 I could see but I can't see the big things and then just interrupt at any point in time because again This is meant to be kind of more of an informal It's not as scripted but the the financial landscape the things that we're dealing with this year You know when we're creating the budget the stresses that are on it the biggest one was Act 127 and that was the idea that For there to be equitable education for all students some students depending upon their context and their backgrounds need a little bit More in terms of resources To be able to achieve equitably compared to their peers You know small schools students from small schools English language learners low-income, which is the one that impacts us the most They all cost a little bit more to give them an equitable education So it was funny when this first came out and we were looking at it a year ago in detail It's like oh, we're gonna benefit amazingly because of this because we got 40% that's in the low-income, right? and so It was kind of funny at the start of the year They had the wrong numbers for us and everything was reverse of what we thought and then they fixed the number at the last minutes before the Blackboard meeting and so we actually we benefited quite a bit and you're going to see that when we talk about the tax rates The other thing that's happening this year is the Essar funds they end So we were receiving a significant amount of money from the federal government to help students with recovery after COVID This particular district with the work that we did We brought in about seven million in Essar funds to bolster the budget over the last three years And so we are in the final year of that money a lot of it was for programs equipment But a lot of it was also for staff and so what you're going to see happening in most districts is people got used to having Those staff there so there's going to be surges and people's budgets as they're trying to keep all those Essar people Employed within the district move over to the regular budget and then the biggest thing that impacts us This is the one that's going to hurt us in terms of the tax rate That's our common level of reprisals right the property values have been going up enough enough ever since the The start of COVID especially as folks were trying to get out of the bigger cities You know Vermont was a great place a lot of people are what do they call it when you work from home? There's a word for it remote remote. It's remote. It's It's distance commuting or it's got the word So so a lot of folks were telecommuting and it was kind of funny at the beginning of COVID we had a bit of surge in terms of Population because they were moving into town mostly brain treat and mostly at the elementary level So we have two parts of our budget Really kind of quick here. We've got what's mandated stuff that we have to pay for the biggest piece that Is going to impact this this year is increases in the salaries right based upon what was negotiated last year with the teachers I think it's an 8% increase that they've got coming and then like the support staff I think we're about 9.6 percent is their increase We've actually been doing really good in terms of our special education Population the number of students that are on IEPs is going down in the district It's been for the last year or two But the students that we have are very high needs and so the costs have gone up a little bit Early education child care tax This was something that was slipped in that a lot of us only became aware of in the last month or two So the state has had a lot of conversations around early education preschool across the state for everybody And so they're trying to find a way to fund it and so they built in a little tax That's charged on folks benefits So that impacts us and then whatever tuition changes at the technical center because we send 60 70 kids there a year We end up having to pay a little bit more So these are things that I call man mandated obligations. We don't have a choice The discretionary things that we put into the budget for this year are right here We've built the the full-day preschool for four-year-olds Two of the locations were in the regular budget Prior to next year one of them is still being paid for by grants which are drying up And so we're trying to shift Those people those four bodies over into the regular budget so we can keep that preschool program going It does serve pretty much what we will call a whole class of kids 60 is about the normal size of the class for This district and so we've had about 55 that have been attending Probably a little bit more if it were year-round right because a lot of people use it for child care And if it's not available during vacations and not available during the summer Then it's it's it's not as appealing Yeah, go ahead and and Are we seeing an impact of having those preschools on the performance of our students in our schools? Yes, if you look And this is something because you'll get a final ends report If you take a look at the early grades up through grade three In a great course grade three is the first one where we get the state reporting on But if you look at the track my progress scores over time, they had been increasing Those are the students that have gone through the preschool program up through grade three at this point So it has had quite an impact the hope is That because the state's been talking about it for two years, right? They're starting to generate money for it. The hope is is that they're going to start paying us for it right they give us a little bit of a subsidy to run it, but it's only they're paying us for about a Point two of the kids somewhere in that range as opposed to giving us the money for a full one-off for student The other thing that we did is that we had nurses in the district that were being paid for by grant funds We're trying to make sure that we retain them because we want an individual nurse at each school One of the reasons for that is especially at the elementary is the two smaller elementaries. They've never had it Their populations have been growing. They're up between 80 and 100 depending upon whether it's for field of brain tree But the nurses are really good in the fact that if they've got a little extra time on their hands at those small schools They can help regulate students that could dysregulate, right? We have a hard time in this state finding mental health care workers Which would be the ideal situation because we didn't have that it's like okay, we can Accomplish two things here. I have in the nurse so we can make sure that we've got dedicated medical care of both Both schools so the kids are taking care and if they've got a little extra time on their hands They can help us with the regulation of the students in terms of mental health issues Two bodies one for brain tree one for Brookfield to help them out again with the mental health challenges that we're facing Coming out of COVID with students a human resources director for central office One of the hardest pieces That I've encountered at least during my my seven years here now if you can believe that Was coming in and having just me Being central office So I was the curriculum director K to 12. I was the superintendent and I was also human resources for 262 employees And it's just too much if you want a real leader who can lead and has the time to do that stuff You got to free them up and build the structure for them so they can So that's going to be very helpful and then we've had inflation the last couple of years And so we've got to increase the the supplies that that were our custodians are using to keep our buildings clean and so the total increase in terms of expenses that we're looking at for the district is 2.1 million as Folks who've been to these presentations in previous years know is that we've been taking the money at the end of The year that's left over right the surplus funds, and we've been using to build up kind of a subsidy fund And I'll show you kind of what that looks like in more detail later, but I've got you know 1,000,033,333 Dollars that is set aside Specifically to help lower people's taxes, so it's going to reduce this amount down to 1.07 Does SEL stand for socio-emotional learning you got yeah, so I know for a special education Mental mental health they're they're getting away from this and they're just saying that the whole needs now So that's a good good observation here now We'll talk about this when we hit the tax rates in just a minute Right what we've been doing in the district for the last three years is we're spending more right? But our revenues are increasing more than we're spending So the impact of the schools itself on the taxpayers is that your taxes are actually going down We're asking less from you each year, and I'll show you what that looks like The problem that you've got is the property values are going up so much it more than offsets So you'll see that a couple of slides so Right the two pieces that kind of control what your tax rates are you've got a part that's controlled by the district That's what we're spending here versus the revenues that we generate And then what's out of our control is you've got this reset This is the act 127 right when they started to say hey We've got a bunch of kids in here that need a little bit extra to be able to get an equitable education We got to find a way to fund that and so there was a reset of the tax base because of that In our case here the biggest impact that people are going to feel is the increase in property values Right you get this misalignment between what you're assessed by the town and what the fair market value of the homes are Right because the state goes out looks every year in this big survey to see what that the houses are selling for a brain tree And then they'll say oh You're assessed here, but your houses are selling for here This is what you need to pay your taxes and that's why you see those tax increases and then the mandated and contractual expenses These are things that are out of our control, but they impact our budgets So the one in the middle I always thought mistakenly I think that it would be break even because even though My house value went up so did my neighbors and I assumed it was based on just Randall Frank tree Brookfields But I think what you're saying is it's based on the whole state and the state different towns do it at different times Yeah, it's um, it's fairly complicated and I don't follow how the town does its taxes because the Education stuff is enough to learn but it's based upon the grand list So it's total well It's a total property value in your town And then they get a fair market value for it based upon what that total assessed value is and if it's different They're going to charge you more taxes to make up for the difference The state is doing that Yeah, the state comes in and they do the survey they do the survey of all the properties and they say oh you're assessed here But actually your values are here And then they call it the common level but they do the whole town at the same time Yeah, so if our taxes were just based on our Randall values and homes And school budget If we wouldn't even notice it if everybody would go up or down at the same time if you if if your tax assessments were based upon Just the assessed value in the town. Yeah Then the only thing that would be impacting you would be the taxes Because of the school right and in our case if that was the case your taxes would be going down Right, so like I like I said, we've been spending more because we're trying to meet the board's ends but at the same time we've been Generating either more revenue or we get some windfall benefit from the state, right? We had 40% poverty So, you know, we got a big jump this year because because of the act 127 But if you look back over the last couple of years if it's just the school in 2022 23 Right, you had a 7.52 Cent per hundred dollars of property value So if you take your property you figure out, okay, this is how many sets of hundred dollars I have and you multiply it by this That's going to tell you how much your reduction would be and so in the case of $250,000 property Because of what the school was doing The person with the property of this value was actually going to pay $188 less per year Because of how the school was running its budgets, which was about $15 and 67 cents a month in 2023 24 It was again, it was a seven cent per hundred dollars and assessed value decrease So another 180 off people's taxes and then this coming year for next year We actually had a 14 almost a 15 cent per hundred dollars and assessed value decrease Which means a 374 saving You know for $250,000 property So for the average person with a property of this value over the last three years the schools Took $742 per year off your property tax. Again, it's the cla It's that common level of previous little people's property values going up that kind of messed up And so this is linear. So right if you got a $500,000 property Then the impact would be double, right? So there's ways to kind of calculate where you where you'd be at In terms of tax impacts for next year What you're seeing is the cla so in terms of brain tree when they went out and did that survey They came back with the cla of 79.57 percent. That means right now based upon the state survey The people in brain tree are only paying 79.57 percent of what they should be paying based upon the state survey So you're going to have to pay more to get that up to 100 because they want you to pay 100 of that fair market value So if you're in brain tree and you got a $250,000 property, that's going to be your annual impact That's due to property value shift. That is not due to what the schools did, right? It's out of our control in terms of brookfield 388 dollars per year in terms of Randolph 196 That make a little bit of sense or that Yeah, it makes sense except Seeing the number there at brookfield Yeah, so 95 of the cla so why Ah, that's a good question. So what what did brookfield do? They reappraise they reassess the reassessment and in last year when they reassessed They're they were actually paying too much So last year they got a huge decrease in their taxes So they lost this year not only did they lose that decrease But they had to pay a little bit more because their property values went up So I think they ended up with the largest piece. So it's the change in cla from year to year Yeah, it's this stuff is very good. So the cla and I know this is your air of expertise It's the state. I think it's a state tax thing And I'm going to ask this probably the same question. I just asked but let's say Retrie 80 percent 80 percent of what is that 80 percent of what they should be compared to the whole state or so So if your house is If your house is assessed at a hundred thousand dollars What it's saying is that's only 80 percent of what it's really worth It's worth it's compared to yeah, but So what they do the so this comes from their survey So I'll explain what they do and then you couldn't tell me if it if what they do makes sense Is with their survey is they they look at brain tree and they look at what the houses are selling for in brain tree And so they use that to to create this fair market value. Sure. Yeah, this is what you're assessed at But the houses are selling here. So this is what we're taxing you So your hundred thousand dollar house should be selling 100 So you need to pay taxes on that 130 but if everything else stays the same If everybody's Assessed value goes up 20 percent Then our tax rate would go down 20 percent in order to get the same dollar value at the end of the day It should because that's the idea of the equalization But it doesn't ever quite if it doesn't then the money's going somewhere else than our town Where's it going? It must be going to some other place in the state Yes, so and why are we a net giver instead of a taker if we're so poor here? So he's he's actually hitting on one of the issues that the legislature has to to deal with this year The education fund Who pays for the who pays for the money that that so the education fund is what funds all schools the 62 districts around the state Where does that money come from? It comes from all taxpayers So what ends up happening is that when we do our budget It's like sending a bill to the state and then you know white river does that does their budget It's sending the bill to the state and so the state gets all those bills and say Okay, now we have to go out to all the taxpayers in the the state and pull in the money We need to cover these bills. Okay, so if we're doing our job by keeping our taxes low and by not increasing expenses here But what's happening in the other towns is you're taking advantage of the the five percent cap If they're saying oh We can raise our tax rate by ten percent, but we only we're only going to get charged for five percent of it Where does that other money come from everybody else in the state? So they're taking advantage of the fact that it's the the impact at home isn't isn't really bad. Okay, I get it now Okay, and again, I'm talking in general not the specifics To make try to make it a little bit easier. So the other thing to remember And a lot of folks in our towns do take advantage of this Given that this is a pretty pretty good increase for next year But again the important thing is it's due to the changes in the cla. It is not due to what the school is doing The school has been doing its part to try to keep People's tax rates low Is that there is this homestead declaration and property tax credit farm So for households that are making less than 128 thousand dollars a year You should fill this out because if you're under that it will bring your taxes down proportionally And so a lot of people do this so instead of being charged on your property value If you're under 128 thousand dollars per year, they're now looking at your income And they're using your income to determine what you should be paying for your property taxes And so I highly recommend that people fill that out And that's the basic budget Last piece is just talking a little bit about the surplus. So we had a 1.4 million dollar surplus At the end of last school year 350,000 of it. We've already moved over to subsidized next school year Right. That's part of that one one million dollar 33 33 33 subsidy that we talked about We're going to ask the taxpayers to vote in 51 283 of it to go to our operational reserve In case we have needs during the school year that we can't anticipate. It's good to build that up a little bit And then the remainder of it This amount here is going to be split into three equal amounts to subsidize taxes In equal proportions for this fiscal year through that fiscal year So that's 350 three thousand and 33 dollars per year to help bring down people's taxes And so what I've been doing Lane can you just For anybody that might be watching sure on Orca Can you explain a little bit why we end up with these surpluses? Um, there are two two basic reasons for this Um, the first is that when we are planning our budgets, it's a year ahead, right? We're planning right now for next year When we do that planning especially when we're looking at staff We have to plan the budget based upon the salaries of the staff We currently have at the end of the year We'll get retirements and things like that people that are high on the salary scale will leave either through retirement or retrition And if we're hiring and people are coming in lower on the salary scale, that's a windfall Right because we plan for here. We only ended up having to spend here So this is money at the end of the year that's going to be left over And if we remember from our mandatory Things that we have to do Education is staff Intensive yeah 85 90 of our our big salary benefits So So the other piece of this Especially in these years with the grants is a number of the grants are reimbursement grants So we have to have the money to pay for what we want up front So gotta go on the budget and then after we spend it and we proved we spent it on what we were supposed to They give us the money back So that's another another pot of it Thank you Yeah, and so what what we've done when covid hit and this is the last slide Uh When we had those surpluses at the end of each year I would take them and I would divvium up for the next three fiscal years And so what you see is that in any particular year that we're in We've got chunks of surpluses from three particular years that we're using to subsidize taxes for those years And I did this this way on purpose because if those subsidies, uh those those Surpluses at the end of the year ever run out We can step down Over the course of time It's not like a big cliff at the end of one year, right? The next year you get two years worth of surplus a year after that you get one years worth of surplus And that gives whoever is here time to be able to adjust things To that decrease in those subsidies Hopefully, you know, we we had we had pretty healthy surpluses before even pre covid Yeah, I was in the three to six hundred thousand dollar range a year was the norm And then with cove it it was typically around a million Million a million million four But that's it must your questions I think one of your early slides mentioned The impact from the budget having taxes go down But then the impact from the cLA going up Is there a slide that compares the two like what the net about is? Yes, I can do that the reason I didn't is because uh, you'd have to have like three or four slides because It's different for each of our three towns, right? So if you take a look In each of those years, so if you take a look, right? Facts rates are different in each town So my question that I have because I've had a couple of people ask me I can give you the average Be making statements, you know We're going to have an 18 percent increase in our budget What what is ours was a 10 decrease 9.97 9.9 cent in our school budget so so But our education taxes will they be at Like a nine point something We are education tax increase because that's what people are really worried about Because you keep hearing on the news. There's an 18 percent increase in the education tax 18 percent Some of that they're taking into account. I think they're taking into account. CLA as well Right across the state when they're looking yeah, I mean I can throw up the tax sheet. Hold on somebody wrote a piece in the herald today today. There was a I haven't read it yet. So I've read the herald letters to the editor area saying 18 percent Education 18.5 Okay, yeah, so where is that coming from? Is that coming from the state? Yeah, I don't know. Have you heard? I heard it. We are not raising our budget like that 18. No, we're charging more, but we got such a windfall from the state So that's that's what happened to our school side of our tax rates 9.92. It's even higher than I thought So it's a decrease. So we're we're having instead of an 18 percent increase We're having them. Is this am I reading this correctly? We're having a minus nine point If you're just looking at the school tax rates, which is what that Yeah, it's just so just what's happening with the school But that's based on the school decisions on school spending That does not factor in what your actual increase will be because that you have to okay. So that's the actual There is the actual increase if you take the CLA into account. Okay, that's what I need So that's what I need. I brought stuff down or we brought stuff down by by close to 10 percent But there's changes in the property tax rate and that reset that they did because of act 127 This is this is what the overall increases are for each of the town Okay, yeah, so brookfield's going to get hit and brain tree but not Yeah, Randolph was interesting because um, not too bad most of the time they were right at the they were at 100 You know, they were always like 101 or 99 for most of the years I was here it was the others that had the big shifts Randolph the assessment values were pretty much straight on with the fair market Have you been talking with the other superintendents in the area? Are they seeing similar? Oh, there were there rates like that or are they They the the districts that got hit So we ended up getting more money from the state because we have 40 percent, you know Poverty The states that actually lost out on the deal They didn't have a lot of kids that fit into one of the categories. So they actually lost money um They're to maintain Their current level of services into next year. They're looking at tax increases between 25 and 30 percent Oh And that's like stow and yeah, so that's what and that's what the legislature is talking They're having like a special meeting Yeah, because what what's happening is people are trying to play that They're trying to Play that five percent cap piece. They're trying to get as much money as they can because they know They're only going to get charged for the five percent five percent increase But that money has to come from somewhere it comes from all the other taxpayers in the the state So if you're game in the system And we're all paying for it. Is that fair and just and so that's why the legislature's kind of scrambling around right now Is to try to try to look at that figure it out. Yeah I'm curious if there's an estimate from the new the 127 impact Is there a dollar or a percenting estimate from just that piece alone 18.5 25 percent of that was what the governor said. Yeah, he put it out his statement That was because he was when he was calling on the legislature to uh, but for us specifically Oh, because we're a 40 percent poverty level What more did we get this year than we would have like say last year under there's a similar formula Oh, yeah, yeah, I love how that actually So Right. It didn't quite work out exactly. So How the waiting system works Actually, we have a slide on How the waiting system works is it isn't like okay You're a student of low poverty. So we're just going to give you a little bit of extra money That's not what they did what they did is they said oh if you're a student of Of poverty then it's going to cost the equivalent of 1.4 students to give you an equitable education And so what they did is they they kind of pay us. That's what the yield is. Let's throw the yield up there This will make sense with the yield Good questions You're making me think and I had some caffeine. So I'm actually on my game. Let's So basically what the yield is is uh, it's how much the state is giving us per student Right. So that's what I mean by a tier one tax Tier one tax is the state way back when it changed its Did its ed reform It said there's a certain amount of money that every student in the state should receive to make sure that they get a fair education And so that's what this this amount is and so what we're getting this year per student is 9452 dollars per student Before the waiting. Yeah, we were we had about 850 158 students After they waited us and then got the numbers right we have 1533 students And so we actually we could do the calculation on this The problem is is that the yield has changed like last year the yield was like 15,000 But because there's more students in the state and a set amount in the education fund the amount you get per student goes down And so what happened with some folks is yeah You know they had a thousand students last year They only got credit for a thousand students this year, but last year they were getting 15,000 per student this year They're only getting 9452 So that's like stow. That's why stow is looking at a 25 to 30 increase. So we had was the number 15 last year It was like 15,300 Somewhere in there times 800 ish times 158 and then you could compare it to this And that would tell you what the change change was All right, so do you so we'll do 15,000 times 800 and 858 What do you get for a total 12 million 170,000 There you go 33 So so for the for the second calculation It's 9 9452 times 1,533 And that's 14,500,000. So we got like a 2 million dollar increase because of it. So that's what I was saying is right Which is about the 18 20 percent I'm costing you a million dollars more But we're getting 2 million more in revenue. So it more than covers our cost our tax rate goes down Right. So we lower this year's taxes by a million and we spread the other million out over the next three years Yeah, roughly. So we're we're not in bad shape But even with that Compared to the state, we're in really good shape. Yes. Yes compared to what people are going to feel It's it's not horrible. But still that overall rate wait What's that 4.768 Yeah, what's that? Is that a but see that doesn't make sense. How come that's different than that other? Yeah, I flipped over. I was on the one The the yields can change as they they go through. So the other one was a projection This is this is the the one that the state gave us to use the nine. So these are the actual numbers Those are the actual numbers. So these are the these are the actual percentages including the CLA. So sorry about that That was my fault. Yeah, we so what you showed us before so they're so brookfields Instead of an 18.5. They're at a 12.12 And ran off as under 5% And brain she is at 8.74 Yeah, not too bad. So this this is the actual number. We were trying to predict if the yield if the yield changes It goes down. Will they change the yield again? Yeah, they'll have to Your expect even though we're all voting on a budget happens every year Because until all the budgets are voted in the state doesn't know what it needs to charge Every taxpayer in the the state to get the money. Usually their predictions are pretty good But yeah, the yield so that yield and you'll change. So this is the number they gave us and told us to use This nine thousand four fifty two Yeah, so I apologize if I confused people because we were looking at a at a lower number for the yield and the other On the other sheet I'm projecting that yeah based upon if if all those folks are Trying to gain the system what might happen Okay, thank you. Yeah, it's good. It's confusing. I got it now. I think It'll last about I appreciate you just sticking it out. It's for a long time when I get out and then I'm like Somebody asked me something on the street and I'll be like I used to I used to go back and review how they actually calculated the taxes every year