 All right, go ahead. Thank you. Okay. So I'd like to call the meeting to order the finance committee for April 26th, it's 9 a.m. And we have a very tight schedule and they'll mix amounts at the beginning, but first I want to take care of the usual opening requirements. And it starts with to announce that pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted by remote means, members of the public who wish to access the meeting, may do so by Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public is permitted at the meeting, but every effort is being made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. And I would like to now make sure that members of the committee can hear and that we can hear them. So please respond as I go through and we'll do it alphabetically. So it starts with Lynn. Present. And Bob. I'm here. And Matt. Present. Bernie. I'm here. Kathy. Here. Michelle. I think I missed Michelle's in the listing. So Michelle. Present. Alicia. Here. Okay, so we have everybody present. And I know you, we now have two others. Lynn, I don't know if you need to call a meeting to order. I do. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the special meeting of the town council to order. I wanna check with the two additional counselors who have joined us to make sure they can hear us and we can hear them. Pat D'Angeles. Present. Pam Rooney. Present. If others come in, we'll note that in the minutes and make sure they can hear us. Thanks, Andy. Okay. And as I've informed everybody previously, I will need to leave the meeting at 10 o'clock. It was an unfortunate circumstance the two meetings got scheduled in the same morning, but the Mass Mutual Association Fiscal Policy meeting at 10 has some very important to gender items for all municipalities, including us. And so I really need to switch gears and attend that meeting. So at 10, I'm gonna turn the chair of the council over to the vice chair who's prepared to then take over and run the meeting as vice chair, one of those responsibilities that goes with the position. So thank you, Kathy, for doing that. Just as a quick announcement for the people who from the finance committee who were not in attendance last night, the hearing to say the least was extremely brief since nobody chose, actually I guess one person who chose to speak and he was actually speaking about revenue and things to do to get more revenue for schools and other things, but it was not regarding the budget that we're actually considering. So it was not, and then during the discussion at the council meeting, there was really only one comment made and it might come up later, but it's from a counselor who I understand is not gonna be able to be present this morning. So that's why she wanted to make her position stated last night. And it was really in the form of a question about whether we could put qualifications on the vote regarding the capital project for the track and field. And Sean answered the question basically saying that all four communities have to come up with the same motion, the same vote and that we can't vary from the motion that is being provided, I think is essentially, I don't know, Sean, if you have anything else to say about yesterday and otherwise we should get on to today. Yeah, maybe I'll just repeat my response and Doug, if you feel differently, let us know. But the question was, could the town of Amherst essentially vote for just one of the track options, modify the debt authorization language to vote for just one of the track options? And my response was that would be essentially voting down what the school committee voted because that's not what the school committee voted. The school committee voted the flexibility to pursue two different options. Does that, do you agree with that, Doug? Yeah, that'd be correct because the school committee authorization has two parts. So it has a flexibility for the school committee as far as the choice, but as far as what the towns can say, it's basically a yes or no to what's presented to them. Okay. So with that, the only other thing I wanna do in the way of announcements are to inform members of the who were not present yesterday. There were two things referred to our committee and Kathy may mention this during the second part of the meeting and there was one other issue that arose at the very end of the council meeting. The two that were referred with the optional tax exemptions, which is a standard item every year. And we don't have to report back according to the motion that was made at the council meeting until June 27. So it's not anything that we need to address very quickly. The water and sewer rates were presented to the council and referred to the finance committee with a directive to return by May 16 with the recommendation. And I think that the thing we will do is because there was some memos in the packet that did not get to the resident members of the committee who were not on the council share point, we'll get those to you. One of us will get those to you within the next day and we'll get it scheduled for another subsequent meeting and we can, we'll fit it in at an appropriate point but it's really not part of today's discussion. And the other thing that came up at the end of the meeting was that we had previously planned on doing the public hearing on the budget as a whole on May 16 last year. It took a pretty long time to do that public hearing. I don't know if we will get the same kind of public response or not. This year, last year was about the Cres program and it was very important issue to a lot of people. So we had a lot of people in attendance but we are gonna have to discuss alternative approaches and there were a couple of ideas that came up. One was to come up with another date that is not a council date and not previously scheduled. And the other was to go ahead and do it on May 16 but to do it starting earlier at 5.30 is a plan. So that it starts an hour earlier than the council meeting time. And that's basically it. I don't know, Lynn was there anything else from yesterday that I'm missing? You muted side, we're not hearing you. Thank you. Not from yesterday, but one of the things that if we have time before you need to leave Andy we should talk about is the process by which we're going to review the budget and assignments. Okay, we'll do the best we can but I think we need to get on with school because Doug can only be with us for an hour. And there was a number of questions. So Sean, I'm gonna turn to Sean because he's sort of collected, I believe the questions that have been so far. Sean. Yeah, so Doug has put together responses to those questions, Doug is it okay if I just share the document you sent me and run through that, those questions? Yeah, absolutely. That's what I thought we might do given that I didn't get a chance to get it to you until this morning. Before you start, I'd like to note that Shalini Balmillan has also joined the meeting. I'm here, thank you. Thank you, Shalini. So I'll turn it over to Doug just to walk us through. Is this large enough for people to see and I'll send this document out after the meeting to everybody on the committee post in the packet. All right, so just to go through this sort of first questions in short, sort of what's gonna happen when some of the money that runs out runs out. And it's not unknown to us. It's certainly something that we're thinking about quite a bit and working toward, there are some, a couple of things mentioned here regarding the CSHS, which is Community Safety and Health Services Grant, I believe it's what it's called, but once we're short, we knew that that would transition away and we would have to carry those costs ourselves. So we're in a process of transitioning the staff that are covered under that grant onto our appropriation budget. So we've been planning for that. I think with the answer funds, the key thing to keep in mind is it goes through all 24 and a little bit of 25. We currently still have fairly strong balances there and we'll utilize those funds to help ourselves out as we need to. And again, the key thing to keep in mind with regard to that is that, there are some positions and some staff that we are funding through that that are about responding to the pandemic and the effects of the pandemic. And some of those things are the things you think about like PPE and that sort of stuff, buying testing or getting testing done, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of it's the other kinds of things the implications and the impacts on our kids and our staff and trying to mitigate those effects and smooth those out. And so we'll continue to use those funds for that purposes as our first order of what we're trying to do. And then the impact on our budgets over to the pandemic, they're more directly financial. We'll also use it as is the case this year, we're gonna use it to help sort of level up our budget and keep our staffing and services and programs offered to the same. So we know that money's running out and we know that we'll have to transition away from that source over the next couple of years. Likewise, we have the opportunity with School of Choice and E&D this year to support our budget more strongly from those. Again, those will taper over the next couple of years. And again, I think it's an evolving circumstances to what our need and response is relative to pandemic. And so I think that's caused us to be cautious about and more committed to a sort of level services and sort of maintaining the status quo in a sense. And that'll be part of the process over the next year to sort of see what changes that we can and they need to make relative to our budgets to kind of keep us financially strong as we sort of lose these limited time resources. So we're aware of it, we're keeping an eye on it. We think there's some changes in, with like the sixth grade of the middle school, it's gonna help both districts, both Amherst and region. We think that there's some declining enrollment that's gonna be a factor. So there's a number of different sort of knobs to turn as to make things to get there from here. But it won't be easy. I think it's fair to say. So we'll have some tough choices ahead as we move forward in the coming years. The sort of second question and Sean, if you'll scroll down a little bit I'll get into that. I'm talking about capital projects. And so I wanna make sure to be clear about the pieces of the capital, the budget as a whole has really for us three parts. It has the assessment method, the operating budget and the capital budget, capital budget being the capital assessment is often how we refer to it. Those three pieces are all part of getting a budget pass for the regional school district. The assessment method, if we use the statutory method just off the books right from the state, we wouldn't have to deal with that. We would, if we utilize that method that wouldn't require a vote. However, we do an alternative method. So that requires all four towns to approve that. The actual functional budget parts where we look at what's the spending we're gonna do in each of those areas needs three or four towns to commit to it. Technically the state has a two thirds but since we have four towns, you gotta be more than two thirds so we have to go to three quarters. So three of the four have to pass that part. And depending on how you vote it, sometimes we'll vote all three of those as three separate votes. Sometimes they'll vote them all in one vote. It's up to you as far as how you wanna operate in that regard, but that's the sort of mechanics of how the budget gets passed. On the other hand, we have a debt authorization. That's a separate ask, but it builds into what our capital assessments are gonna look like over coming years. Debt authorization is basically an ask from the school committee to each town to incur more debt and any town has the ability to reject that. And so any one of the four towns rejects that authorization, it fails and the school committee would have to come back with a new authorization. If you take no action, that's a sort of a pocket approval. But I wanna keep those terms and those concepts separate because they really are. There's this sort of budget piece which has to do with the assessment of capital costs and the operating costs and then the debt authorization, which is there's two pieces this year because we've got those sort of standard-looking authorization and borrowing that we will potentially do for the future and then the one related to the track project. And so the debt schedule that separates out the projects at the tail end of this, it's a pretty lengthy thing. So at the tail end of this, I've got a grid. It's similar to what you've seen before, but it basically broken out capital projects over the next several years and put them in place. And you can see the impact of various projects on the capital plan. I will say this, one of the things we know we need to do in sort of between myself and our facilities director and that is to balance the plan out a little bit. There's a big spike in the next couple of years. It's just too big for all four communities to take on. So we're gonna have to moderate that and move some capital projects around to sort of level that out. The other thing I'll point out the last couple of years that are on that chart, I've got like fiscal, 30 and 31, that's not a full representation of every project. I only put in projects through fiscal 27, which would come online as far as borrowing in fiscal 28. And so those are projected out. It does include one of the larger projects. It's the Windows project, maybe it's the roof. I forget where this, it's the roof that it's in. So right there, I'm sorry. So the roof project is $5 million that comes online. The Windows is not fully into that assessment. So if you look at assessment, it kind of drops off the last couple of years. It's not, that last couple of years is not a full representation of the true capital plan in its entirety, but I wouldn't lean on it too much. There's a lot that's gonna change over the next, you know, literally months as we rework this a little bit and as our current middle school roof project goes through the MSNBA process and we find out whether we've been approved or not. If we've not been approved, that's gonna shift that project again. That'll require us to reconfigure our capital planning again. But certainly aware that there are several large projects regional schools that are gonna need to be taken care of and currently how we have them laid out, excuse me, is going to create an uptick in capital costs for all four communities that is not able to be met by the four towns. They just, you know, I've heard that and we'll make a deeper dive into that and try to smooth those out, level that out a little bit, potentially push some projects off a little bit. Some are more urgent than others, but you know, they'll need some more attention in that regard. Keep scrolling down if you would please. Looking at some parts of comparison over time, particularly to other programs, other programs really consist of three main things. There's charter tuition for kids leaving the district to go to charter schools, the choice out tuition, the vocational tuition. They're all dependent on how many students we have. The overall population of students has been pretty steady, you know, over the years. Choice out is has a baseline of 5,000, but if the kids have special education costs, some of those are charged the district. So that creates some variability there. The rate at which those special education costs are charged is set by the state and it hasn't, you know, they take into account of inflationary factors. Same as true vocational schools, vocational school costs are determined by the state. The vocational schools submit to the state what they think they need from a tuition of each student to operate their school. The state either raise or modifies that that they set the rates and we pay them and typically they don't go down. So some of the increases we see over the recent years is related to, you know, sort of the inflationary costs of those students opting for other kinds of educational experiences. In regard to that. It looks like Matt's got a question, so I'll pause and have him ask. Thanks Doug, and thanks everybody this morning. Doug, can you just clarify what costs are we paying for vocational students, special education, vocational students? Say that one more time, I'm sorry. What costs are we paying for special education, vocational students? So, you know, depending on the nature of the kids. So kids that are vocational students, if they have special education needs, there's some of those that are covered within the, within the, you know, sort of tuition and responsibility of the vocational school. There are some others that are then reflected back onto the, onto the, onto the sending district, which one's particular I don't recall off the top of my head. I just know we do get charged, you know, incremental additional charges in some way similar to the way choice works. It's not exactly the same, but there are sometimes when we do get charged for some of the special education costs, sort of not be more specific on that. I'd have to dig in a little bit and find the specifics on that. But if you don't mind, I would be interested just because this is like the one thing I do feel confident learning about. Doug, do you want me to add just from my experience in the past or it's probably changed a little bit, but there used to be an increment for special education students that was charged on top of the baseline tuition. It was three or $4,000. And that was at Smith and Franklin County. And then there's even been some instances in the past where there's special programs at those schools. And so there would be a separate tuition arrangement for those special programs. I think it may have evolved a little bit where they maybe stopped charging the special ed increment at one of those schools, but in the past there has been special education costs for vocational schools. We need to pause for a second. Athena, you have your hand up. I just wanted to know what quickly Councilor Pam joined us. Can we confirm that she can hear us and we can hear her and note that in the minutes, please. Yes, I can hear you and see you, thank you. Thank you. So the second part of that question in regard to sort of budget areas and decreases in regular education. I think one of the biggest things in regard to that comparison between 23 and 19 is really sort of this year because we have a much larger amount of school choice. I mean, there's a number of other factors, but we're using a larger amount of school choice this year and we directly apply that to our regular education costs. And so it, I don't want to say artificially, but it more significantly impacts and reduces our regular education costs. So, in the regular education costs that you're looking at generally and especially that comparison chart that's being referenced here is about the sort of general fund exclusive of spending that's done through revolving funds like that. And so in particular, I believe for this year about 400, there's a decrease in our spending for regular education payroll. The decrease is like $400,000 from the current year. And the thing is, is we're not changing the number of staff we have, but because of a larger amount of school choice, it reduces that burden and therefore sort of shifts the totality of our regular education. It's a bit of a, when looking just at the sort of general fund monies or the appropriated kind of monies, it can be difficult to represent that well or to follow the reason why those regular education costs look so much lower over time. Sometimes it's sometimes an artifact of how we're using some choice funds to do that. Kathy, any questions? Yeah, Doug, when you're saying the school choice funds, is that people who are choosing to go to someplace else than our high school or middle school, or is that people who are coming in? Is that in or out? Because if in, we get money for it. If we go out, we pay for it. So which is, what's the flow on the school choice? So the school choice in this circumstance, because we have that revenue coming into the district, we use it to reduce the cost that we're paying from the general fund monies. In other words, the assessed amounts that each town is paying. So it's because we have sort of cash on hand from this resource, we're reducing our sort of our general fund use in the current year in that area. And is that a, can I find bodies? So I don't just divide 400,000 by 5,000, right? To figure out how many kids that is. So is that, I don't need that number now, but is that sort of, is that more children? We can send you, it's posted on Desi's website. So we can send you a link where you can see, it's way more in than out. That's the one thing the schools have always been really good at. There's way more interest coming into the district than leaving, but all of it's published online. So we can send it to you. Okay, that was just my question on flow of humans as well as flow of money. Yeah, thanks. And there is some about the in, a little later in this document, there's some, a little bit of a headcount for current year on number of kids we have in it. So let's move down to the next one, which is the staffing question. Right now we've got a level services. And so the staffing is level from this year to next, the current seventh grade is a little smaller than the incoming seventh grade or the rising seventh graders, the current sixth grade class a little larger than the class ahead of them. And so it's likely that we'll need two and a half teams for the seventh grade next year. So we'll hold our staffing steady there. And then there was a question around the art staffing and as a note here, it's a bit of an artifact to the accounting. It's simpler to apply sort of all of the ESSER funds to an individual as opposed to fractions of four or five individuals. So in the high school in particular what's the block schedule they went to this year, there were some needs around the choices kids made to as to which electives and which classes they were going to take. And so there were some small fractional amounts of FTE and a number of departments that we use some ESSER funds to cover. We kind of lump that into art staffing. And there was a, I think the other person, other big area that we put it into was a science position, believe it was science. And that was the simplicity of our grants and tracking our grants and that sort of thing. I think the real sort of real question is when an ESSER runs out is what and how do we apply that reduction? So if we have fewer students we theoretically would have fewer sections needed and we could produce staff accordingly but it won't be necessarily targeted to the art department, art department state may stay exactly like it is. I think we'll just have to evaluate whether or not the staffing we have and the students we have and the programs that we have and what we have, what we wanna have and what funds are available. So when those ESSER funds run out we'll probably sort of slice pieces of a few different things to actually make up that difference as it were. So I wanted to sort of allay any fears that art was gonna take a hit a couple of years. If it may, but I would suggest that it's more likely we'll have sort of smaller slices in multiple departments much like we did coming into fiscal 22. We took a, we anticipated some reductions in sort of multiple academic departments that we ultimately then needed to support with ESSER funds. But it's driven by students and their choices of what classes they wanna take especially in those in the junior and senior here. The ELE staffing, just to move down to that next one has increased, there's probably a shift in model we've gone to less use of what they call loud tutors or ELE tutors which are ad hoc staff that come in and provide support to students and more of a model that uses staff that are on contract with us. So that's one piece of it. And then I think the other piece that you'll see is that there's just been an uptick in the percentage of students that are needing that support at the high school level. So we've had, it's a two-fold reason why we have more staffing needed a model change to some extent and how we're delivering those services and then also an increase in the number of students that need that support. I think I did a quick glance and it's about a 2% increase in the students that are actively getting ELE services over the last four or five years. So a 2% increase starts to just need more staff to sort of meet the need. And then I think our model change also has more on hand on the sort of in the FTE count type staff. Moving into the revolving funds, food services, I think the question was, it says it's trying to, revenue should meet your expenses, that'd be great. We're not there yet. We've had for several years, straight up budget support to help the program break even. We were able in the last couple of years to build the balance in that revolving fund a little bit. We were able to with the support from the federal government for a larger amount of, well, for every meal served to be reimbursed at the free rate and we were able to offer and provide a lot more meals and have a lot more support for those meals. But the long story short is we're not to a place yet where we generate enough revenue to break even in food service. And I don't know if we ever will be, it depends a lot on what the nature and shape of the national school lunch program looks like and how it changes over the next few years. I think there's some strong push to retain the fully free for everyone meal programming and support for all of that. That would be tremendously helpful. But it is an area where with inflation being what it is the food costs are noticeably higher and so it's really difficult for this program to break even. It would be lovely to get there. I think we'd like to, I certainly encourage any and all opportunities when we're doing other things that require food within the district to use our food service staff and our food service capacity to provide those things. So if we need muffins for beating or something like that we try to do that in-house if we can and build that capacity for those ways to generate small amounts of revenue to help offset some of the costs. But we're also in a place where our equipment is, the capital equipment we have is pretty significant. The needs are coming on. The high school was renovated in 96. So some of those pieces of equipment and you've seen it in the capital plan as well but there are also some things we try to cover from within this food service budget. There's equipment we use in the food service that we try to pay from here. So that's another area of need that we're always battling with as far as offsetting costs and expenses is trying to cover some of those equipment needs we have with some of the resources we generate through this program too. So it's an area we'd like to continue to improve our balance sheet on and get a little better. I'm not sure how soon or how quickly or how possible it will be to get to a break even but I'd love to. Talking about school choice. Doug, just a moment. I need to just note that Jennifer Taub has joined us and I need to make sure she can hear us and we can hear her. Can you hear? Yes. I'm here. Thank you. Great. Speaking of school choice, we definitely are leveraging our balance. I mean, the idea with having a revolving fund is you sort of smooth out peaks and valleys in income. And also when you have tougher budgets or tougher circumstances around budget, you have some resources to lean on to help out your budget. I think that's certainly what we're doing this year. We were able over the last couple of years to just by virtue of much lower overall expenses we were able to not use as much school choices we had expected or anticipated or balance has grown. It's really, you wanna keep too much cash on hand either because that negatively has an impact as well. I mean, it's not doing anybody any good if we're not spending it. So we wanna strike the right balance between how much we have on hand and keep for good times and bad and then how much do we leverage in the short term to sort of provide the services programming for the students. Next question on school choice. Yeah, it's a little more. So there's a suggestion of how to figure out how many students there are. It's a little more complicated because of the special education component. The state actually calculates an FDE. So if students don't, or school choice, but don't attend a full year, you don't get a full $5,000. You get the fraction of the year times that 5,000. 5,000 is the base number for regular education. That fraction of FDE also gets factored into the calculations for the special education costs. But, and it's one of those things, and this is another reason for using a revolving fund is that we don't really fully get the final numbers until the year is finished and we're on to the next year. So when schools close out their year in June, they do a final reporting of all their students. Then the state sort of squares up the books on what school choice looks like. And in the new year, they project what they think your school choice is going to look like and they make corrections relative to either over or under payment to you on the previous year. And so by putting our school choice revenues into a revolving fund, those plus minus by virtue of the time the state needs to fully square up the books starts to smooth out. So that's part of the idea there. And Sean, if you can scroll down just a little bit further there, I give a little bit of the numbers that we have for the current year. And this, you know, the, I put a link in there as to how school choice works and what's reimbursed and how the special education is done, the state about December or so puts out a projection of what it thinks your school choice is going to look like for the year based on the October reporting of all the districts in the state. They then set the monthly money that they send us, you know, based on that number. And so currently, you know, the projected, you know, revenue from choice in for this year is just shy of $700,000. That will, I can guarantee that will change somewhat between now and the end of the year. Hopefully, you know, we'll get more revenue, but who knows? But, you know, the head count as it were at December was 107 students. That will likely change a little bit as we go through the rest of the fiscal year. So, you know, you sort of see from this and the fact that, you know, it will change as the year progresses, you know, by having a revolving fund where we sort of put this money in, we can kind of mitigate those smaller variances as the year goes from one to the next. Kathy, you had a question? Yeah, Doug, this is helpful for me to see these numbers, but can you assess with your 107, which is a mix of some special needs and some just choosing in, can you do a, what if you had no choice in at all? What would the school staffing be? What would the school expenses, what would that kind of what if? So the above statement that we've always been told, it's at worst neutral and it best generates a bit of money because the marginal costs aren't as much as what we're taking in. Can you actually, can you do that assessment? I know you're saying you need an end of the year, but can you, after you finish out the year, can you do that kind of look? It'd be a little tricky, I think in some respects because at the regional level, I think at the elementary level, it's a little more straightforward because, you know, you have sort of, you know, at least through fifth grade, you have a single classroom for each kid kind of thing. That sort of thing, it's a little more straightforward on sort of making that analysis. What happens at the secondary is because, you know, it's so dependent on what kids, what courses kids take and how big class sizes are and they vary, you know, some classes have, you know, 15 and some have 20 and that's a big difference over the course of, you know, and so an individual student's experience might be 15, 15, 20, 20 and they're, you know, they're five periods during the day, that kind of thing. So it gets a little hard to sort of tease that out, but when we're looking at how many slots to open, what we're looking to do there is to, you know, not create or require any additional staffing. Now, of course, we have to be blind to who the students are when they come in. So if they, you know, we can't look at whether they have special education needs or those special education needs may manifest themselves once they arrive to us. So that any staffing that sort of comes with that is hopefully covered by the additional increments around special education. We have to be blind to that aspect of them when they come to us. But Sean, did you have something you wanted to add on that? Yeah, I was just gonna add that that's maybe 10 years ago now, time seems to be flying by. We did have an outside or the region had an outside group. I can't remember what the firm it was, but they did have an outside group look at school choice usage at the region specifically and to quantify the costs of the school choice program. Kathy Mazer, who was the former human resources director was sort of the lead on that project. And at that time, my recollection was they said the cost of our school choice program was about a 0.6 FTE. So that was sort of our inefficiency by through accepting school choice students that we had an additional 0.6 FTE. So comparing that to the revenue that was being brought in it was determined at that time that it was a school choice program was pretty efficient and effective. That being said, enrollments changed a lot at the region. And so there was always sort of the intention of doing that type of analysis on a recurring basis, maybe every 10 years, every 15 years or something to determine if the school choice program is still efficient and effective. Because as Doug said, I think the goal is always to top off classrooms with school choice, not to add classrooms. Right. And I could see if that report is, I'll try to see if that report is available on the website because it might just be interesting to look at. Because I might suggest you do it at the end of this year, once this year is closed out, because with the sixth grade moving up to the middle school, some of the, we don't know yet what that will mean for art, music, the extra classes that some sixth graders might tap into, but just to try to do it. Kath, you muted. It said the host muted me. Sorry, Kath, I was muted myself. I accidentally muted you. Oh, geez. You're right below me. Forget that statement. No, you're right below me on my screen, so I clicked the wrong one. My suggestion wasn't for right now, but at the close out of this year to do an assessment. And then when the sixth grade moves up, look at it closely, because the sixth grade may take up some of that, what you said, it's on topping out. Topping out, they're gonna have their own regular classroom teachers, but they'll potentially tap into languages and some of the other programs in a helpful way. That's why you're looking for that. So I think thinking about it in advance with a, how are you gonna look at it would make sense. Yeah, we need to keep tabs of the pace that we need to move through the questions, because we do have a time crunch if you have to leave at 10, Doug. Yeah, I do. So this last one here is probably the last one I'll go into detail. The others are numerics that I'll just explain what they are and let you look at them. But just a question on the Athletic Revolving Fund, I think the key thing with that fund is that the intention was primarily is for the operation of the athletics program and not as much for capital needs. It does do some support of some facility maintenance and capital things. For example, we had a fairly big filter project at the pool at the middle school last year. The athletics budget and its revolving fund helped contribute a little bit to that in addition to some of the monies we've collected from the users of the pool and some appropriation of money that we had available. So I think we have been able over the last couple of years again, like we did in food service to shift some costs and boost our balance in that revolving fund, which has allowed us to hold the fees that we charged the student athletes steady over the last couple of years. We'll do an evaluation of fees this fall and probably for the fiscal 24, make recommendations on fees across the board, not just for athletics, but any fees that we'll be doing a deep dive because we haven't had a couple of years and the nature of some of the costs have gone up. We've been trying to hold off given the uncertainty of the pandemic on changing those kinds of fees. But it's certainly one of the pieces we have to keep in mind as we look at that athletics budget, making sure it keeps itself whole and covers the lion's share of its costs. In this last section was a series and sort of request for some numbers of number of SES students over the last five years. The staffing sort of changes in regard to special education for the last few years. And then the size of the special education budget. So I've just compiled those over the last few years. I didn't, on the last one I was looking at it, the past five years and one in five year increments going further back, I'm gonna have to dig a little bit to get those out. But it just gives you a frame of reference as to what's going on relative to the number of students and the number of staff we have in special education. The one thing I will point out in the SET teacher group when you see the pretty significant uptick in 22, 23, that's a fair amount of that's funded from is related to and funded by pandemic funds and it's related to pandemic response. And so some of that will probably recede a little bit. They get kind of classified in the areas of psychological support tier two support. As they call it sometimes relative to supporting students that aren't necessarily special education in a routine way, but in a different more day-to-day psych services kind of way, I guess is one way to describe it. But you notice that precinct can increase from 21 to 22 of staffing of teachers there. And like I said, the amount of that is almost all of that is gonna be covered by our answer grants for supporting those staff. And there need may and I hope will diminish over time as the answer funds go away. Pam, you had a question? I probably misheard. Do you charge fees to students for participating in athletic programs? When you said athletic fees? Yes, we do. What is the average amount of that fee? Oh, that's a good question. You know, we have we have, you know, a pricing structure, which I don't recall if I had it. It's it, you know, depending on the sport, some sports, we have, you know, we have three tiers of sports and expense. So like ice hockey is one of the most expensive. So it's charged a higher amount. There's a middle range and a low range. Most of the sports, it's in the $230 or $40 range. I think there are caps by virtue of, you know, family, you know, total family commitment in the course of a year or total, you know, athlete commitment in a year. So we do put some boundaries on it, even separate from reductions for people who have lesser, you know, means available to them. It resists using the term free and reduced launch because you technically can't use that information to make a determination. So we don't. But we do have a variety of, you know, cost structures relative to that. It's a pretty complex set, but it's in, you know, it's a couple hundred dollars to play a sport at our high school. If you're just, you know, putting one sport. I guess I'm dismayed to hear this because from my experience, whenever people are told if you can't afford it, you can apply for an exemption. There's so many families that will never apply just out of pride. So I am upset about this, particularly when I think about the huge expense that people wanna spend on a turf field. I mean, you're saying ice hockey is the most expensive. And I said, oh, that's why ice hockey is so white. I'm just, you know, obviously, I don't follow the athletics that well, but I'm expressing unhappiness and dismay that in Amherst, we charge students for athletic participation. We do and we have for a number of years. I would, I don't disagree with you that I do think at times it suppresses, you know, it suppresses participation, but I think it also is a circumstance though, the way in which our athletic department or athletic director and there's in her staff and our school's approach that is one to be as inviting and welcoming as we can relative to those fees and understanding and working with folks around those. You know, I know that in the past and certainly I think this is still true, you know, there's a lot of flexibility granted around that. So there are times when students are, you know, that the strict structure is not explicitly adhered to. I mean, I think this is a way to describe it. I mean, we endeavor to collect fees from those that can and obviously for those that can't, we try to make accommodations as best we can. I don't disagree, you know, certainly, you know, when I was a kid in school, all athletics were part of the program. We just had to, you know, the only cost that a given family might incur is the physical. It would be nice to get there. The economics of, you know, this and other programs like it are just such that we've got to charge some sort of fee to kind of keep the program running. And at the level that we have, we have a fairly extensive program. So it's a tricky balance. And it's, you know, in order to put funding for that, that means other things would have to go because it would just sort of, you know, it would be a factor relative to the, you know, other parts of the budget. So it's a difficult choice. Yeah, Michelle. Thank you. Doug, you said that there were three parts of the budget that needed to be voted together. I think I understood that right. And that the debt authorization was a separate piece. Just trying to understand with respect to the capital projects and specifically the track project, just trying to understand on this chart in a presentation that you made that's in our packet from last week. So the 1.5 million, is that part of those three categories that you talked about? Or which part is the debt authorization and which part has to be voted in the other two aspects of the budget? Right. So the capital assessment is for borrowing we've already done. So that's the authorization to borrow is already being given and we've done borrowing probably not fully, but we've done some of the borrowing for it. So the debt authorization gives us permission to borrow. Once we borrow, then we will assess and charge that. So that from the, from the budget standpoint, the capital assessment and is for debt we've incurred and costs we're incurring relative to those, those borrowings that we've done. And then the operating budget is, is what we've been talking about. In this chart here at the back of this, I basically took, this is the same as what you saw before I just broken out instead of grouping fiscal 23 to 27 I've spread it out over more time. So the debt authorization of a million and a half that is for the four towns for new borrowing would not hit the assessment until fiscal 24. Doug, can I just add one thing real quick? And so Michelle, just so you understand how it all works. So once you authorize the debt, the town will see it as part of the capital improvement program. So once the council says yes, you can borrow all the towns say yes, you can borrow the regional schools will borrow. They just set us a notification every year of what our capital assessment is. And then we plug that into our capital program. So this year when you use on May 2nd when we present to you the FY 23 budget you'll see the capital section. There will be a line that says current debts. And in that current debt, we include the regional capital assessment because we really don't have discretion about whether to fund it or not. It's sort of like we borrowed essentially. And so we plug it into our current debt line. We can give you that number separately too. Or it actually may even be a separate line now. I think we broke it out a couple of years ago to be a separate line. So you'll see that regional assessment in the capital improvement section of the town's budget. Perfect. It's not really voted on part of the regional school stuff because it's already been authorized. So it's in this capital section. Great. Thank you. Just this chart just to explain it is basically this is the chart you've seen in a previous iteration where I've broken out each of the fiscal years from 23 to 27 into their own line and the sort of associated assessments with it. Like I said earlier, these totals in these 30, 31, 32 don't actually capture all that we put on our capital plan because I didn't plug in the debt that goes with those that would kick in in years 28, 29, 30, that sort of thing. So as I said earlier, these sort of total amounts to be assessed kind of get a little too large here in the next couple of years. We're going to want to balance our plan a little bit to smooth that out for all four towns quite frankly because it's too big an increase and we know that. And Amherst is responsible for 80% of this, right? This is everything Doug. So Amherst would get assessed 80% of whatever, roughly 80% of whatever these numbers are. Yep, yep. Yeah, I didn't intend to, but I evidently cut off the assess this particular town assessments, but it would be the exact same as what was on the previous chart. So if you look at the town assessments in the budget book that you got that would be indicative of what you're seeing here. So look, I think that what we need to do in order of where we're going now is in, Kathy's going to have to take over it in appropriate point, but the, see if there are any additional questions for Doug that can be answered in a couple of minutes. Then I think that Sean probably has the proposed orders for the financial part that the council need to be voting on on May 2nd. And so the finance committee does need to take a vote on whether it recommends the orders as proposed. And Doug, I assume you've seen the orders, and if not, you're not sticking around, Sean can send them to you. I haven't seen them, but it's fine. I'll look at them when Sean gets a chance to send them to me. I don't think there'll be anything that's surprising there. So I think that's what we have to do, Kathy. Okay, but before you leave, Doug, I think what you said at the very beginning that these are separable, including the track. So my understanding is if we wanted to change the wording of that order, the one town not passing it being a no, would send it back to the school committee and it be on a delay. Does that mean it can't possibly happen or does that just put it, it goes back another round in terms of us? We could still do the operating budget and the assessment. We can move those forward is, but we would be delaying the track piece, as opposed to, I know we're killing it, but we're delaying it in terms of it would have to go back. Is that correct? Right, I think what I would say is this, is that if you rejected, let's say the town of Amherst would be any of the towns, but let's say one of the towns rejects that authorization. School committee could vote a new authorization at their next meeting. And so what happens when that occurs is that each of the notification is sent to the four towns. The four towns have 60 days in which to respond. And so what we've traditionally done is tried to do it through the spring cycle so that we match up with the town meetings. And so the, what happens for the other three towns because of that would be if we went into a certain sense where we had a new authorization happen, council meets every Monday, every other Monday. So you guys could take it up easily within 60 days. The other three towns would have to call a special town meeting to take it up if they wanted to, if they chose that they didn't want to, they could just do nothing and it is approved. But the potential is that they might, and so having a firm authorization might be delayed until they can have a fall town meeting. So it's kind of how the mechanics work on it. Thank you. Other questions. I just want to thank Doug for an amazing, thorough set of answers and explanations and that we will add it to the packet. I agree and thank you, Doug. Michelle, you have a question. Yeah, and I know you have to go, Andy. So just to be clear, we're voting to make a recommendation to the town council today without Andy's presence or with Andy's presence or we're gonna have to do it without him. Yeah, I should do it in three minutes. And this includes the track, whether we recommend the track. Oh, goodness, whether we recommend the track as it was proposed, Michelle. So you heard last night, Mandy wanted to put a clause in it to have it be specified for an option. So it's not a up or down on track, but if we change the wording at all, it's a down on what's been proposed to us. So they would have to come back with the new wording. Okay. So does that answer the question? So I am gonna have to leave the meeting and turn the chair over to Kathy. And I think that where we're gonna go is that Sean will work with Kathy to get the orders that need to be voted before you and explain, we're in packets previously so that these are not unknown items either to the council or to the committee because they've been in prior packets for both. So, Kathy, are you ready to go? Yep. So I apologize that this problem occurred and that I'm having to do this, but I am gonna switch over to the MMA meeting. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Andy. Thank you all. I appreciate it. Don't hesitate to give us your questions, please. Thank you. Kathy, do you want me to bring the orders up on the screen? Yep. So this first one is the assessment method order. This is the one that requires all four types of the assessment order. This is the one that requires all four towns to approve. And this is the one that moves us to a full statutory method with a five-year average of minimum contributions. Lynn? I'm ready to make a motion, okay? Yep, it's absolutely fine. I recommend that the, I recommend that the town council approve order FY20 33-01 in order approving the Amherst Pellum Regional School District Assessment Method. That's my motion. And can I just ask, Lynn, you meant that the finance committee recommend, right? Finance committee recommend that the town council approve. Thank you. Do I hear a second? Second. Michelle seconds. Okay, I will call a vote. Well, first let me ask if there's any discussion. I can't raise, I shouldn't raise my hand anymore. I'm chair. Is there any discussion? I'm not seeing any hands up. Then I will do a vote first among the voting council members and then I will ask each of the resident members whether they support it. Lynn? Yes. Kathy is a yes. Michelle? Yes. And Elisha, Elisha. Is Elisha still here? Yes. Yes. One, two, three. So the four counselors, I've captured all of us. Bernie Kubiak? Ornith. Matt? Asport. And Bob. I don't see Bob. Is Bob still here? Yeah, he's muted. Yeah, sorry, I was muted. Yeah, I support. Okay, I've just got to make my screen big enough to see everyone. Okay. So it passes for voting with one absent and all three non-voting members supported. I'm ready to make the next motion. Okay. I move that the finance committee recommend that the town council approve appropriation and transfer order FY23-02 Amherst-Hellum Regional School District budget assessment. Shane seconds. Is there, does anyone have any comments, questions? I'd like to just make a comment that I appreciate the fact that the school district came in at the designated finance committee guidelines as approved by the council. I don't see any other hands. So then we proceed to a vote. Lynn Griezmer? Approve. Kathy, is it an approval? Let me, Michelle? Yes. Elisha? Yes. Bob Hegner? As support. Bernie Kubiak? Support. And Matt Holloway? Support. It is approved unanimously with one councilor absent. Here's the third order. And this one is specific to the capital authorization. Right, then I'm ready to make a motion on this. Go ahead, Lynn. I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council approval of order FY23-03 Amherst-Hellum Regional School District capital debt authorization. Should I hear a second? Second. Any discussion on this financial order? Michelle? I'm really sorry. I just want to make sure I understand what we're doing here. So the track has now been separated out from this. Correct. Okay, so we're only voting on these items that we can see here. And okay, thank you. Any other questions on this order? Seeing none, we'll proceed to a vote. Lynn Griezmer? Approve. Kathy is an approval. Michelle Miller? Yes. And Alicia? Yes. Bernie Kubiak? Support. Bob Hegner? Support it. And Matt Holloway? Support. It's unanimous with one council member missing, absent. I need to make a motion. Okay, Lynn, go ahead. I'm going to let the finance committee recommend to the town council approval of order FY23-03B, Amherst-Hellum Regional School District capital debt authorization. Is there a second? This is the track and field. Right. I can second it, but I... So, Kathy, can I speak to this one a little bit? I need some healthcare. So I think it's helpful just to kind of like frame what they voted and then what next steps could possibly be. So the regional schools voted the 1.5 million if they set a target of somewhere around January 16th where if the member towns raise the additional funds that are outlined in their motion, that the regional schools could then pursue the larger project. If by that date the member towns have not raised those additional funds, they would revert back to the smaller project. The reason why they've done this and talking with Mike and Doug is that the track is in dire need of replacement. I mean, it was in dire need when I was there. And the reason is that this project was always on the horizon and getting geared up to do it. But I think everyone who's walked the track knows it is in dire need of replacement and that we can't, as a town, we really don't want it to keep getting pushed down the road. So they've taken this action to give themselves the option to pursue the larger project if the four towns support it. And if the four towns don't support the larger project, then to go with the smaller. Let's say for example, Amherst chooses that, no, we want to go for the larger project. You could vote it down. It would go back to the regional school committee. The regional school committee could say, we're going to just vote the wording with the larger project. That would then have to go to the four towns. If one of the small towns doesn't want to do it, they could vote against it and that doesn't happen unless Amherst decides they want to pay more than what the regional agreement calls for. So I think the way they've done this is they've kind of tried to cover both basis and do it as quickly as possible so that if there is support in all four towns, it can move forward. If there isn't support, they can still move forward with the larger project. But just be aware that any town, if they don't want to do this larger project, regardless of what Amherst votes can tank that debt authorization, it requires all four towns to approve. So the only way Amherst could really, if it wanted to push the larger project would be if it was going to fund more than what the regional agreement calls for. And we haven't discussed today, we haven't really discussed that. So again, the reason, I think they try to create that flexibility to set a path one way or the other to addressing the track. And I think they've openly expressed their interest that they want to go for the larger project and they're going to push for the larger project. But ultimately they need Amherst to come up, raise the additional funds that have been laid out for Amherst and that track and field PowerPoint that was in the packet or in the council's packet last night. And equally important is they need the smaller towns to raise their additional funds as well. Lynn. Sean, there was a very nice PowerPoint that was developed about the track and field. I wondered if you could put that up because I think it helps give us all a sense of what the other sources of money might be and the expectations on Amherst. This one, Lynn? That is the one and it's that chart that's further down. Yeah. So the total cost of the project, the larger project is about 4.7 million. The region has sort of created some targets for how they envision this project could be funded. The one and a half million, which is what is in front of you all for recommendation now. Money from the CPA fund of each town, grants or reserves or any other, really any other funding source of a million. And then they would have a fundraising target of a million. So the sources that need to be in place by January 16th in order for the project to move forward are the CPA funding, the grants other, the local taxation. The donations would, I don't believe have to be in place but that January 16th deadline. And so if you keep going down, you can see what that means for Amherst. Those were total numbers for the project. Amherst share of each of those is here. So for CPA 947, Amherst has already set aside about, has already, Amherst CPA has already given the region about 150,000 I think, somewhere in that 150, 160,000. So the additional ask of CPA would be somewhere around 800,000 that they would have to go back to CPA to request. The donations, Doug has said, they just sort of artificially split that up. It's not saying that Amherst has to fundraise its portion. I think they're planning that there would be a large fundraising effort that would address all four towns, not just one town in particular. Grants other, I think they were envisioning this could be from either ARPA funds, reserves, or if there's any other funding source that each of the towns wanted to propose, they could do that. One thing for this group to be aware of is that the region exceeded its excess and deficiency reserve account. That's the region's reserves. They receded that NFY 21. You can only have 5% for reserves. And if the reserves go above 5% of their operating budget, that money goes back to member towns. So they did exceed that. And so they're gonna be giving the town back about $400,000, Amherst back about $400,000 this year. So that's just a thought. I know they've talked about, that would be great if the towns could put that money that they're giving back to them if they could put that towards this project. And then local taxation is the 1.5 million that would be our share of the debt authorization. Okay. So I am assuming that the other towns have also gotten some level of much smaller refund based on the E&D. Yep, absolutely. Do you know if those other towns are discussing the possibility of giving that back to the regional schools for this purpose? I know Doug is working with them on this, like he is working with us on this. I don't know if they've said yes or no or what their thoughts are, but I know Doug's having conversations with them about similar stuff as he is with us. And the other thing I just wanna recall for people or if you weren't there that at the regional school for towns meeting, there was some concern on the other towns part about this much commitment from their CPA because in most of those towns it basically is their CPA. There isn't a whole lot more. So, and then the only other thing I'm gonna just add and that is that the, I think you should look at the donations and grant line as combined because it is possible that for example, a local business or a bank or something might give money to something like this as part of their community commitment. And I have spent some time talking to the athletic booster club, I think it is. And they're really working hard on it but those are the pieces that I just wanted to mention because of other conversations that have taken place elsewhere. This is a big ask and a lot to absorb. Michelle, to your question earlier too. So this project alone, if all the funding sources work out this is how much this chart down here versus local taxation and these individual amounts. So for FY 24, 128,000 that is how much would be added to the capital assessment or into our capital section from the region. So we already have an amount that we pay them. I think this year it's somewhere in the $300,000 range. This is how much would be added on top of that for this specific project. We try to maintain, we don't want that number to be too volatile, because we know that like town buildings, the region's always gonna have capital needs and we wanna sort of keep a balanced stream of capital funding going to the region so that there's not huge spikes. So we don't ever really want to see that number go to zero because that means they're probably deferring capital down the road, which doesn't always play out well. But this would increase it, add a big chunk to it. And what you'll see when we present the budget is we have forecasted, we've built in a rising regional assessment, capital assessment into our five year plan for capital, knowing that this project was coming and knowing that there's other capital projects coming up. One last thing is this is gonna, unless the town decides they don't wanna do the track at all, this amount is gonna be added in no matter what, because this is just for that 1.5 million, which is for whether we do the big project or the little project, we're still gonna be adding in that 1.5 million into our assessment. So this number doesn't really change whether we do the larger project or the smaller one. So I see both Lynn and Michelle's hands are up today from the first questions or is there a second question? Michelle? I have a second question, yeah. So let's say that we vote to recommend this and the council recommends this. What happens, I mean, close to a million dollars in CPA funds coming from Amherst is significant, I think. And so what happens if that's not, if we've gone through this process, but then it gets to CPA and they don't approve that sort of funding? So if the town, so say the council approves this, CPA has heard this project once already, they put it on hold because they wanted to see which direction the region was gonna go in. So if the CPA committee recommends it, then it would go to the council for a vote. If they don't recommend it, then the town would have to decide if it wants to identify some other funding source to make up for the CPA portion or just not hit its target. I mean, the choice Amherst would have after this would be do what it can to hit the target that's outlined in the region's debt authorization so that the larger project can go forward or the town could just choose not to generate any additional funds for this project and then we would go to the smaller project. The smaller project, Michelle, would be just the track. So the 1.5 is set to be able to do the track. Doesn't stop, it stops the bigger project. It doesn't stop anything, yeah. Got it, okay. And that all has to be determined by January 16th. Was that? I'll have to double check the data. I'll try to send the vote wording. I think it was January 16th, but I'm not 100% positive. If we stop this, this doesn't even repair the track. Well, if this vote goes down, then it goes back to the school committee and the school committee would have to decide what to do. But yeah, there'd be no funding to replace the current track. Please skip to Bob. Bob? Yeah, I don't really have a question as much as concern. And my concern is twofold. One is that we've known, I mean, never since I've been in town, people have been talking about replacing the track. And yet we don't have any donations. We don't have any grants lined up. So I don't know how much support there really is outside of the tax base in order to fund this at any level. And the second thing is, I have a concern that the other towns are gonna just say, well, what Amherst do, whatever Amherst wants to do, and we'll go along for the ride. So it's not a project that's well-defined where we know exactly what the costs to Amherst are going to be. And that's the concern I have. And I don't, I understand the need to replace the track, but I just don't see that this project is fully baked at this point. That's my concern. Thanks. Lynn? Yeah, I'm gonna explain why I'm gonna vote yes, okay? And believe me, trying to understand how this all works is not, it's not easy. I'm gonna vote yes because I think Amherst needs to send a signal, one, that whatever happens, we need to repair that track. That athletics, whether we charge students or not, is still a way in which students get equal opportunity, regardless of ability. In addition to that, it also sends a signal to the fundraisers of the Booster Club that we're with them. And if they can come up with a billion or more of other money, then we've basically said, okay, we're in with you. This is a track that is not just used by our students. It is a track that's used by all of our population. Many, many people go over there just to put in and walk their miles, whatever they're gonna do. So as much as it's taken me a while to sort through how this is gonna work, I'm voting for this. Thank you. Bernie? Oh, thanks, I share Bob's concerns about the project not being fully formed and thought through. It's not a secret that this track needs to be replaced. It's been there for a while and it may pose, in fact, pose a hazard to users. It's, I would think, and one thing I haven't heard is this track is probably part of the regular FIZZ program that the schools were not just for teams. I'm gonna end up supporting this because I think this is a function of Amherst in particular and maybe fall off for the region as well, our unwillingness to confront major capital projects when they first emerge and the time it takes, it costs a lot, time is money. And waiting years to replace the track means it's more expensive. Waiting years to replace the central fire station means it's more expensive and so on and so on and so on. So I think the school administration has worked with the school committee to come up with a half-baked compromise but it's something that we can work with and we have to place some trust in the fact that if they don't meet their fundraising goals, they get to repair the replacing existing track at a bare bones level and that's it. So I'm gonna be supporting this but with some reluctance. Thanks. I'm just gonna weigh in on this. What Bernie just said at the end part of what he said, I think the school committee has to be ready to move forward with just doing the track rather than the bigger project if the money doesn't come up because one of the reasons CPA didn't move on the bigger ask this past year is it wasn't clear what the plan was and that's possible that where there's still a million dollars of fundraising and if it's not there, CPA has had a couple other projects that were contingent on some other money that didn't come up. So there's CPA money stage sequestered. So it's a huge piece of our CPA money to Lynn if you take that out with the Jones library, the debt that we, Sean just showed us out for 20 years. It's that kind of money off of CPA that won't be available for something else not a million, but 150. So in supporting this, I wanna make it clear that I for one would be supportive of the small project. I'm not thinking that the large project is, Bob, you called it half-baked. I'm not even sure it's half-baked, but at least a quarter of its bake that the track is here and I think we're securing the track repair but everyone keeps saying, but it's not really the way we wanna do the track. So there has to be a decision that you're willing we're willing to do the track this way. And Sean has said there's a hard deadline on it, but I would hate to see that we didn't raise the funds and we're still going for the large track, the large project and two years from now we still haven't done the track. So my understanding is people are prepared to move on the small project, Sean. Yeah, I just wanna push back a little bit on the plan being half-baked. I think the plan for what they wanna do has been vetted by lots of people. There was a strategic plan put together. It's been five or six years of people sitting around just determining what are the needs of the region. It was in response to some really terrible field conditions a few years ago where people, we couldn't play on the fields because they were so bad. It's in response to having to move the ultimate invitational tournament to grand B because our fields were in such bad shape that we couldn't host it here. So I think the plan has been fully vetted people. What it's proposing is addressing the issues that have been identified. I think the part that why I get why there's some uncertainty and some questions is the funding piece of it. And that stems from just whether all four towns can support that level of the financial commitment because it is a large financial commitment. So I think the region is trying to be creative and trying to aim for what it wants and what meets the needs of the students. And if it can't get there, can't get there. But I just wanna be clear that the plan itself has been discussed for many years. And I think if there's questions on the plan, we can bring in a lot of people who can speak to why it is the way it is. And Bernie. It's the five or six years that bothered me. I think I would be very, very comfortable if the region said, okay, here's the RFP that we're gonna release on January 17th, the deadline funding deadline is 60. And it's gonna have a series of what ifs. And we'll knock out the sections that we don't have funding for as of the 60th. I just, my fear here is that we're gonna get to the point where we'll be right on the edge and folks will postpone and postpone. And the one and a half million dollars we've appropriated will get eaten up by time and inflation. So I don't, I'd like to see this ready to go. And I think we need to be more proactive the way we do things. And I think we spend our wheels and spend so much time reinventing things and we lose time and we lose money. That's the point. Michelle. Yeah, what feels less big to me is the private campaign. And I think it's interesting when we're talking about asking residents to make donations to things, it's one thing for the town to support something, but then it becomes a matter of individual residents' priorities. And I just think about it from an equitable standpoint, what sorts of campaigns are happening for what sorts of priorities and projects and who might have more ability to promote certain things versus other folks that have less ability to promote certain projects. And so to me, this is just interesting seeing how this is going to require a private campaign that doesn't seem, I mean, we're gonna be asking a lot of our community. We have the library campaign that's happening. There are other asks that we're making to the community. And so I just, without really understanding what that campaign looks like, it's just, it's a little bit concerning to me and sort of the power structures in place and that kind of thing. So I just wanted to voice that. Dorothy, and I am conscious of time, Amy and Gilford have joined us and we have at least one other item. So Dorothy, if you can keep it short because I think we need to put this to a vote. I just wanna make a statement that I am against artificial turf. It has, it is so contrary to other values that Amherst holds in terms of our relationship with nature. Artificial turf is very dangerous to many people. Those with sensitive skin conditions, you can get MRSA and other things from abrasions with artificial turf. So I see that whole idea as really not what we wanna do. I certainly support fixing the track and making it open and accessible to the students and to the townspeople. Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. Are there any other committee comments or are we ready to put this to a vote? Seeing none, Dorothy, it's your hand back down now. Okay. Okay, so vote yes is, this has already been, it would be the finance committee recommending to the town council a support of this. A vote no would be against. Lynn, I vote to approve. Kathy is a yes. Michelle, yes. Alicia. No. Bernie. Yes, they support it. Bob. But luckily I do not support it. I would support it if it were just replacing the track, but I can't support this. Matt. Support. So I think we did all vote. My own vote, I guess one can't change the vote because I am in the same camp that Bob is. I would be much more comfortable with an earmarked, ready to go project. And I think our report should reflect that. So I think we have done the regional school budget and the capital authorization. Kathy, do you want to ask Alicia if she wants anything on the record regarding her vote? Alicia, we're, when we write up why there was a no, you know, we have some Bob has spoken, but would you like to say a few words of your opposition? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, basically I'm in the same boat as Bob. And so not that I completely don't support the project, but that I hope that it wouldn't be formatted in this way and that we would go about the smaller project. I think I would be more insupportive. And then just additionally, it's very, it's very difficult for me to have conversations as to why we cannot like allow low income students to participate in sports for free. And then to authorize like such large spending on a project like this is really hard for me to back, especially when those conversations are back to back. And then just seeing the different ways that we talk about things is really unsettling to me and how we say like, this is so important, but is it not also so important that we figure out a way that all students can participate in sports? And so those are like the two main reasons why I'm voting no, but also want to make it clear that I am not in support of fixing the track. Thank you. And we will show that in the record that putting in minority and the reservations people had about supporting this particular motion. Lynn, I just want to ask Sean, does the school have a fund where it assists lower income students to be able to participate? So I think just to recap what Doug said, the school has two tiers of subsidized rates or lower rates for different income levels to participate. So the lowest rates, I can send those out to the committee. I know it's not free, but it's dramatically lower than the stated rates are. So I can send that out. And then I think what Doug was trying to say is that they try not to let ability to pay be a prohibitor of somebody participating in the sport. So I don't know, again, I don't think that was well-defined or maybe as explicit as we wanted it to be, but I think that was what he was trying to say is they don't prohibit somebody from playing. Thank you, because I think the way he explained it wasn't as clear as you're making it now. Yeah, I'll send the fee schedule with the lower, with the different tiers of rates out to people so you can get a sense of it. Thank you. Dorothy, your hand is up. Very briefly, a student who is very, very good athletically and of low income, they will find a way to pay that athlete's fees. A student who doesn't even know if they're good, hasn't tried that hard, but would like to try and is of low income. I bet that student doesn't get the chance to participate. I think it's really an open to everybody when it doesn't cost them anything. I just feel very strong and very upset to hear about these fees. Thank you. So I think that concludes agenda item one, which is the regional budget and debt authorization. And I see that Amy and Guilford are both here. Are we ready to move to a discussion of water regulations? And I know there was one other, there was a request to do rental registration fee today because that needs to be decided on at 1034. So I hate to keep you, yes. Kathy, maybe if you're okay with it, check with the committee to see if they're available to stay till 1115 or 1130. Yeah, that's what I was just gonna ask. Can we stay 15 minutes more so we can get 15 minutes to a half an hour longer so we can get through these two items? And if not, we can let Rob go if the committee can't stay late. Because Rob is here as well. We need to keep at least the voting members here but can people stay for an extra half an hour to this morning? Kathy, I also think it's very important. We talk about the hearing and also assignments for the budget. Yeah. Whether or not all of the members of the committee can make the finance committee meetings as scheduled for the month of May. Kathy, it is my understanding that the rental permit didn't need, the fee structure didn't need to be discussed today in full. I saw Andy wrote that in an email to us. So I don't know if I got that wrong, but... It could be discussed during one of our May meetings. It would have to be discussed before the 16th. Before the 16th, right. So it could either be on the 3rd or the 10th. Or the 10th or the 12th. So it could be later. Because I can only stay until about 1120. So if that... Okay, so let's... We're trying to do what we have to get done today. Amy and Gilford have been postponed once already. If we could let Rob go and have him... If Andy can make time on the first week of May, then we didn't have to do rental registration fees today. So let me just see how quickly we can get through... How far we can get by 1120, I think. And I'm looking, we have one public attendee. So we may be able to do that quickly. And we don't have to do minutes. So Gilford and Amy, welcome back. So we had a few questions on... This is not the rates, but this is regulations. We had a couple of questions that were related, I think, that were sent on them. And I'm just looking... I know Lynn raised them both, but the big issue that we wanted to have a discussion on was if a water line needs to be repaired and it's running under the road, it gets assessed to the person, the home, or does it just get from the road to the home? And that was raised on... If we change the policy, what kind of impact it would have on rate structures, I think was the question. So Lynn, those are the ones that Andy related to me as the questions that have been raised on the regulations. And if anyone else had any others, they should talk about them. Basically, the questions I asked were, what would be the cost of the town and the timeline of changing our regulations so that we would either pay from the main line to the property line or from the main line to the meter. And the reason I asked that is because that is what other towns, not all other towns have done, but clearly it would have a serious cost involved and there has to be a recognition that if we did this for residents, how are we going to handle our higher ed institutions? Because we are their water and sewer providers as well. But this comes from the various residents who have brought to our attention the bills that they have absorbed for water and sewer line breaks. Bob, are you speaking to this or should we get a response for them on? Yeah, I want to raise some other issues, so I can wait. Okay, so let's do this issue first. Good morning. It's still morning time, yes. So when we talked last time, we kind of gave you a per foot cost of doing a repair. And we said it's around $200,000. We would need to add to our budget. If we decide to take on the sewer services, sewer or water services from the main to the property line. And it's roughly about the same number for taking on the sewer services as well. And that's just a basic rule of thumb and saying that we're going to probably replace more services than residents do because we want to be proactive. Because as Lynn mentioned, it's how our customers started looking at us at that time and how we treat our customers. We had two backups this week on the sewer system. So if there's two backups and if the town's responsible for the service, wouldn't you as a customer say, you need to fix my service and get it squared away? So we would be doing far more water and sewer service repairs if the town takes it on. So we used a number of 100. So using a number of 100 a year, we came up with those figures of about 220, 220,000 and 250,000 additional we have to add on if we just did what was inside the public way. So we went back to a study we had done a few years ago. And the average length of a water service in Amherst is 105 feet. So if you take that average, which that's the average, we have some that are almost a quarter mile long. We have some that might be really short. Take that average that changes the numbers from 200,000 to around 2 million. So we would need a roughly $2 million for the water side and $2 million on the sewer side if we were responsible for the water mains all the way to the property, all the way to the house and the meter and the connection. And that would be doing, we figure based on the calls we get that we'd probably doing 100 of each every year. And that's just material costs. We didn't include. Well, we did include labor in those two views. We use a contracted labor prices to do those. So that's material and labor. That's, so that's what the cost. Ballpark cost would be. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. Well, I just wanted to bring up something else that Lynn brought up is how do we treat people? Are we going to treat you mass the same and say that all the, all the sewer lines and water lines and you mass, they're now privately owned by the campus. Are they going to now be lines that town maintains? And they have much larger mains, the boulders, the townhouse apartments, all the large apartment complexes, they maintain their own water and sewer as well. So we're looking at adding quite a substantial amount of. Well, miles to the system at that point. So that's the other thing to think about. When you talk about these numbers and we, when you go from the property line to the house, you also have to worry about people's landscaping. If we're cutting through to replace the sewer line, we're responsible for the water line, we're responsible for, are we now responsible for replacing the invisible fence? Are we now responsible for replacing the water feature they have in their front yard? Are we responsible for replacing their beautiful special stone walkway? Are we now responding? And those changes the cost and we'll add to it. So just to add on everything and wrap everything in a ball. That's kind of everything right there. So just things to think about. And I just ask on the large entities, the education. If we were considering residential, if we were considering residential, can you make two classes on who's responsible for the under the road part? Or do you have to treat everyone the same? We can make the rules as we want to, I guess. So if we wanted to say, if you're a single family of residents, it's owner occupied. That you could that we're responsible to further to the house. If you're going to say it's a rental property that's owner occupied that we're responsible to the property line. So if you're going to say it's a rental property that we're responsible to the property line. The lady who has been spearheading this the most, she actually has a rental property and a owner occupied rental property. So. As people have kind of. Consolidated around her drive. She would be treated a little differently probably. So Lynn, are you, you on this topic? Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Gilford and Amy. Thank you for coming up with those estimates and understanding. The impact on. Rates because that's where these would be reflected. Would be in increased water and sewer rates, which right now we pride ourselves in being. Below the state average. As we saw just last night. Paul and I don't know whether Amy or Guilford you were part of the conversations with the insurance company that explored that Paul has talked to that does offer insurance is an option. But my other question because I, first of all, I pretty much dismiss out of hand that we can go to the meter. I just don't see that as even possible. Did your numbers include going to the property line for the higher ed institutions and large complexes. That's just a single question and then I have others. So pretty much the rule right now is is we pretty much only go to the property line for those larger, larger institutions and apartment complexes we do have some we we have said we go to certain manholes or certain connections that are a little bit farther beyond the property line but right now the larger institutions and the apartments are treated that way right now, we go to that cut off point and then they take over the rest. So, and then my next question is, I would assume that if the town or a contractor of the town in improving a road or repairing a road caused one of these problems that we would then as a town be responsible for the cost of repair to the sewer waterline. If it was disrupted am I correct on that. Yeah. Okay, and I know we know that that happens from time to time where, you know, say, when we did the pine street repair I think there was a couple of service lines that were ultimately leaking in the town fixed those, because it was our contractor that did that. Okay. And then I guess the other question I have then is, I would like to see some sense. I know this will not impact this year's rates. But I would like to see some sense of how it would impact rates a year or two from now, if we went to the property line. So the easiest way to do that is as a as a ballpark we use for every $100,000 we add in the budget for every 100,000 we add we add 10 cents to the rate. So if you go to the property line you're adding about 20 cents. 20 cents, 25. Are there other hidden issues related to either of these that create a greater liability for the town. As we go forward. There's always hidden issues that's the problem. We just need to kind of figure out exactly what we want to do and be very clear and concise and document well what we're doing so that there is little ambiguity when we talk to people and they talk to us. I have a final comment and I don't know whether this is going to be something the finance committee would do or finance combined with TSO or the council at large but there has been a request not just by the person who was brought this forward to the town's commission but by a few other residents that there be a much larger hearing or public meeting about some of this to get more public input and that so I'm finished with my questions for the moment thank you. Jennifer are you speaking to this issue. I just wanted to reiterate I know that Paul said that he was speaking I think with the League of Cities about the buried line coverage, and I hope I know Springfield and a number of other, you know, municipalities in Massachusetts offer it. I guess the contract is from the town to the insurer I'm not sure of the specifics but then residents in the town at a very low cost can purchase buried line coverage and in addition to everything, you know, all the questions that Lynn just asked I hope we can seriously pursue that because I've been surprised you know just in my personal life I know three or four different people that found out they had a leak under their house didn't know there was a leak. One, it was a $35,000 bill, and she had insurance so it was covered, but I know when they repaved Lincoln a couple of residents found out at that point that they had leaks that they had to pay to repair fortunately, the town was already repaving the street so they didn't have that but it was thousands of dollars and I think just for the town's own protection, they would want as many people insured so you're not having to go after individuals that really may not have the funds. Thank you. So we were meeting on the on this Friday to talk to the insurance provider. Great. That's great thank you. Any other comments on this issue. Bob, you are on. Thank you. Just wanted to mention that I read through the draft regulations both the water and sewer and I had a number of questions, which I wrote down I sent them to Andy and Sean I don't know that I need to go through them now given the time but maybe a couple of points one is that I didn't see in either of these regulations, maybe while there was a one mentioned in the sewer of any kind of administrative or due process. You know process for people to dispute the town, and I think that if that's such thing, such a thing exists needs to be at least mentioned or it needs to be put in as an appendix, but I mean is it just a lot of things where, you know, the resident, or that you know the proprietor will be fine this or that, and which is fine which is okay but there needs to be a process around that. I think it wasn't clear whether many of the regulations applied only to new installations, or are recto actively applied to all installations. For example, I think, and one of them either the sewer of water it said that you need to have as built drawings well my house was built 21 years ago and I don't have any as built drawings so I couldn't possibly comply with that retroactively. And another general thing is that there's a lot of technical terminology in this and the water is less familiar to me than the sewer, and maybe, you know some sort of diagrams that would show the system and all the components of the system would be very helpful to people, because I don't know where the curb stop is on my property I don't even know what a curb stop is. I don't know what other of you guys all do, but I don't, and you know I don't think most people do. So, again, it would be very helpful if there was some sort of diagram, where we could, you know, see what it is. And again, some of these, especially on the sewer side some of the regulations. And they are very technical in that you know you can't have grease more than 100 milligrams per liter or something. How in the world would a homeowner have any idea what that means. You know, I mean obviously I wouldn't pour, you know, a thing oil down my sink I know that, but bottle of oil but I mean what there is no way for an average person to understand what that really means in terms of what you should or shouldn't do. So, again, any way that you could explain that or provide some guidance I think that would be very helpful. We can address all those. Yeah, can I just talk about a couple of these. So, um, diagram with components I think that's a great suggestion because we do define things but I do understand that to a somebody who's not as entrenched in it I think that's great. The, the as built. I'm only going to point out that as you guys are talking about who takes ownership, you're asking us to take ownership of stuff that nobody has as built for as you just pointed out Bob. So we're taking responsibility for components that nobody knows where they are. And some of the hesitation that we have with it is just so just kind of think about that as you're thinking about who owns liability, because we didn't have ownership, we don't have the records on where all these components are and then if the responsibilities thrust on us were responsible for stuff that we don't even know where it is, and we don't know what it is, we don't know the size the makeup. And then the last thing about due process. That was actually something that we talked about with Paul. And so it was a note that we're, we're trying to put it in there but I think he was trying to figure out whether there was an overarching anywhere in the town if you have an issue with something that happens in a regulation like whether it needed to be called out specifically in these or whether you know the town has an overarching one so that that's something that we're aware of and certainly I think we want to circle back because you're right like that should be clear. So, thank you. And then Bernie. I just wanted, before you go to Bernie, I want to ask Dorothy, and I think she's the only one here from TSO. Did TSO finish their review and vote Dorothy. Yes, the TSO voted to accept the, the motion that was sent to us, we said yes we're going to sign that knowing that things are going to change later, because we had many questions about this and that we decided. It wasn't really the right thing to do to how to settle them all, because this was a temporary measure that have been recommended by people who thought it through, and that the permanent member measure would be a little bit different. It's not a temporary measure. It's a permanent measure. We're talking about the, Doris, they were talking about the water and sewer regulations. Oh, water and sewer regulations. Oh. Andy, do you remember. Look, we didn't have any serious problems with them. We didn't have a vote. I don't think we had a vote. The reason I'm raising this is because the issues that Bob is raising, which are very legitimate, and so forth are the kind of issues that should be dealt with in TSO, unless they're related to the finance and so I'm going to encourage Bob to make sure that we have a reasonable set of those issues. And if you send it to me, I'll make sure TSO gets it so that they can consider it as they deal with the content of the regulation and bylaw, and so forth. And I just want to thank you for your thorough look at the bylaw. I will say that's going to take a long time. I'm agreeing with you and I was really listening to Bob thinking, oh, I'm so glad that he did that reading, because we did not read it that closely. And we didn't finish the discussion. So I think that that's very important to send it to TSO. So I approve of that. I see. Andy has returned. And Andy, if it's okay with you, I was going to call on Bernie and we have extended, just, you know, we've extended the meeting time to 1120. Okay, just real quick, because it's responding to what was just reported. Dorothy, we did go through and remember Anna took us through section by section on the water and sewer regs. And voted to recommend, I believe. And we didn't deal with the issues he just brought up though. No, that is correct. That is correct. But I just did want to supplement the answer. Back to you, Kathy, and keep chairing. Right. So just to Dorothy and Andy, in order to consider them, you would have to move to reconsider your vote. Correct. Thank you. Andy, I'm not sure that we gave Anna the full time to go through all of the things that she because she had said she was going through it carefully. So I, I, let me suggest we don't take time. There's a history. We'll have a record on this. So we'll, we'll come back to that. Just being conscious of all of our time. And I haven't seen Bob Bob's injustice. We've been requested to do so. The rest of us haven't seen all of them either. Bernie. Yeah, I, Amy, I, we tried at one point to locate our water drawings and the Tom couldn't find them. So I understand that. And Bob, thank you for your thorough reading of them. I went through them page by page and had to live with some of the stuff as an administrator. But there is no mention that I found of an appeal or adjudication process, some kind of negotiation process. So that, you know, problems could be addressed or if someone has a problem paying, they could do it in installments is other in any kind of ways that some flexibility in there to give the town the ability to work with the homeowner to solve problems. The question that was raised in the presentation about new and modified services isn't answered in the regulations and I think the town. From my experience is not approved, or is not considered. Betterment fees for when sort of water lines are extended. And I think that needs to be considered because we extending a sewer line because of a failure and subdivisions and expensive process and those homes are worth more. Once they run sort of water. I was surprised at how many private water and sewer, how much miles like private water and sewer owned and down. So that newer modified service piece needs to be looked at the adjudication appeal piece needs to be looked at and the other thing that's not in the right so it's not go for its job challenge, because we don't have a septic system maintenance program. And I think that the town should look at implementing something like that because it's a way of preventing the needs to extend sewer lines. So that's, that's my two cents. Thank you. Sean. Yes, Kathy. So go for it. It's, is it correct that these regs are still under review and being modified based on all the feedback that you're receiving. Is that accurate. Yes, the TSO didn't, the TSO didn't get through the water regulation so they haven't even started talking about the sewer regulations, so we didn't finish. So maybe as a suggested next step. And because May is such a busy month I think Kathy and Andy if you think it's okay. If people want to send their input or feedback Bob I've already forwarded your, your feedback to go for an Amy, we may want to bring this back in June or whenever Amy and go for thinking that a next version is ready to review. And we can submit give the feedback to them now so they can factor that into their, whatever their next version is that that sounds that that sounds like the right approach and we could at this point move to the next item on the agenda. If, and thank Amy and Guilford for joining us, because they will be back for water and sewer rates we're going to see them soon. Thank you very much. Andy, what do you want to take back sharing, or should I continue. Why don't you continue. The, what we were trying to stretch the time to cover was if we could get to it rental, registration fee but also to be talking about assignments for people taking different parts of the budget, which is what we're going to be starting to meet next week. And I see Matt's hand is up and one suggestion if we can't get through both was to move rental station fee to one of the slots create room in the one of the main meetings we have to make a decision by May 16 so Matt do you let me just call on Matt to make a decision since his hand is up. Thanks Kathy, I apologize I cannot stay until 1120 but I just wanted to say that I did review the memo and get that goes up for a vote that I do support the registration proposal. And then I would also be more than happy to take on any assignments as the as appropriate I don't know if that's within the non voting members scope but I'm happy to do it. Okay, absolutely and if you if there is a place you're particularly interested in Matt just let, let Andy know, I mean we each take on things that either we want to learn more about or we're interested in anyway. So, thank you. Wonderful. Michelle. We also have to discuss the hearing. Before we finish today. So I want to make sure we confirm that because it does change things. So, I guess I'm looking for is the discussion on the rental fee registration. If people have read it is this a fairly short discussion and we can move the item because Rob Moore is with us. And if so then we, I would, it's about 1105 by my and Michelle said she has a hard stop in 20 minutes or should we just move to parsing out the budget so Sean you're raising your hand. Yeah, I just wanted to say something real quick about that. I think Andy said this in his email and that's what he was trying to describe so with the rental registration fee there's sort of two parts there's the proposed fee increase and I think Rob is looked at those, those numbers already I think the numbers make sense. In terms of the math of the numbers. I looked at it quickly it seemed to make sense. So I think there's one thing for the finance committee to review that. And I don't know what your recommendation would be on that but the math seems to make sense. There's the second piece about the staffing, how those revenues would support additional staffing. And I think that's the piece that would require. It may not be required in order for recommendation to go to the council but we don't generally assign revenues to specific departments. So just because there's an increase in revenues and the inspection department, it doesn't translate to Rob here you go here's you know, here's that money go hire staff, you know we still have to fit additional staff within the town's operating budget. So I think that's one thing I just want to clarify in that memo kind of makes it seem like, if this department revenues go up we can just add staffing in that department but that's not how our practices are. If it was that way things would be really chaotic in terms of assigning revenues to specific departments. So it's not to say that the town manager if there's a bylaw that requires more inspections the town manager wouldn't have to figure out how to address that bylaw. I just wanted to clear that it is sort of the coupled in terms of the revenue goes up on one side doesn't necessarily mean the expenses are going up on the other side. It sounds like we have started a discussion on rental fee so maybe we can it did any Bob go ahead. Yeah I just had a quick clarification. It was, I don't have the document in front of me because I had to move it was sitting on my desk. Two floors up but um, did. There was an inspection fee I think of $150 was that per unit or per going into a building in other words, if you went into a built building to do inspections, and there were three units versus one unit is it 350 or 150. Yes, so we currently do not have any fee for an inspection so we when we're responding to a complaint or conducting inspection. You know, we're, we're, we're not able to charge a fee. It's going to be, this would create an opportunity for us to do that and I think at this time, because the bylaw doesn't require an inspection. It's complaint response. It's going to give us the opportunity on reoccurring issues with properties to be able to charge a fee to that property owner, as part of the, you know, the, the, the effort to bring better compliance to that property. So it could be per unit, it could be per inspection depending on exactly what the situation is. Okay, thank you. Any other questions about, we have just the fee fees being proposed and later on there will be a larger look at permitting but this was to start the process Andy. The, the question though of whether it is for unit probably does need to be clarified and put into the, the policy that the council is going to ultimately pass, because you can't leave that kind of vagueness out there. It's got to be incorporated. Michelle. I could just add that as an original sponsor working on this our intention right now for this sort of temporary structure was for that to be just on complaint. And as we continue to work on this and we have a new bylaw which will have a new fee structure, looking at other communities, it's clear that most of them are actually by unit and the inspection costs are usually baked into that fee. So this was really at least initially intended to be by complaint. Jennifer. I just wanted to add that the residential rental property bylaw is now as you all know at in the at CRC and as part of revising that bylaw, this, the fee structure will also be a part of that so this is really a request we wanted to get for there to be the community to bring in more revenue in fiscal year 2023, although we may propose another fee structure the following year as part of the revised bylaw. Other comments or questions on this and I guess the larger question is if we bring the motion up. This was approved by TSO. Are we ready to vote on the proposed fees to recommend. Michelle is saying Sue, does someone want to make a motion and then go for it. The only problem is I need to see the memo. So I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council approval of the motion of the fees rental fees as proposed. Second. I am going to go around the room. Andy is that a comment or are you ready to vote. No, I still think we have the problem that needs to be resolved as to whether the $150 inspection fee is that if the inspection if robbers staff go out to one building that has multiple units are they is the fee $150 for the entire visit or is it $150 per unit within the building. And how you could impose a fee structure without clarification as to what the fee is that's being imposed. Rob. I would suggest that based on the language being proposed that we would likely look at that per inspection, and if we, if we were responding to an issue that required looking at more than one unit. If we were to make a decision, can we do that in one inspection or do we need to break that up into multiple inspections so I think having that flexibility is okay. You know, it's, it's probably not unusual to look at a multi unit building and be looking at maybe just the common areas and not necessarily have to charge, you know, three inspections of a three unit building just because there's three units. I wouldn't want to specify per unit and I think, I think the per unit inspection for the purposes of this level of where we are with the bylaw in, in, you know, basing it off of the current regulation I think it'll probably work okay, and and give us the option to decide if we need to need to create multiple inspections over time, say as a way to monitor a property that is having issues. Dorothy. Well this issue is very important at TSO. There was a lot of discussion about equity, small owners, and large buildings, and the understanding was that, although the fees are very close right now, between for like one to six units, and a large property with many units that that was going to be remedied when the fees were more consistent so I'm because there was a very strong feeling in terms of passing the bylaw that's going to come the TSO had a great concern that there be difference in funding in fees and expenses between smaller properties and larger properties. So, I understand Rob's point about you need flexibility but I think it'll have to be defined a little bit more than that. Well, as I understand it this is per inspection right now so if you're called out, you're doing an inspection, as opposed to the permit fee or the registration fee itself. So, Rob. I just want to follow up on that that you know when, or if the bylaw ever does get revised that has a mandatory inspection requirements some sort of periodic inspection of the units. The fee schedule would have to be looked at completely differently than what what is being proposed here today this is not at all intended to address that type of a bylaw or that type of a program. It wouldn't work. And so this is really just about our ability to go in responding to complaints and decide if, you know, it's an issue that requires us to charge an inspection fee. And this is really, you know, my thought of this is for the 30 to 40 properties that we deal with regularly reoccurring problems and trying to gain compliance and spending a lot of time at those parcel properties. So this will give us the opportunity to charge fees appropriately for that work. So, are there is the committee ready to vote and Andy, I think what's been answered is this is per inspection and it's on a, it's, it's in this, in this instance, it's been prompted by a call. You know, it's in response to a complaint so we're not talking about general inspections of larger multi units. So, yeah, I think Rob provided a good answer and it's defined as per inspection if he has a way of interpreting it so that nobody will come back and accuse him of being inconsistent or in violation of the policy and he's comfortable with it that I think we're fine. I am going to I think we had a motion made and seconded and then I'm going to call a vote on Lynn. Hi, Kathy is a yes, Michelle. Yes. Elisha. Yes. Andy. Yes. Rob. Bob. I support. And Bernie. I think Rob going to be accused of being inconsistent regardless. I support this. Thank you. So it passes unanimously with one non voting member absent. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rob, for joining us. And we now have, I can, we now have the witching hour for Michelle. She said she needed she had a hard stop at 1120 but we have the people taking assignments and then the issue of hearing so it's, it's, it's the setting of the hearing date. Is that what we were supposed to be recommending. So Lynn, what are our choices to option that the issue rose last night during the meeting by raised by counselor Hanna key that all other committees that have been designated to do hearings do them during their committee time. Right now, the hearing for the finance committee for the FY 23 budget is scheduled for the 16th. One option is to do that hearing separately at 530 or five or 530. She would suggest even five, even though it might mean we have a break. And then that we also looked at the option of having that hearing on May 9, which is presently not scheduled as a town council meeting. Personally, I would just assume to the five o'clock on May 16. I certainly would do, given the other meetings I have those weeks is that is there any opposition to having that be the time for time and date for hearing so I'm hearing the recommendation is to have to conduct our hearing on the 16th, which is a Monday and it would be before the council meeting at potentially at five. Is there agreement on that. Anyone in objection. Okay, so I think that's our recommendation. Thank you. I think the next item I want as we go to assignments, I just want Alicia to weigh in, whether she has now been able to arrange her schedule to be at the meetings in May of the finance committee. Yes, sorry, thank you for giving me the time sorry also I'm with my child so that's why I'm not on camera, but so I still have not actually gotten a final answer as to whether or not because my work schedule is being ranged. So currently I can still make the next meeting but I'm not sure about all the rest moving forward because I haven't gotten my new work schedule. Okay, thank you. Okay, we're the last item then was for people to take on different departments and since we are basically out of time. One thing we could do is if people want to quickly say if they have a preferred department right now, if not, you could send out a list and have people just make choices based on the list. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and schedule up. Sorry to cut in just wondering what exactly is it that we do when we take an assignment. Okay, I can describe it if you, what you do is you take on yourself to read the proposed budget. If you have questions you draft the questions and get them to Sean in advance, so that the department to the extent they can can see some of the questions, and then later on, when we write this up, you can write the short paragraph or the longer paragraph about it so you're sort of taking on thinking about it in more depth you're going to see this budget document is quite long. And so that that's what it is. But, you know, most of us, all of us will usually read all of it, but then it's a question of focusing more in a particular area. Can I add to that real quick. Yeah, just so people have a sense of what are the category so it's not this granular in terms of what you'd sign up for so. In the past we would have one member do general government, which would include all the departments within general government that those would be the ones that you would focus on. Somebody would do public work someone would do public safety someone would do planning inspections and conservation, and somebody would do community services. And then in addition to that we somebody would focus on either all the enterprise funds or we would split up the enterprise funds. And then we'd have somebody on the library and somebody on the schools, the elementary schools. So those are, I don't know if there's seven or eight of those but those are the main categories that would be assigned to each person on the committee or one person on the committee would be assigned to each of those. So Kathy, I will take the 19th, which includes public works and water sewer transportation and solid waste. And Michelle if you look at that you see what John has just done and of course he's done it in setting these up. Those clusters are per day as well. You know so if you take the 17th you get a cluster of first responders. Public health public welfare. Yeah, what ones are the what days the community services, which one was that is may 17. Chris you mean, no, no. So I'm interested in like down here at the human resources, the diversity equity and inclusion, the general government. That's, that's the 24th, that's May 24. Okay, is anyone else want to fight me for that one. No, I'll help you with the council and town manager since I wrote the council section. Perfect. Right. Public safety. I can take the ones on the conservation planning at the bottom of the list there if that's one chunk. I'll do public safety. That's the 17th right. Maybe, maybe Matt would do the schools. Yeah, no, Matt would do the schools would be great right. So we have library left. And then we have a couple enterprise funds left. So why don't I, why don't I do the, why don't I do the library. I can, I did the, I've done the enterprise funds in the past so what's left, John. So we have community services left to which is like the recreation department. Cherry Hill the pools senior center, public health. Where do you have enterprise funds or it's up in water sewer. So water, water. Yeah, water and sewer makes sense to go with public works because they're all Guilford. But the other two enterprise funds that could be separated out are transportation. Yeah, and solid waste and solid waste. So somebody could take those two if they wanted to take those as a cluster. Did anyone take community services Bernie were you taking that one. So we have a public health library. So we saw Andy that needs to take something. And Alicia. So we have what police communication center, fire and EMS crest public health senior center and veterans. So that's all under so community services is the cluster that we need to go next. And that would include the recreation department cherry hill the pool senior center. That cuts across a couple days. It's the 12th and 17th when most of that is discussed. Alicia has her hand raised. I'd be happy. I'd be happy to take that one. Community services. Okay. All right, so then the last one, I think, in the sense that something would be transportation and solid waste. And if Andy was open to taking that then we would be, I think everybody would know I already took those. You were you took sewer water and public works. He actually took May 19. She took the whole day. If you want the whole day, take it if you want all that you can. They're just they're distinct enough if you want to break them off and let Andy take them. You can. But if you don't want to. Nope, I'll take them. Okay. So then Andy is without currently so he is the chair so that gives him time to plan for. What are inspections and facilities and police facility under. So facilities, regular facilities is under general government so that would fall under Michelle police facilities. It's technically under public safety but it will likely be also under general government because Jeremiah will speak to that one. I think if we can mail out a list with our assignments attached. Yeah, with the dates. Yeah, I will. And then inspections planning conservation. That's all Bob under conservation development. And I think I took all of May 17, but Alicia might have taken part of it so we can, we can talk about that later. Yeah, so you Kathy you'll have the first three the public safety items. Police communications fiery massing cross. Okay. Because then there's public health and senior center and veterans, if you need to I can take them all. I know I know that I don't think it has to go by day. So the goal here is that when you get the budget document, the clusters will be more or less together and so you're going to be focused on that cluster and generating questions. If they're on different days I don't think it's the end of the world. Okay. Then I think we are. We got through the agenda, amazingly. We haven't done public comment. We haven't done public comment. So that was the one and I don't see any public. So that so he one person that was there has, has left. Lynn has her hand up and think, yeah, go on. I just want to apologize that on the second, starting at 1030 I'm going to be trying to plug in by phone and in a multiple person vehicle so I, I have no way to avoid that. May 2nd, May 2nd. Yeah, that that's Monday. No, I meant the third third okay. May 3rd. So I just want to apologize in advance for not having people feel like I'm not as connected as I should be. Thank you. Then I think we've actually done next agenda items, you know, looking for to the future, which was listed here so I think we've actually finished today's meeting. And I'm ready to adjourn the meeting of the finance committee and Lynn, I guess you have to adjourn. I'm going to adjourn the meeting of the council at 1130. No, actually 1128. And I will adjourn the meeting of the finance committee at the same time 1128. Lynn and Sean, I should report back to you a little bit on the MMA discussion at some point. Okay. I can stay one but you know Sean you have to hop off. Yeah, let me make sure you're if you want to stay on we just got to make sure your. I need to let you know to so I'll follow up. But some of it was following up on the conversation we had with Jackie sometime ago. I pushed that issue hard. Thank you. Bye.