'm going to take the opportunity since everyone else has spoken to make a couple of observations perhaps ask perhaps ask a couple questions um first of all um i want to note that the discussion of the achievement gap i think the uh the comments by uh john by dine and shane and and shaleen are are correct the achievement gap discussion goes back to about 2018 2019 um the the question of what the achievement gap was was asked back then i'm not sure it was ever answered or how it's measured the amount that the override the additional amount that the it was voted in the override that um was associated with the five-year plan and the achievement gap uh has continued to be carried in the in the budget it was in the the first year um fiscal 20 it was it was abbreviated in fiscal 21 by consensus with the school department because of the pandemic people didn't actually know what was happening we didn't know what was happening in the in the overall budgets in the town but those funds are again in the five-year plan and um as i mentioned earlier the 800,000 the second 800,000 and 800,000 have been increased to 1,030 to represent the a makeup on the shortfall that was originally uh originally forecast that was against the original forecast i think that john ellis and grand gibbian and perhaps some other people have raised um in in their own way raised the question that i asked and in my view um the the whether or not the proposal the second proposal that dean has put before us about replanting the future can actually work has a lot to do with whether it's actually worked in the past or not and if you look at the state data which i published in that paper that that i that memo that i wrote about a week ago between 2011 and 2019 if i think that's the less of the times i'm not sure it's um the the maximum growth rate of arlington special education spending was five percent and the last five years it's 3.5 percent those are the that's based on the numbers that the school department files every year according to a standard reporting method against their costs on the other hand every year in those last 10 years the school department has asserted that they needed the seven percent increase in their special education budget to meet their special education needs and the town including the finance committee shame on us have listened to them and believed them but their own data fight against it and if and dean if you have been so diligent in looking at the overruns and the changes in the budget every single month for all these years how come you never reported back to the finance committee that they were under spending this the special education budget and spending it on something else this is this is a kind of answer that question i'm not you ask me a question i'd like to answer thank you let me i like i'll answer it so the the question in my mind if we're talking about changing the rules of the game quote unquote how do we know the rules of the game are going to be followed in the future where is the school department or the school committee's credibility in saying that they're following a certain path when they deviate from it so seriously the accumulated deviation from that seven percent if they had if they had been spending even at four percent if they have been planning at four percent versus seven percent we would have 12 to 20 million dollars more in our override stabilization fund than we have today this is a huge number and i think it's unconscionable that the town has put up with this over the last five to five to eight years and i you know i had thank you allison but i'm speaking i had if some of you remember when diane johnson was the cfo of the school system i repeatedly asked because in the analysis that i was doing for their own budgets i could not see the seven percent increase in the in the special education spending and at one time in fact i think she even said it in her presentation of the finance committee superintendent bowdie said that she that they did not divert money from the special education purpose to something else in their budgets and yet there's this big gap between what they say their costs are and what they report to the state and the gap in my mind the repeated gap over multiple years was confirmed by the data that um the that mike mason presented to us on the 31st of march i don't deny that the school department has had a very difficult year and i and i suspect that indeed um there may be an increased or an accelerated achievement gap because of the pandemic um but i i can't confirm it either i mean i don't think we have any metrics one way or the other to that effect i'm i continue to be seriously concerned about how we can make any future plans in a collaborative way with the school department when they have deviated so far from what they have committed to follow in the past so um jean you wanted to say something i think i've said my piece here i i do and i'm going to go back to this one slide that we we had in the presentation right and this is this is where i get kind of frustrated with this like focus on special ed argument because when these budgets are are created i think the committee should understand when these budgets are created they host a multitude of issues so when the school committee first started experiencing um rapid enrollment growth they came and asked for a 100 net new student increase and our representatives to long-term planning which was our current chair our former chair and one of our vice chairs said no it should be 25 and that's they they held the line right and as charlie showed in his presentation earlier um and i'll have to go find it i mean last week what that did was it caused an erosion in per people spending right and it didn't work and so they came back again and they said hey we want an increase we need this increase we want we want a hundred percent of net new student to maintain this thing and the finance committee said no you can have 50 percent okay and so the school committee has never agreed with the 25 percent they've never agreed with the 50 percent and but but they were okay because they had enough funding to kind of get by and the reason i point up this slide is this slide is the unequivocal fact and the unequivocal fact is over 10 years per people spending has gone up 2.3 percent per year on average 2.3 percent that's less than any other budget in town if you normalize for the services that have to be provided and that's what i keep talking about which is you simply can't cherry pick the part of the budget that's you don't that's not working and say this is it this is it because this is what the school committee agrees to they're they could say you know what you're right let's do special ed 4 percent but we've got to go back and get 100 percent of net new student retro to 2012 because that's what we wanted right like so this is this is part of the well charlie it's my turn thank you this is what this is part of the larger discussion in negotiation and my frustration is when we put together a budget critique that just cherry picks the lines we don't like ignores the lines that we know don't make our argument and then try to argue with the people that they can't bring those points up and i just have to and it's will be brief it is really important that we keep using the phrase special education without saying what thank you are you finished dean uh-huh okay can you put that slide back up for a second yeah absolutely hold on the first thing this says is that the the annual increase in per pupil spending exceeded the student enrollment okay on the face of it so i i think that's sort of weakens part of your argument no they're not really trying to not relate it that's not mathematically if i can finish what i'm saying all right and secondly you can't tell me with a straight face you're you're an accountant all right and i'm sure you have experience of this in other areas you can't tell me that the variable cost of educating a student is 100 percent of the of the total cost of educating a student per year in other words when you have a cost per student some portion of that is variable and some portion of that is fixed and you supported the 25 percent and you supported the 50 percent precisely because it was estimated to be a good it was decided to be a good estimate of the variable cost per student and as far as the fixed infrastructure cost of the students you know we're paying millions of dollars a year we we've rebuilt the entire elementary school system we're rebuilding the high school so there's a lot of fixed cost that is not cap not counted for in in our in our spending budget so i i i think i think you're you're you're a assertion that the school department has been deprived of something because they didn't get a 100 percent variable cost for each new student is bizarre i didn't say they were deprived i never said that what i know what i said was to cherry pick the section of the budget you don't like no i'm sure or the other facts is not is intellectually dishonest i'm sorry deed it's not listen you know we we you said correctly that we uh looked at those um fte's in 2019 and we said we agreed with that but every year we've also looked at the three and a half percent and the seven percent and we've agreed with those budgets based on those growth figures what i'm complaining about i'm not cherry picking here i'm talking about gross misrepresentation over 10 years that's what i'm complaining about yeah but it's it's it's incredible look but look here is a here is a 10 year comparison of our per pupil spending in arlington to the town manager 12 okay so if it was so grossly negligent if it was so terrible then our rank in per pupil spending compared to other towns would be going through the roof right so in 20 2008 2009 we ranked six out of 12 then we were six at the point yes it is the point see this is what i mean this is what i get frustrated charlie you don't like this fact so you want to shut me down because it doesn't suit the argument the point of the matter is our pure pupil spending has not moved versus other districts in over a decade so to say this argument that the school system has been mismanaging their money it's it's supported because you you you slim it down to the to the one line item you think makes your point and you ignore all the other data it's 24 million dollars you ignore all the other data 24 million dollars it's not though because you would you would if you took 24 million dollars out of this budget for per pupil spending we would be we would i'll do it right now in front of everyone what would happen we would crater to the lowest spending district in the state okay because what you're asking me to do right let me do this i'm not asking to take the 20 million dollars no i'm taking it out Dean let's not be ridiculous why because you don't want the committee to see what the number would be charlie you know the numbers you take 20 million from 80 million you've got uh 56 million hold on hold on i'm just i'm just gonna do it i think the committee should see this committee should see that what we would do is is you're saying per pupil spending should have been eight thousand dollars per student the next lowest community at that point the next lowest community was 12 i mean how is that logical i did not say that the student per pupil spending had to be million that's taken 20 million out of the budget i'm sorry Dean that's not what i said so um i think i made my point i'm i'm um basically concerned about the ability of the town to reach consensus with the school department on future spending if they haven't lived up to what they said they were going to do in the past or they haven't reported what they were doing in the past you can take that screen down now thank you all right sorry hold on i have another question charlie yes so are you saying that over the last 10 years the schools never returned any money to free cash no none no i'm not saying that okay so you have to take whatever they return free cash off of your 12 to 21 million dollars even if no sorry sorry but the point the point is the point is andy is that let's just call it 12 million dollars it's it could be higher but i don't want to get into that subtlety so let's just say it's 12 million dollars okay they spent 12 million dollars more than they told us they were spending for that purpose they spent in other words they every year that they said that they told us that we had a budget so much for special education and they were spending two-thirds of that on special education that is not being straightforward and truthful with the rest of the town i'm sorry but charlie every department does this dpw we just did a whole discussion about how dpw moves things between line items this is the moral equivalent of doing that they had money in their budget they had something that cost more than they expected and something that cost less and they paid for all their expenses and they returned money to free cash the same way the town budget does and frankly i agree with dean the school does a more detailed budget they monitor their budget better they hold more public hearings about their budget and they have a budget subcommittee which by the way the select board does not that looks at the actual to budget every every month okay they're doing the best they can they're not being honest and i think you're choosing them to be dishonest is what i'm saying look in any given year any if they spent that money and they've spent it somewhere else that's that's life okay but then come back the next year and say you need seven percent growth because that activity is growing at seven percent is not true can i make a comment all the equivalent of what we do with healthcare you don't always spend seven and a half percent on healthcare back when we were doing seven percent as the limiter we didn't always spend seven percent we had years when we didn't do that on the town side and we did not change the budget parameter or reduce that budget line based on the previous year's experience we did we're treating both not no we did not we did not do that year by year i was in charge of that eventually after some period of experience okay any let's you change in the subject but i was on the i was on the committee that reviewed that budget we had a we had a trust fund balance we adjusted it based on on the actuals so i'm sorry arif yes so comment to what annie is saying look uh you know you can't compare it to moving line items in the water sewer budget because if you're allocating dollars for something that is special education there's a huge emotional decision being made when the town votes for it and i don't i don't think you're taking that into account so just saying that it's a similar sort of sorry let me finish but let me let me talk let me finish don't get overly emotional about this stuff we're in the finance committee we're not supposed to be emotional about anything so the the whole point is that we need to get the emotion out of it there's too much emotion in this and it's for the wrong reasons you've got to think logically and think properly about this just taking a budget you know when the town votes for special ed special education sorry it means a certain thing when you vote and when you move money around in a water sewer budget that doesn't have the same implications okay so i need to make a statement about that you need to iterate you need to segregate those things out and please for and i will make a statement here guys keep the emotions out of this i i'm not liking the way this conversation is going at all what charlie is saying is some very relevant points dean has put up some points without any data and all emotion based on emotion again annie is doing the same thing and i'm not going to make an emotional statement i'm just going to say this is what i'm observing thank you neither the town nor the town votes a sped budget will go to bottom line for the education budget the same way they vote a bottom line for dpw thank you annie chilean uh in the interest of being fact based and not emotion based i would like to just state that um a lot of what's being said right now is based on the report that that charlie put out i believe based on slide number eight that uh came up with a figure um that is a is his estimate of a percentage for sped that isn't that is you know an estimate so i just want to say um we also have uh cursey allison amp as a visitor who has not been acknowledged to speak and she may not be who it has put into the chat window that she thinks some of the things that we are debating might not be based on fact so i'm not saying i what i think facts are i'm just saying it's possible that we don't even have like a concrete number to go on we think seven percent is high and charlie has put forth a different number and um and now we're going around and around so i just wanted to flag that that like we may be uh not working with full facts at this point that's all thank you charlie al-tasi yeah i uh i think everybody's said their piece and uh all the data has been out there i think uh the most important question we'll decide tonight is actually the the second part of uh the school subcommittee's uh proposal uh but i'd like to request the chair we move to a vote is there anybody else on the committee that would like to speak charlie i think you should give an opportunity john ellis john i'm turner okay i was hoping to hear from john i think you're on mute sorry i'm hoping we can hear from cursey my mute no i heard you cursey thank you okay um i can't address everything because i don't want to talk i know this is your meeting and i don't want to take a long time on it but i would point out that i strongly disagree with what is being said that we have not been good partners in the past we have fulfilled all of the override obligations however what has not been mentioned here is that they changed over time in 2011 the override obligation was for us to that we had to justify the seven percent increase in special education the number was obtained by looking at what the spending had been over the past and it was in fact eight and a quarter that we had found and then it was dialed down to seven because that gave us a motivation to not increase too much in the 2016 override we did not have that same obligation we continued the three and a half percent increase in the seven percent increase but we did not maintain that same obligation to need to justify the special education spending the same for the 2019 this is a formula to figure out how much money the school system needs to run in an adequate fashion it's been doing okay it's not perfect that's why we needed extra money when we opened the Gibbs that's why we've needed extra money along the way and that's why there's been all these changes in you know kind of updates on the formula i think we could use looking at it and seeing if we think we're i mean it's possible we're not actually spending enough and i know that's going to freak everyone out but what we're trying to do is get the school system that our children need and to say that we are not our behaving in bad faith because we didn't spend everything that we had put in a budget category towards that budget category given even though half of the year was in a pandemic is not only unreasonable i mean it's it's untrue it's unreasonable and it's not helping create the kind of working relationship that we should all be having so there i'm sorry i've been hearing a whole bunch of mistakes both in this and charlie's presentation last time i'm going to try and address a few of them before wednesday but we will i will work on a longer rebuttal after that because it's just it's going to take me a while but the big picture is what we've been trying to do is come up with a funding formula for the schools we aren't coming up with it's not a sped pot in a not sped or a gen ed pot it's a school budget and we are running the schools as best we can so thank you thank you kirstie chain thanks charlie so i am a parent as well as a finance committee member and a taxpayer like everybody here um so i think i am a parent of one kid and i will be a parent soon to be consuming twice as much from the school system in the fall uh so you know i am fortunate that my kids do not have special needs um but i know that there are plenty of parents in arlington that do and i have really been grateful for the work of the school um well obviously since i moved to arlington but particularly over the last year so um i would just say i think we can reflect on the past um and but look to the future and you know i have relatively new to this committee so i haven't sort of been in part a lot of those discussions or hate about those sort of different sort of underpinnings of of the budget but you know i again as a finance committee member as a parent as a taxpayer um i'd really like to be part of the discussion about the future uh because i do think we have a really great school system here we have a lot of people that are very interested in it i acknowledge charlie's presentation i appreciate the time that he is spent on it i appreciate that there are different opinions on the finance committee about about this but um i guess it's maybe this is more just a thought but i just wanted to say you know i'm going to vote for the budget as you know presented in the in the presentation and um yeah i just i i i think you know look to the future and reflect on the past and that's more just my comment so thank you thank you shane um kirstie do you still have your hand up thank you any other comments on this budget on this though i think um dean you did you move the budget okay was was it seconded yes sir yes and i seconded it thank you okay so it's been moved and seconded there are no uh further hands up i see no further questions so um dean would you put your motion up i have three screens and a million things up at the moment so give me a second to find it this fancy little share button okay so the vote is that the finance committee approves the education i'm sorry the motion is that the finance committee approves the education budget of 80 million 104,634 as printed in the fiscal 22 uh budget book let me one second here so on the school budget grant gibbian hi jane blendell yes john ellis yes micaiah heli yes mary margaret yes arie padaria no uh johnathan wallach yes brian beck no peter howard peter howard your mute i was voted uh yes chaeline pokris yes darryl harmer yeah john dice no uh ellen jones yes annie lecourt yes bill keller bill keller you're here right he was here bill keller okay um i'm sorry yes al toasty yes george kosher yes pristine deshler yes yes dean carmen yes david mackenna yes so the vote is one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen and three and three against the budget is passed so uh recommended vote number two dean i'm going to read it um so i let me preface this by saying that the budget we met with the budget subcommittee today and they were um amenable to this um so this isn't hitting anyone out of nowhere and so recommended vote of recommendation i'll give a brief comment and then we can discuss it so recommend vote number two that the key stakeholders meet to review education budget budget funding in f y 2023 and beyond including but not limited to arriving at a new funding formula for the budget in future years key stakeholders meeting should start with town and school professional management then add members of the blackboard school committee and finance committee second any discussion yeah i have a comment chairman um this is out of go ahead okay so one of my comments is that uh uh who is on that the people who provided the education report shelly dean and uh yeah and all three all three of the folks have children that are part of the school system i would propose that we have somebody on that subcommittee that group that does not have children in the school system who has children who has who are passed out of the school system or some such because i believe there should be no element of bias in that reporting okay so that is my that is one comment i'd like you to take into consideration please so rief i just just to explain it deem this is not for you it's a comment my friend no but it's but no no no but you you made an argument i think you misunderstood them i don't make an argument i mean i'm sorry you haven't been recognized but he didn't misunderstood the motion i just want to clarify because it actually is what he wants to see please um so the i think the the the motion doesn't name who's going to be on this committee or how it's going to be done uh rief i think it simply states that the finance committee would support a process that uh goes forward uh in that direction so i think no i understand that charlie i'm making a comment about and maybe it's not to do with this but uh i think it ties well into this is because the three people that were helped uh asked to investigate and present it if i'm not wrong all of them have children in the school system and all i'm saying is that enough of us on this on this table in this committee that either do not have children in the school system or don't have you know and that we can be part of that group so i would ask you to take that into understand every but i don't think you can make the assumption just because somebody has uh i am making a white white contact that's the bias okay i i'm sorry you have to mix it up charlie because if you don't do that there can be an assumed bias in there okay thank you i'm assuming that bias i don't have a child in the system and i feel that all three of them have children in the system and sorry i want to make it known thank you thank you thank you uh alan jones thank you charlie i'd like to uh offer an amendment which is to change then add to including or something like that basically to start with the full committee rather than just the uh management can can you flip that back up there so i can see that again thank you i mean the intent is to start the process with the whole group rather than i second alan's motion you see what i'm saying there's the start with town and professional management then add members um i just want everybody together all at once whatever the right wording would be yeah i'll be honest with you what i was trying what i did is i just took along the long-range training committee members and passed them into a document that's how i did this but that's what i'm trying to get at uh could you speak a little louder dean please sorry try my my intent here what what i thought i was doing was just saying essentially i was kicking it to long like a subcommittee of long-range planning because i figured instead of long-range planning going to hold everyone on it we just put the key stakeholders in it and i was giving kathy and adam just a running running room on it but it's fine we changed it uh and like changed it to including i mean town and professional management aren't the only stakeholders that's what i'm thinking no i just wanted to give like we have a new superintendent so she'll have to jump in on day one so i was trying to give her some running room to talk to adam okay well that's my amendment thank you charlin okay thank you thank you so what what would you like to see changed there alan i changed it sorry just just to to start with the management and members from the select board school committee and finance committee rather than start with only the management and then add the original said then add okay including to eliminate that delay and so you accept that as a friendly amendment dean yeah absolutely okay thank you alan thank you charlie um al-tasi yeah i just uh like to make a few over overview comments um i think the research that the chair has done uh has been extremely well done has taken a lot of time and makes them excellent points uh but i don't think the uh and this is the reason i voted for the school budget as presented with teams motion uh i i think these points and this discussion research discussion and decisions need to be made uh by the major stakeholders primarily through the long range planning committee and not on the floor of town meeting uh town meeting is not a very good place to make these kind of decisions and come to fairly technical uh decisions um i think uh that the schools um over the long run uh have made compromises and been collaborative in a lot of the decisions that have happened over the years uh just last june uh the uh finance committee made a proposal that with the pandemic we need to cut the 2021 budget now and uh the manager proceeded to eliminate all the positions that he had put in and come up with additional cuts uh and the schools stepped forward upon request and cut about four hundred and sixty thousand dollars out of their fiscal 21 budget and rather than just resist to the end even knowing that they were going to have some additional expenses that they didn't know what but they made that cut they made that collaboratively with the manager and with the finance committee year after year second point um the school committee has gone with the original decisions of the long range planning committee made in december january uh even though later on the houseways and means committee in april or even the governor might have come with additional chapter 70 money rather than jump in and claim that's ours um that money has flown has uh has flowed into the long-term stabilization fund uh or the uh actually the uh long-term can't remember i call it now uh but the fund to help prevent future overrides or reduce their magnitude uh and and they've stuck with their agreements uh in december and january and february uh even though things could have got better for them later on and finally on the uh pupil um when the when the decision was made to go with the increasing costs the original decision was to go to 25 percent and there was a lot of grumbling and and uh on on some of the members from the school committee but they know it was moving in the right direction uh it was a good faith effort and they went with it we we then bumped it up to 35 percent uh listening to them and finally to 50 percent to pull it all together uh which i still still think is a reasonable number so i i think the school committee has been uh a good faith participant with the select man in the finance committee and the long-range planning committee and i think if if uh the finance committee votes uh this recommended second vote which i hope they will unanimously um if possible uh i i think that they will be a good faith partner in getting that done everybody knows there's an override two years from this coming june of one magnitude or another and that we all have to face it and this override will be different because it'll be after a large excuse me part of the impact from the high school which will be impacting their tax bill over the next several years so i i strongly urge you or a yes vote on the on the vote number two i think it'll move this town forward in a collaborative way uh which i think is a is a keystone to what this town has done over the last 20 years so thank you mr chair thank you alan um shane thanks charlie a little bit of comment about the number two but i think i think what we're seeing here is a diversity of perspectives here and i think just as i think we all bring our own biases and perspectives to the thing come work but we all we volunteer for this you know we don't get uh so i have kids um some of the people don't you know some people are retired some people are still working um i think we all benefit i think the finance committee the discussions benefit from our different perspectives here and i come with a fresh face and interest in this work and yes i have kids um but like everybody else i'm invested in this town so i just want to make that comment and i'm going to support number two thanks thank you thank you chain um i don't think i see anybody else's hands up because alan and chain's hands are still up but i assume that's um residual um mr chairman can i it's yes dean so i because i think we're moving towards the vote i do want to thank everyone um for their discussion tonight um i i want to echo al-tosti sentiments that i want to thank the chairman for his um digging into special ed numbers and and poking at it and sort of not sort of but being the impetus for this this second vote right um because you know i i think i don't think i'm alone when i say that i i i've never liked voting the school budget in two hours after their presentation like i think this is healthy that we kind of like have a robust discussion and debate and argument and food fight and stuff like that over this budget it's it's the single largest budget in the town it's been growing at 6.4 percent a year like all of this was really awesome and healthy and i thank everybody who contributed i loved you all when i came in i love you all more as i leave so thank you thank you dean any other comments no other comments okay so a vote on the motion by dean uh which is which is uh modified to use the word including as a friendly uh modification dean would you send that that uh presentation to uh peter and myself yep thank you okay um grant gibbian yes jane blundell yes john ellis yes lekaya healy yes mary margaret yes yes a reef padaria yes Jonathan walsh yes brian beck yes and i still love dean you're Howard yeah jaylene pogris yes they're only not voting if we love dean kidding daryl harmer yeah john dice yes yes alan jones yes if we could all sit and come by yas annie lecourt yes and charlie you're still one of my best friends uh thank you annie um likewise bill keller yes um alan tosty yes george cozer yes christine deshler yeah dean carman yes and david mackenna david mackenna uh yes thank you okay so that motion passed unanimously good work dean okay it's um it's nine fifty and um let's just let's vote one thing uh some housekeeping if you go to um the uh budget 51 the peg access budget i distributed some information i got from uh cooler today for uh peg access budget of 845 512 dollars this is um this is basically um money that comes now um from the cable companies to fund acmi in the legislature um ruled a couple of years ago that this or maybe it was dor i'm not sure but they decided that this money could not go directly to acmi but it had to come into the town and then be appropriated so it comes in and out and the um the ins and outs are shown in the page that i uh page page uh three on the agenda that i distributed tonight so um a motion is in order for uh article 51 the peg access budget or don't move 12 dollars moved and seconded um any discussion excuse you tally we can we can see dean's screen so we can see what you're doing thank you oh okay um but let me just bring this up i can't uh i'm not going to take your time i can't find the file so i did it's here yeah you want the warrant or what no i hang on a second i i've got it i just have to share this you see the uh file i uh no we can't do this there we go can you see this yes okay this is article 51 the peg access budget 845 512 dollars um this is the sum of the revenue and this is some of the expenses it has zero effect on the bottom line from the town it's entirely associated with uh cable revenues and expenses by um acmi so do we have a motion for that move approval zero seconds second moved and seconded article uh 51 great gibbian yes stein blundell yes john ellis yes um mackaya healy yes mary margaret yes kareef yes johnson wallet yes brian beck yes here yes aileen yes darrell yeah john yes allen yes yanny yes uh bill keller yes al-tasi yes george cozer yes disney deshler yeah dean carmen yes david mackenna yes thank you uh unanimous okay so well we have this um so there's i made some comments in the agenda about the the report and rather than just to go through it quickly there is a folder that's up uh in in the share point that um um allen put up for it's called the uh fiscal 22 or f y 22 um annual report finance committee annual report and um so we have we're we're gonna start working on the on the uh finance committee annual report essentially starting tomorrow and so you will all have access to that okay um um and you'll be able to look at it and edit in real time allen have you put up a trial budget as well i sent out a pdf of the trial budget to everybody today asking for review it's the you know the unformatted fully documented one but everybody should check the numbers and the head counts and look for any obvious typos don't worry about formatting okay and if you didn't get it let me know and i'll i i sent it to the to the fincom and our like the fincoms on online group so if you didn't get it let me know okay so um i'm i'm requesting that christine and allen uh work with uh liz and i on on getting the basic document going um and then i'd like this for a first pass ask for uh peter uh john wallek and annie and dean and al to review the budget that'll be in a few days that's a review to report in a few days and then we'll coordinate it with uh sandy pooler uh select board and the moderator and school management so um charlie just just the information just because you haven't been through this the the body of the report is a big word doc it gets turned into a pdf i generate three pdfs for appendix bc and d so they're all independent documents and they get merged together at the last moment okay um i'll uh i'll track you down on that afterwards make actually liz will tell us what to do i'm sure okay um so but i think we're going to try to keep the the the work in process uh in the share point file so anyone will have access to be able to look at it and comment as time goes on um and i and i imagine that everybody's going to edit out my comments on um the school budget not out that was just trying to maintain a sense of humor at this late hour at night nobody thought that was very funny folks are tired charlie okay um charlie i can just tell you i'll my second glass of wine because i'm home okay i'm just drinking tea tonight that's maybe my problem so i think it's time to adjourn we need to have a uh we need to vote the overestabilization budget i don't know that we're gonna have that by Wednesday night um so i think i think we'll um i'll send an email out but i think we'll have the next meeting on monday not on wednesday anything else anybody wants to touch on tonight i just want to say thank you to the subcommittee that worked so hard on the uh with the school committee on the budget i actually think they did a great job um yeah oh despite the fact that we may not be in agreement it should work so thank you very much for that thank you much for that okay uh motion to adjourn is in order some moved some moved and move the second that hearing no objections the meeting is adjourned thank you bye bye thank you good night