 Okay. You're good to go. And I've got calling the finance committee meeting of September. 29 2021 daughter at 630pm pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so why zoomer by telephone. And the instructions are available on the posted agenda on the website. I'm not going to go further because there is no one in the audience a moment. And we're ice. Are we are in Los Angeles media is covering. No, they're not. Okay. So, under that circumstance, what I would do want to do, however, is first ask each member of the committee. If they can hear and just by responding, let me know. And then I'm going to turn to Sean and ask which agenda item that he's recommending or Paul which agenda item he's recommending first. So, going through the members of the committee. Pat Angelos present and I can hear. Dorothy. President. Lynn Grisner present. Bob Hegner here. Bernie Kubiak present. Kathy Shane here. I think that we have all current members of the committee present with one, of course, vacancy as the present. So, but also all seated members are here. And so the question that I wanted to ask was whether in order to. Is only here to present the third of the fourth quarter in your own budget report. Is the preference that we start with that item. I'm here for the whole meeting so that's fine. I probably would suggest that Sean start in case he gets called out in the room. Okay. It's possible I guess under the circumstances. So then let's turn to the review of the draft of the financial management policies and objectives. And my recommendation is that since the bulk of the comments were about sections. Probably near the beginning that we just take it in order. Because the comments are presented in order and obviously then it's easiest to do that is that acceptable. Yes. So, then how would we like to do this is a request that the policy be put on the screen or the comments be put on the screen. Or should we just assume that it's all available to us. I was thinking Andy it might be easiest to go through it if I pull up that sheet I sent everybody. And we just go through and then we can, you know, I can kind of highlight unhighlight them as we address them and then if there's anything that needs follow up I can make notes right there. Okay. Then go for it. And I will try and keep an eye on hands raised to all times as we go through. So, Andy, do you want me just to walk through the comments. Yes. Whoever made them. There were questions and responses you can just handle it that way. And if it needs discussion, then we'll get to discussion. Okay. But we're starting with the overview and the objectives, I believe. Kathy has her, her hand up. Just a quick question on the very front page. Sean, it says November 2020. Did you mean it to be November 2021. Is that what we're doing. So just so they were drafted for November 2020, but we will once we do this and finalize I'll update that date but they were that's why it was 2020 originally was because they were ready last year I wasn't sure the timing of when we discussed. Okay, that's I didn't understand why I was seeing that date and then I'm seeing them. I think for the first time now right. Okay. Okay, proceed sorry. So these first two comments are both about a section in the old policy that was sort of like an overview introduction to the policy manual. I think both of these comments make sense. So I think we'll add, we'll add some little, either an intro or add these to the objectives I think both of these comments were about adding an objective around financial environmental sustainability, and then also about the general provision of services. And so I think, and then the social justice impacts as well so I think both of those make sense to add to the objective section. So unless we want to discuss it I would just unhighlight those and say that we'll add that. I don't mind highlighting these two but I would just soon in this area. We say something about consistent with the town manager performance goals established by the council, because in fact they all have to relate to that. Actually, I sort of had the opposite view and I wanted to just point out that this is a policy that has to do with how we manage finances and not what our underlying policies are that are going to be revised for year to year. And so I'm trying to in my head sort out what belongs in this policy that gets revised, you know, every five years or so, and what belongs in either the performance goals or in the annual budget guidelines. And I guess, Andy, but I'm, let me take that and suggest that instead of mentioning these two, I would just refer in general to whatever the current town manager goals are, and not get into what they are, because they change over time. But then there's a referral to the fact that it would be consistent with those. Otherwise, I would not signal out signal ones because the moment I see these then I want to throw, you know, for other ones in there. I understand what Lynn is saying, but I think that we've made it clear that these are two of our major goals, and these goals are not things that should be on one year and off with another council. I think they're just consistent with the town of Amherst so I think I reference the town manager's goals but I think they should be, you know, for others take a look at the, you know, with these two and then say for other objectives major objectives over the town manager's goals. But I think they're important. I'm not adding anything new. I just wanted to affirm what Dorothy said and I agree with putting these two goals in here around environmental and sustainability and also social equity and social justice because they are going to be ongoing they're not going to change. I guess then I have one follow up question with the environmental goals we certainly have policy that we've established and intended to be a long standing policy and it was worded as such. I assume that the consensus is seeming that they both fall under that rubric. Kathy. I think Bob's hand was up before mine but no, I guess I guess I would, this is a financial, the title of this document is financial management policies. So on the second one. I would shorten it to get off and leadership and all policies to incorporate sustainability environmental stewardship in financial policies but it's not in all policies so just to anchor it in financial and later when we get to the capital side, I'll give an example I give an example that if we invest. If we wanted the criteria we use for capital investments is something that will lower long term operating costs or have minimized the impact on the environment, it could be a criteria for capital. So I'm just trying to anchor it to the financial side so the leadership and all policy seems to go to broadly. And I have no idea how to do a same similar kind of thing and the wording on number. The first one but I just thought the second one went beyond a financial policy. And Kathy, just on those I think, you know, we'll, we'll write these probably a little differently. But maybe we can reference it like in regards to financial planning, as we go forward we can. We can incorporate both of these two objectives in regards to financial planning. So I don't think we don't get stuck on the exact wording we can rewrite it so that it makes sense. Okay, and I'm just in the reason I'm raising those is when I look at the ones that currently exist. Everything is narrowly anchored in the financial policy. You know so just think of the wording so it's not. I don't disagree with these are central but it's this is the financial policy guidelines so I'm lowering my hand. I'm done. I just wanted to emphasize that we also need to consider financial sustainability. And I think we've talked about this in committee. So I don't want to lose that, you know, with the environmental which is important. But I think financial sustainability is equally important. Okay. And you can capture that. Yeah, yeah, that's that's in here but we can. If that's not already an objective we can, we can make sure that's mentioned or highlighted. Dorothy has her hand up as well. An objective is not a promise and objective is a goal. And the reason that I think they should stay in is that we do have ups and downs and we have hard times and sometimes we have to make choices we don't like. We also I noticed that just from, you know, having lived this long that these are the kind of things that get dropped first gives it all it's really hard we can't afford to do that. Well, maybe you can't afford to do all that you wanted, but for example we have said that we were going to put aside money for the reparations fund. If the finances got really bad. I think we should still put some aside but it might be a smaller amount I think the goal should still continue, although we have to bow to reality. And that's, I think it's all these nice things they always get dropped like an education all the new programs as soon as it's a hard time, all the new programs are out. Well, I just want to run us to be able to move on but the key question is in what is the budget that's going to be developed and submitted to the council and what is the council then going to approve or not approve because that's what the charter dictates as the process and these are kind of directions or guidance to the manager in proposing an annual budget, as opposed to a management and I think that's where some of us are kind of going back and forth a little bit of uncertainty as to how they relate. I think, I think Andy that's where we can, again, when we write these we can write them so they're not they don't feel as specific to one budget cycle that they're more overarching I think we can write them that way. So, I think that we need to look at the next draft and move on accept the limiter hand up. And if you have a set of goals, and they change based on the priorities of the council, and the whole set of goals are referenced here, then those goals also drive budget and they drive financial guidelines. And this way you don't get into highlighting this here, or that there or somebody else arguing oh it should say housing. Those arguments take place when we're setting the goals for the town manager. And then the budget follows. So, it's that's where I'm coming from this. It's not because I don't believe in these goals. I think it's a suggestion that they, they not be included or at least that we look very carefully at what the language is. I think it means that we look very carefully at what the language is with an overall reference to the town manager's performance goals. Because my ending suggestion, the conclusion of this discussion so now that we can move on is that we asked Sean to send us a marked up version that shows where changes are made. But in the future meeting we don't have to go back and look at the entire policy can only look to see what changes he's incorporated and whether we recommend the changes as he has presented them. So, so I think we can go on and go back to that. Yeah, so the next one is on the audit so there's nothing on accounting and then the auditing section. I think it's referring to the length of the contract and how often we go up for procurement of auditing services. Dorothy was I think this was your comment right. I'm sorry. This was just about more flexibility is this is not a major point it's a minor point, but I thought the five years was awfully specific. And we wanted to you said these other words that are in caps. And I mean it with. I'm unhappy that we don't seem to be able to change auditors but you've explained why we can't. And that is what you have set up the rotating principle. So I just thought it should be in there because otherwise I would say we should say change auditors. You know, closing this is not a good thing. Anywhere. Yeah, we'll take a look at that language and and see if we can add something more specific around the around what you suggested. Thank you. Any comments is chair of the. I just wanted to say that the five years is a good duration, and we went through a competitive process and made the, and it did come out that the firm we were using is was scored higher they were the better for firm. We had some negative feedback during reference checks and so I feel like and, and the middle Melanson is also less expensive. And I think we've made a really good decision and that change of principle. It will be very good thing because it really does bring different eyes to the process start Dorothy. It's just randomly changing there only a couple of firms anyway in this area so randomly changing the firm isn't necessarily a productive thing to do. And I guess the other thing Pat and I went to a training that was reported information about everybody else was conducted by the division of local services and the office inspector general. And I think that it had a very specific five year recommendation. So should we go into financial planning. Yeah, so I think this next comment. I don't, but I think this was Bob's comment I don't know Bob if you actually had any suggested changes I think you were just noting that you know due to Kobe this is more difficult than it's been in the past. I actually put the reasonable expectation in there, rather than what did it say it said, without firm evidence that revenues. I just, we don't always have firm evidence to know sometimes we have to do a guesstimate. COVID, you know, kind of demonstrated that that we had to kind of come up with estimates of what we might get in terms of revenues though. I just, I just wanted to make it a little bit more flexible. When I highlighted the section that says revenue, revenue deficits will be avoided at all costs. It's, it's a good sentiment except that. What can you do. How do you avoid revenue unless you are going to low ball your estimates on and always end up coming out so that you'll always kind of out on the high side which has as consequences to because then you're always building more surplus. You know, that's, you always budget conservatively for that reason and you know, not every every revenue category might be a little different in a given year but if you budget conservatively usually it sort of evens out. But I think most finance managers will say that's why you budget conservatively because because of that reason you don't ever want to have a revenue deficit. Yeah, I just wanted to remind everybody that the DR actually regulates our local receipts pretty heavily. So you have to have evidence to raising them and why you're raising them whether it's rate change. You can reasonably expect money coming in. And they also look at if you put them too low so they're watching that all the time. I wanted to point that out. You have to pretty much defend any local receipts that you put in the tax rate. Anything. Anything else that people want to add here. Because otherwise is the sentiment to just leave it. I think, unless Bob you have another it's anything else to say. We just leave it as is. Okay. So we're agreeing to the. So next. All right, so the next, the next comments on reserves. And so the, the one of the bigger changes in the policies is that we changed it from five to 15% to 10 to 25%. And so I thought about it a lot about what's that right upper limit. We thought about where we are now and also having sort of a reason for the range, not that the range before didn't have a reason, but we really wanted to think, like, you know, if we're at 10%, what does that get us is that sort of one year of economic downturn, or two years of an economic downturn, how much do we want to sort of that low end. And then at the high side we wanted to think about why would we want this much money what would we be saving for. So we tried to write that in there. And, and the first question here is, so there's a lot of questions on reserves but the first question here is, how does the 10 to 25% mesh with stabilization funds which cannot exceed 10% of equalized valuation. So the 10 to 25% we're talking about are of general fund revenues which is, you know, essentially our budget, whereas this 10% of equalized valuation that's the total assessed value of the town. Like in the billions when you add it all together so we're nowhere close to, we're nowhere close to that number. Okay, so that's that first one. And then I think the next, the next comment was about the policy talks about if we're going to pull money from the civilization fund, having a plan to replenish the fund. And whether, you know whether we still want to plan for how to replenish the fund if we are still within our, our acceptable range. I think that's a good question I think you know for for at 20% and we go down to 18%. I don't think we necessarily need a plan to, to get back to 20% for example. I think it's more about if we fall out of our range of reserves that we want to plan for how we're going to get back into our acceptable range. I just want to see a couple hands up. Dorothy. This is just a psychological point at, we kind of feel that somehow we're in this big ordeal of four capital projects, and that we're going to come out and we will caught up. But the fact is we will not have caught up. And a lot of people are making noises about the senior center. And that's going to be another big project that will come after we finish the ones that we've got on our plate. So, you know, keeping them on the high side if possible is good because we're not really over the hump even though it's going to kind of feel that way. And Kathy. I, this will seem to go in an opposite direction of Dorothy, Sean, you said we went from a range that was five to 15 to arrange that was 10 to 25. My question is why, why wouldn't we want to make the range five to 25. And put wording in that would say, you know, we would normally want to be much higher than five when we anticipate major capital projects. But, you know, if we got, yes, we have a backlog right now but I just want to see some evidence that 10% is something that we should aim to never be below is what this would say. And I think in my comments it's like, what do other towns do or the municipal guidance that because it's 10% of general revenues I mean this is a pretty high amount so it's that's my question on if we were living with five to 15. And we're building it up. I can also understand why we want to make the range higher, you know, and then, and then do some kind of qualifying here. I think you may have done it and you're wording already but if you were a lay person saying oh the town is got ever tighter operating budgets, but look it's put 25% into its saving thing it's just not spending money and the teacher got cut in half or the art program got cut in half you know so we need to, we need to be thinking of, you know, you build it up when you have certain things in front of you but you don't necessarily need to go that high. And so my question was on do we need to have 10 be the minimum. I think that's the way of saying it, but I also wanted more words that gave my, the sense of what I did, did that we would not want to be anywhere near five. If we have, you know, a backlog that we're trying to save money for, you know, like normal people save money to buy by house. You know, so, but, but 25% as a possible normal range seems high so it's, I think I've said enough to get my sense because this. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. I just want to point out one thing and then I guess Sean and then to the other two people have raised hands. I sent a link earlier in the afternoon to a document that I recall being there and it's researching to find it. And for me, the guidance and looking at the section is the experience. And I would be the only one who can say that I was on the finance committee. And the last recession in 2008, essentially was when it was really hitting us. And so we did a lot of thinking about the subject and that's that subject of the 2008 memo was and so I have to go back and look at the experience and the question of how long we expected it to last. And then you stretch it and then go back and think about the 10%. So I'm not going to express any conclusions out of that, but I did want to say that with the addition of Doug Slaughter who is also on the finance committee at the same time. I think the only two were in some way involved in the government processes right now who were in Amherst and doing this stuff back then. Bernie. Oh, Sean, you were saying if you had anything to add. I'll just quickly say two things one. I think Andy, what you just said is the sort of what we did when we looked at this range we looked at the our historical revenue charts. And we looked at the years where we had a recession and the amount that revenues dropped. And so we try to set the lower percentage out what it would take to cover us for two or three years of a revenue decline. And you know that's a relatively safe time span so we looked at, I think it was 2010 or 2009 how much revenues dropped then there was another time span where revenues dropped and so we looked at how much it dropped from one year to the next and how long it lasted and we tried to set a number a lower range number that would allow us to sort of weather that storm. So that five percent of our budget, we're talking about four or five million million dollars as a reserve, which just felt like where we are now that that's maybe too low. You know on an 85 million dollar budget I think with with coven we were sort of, you know we were worried worst case scenario that state aid would be cut and if it was cut we would, you know we would have easily went through that $5 million lower end in one year than we were. So I think that's why we raised that we just felt that was a little too low and that 10% what you know kind of allow us to get through two or three years of a downturn. I just have to say I think that's really a good helpful explanation Sean and maybe put one sentence in there that that was the rationale for the minimum. Not really short but it's that that it could weather two years of a recession, you know. Thanks. Bernie. The five to 15% is the, as I recall it is the old or one time do our recommendation for reserve funds and towns are all over the place. I don't think we should keep your fields reserves at 25% because 5% 10% is a dangerously low number. The other thing that people need to realize I don't know there's a way to get this across is these reserves get built up from one time only money. This is not something that repeats itself. I'm going to surplus you put the money into reserves. So it's not like it's, it's not like it's something that's going to reoccur from year to year to year or could be used for something like salaries. I think the 10 to 25% target is perfectly reasonable and I like the idea of just adding a little bit of rationale to it. Can they suggest that I think that would make it work. I appreciate that you and Doug were on the finance committee. I was on the committee that wanted to build buildings and got stopped smack in the middle of it all. I want to say two things. First of all, I absolutely feel that we should go with the low that not a lower but the 10% for a couple reasons different organizations use different measures for how many reserve how much reserves they need to have. Some say well it should be enough to carry us for half a year some of it say for three months. You know, I think the fact that you've looked at how our money has fluctuated through periods of up and down of state funding is a good thing and I like referring to that. But the other thing I want to just suggest is we're never going to be done with our capital projects because the moment we finish one, we're going to need something else. And so we may feel like we have a backlog now, but you know, we have declining roofs, we have buildings we're going to have to do things to so I, I feel we need to stay with the 10 to 25. I'm totally convinced, and especially the two to three years, I just wanted a rationale since we were going up. Yeah. Sean later in the document I think you had the things that I had added this comments. Yeah, you're the, you're the magenta color. So, these are your comments Andy right here on the screen, or these are from the, these are from the memo actually that you sent out. Yeah, well it was not a month. I think it was some things that I said this morning that are in that purple piece. Sorry at the top, the top part of your comments, yeah. Yeah, the top part of the comments and the bottom part of the memo quotes from the memo. What it happened historically was that we had stuck with 15% is the high up until the point when we started looking down at the effect of the four projects and tried to figure out four projects. And Sandy pool or had come up with the feeling that we really needed to start thinking about it, before we got into the projects per se and start building up the 25, because of the reasons that we now know about from Sean's modeling. And which is really built on Sandy's modeling that initial modeling. And so the idea of running it up to 25% sandy it actually wanted to have the additional amount put into a new stabilization fund for capital and town meeting, essentially said, I don't see why that's necessary because you can just do it through the current stabilization fund. So we're, we don't want to vote, they turned down the proposal to vote to create a new stabilization fund, but no, they were not objecting to the increase so Sandy just took it off as a win and went on with life. As we all did. And that's the history but so the question of going above 15% and saying that you're going to replace it, which is sort of the intimation of the whole thing. Sort of is that does that make sense under those circumstances and looking at why we got up to 25%. So I just wanted to put that out there for general comment from the committee which is why I cited that experience from the, how we got to as high as we did. And I think it's very handy that I liked from your the document you sent out or the sort of three, the three situations when we might use reserves. And so I was thinking that we will look we'll take another look at this section and think about how maybe we can incorporate something like that. Um, I put that out there for historical purposes of course that was created is at a time when we needed to be very clear with people developing budgets as to how the finance committee was looking at it in the time of that it was written, which was the time of the recession. So the next section, more on what we were talking about so the, I won't bug you now with it but there are a lot of. There's a lot of nice reporting online now where you can look at the reserves of other towns and see what percentages they're at. They're much as a percentage of their of their budget and their, their stabilization fund as a percentage of their budget so the, you know, depending who you want to compare us to their the towns like Bernie said they range all over the place but there's some towns that are in the 30% range or some that are are much lower so we can definitely look at any town that anybody wants to. So rather than just pick random towns we do have a cohort of towns that we compare ourselves to. During the financial indicators project that we could use that as our benchmarks just so people don't start cherry picking towns we already have some that we've settled on that we've been using for a decade probably. Yeah, that's already a you're a good point that's already a slide that will will share the indicators that's one of the slides that we look at so it'll have the are near our neighbors nearby and then some of the eastern mass communities that we compare ourselves to. So the consensus seems to be that we're going to stick with the 10 to 25% that Sean is drafting language to explain a little bit more clearly how we got to the best numbers how and what the and something about comparables but I think he is he's indicated that's also going to be in the annual financial trends indicators report that we get in that meeting. And then you'll come back for us to look at the changes that you propose based after this conversation. Does that seem to everybody like reasonable quick summary case shine back to you. So this is the revenue section is the next section so this first comment is about one time revenues. I think this might when you Bob that had this comment, or maybe it was Kathy I'm not sure. Kathy was this your comment on the one that is made mine and I had one just before that Sean just on a in on the reserves we have a. We wouldn't use the free cash. And down to an emergency in emergency, do we ever define it was a question of do we ever define emergency. And should we. So I don't want to be labor right now but that that question came up with the with the bridge when we first came on and people said, what constitutes an emergency. And is it and if it's urgent to some people is an emergency so I'm just wondering whether you know at the very end of this is, should you take a stab at certain terms were used you know what is free cash. It's an emergency so it's a suggestion. And I'm ready to move on but I just, I thought, you know, there was actually Andy, I think everyone was first, our first finance decision was whether to do this or not. And some thought we weren't in what constituted an emergency and others who were affected by the bridge felt it was emergency. I just leave that as a thought on do we need something free cash is one that when people read it they don't always know what free cash is compared to a stabilization fund so. Yeah, and we can look at the state has language around what an emergency is when it comes to procurements and how you justify an emergency procurement. So we can look, you know, usually has to do deal with with health and safety of people and also buildings and things like that so we can, we can take a look at that and see if that would make sense to maybe add. Okay, so yes so this on revenues it was one time revenues will be used for capital or for reserves. And when I was reading it to, or, you know, I get this last or as legally restricted to a specific purpose. I think, and so I was asking as a question, I think that covers all these instances where we're getting one time revenue, and we're not using it for capital. Is that true that or for legal special purposes. So we. Yeah, maybe that's something we can. Yeah, the COVID money the ARPA money and we can, we could use it for operating. So I was just reading that it either go is a capital purchase or reserve so that so that was, is that term broad enough to encompass all those. Yeah, we'll add something to clarify that. So that was my question on that and then you had a second of fees that you're going to fees and user charges should be reviewed annually in relation to the costs of providing the service so here's one where you want to review a fee. And I don't know whether we always review our fees annually. I liked reviewing them annually but I'm thinking of the instance of parking permits, Sean and I know you're looking at them. You might want to review them not just to compare to costs, but for a policy reason. For example, you're increasing the feed a park, get a parking permit on our street, because you want to contribute more to transportation fund because you want to although the US lots are full right now make people think twice about putting a car on the street versus putting it in a parking lot. So, this seemed to restrict the fee increase only to the cost of providing the service so that's, and I understand you weren't thinking necessarily a parking permit. Yeah, and I think, I mean, I think this is meant to say, as a matter of financial management, we should be looking at these every year and comparing them to, you know, to the cost of the service being provided. But I don't think it me, I don't think it was intended to mean that we will never look at them for any, like for like you said for policy reasons so, again, we can try to clarify that. It might be it compared to costs, or for for policy, or for other financial policy reasons or something so just so you don't restrict it that the, and I don't know I know the water fee is related to costs the building permit fee is really relating to the inspection costs, you know so so some of these have a much more direct link. So I like the annual review a lot. And my question here was, if you are doing fees that are broader. Do you as town staff just do this, do you need to report it up. And this was a question, you know, before they go into to, would you bring them to the finance committee normally like we're about to revise our fees and here's the rationale. Or is this just something that the were delegating to the very capable town manager and finance staff. So it was a question. It depends on the fee. So like the parking permit one for example is why I believe has to go to the council for consideration where there's some fees that don't because they're small enough or you know they're just they're not required to. So I think it and I think, you know, to the extent we would bring it to the finance committee the council probably depends on the adjustment if we were just making a very small adjustment. And I don't think that would rise to that level but if it was something more significant that you're going to hear about, then, then we would probably want to make sure the finance committee is aware of that. Okay. Think of inspection services fees. Yeah, I certainly didn't think they should be regularly coming so I was just, you know, I read this as limiting it to the cost if you're saying you're not limited in your review to just the cost. I'm fine with it as it currently reads. I don't want to be labor and Andy I agree I wouldn't want lots of small adjustments that are totally rational, logical right to becoming at all, beyond the staff. Paul and Dorothy. One of the things one is when you set a theater has to be tied to the cost of the service you can't just randomly set fees we're not a business that these have to be tied to the cost of providing the service. So even suppose we had something that's really worth a lot. We can't overcharge for it if it's more than the cost of the service. Secondly, fees are again our, you know, Sean said are tied to different fees are different things most fees are administrative and they would not go the legislature for approval. So we have to stay with the admit with the executive. And it's not really about the value of the increase it could be that we have a $1 fee that we're going to quadruple to $4 that's just because it's it's not the value of the increase it's really who has responsibility so the public way is in the responsibility of the council. That's why you control the parking and everything that goes with the parking in that that realm is my understanding. Thank you, Dorothy. That was an interesting clarification because I put my hand up to completely second Kathy. So if you cannot raise the fees on parking on the street, then I think we have to find it because of the what the word fee means and the definition of fee that it has to be tied to service cost of services. I like to call it something else because the complaints on this issue, the injustice of it are just coming in they haven't stopped three years of people complaining about the $25 your fee to park on the streets. And so if that's if a fee cannot be raised, then there. Call it just to clarify that Dorothy I didn't say fees could not be raised. I don't think it's going to the cost of the service. Yeah but parking fees have an enormous costs every all the police the entire police department is involved with public so you don't with parking fees, there's ample room. Don't worry about that piece of it. We can, you know, we because they are enterprise funds. But we do treat them sort of like a business so we can think about our long term capital costs and our need to have a reserve and there's lots of things that we incorporate into the fee level when we set them so. I had a couple of things are, unless you have more Dorothy since your hand is still. No, thank you. In this section on revenues, I didn't say anything about it in Britain form back to you Sean but this first paragraph after the thing that's in green. Just because it's only essentially a sentence year to year increase of actual revenue from property tax lovies show generally not exceed 2.5% pursuant to the limitations of proposition to have excluding the value gained through new construction new growth and expenditure increases outside the tax limit cap ignores possibility that the council could ask the voters to consider a general override and the voters could agree to it. So, why have you excluded the override possibility and how you worded that. So I think I don't have in front of me because I'm sharing my screen but I think it said to say generally I think it's, I think it was sort of implying that on a normal year to your basis we're going to stick within that 2.5%. But to your point we can certainly add language that acknowledges the possibility of an override. But I think in general the policy is trying to say that we're going to live within our 2.5% on an annual basis. I don't know if there's anybody who has a reaction to. Andy, I read it. It says shall generally not so I read it that the norm would be we wouldn't but you're saying the implication if you read it that this would never then it may need another sentence. But I said that our norm would be this behavior without some other action. Yeah, I was just going to suggest that if you add in a clause at the beginning of that paragraph, something to the effect unless the, the voters approve an override dot dot dot, you know, that that that would say, it's the general rule but if there's an override there's an override. Okay. The next thing I noted was that in several paragraphs down where it's where we're talking about grants. And there's the sentence said, said when positions are funded with grants portion of the grant funding shall be allocated to recover the cost employee benefits if allowed by the granting agency. But that's helpful sentence so it's not really questioning it but it prompted me to think about that a counselor who is not a member of the committee but has a lot of experience in town government has on multiple occasions over multiple years. And that raised the point that we need to be very thoughtful about adding positions that are funded by grants because it creates community expectation that or employee union or some other expect group expectation that those positions will continue and we don't always have the ability to make that assurance when we accept the grant. You haven't really touched on that subject and I can think of several times that that has happened where positions have come and then put pressure on the town to continue to fund the position, or the position had to disappear even though it's an institution that really wanted the position to continue. So I think, and again we can clarify I think that's sort of what the one time revenue use being restricted to capital reserves was meant to cover saying if it's if it's not a revenue that's reliable annual revenue that it's going to be targeted towards those that are one time expenditures. But to your point we can, we're going to add clarity around that, including grants as well, based on Kathy's comment. I think that would address your point that you're making. Yeah, I can do a very specific example of one. Now this is, this goes back a long time. I mean, I may be the only two can remember it, but there was the grant program from the federal level that allowed municipalities to apply to for funds to add firefighters. And we did apply for those funds and add firefighters and then the question is what happens when that grant runs out and the firefighters are employed. And that was certainly one example and the other one that I thought about was the one that the grant more recently that went to the department of DPW regarding somebody to assist with recycling coordination. So it is a issue that has recurred and Pat. Yeah, I, I understand the issue and there we really would have to plan to maintain the positions after a grant. But it seems to me, in the instance of the fire department where they've been told, you can apply for this seems to be not a constructive way of, of looking at staffing and funding staffing. It seems to me more likely that if you apply for a grant that will stop after two or three years that as a person who's applying you're also then looking to how you would fund on those ongoing positions so I hear you and it's legitimate absolutely. But I think that it's also the way it's been you responded to is to actually stop our the department's ability to get funding. So, I think we need to be able to look always look and then see what we can do and what we can prepare for in advance. I hear you. Yeah, so maybe the thing for to consider. Johnny might just want to give some thought to it and then come back to us if you think it's appropriate, some language that if there's one time, if there's funding for positions. So I think that area we might look at and whether we pursue the grant, and to recognize the concerns and also that's point. Makes sense. Yeah, it does to me thank you Andy. That sounds good. Okay. My last one that I wanted to hit on that section is where you talk about strategic partnership agreement between the town and the university. Did you mean to exclude the colleges. No, I mean so a lot of the language I didn't change I either updated or I modified but I think to your point we could add. I don't know if there was a strategic agreement at the time it was written with anybody other than the university but we could certainly add the colleges to it. Pat your hands up. I'm sorry that was an accident. Okay, then I'm going to turn it back to Sean to go on to take us to capital planning. Alright, so I think these might have been Bob's comments so the first one is around inventory. And I think the comment is, is to, you know, we started really doing a more robust inventory last year and to keep building that out to include more and more of the of the assets of the town. Bob, do you want to speak more to the deferred maintenance piece and I don't think that would necessarily be in the, I mean, maybe depending on how we, what categories we have for the assets how we would capture deferred maintenance. Yeah, I just wanted to, I think, echoing what women had talked about earlier which is, you know, when we're done with the capital projects are going to be more and based on what the superintendent of public works has said there's a large, backlog of water and sewer infrastructure that may need to be replaced at some point. I'm just saying that we need to before we say that 10% is the right number. We need to understand what what the inventory is. And I know we're working on it and I, you know, we're not there yet and that's fine. I understand that. I don't want to put some number in here until we have a sense of what it is we actually need. You know, it may be the best estimate we have now. But, you know, I think we should revise that as we get more information. So the 10% on the water and sewer front so those would be primarily funded out of enterprise funds I believe so this, this 10% is referring to the general fund, the operating budget and what percentage we would allocate within the operating budget. And so generally that doesn't cover enter water sewer transportation or, or solid waste expenses so you know the time the 10% was set it was a goal and we were well below it. And we're still below it so you know I sort of like it staying there as a goal to get to and then maintain that and then we can decide if you know if we want to go based on the the inventory or the needs at the time if we ever want to go higher we could go higher but I think the 10% is a good number to stick to and we look at our when we've done the modeling in the past and we look at what 10% gets us. It does sort of get us to a good place where we can start catching up on anything that's deferred and then be more proactive on the capital side. Okay, that's fine but I mean, we need to, we need to understand what the long term maintenance needs are even if they're covered under different, you know, budgets. It's all stuff that we have to pay for one way or the other. So, that's all that was on my point. That makes sense. Um, you know, it's sort of on the same topic but you know I I've got a comment later on the CIP plan. You know we have not traditionally when that five year plan comes out had a section called enterprise funds they're often their own world. Um, and in this, when we read down enterprise funds is asking for a substantial amount to be put, you know, to be reserved. So shown there may be some way of making it clear right at the beginning. We have two sets of capital needs one is, you know covers the school general operating and then there are capital needs within our enterprise funds and, and, you know, just, and that will first talk about one and then we'll talk about the other, you know, so I don't know quite how to do that but um, and then Bob, you know the 10% you know it's been a stretch goal, and we're about to stretch really stretch to get back up to it, but we can see the pressures putting on operating budgets. So it this the sentence I'm just looking at where Tim, maybe there's, you all don't, these are Doc Tom documents don't often use footnotes, but, but if there were a way of trying to just justify where 10% came you know that 10% we've been looking at it historically this seems to be at a level that allows us to maintain buildings and buy equipment and also have some room for new debt. And much lower, we don't but but this needs to be examined on an annual or every five years or something, you know not to say that we know 10% is the right amount. So, yeah, we can, we can add that I think, you know the when the original 10% was that number was thrown out there that's sort of what they said and if that's not clear enough we can, we can add language in the doc in the document. I don't think there's any magic number with a percentage but I think when when we've modeled out 10% that does get us to a level, like I said that allows us to be more proactive with capital. As I said, I'm, I'm probably because I have, you know, sometimes reading academic, I don't mind footnotes you know so rather than making the document ever longer that, if it is, is basically to tell you where did that number come from, rather than trying to write three sentence to explain it. So I leave that to your judgment on what this does but yeah. So the, the next sec, the next comments are on the capital priorities and there's the proposal to add a couple different couple more criteria for prioritizing capital. The first one is reduction of carbon footprint of the town and then adherence to long term objectives of the town. Both of them are, they both make sense and if they weren't in there, they're good ones to add because we, I think we already sort of do that internally when we look at capital projects that are submitted so we should add them. Yeah, I forgot to take it down but I don't know whether it belongs here or I'll make a comment later on judgment but do you think the criteria you have already say I mean maybe improvement maintenance of productivity sometimes a capital expenditure is going to save some of the expenses later. Do you think the one you've got there already says that. Again I can't see the exact language because I'm sharing my screen and it's, I mean what it says is is improvement slash maintenance of productivity that's the only one I could see that would, you know, you've done capital, these other two things but if I invest something now I can lower my heating and cooling costs of the building. And so it's not just carbon, but it's related to operating costs. So I don't. If you think the wording productivity, or maybe it's just improve maintenance of productivity or lower operating costs you might just expand that or add that to an existing one. I think we can get to so it covers that. So the next comment is about the simple be funded funds of the town grant funds for federal and state governments and other sources as available. I think this was your comment Dorothy Dorothy and that I forget the context that this one this comment was made if it was just to add that quote, it's just to add that. To remind us that there's often money. If you, if you remember to go out and beat the bushes. We should be able to take it. Right and then the next comments are from Kathy. So this round, do you want to walk through these comments Kathy. Sure. So I, I loved it that you said you're going, you, you're doing an inventory you're opting it annually. And you said, and you're going to provide this to JCPC. What, again, and that you'll post it on a public page a lot of people look for this and we because the report didn't attach it. So that was just a commitment that you would post in a public page along with other budget documents or wherever. You know so it's not just, you have to see the packet for JCPC to find the inventory. So that was just purely commitment to that. And the second is, it's a question but we talk about that all the departments will go through this process. There's no mention that we have something called a resident capital request, and my suggestion would be add that capital request may also come from residents through a resident capital request, and one. So I'll just one other comment. We made a recommendation from the participatory budget commission that we think of when that open period proposal might come that it comes at a time period, potentially coordinated or near when CPA is open also. So that if a proposal came in from a resident for capital and it fit with CPA you could say it's a better fit with CPA or if it came in to CPA and it's a really good fit with the capital request. People could do it. So my thing was mainly could we mention resident capital requests as another thing that's considered in the capital. Going down my other list this was a thought and this may be a council decision, you have the copy and paste of the charter who's on the JCPC and it says at a minimum. I've wondered for a while whether a resident non voting member of finance might also be a member of JCPC to broaden the membership. So I'll lens on it as part of this committee would that be something that the council would have to raise if we wanted to do it because we dictate how many council members go on it. So it's kind of a question but I'm thinking of, you know, people like Bob and Bernie and who have a lot of wealth and wealth of expertise. They might not be part of the capital discussions at all the way we're doing it they just to be presented with a plan. So I was thinking of giving another link to the town's finances by saying to allow, and this is probably not the right place to raise it, but it occurred to me while reading through the membership of that. Thanks for just second, because I don't have the charter for me but listen to Charter specify who's this the charter says the charter says at a minimum, Andy, did a nice job of copying and pasting the language. So the charter. I read the wordings is not exclusive like this is at a minimum. It says, the JCPC shall be composed, comma, at a minimum comma representatives and then it gives the list as we now have it. So let me turn it on. So that I know I'm raising different issues as I go so I'll stop. Yeah. You can take Paul first, if you want, I mean it the way it is a charter issue, and then it becomes a council issue. But it also is something because the committee is set up with the school committee and the trustees, I think it would have to be mutually agreed upon. I'll take his hand down. Yeah, so yeah, it's really not clear in the charter. It looks like the town manager points to JCPC, but it doesn't. It has the minimum representation from the three bodies. So it could be essentially three people in essence. I don't know how we've done in the past, but there's no definition about what's the required composition of the committee other than that there's three those three bodies have to be represented. But I have to study the charter a little bit deeper on that one. It's a good question, Kathy. And that's a committee that's advisory to the town manager under under the charter so right. Do you have a comment still. No, then Pat. I just wanted to support the idea of having non voting resident member on JCPC I think it would be an excellent idea, especially given Bob and Bernie's experience. So I agree with Kathy and I'd like us to really look into that. So, as I said, that's an issue outside of this document so we'll, we'll figure out Lynn whether when and how. So my priority list of deciding on capital on page nine this, this is kind of an overlap with objectives but I, it says greatest need and I thought we could add some criteria potential for long term payback. It could be reducing operating costs improve productivity or reduced admissions reliance on our renewable. So I thought is the greatest need is not the only reason that we would want to put something up with a high rank. So it was a suggestion to add to this. It appears on page nine. That's it. Okay. I think we have this final comment and read here is there any. This is the seat that I raised this last year, Paul, JCPC should or could we have seen a few towns that their capital report to the town has a section that's general and also has enterprise funds, so that one can see capital costs the body of the municipality and they differentiate it. And ours doesn't. So, would we in this report said the CI CIP should be the capital plan with at least the five years, and a separate section on enterprise funds. I have no idea whether CPA should be in here or not, but on enterprise funds. I don't personally like to have to go to two separate documents to see planned, and if we had to do it on enterprise funds maybe we would know that there's a plan to do it in a way that we knew well, or to do a something three years from now we'd see it in the, the annual report so. So it was a question about the content and the organization of that report. Yeah, I'll take a look at that Kathy I will say the, the capital plan is sort of complicated as it is with the different funding sources and uses. It's sort of a chart and it's sort of a full page of sources and uses, and that's without the enterprise funds. So, again, I just, it's, it's pretty complicated as it is and so. And I would do it in the simplest way it may be the capital plan has two major parts the one is general capital that all of section one, and second is enterprise, you know, and make it short so it. It's just my, I like. You know, people know their centennial but they'd have to see back in some other report where where that expenses and how much it is. I just think it would be useful in something called the annual capital report to show the enterprise funds. That's my, and it to me it's a financial part of a financial management document to have it. So I raised it here. That's it. Yeah, I, again, we'll be back into the question about where the CIP which is brought up through the charter, where it fits into the charter. I think that's the one complicating factor. Bernie just really quickly the second Kathy suggestion I like the idea of having comprehensive documents. Pull every pulls everything together in one place so that you get a good broad idea of what's happening. Anybody have anything else you can ignore CPA CPA just forget that one. My focus was enterprise. Yeah, I would just. Again, at least go back to the whole thing that the CIP really is specified in the charter and it's tied to the general to the operating budget that the council is approving to make sure that there's the fits within the charter in some manner but I think that's, you know, finding a way to get that information added to the report. It's still a desire it seems to be that I'm hearing Paul. We, one of our goals has to been has been to put everything together and Sean, Sean and Sonia done a terrific job on our website of linking every possible almost every possible budget, so that it's, it's all there. What you're saying is, you know, so if you want to look at this regional school district budget it's there. There's a link to it. And the library budget that more detail than we put in a general budget so. So we should, we would like to look at how much additional work it is to put it into one new document. But I think if our goal is to make sure that people can find all the information really easily on one page, and then click and find it. And I think that we shouldn't be thinking of it in terms of a book or a pamphlet or you know, a production but maybe that on one electronic sheet, everything you can find is right there so you can click on it and find it because I think the idea of assembling things into a new document might be a pretty big task. So, but that information should be all on our website. So over the last couple of years we've really worked hard to say, let's make all those documents easy for people to find, because it was harder to find previously. Anything else that's helpful. Anything else. John, we're going to go on there. Yeah, so the next section is on debt management and I think it's, it's not really. It's more of a comment, I think, so it's about trying to maintain at least 50% of our outstanding principal to be paid off within 10 years. So, you know, not back loading a lot of debt so that we're paying a little upfront and then a lot in the future. I think we want to keep that and I think but I do appreciate sort of keeping flexibility and I think again this is sort of a goal, you know with the four building projects this is a major challenge. You know, it's a really big challenge if we take out if we do four building projects to stay within this, this goal. But I think we have a plan where we can stay as close to this as possible. But I appreciate again the flexibility because it is one of those things where we may not always be able to do this, but it's something we strive for Dorothy has her hand up. Yeah, just made me kind of wonder for a minute. I think most of us don't really have much of an idea of how much money may have come in from the federal government for the state in terms of code and of course we don't know how long it's going to last either. But when you have extra or what seems to be extra. You know, I guess we've been thinking of reserves or free cash, which I get confused as to what can go which one, but also paying off debts, are you allowed to do that. The grant money. Yeah. No, not with. I don't believe we're allowed to pay out we're not allowed to add to reserves I don't believe we're allowed to pay off debt with the American rescue money there's a few things that are, are specifically ineligible and I think those things are because, and in the government's opinion, those aren't really the intent of what those funds were for they were to address you know the health challenges of cobit and then spur economic development. Those would sort of address things that happen in the past. Right. Thank you. But I think your point of when we do have one time revenues maybe not from the grant but when we've other one time revenues. One of the things we do consider is whether it makes sense to pay down some of our old debt. I think the problem is right now it's sort of a good problem to have is, we have really good interest rates on most of our debt. And so it's, it's always one of those things where there's not, you know there's not one that sticks out like a sore thumb, you know with a 7% interest rate like yeah we should definitely pay that off. So it's a good problem but yeah we just we don't have anything like that right now. So the next section is on enterprise funds and the comment again so so a little context to this so the nice thing is there again we can look at our name. Other communities as to what they have for reserve balances. Sort of philosophy to this range as we did to the general fund range. This looks a lot higher, but, but the thing to remember is again those the budgets and enterprise funds are much lower. So, the budget for the water and sewer fund for example is for $5 million a year so 30 to 50% is somewhere between 1.5 million to 2 million for reserves. So it sounds high because the percentage is much bigger but when you think about the actual dollars in the, especially when you're talking about sewer and water the equipment and the infrastructure that's involved, it's really, it's really not that much money when you think about all of what's included with the water fund and the sewer fund. And so again we looked out, you know, and we have we have more recent experience with this with COVID, you know what would a downturn look like if the college what you know if the college universities were closed how much revenue would we lose. And would this be able to weather that storm and so we sort of took that same philosophy for the enterprise funds. And this is something just where there was no, this is a new piece to the policy manual before there was nothing around percentages for enterprise funds and that was something that was asked for in the past. So we did spend a lot of time thinking about what would be a good percentage for for those funds. The red, I'll raise my hand. Sorry. The red, the questions are for me showing you sort of answered where 30 to 50 came from so I'm wondering on the 30 and what we saw with water is when you mass went home. We couldn't cover fixed costs so we were drawing off it so is the 30% enough to cover fixed costs sort of reserves. So that was a quick, it was sort of a question again a rational, I like rationales of where we come up from 30 to 50. And if we're building it up. I mean if we're not facing a big expenditure, and we're going along, other than the anomaly of UMass going home which was an unusual event. And it was high to me so I just, I just thought we should say a little bit more otherwise it looks like people are building up cash cows somewhere and the town is just putting away money so it's a perception. So that was just a, again, I'm fine with footnotes that we other towns are going this route we know we've got long term expenditure, you know, we've got some big expenses coming along so that's what we're doing. And my review of fee structure at least once every five years, I didn't mean the fee level. I meant the conversation that we just had with Guilford that you could structure the water rates with a quarterly rate. So every five years, every 10 years. Should we commit to taking a look at what the way we do you do a different commercial rate from from residential do we do a specific. In the discussion we had for people who weren't there, we could create the large educational institutions as their own class so it wouldn't hit apartment buildings and look. I think so, would we want to commit to taking a look at it once every five years to say, rather than waiting for the department to have to say we need to change. So it's a question. I personally would like that commitment, but I don't know whether five years is the right time period. I mean I don't think it's a bad idea I think again it's a staffing thing and and having some, you know what does that review entail. But I don't think it's a bad idea to, again for it to be a pile in the policy manual for something we strive for to take a look at it every five years. Okay, that was my comment. So keep going. So there was nothing with CPA revolving funds. And then we get to the investment policy. So if you have any comments on the investment policy I'll be pretty blunt that the investment policy was put together, you know, in large part by lawyers and they're very careful about the investment policy and not making too many tweaks to that because this is a very, this is a very important policy with how the treasure does her work and what's compliant with state law. And, you know, issues if I do share a duty and things like that so we don't want to make too many tweaks and if we do we definitely run them by our legal counsel first so we can we'll go through these but our investment policy is pretty consistent with many investment policies across the state, probably because they were all written by, you know, one or two attorneys at one point. First comments I believe we're from Dorothy, and it's about the prudent investor rule. I think it was more of a comment just Dorothy you can add to that if you want but I think you were just asking you know how was the prudent investor rule related to the investment policy. Yes, yes that was the question. Okay, yeah that's, I mean that's something we can talk with our, both our attorney but also our, we have an investment advisor that takes our investment policy and make sure that we're consistent with it and he's compliant with it. So we can look at that more. And then I think there was some comments around just fixing town meet changing town meetings to town council which those totally make sense those ones I missed. Yep, those are good. They're still going to be sneaking around for a couple of years I'm sure but at some point we'll get rid of them all. This comment on ethics I think makes sense. Again this is just broadening the behavior that we want out of the town treasurer and assistant treasurers to include anybody who may have any role in implementing the investment policy so I think that one makes sense I don't see any major issues with that. And that, and that gets us to the next section. I'll be asked one question about investments and the, we control the investment of the OPEP trust, and we have made the decision to invest that with this Commonwealth through whatever it's called. But the investments that are made of our other retiree money or pension money. That's entirely in the hands of Hampshire County retirement system and we are committed to the retirement system that can't be changed is do I have that correct. Right and I think I'll double check for the committee I believe I thought I heard something that Hampshire County also made a decision to either transition to the state or to do something different going forward but I will double check that for the committee because that would just make it simple if everything was invested with the state. Yeah, the reason that I bring it up just so that everybody knows is that I was talking with somebody who's had some prior role in working with the town on various financial policies. The other day, and he was complaining that Hampshire County is underperforming the state on a consistent basis. Yeah, I mean, we do get reports. Quarterly, and I will say that they both are doing really well, the double check to see if they were underperforming I know points they were doing better I thought but, but they both have done very, very well in the past years you might expect with the way the stock has gone we've seen pretty, pretty strong investment gains, which I think, you know, if you look at the audit I think it's discussed in the audit to because we have to add the investment gains to the different funds so both places are doing pretty well but we can get more information on that. Okay, now talking about that's another time to do something we need to do that in the policy right now further. Is anybody who wants to say anything else or otherwise, Sean's going to go into the next section on asset management disposal. Okay, go ahead. Oh yeah the next section a lot of this is a lot of these comments that it is state law so we don't have a lot of flexibility around it. This first one. I think was under the bid category of procurement there's different categories based on the how much you're buying and the, there's a couple methods that are available available to you at different amounts. This particular section was under what we call a bid. And so with a bid we don't have any choice we have to go with the lowest responsible and responsive bitter. We don't have, we can't make a qualitative decision is if we deem that the vendor is responsible and responsive which there's defined there's clear definitions of what what those mean. Then we have to go with the lowest bidder so so we don't really have much we can do there. The next one. So the next one is a comment that came from the different section it came from the request for proposal section. So, when you purchase over $50,000 of a supply or a service you can choose to do a bid, which is you go the lowest price. Or you can choose to go with a request for proposals process which we do sometimes for different things. And when you do a request for proposals in that particular procurement type, you can weigh cost versus quality. So again this, it sounds like it's contradicting the prior one but they're two different sections so the type of procurement dictates what you can do. I'm sorry, I was that confused me a little bit. Yeah procurement is, it's, it is a, it's good if there's a lot of rules and helpful guidance on on the state website but it can be a little confusing because you can do you have choices at different levels. And then so the next comment Kathy I think these are your comments do you want to walk through these. Yeah, so I saw the liability policy that when you're doing a contract that you have a million dollars or 10% of the project construction costs as liability insurance. So it was a basic question would this also apply to state partially funded grant program so thinking of the elementary school budget building project or the library project. Is this in general is this across the board or is this specific to everything but those. I have a question on this first one. And, and then Paul I know this came up in the elementary school bids for the designer we had to fill out a thing on how much liability insurance they had to have. You know did we have guidelines or not. So I just didn't know whether we, how we apply this it was a question. So let me look at that one further. Yeah, for that we were looking at the, the professional liability for designer. But let me look at this one more to see if we want to add anything or make sure that it makes sense to us. So if, if, if, if this is not specific to those others, you could say, you know, except where it's funded and guided by grant principles or something. This is the policy. So, so like with Jones, the, you know, assuming everything goes ahead, do we have, will they have to have a liability policy for 10% of the project construction costs so it was a question that I had. And I don't know how we currently do things. So, I wasn't questioning the levels as much as what it applied to. Okay. And then my second piece is for design proposals the procurement officer, the chief procurement officer and I think you are that person for the time being, but anyway, the chief. Paul's technically Paul's technically the chief. Okay, you're the chief chief Paul so Paul points a committee. I know again with the grant driven ones MSBA has a very specific what a committee has to be does. Do you want to give any guidance that that in general there should be for others there should be at least one person from department staff or is this completely at the discretion of. In this case Paul, that's, that was my question. And then Paul has his hand up some maybe. So, thank you Andy. So a few things on that one is, yes, so there's one differentiate there's the chief procurement officer then the certified public procurement official, Sean is the CPP. I'm the chief procurement officer the different roles different responsibilities that can be one in the same, but they are different in our town. So, what I'm worried about is that our policies become so prescriptive. And there are so many things changing, like the grant program may have one requirement our insurance company may have a different requirement. And if we get to be very specific and these these are policies. I don't want to get in a situation where we do something based on our insurance company saying you have to have this amount of insurance, or the market says, you know, you, you're not going to get any bids if you have that level of insurance and we've become. And we're out of compliance with our financial policies because then we get into trouble, because someone can go to a bid document and say ha you didn't comply with your own rules. And we're not put in writing so when we get really prescriptive and detailed in these policies. I understand the purpose of it, I think it's good to say what our goals are, but, but to, you know, and I think, you know, for reserves and things like that being specific is really good but on some of the things. I just feel like sometimes we're getting too detailed in our policies. We're doing our operations. And because there's a lot of different people who tell us how to do the operations, whether it's state law it's a granting authority. It's our insurance company it's our legal advice. And, and so I just caution the finance committee about as you make your recommendation about these, how I'm going to look at these policies when we finally adopt them. Yeah, Paul I just want to say that I wasn't actually saying we should go beyond. I was sort of asking how broadly do we. I don't even know where the 1 million and 10% came from so I'm assuming that works. But I saw that and I didn't know how broadly that applied and now that I know you are the chief procurement officer. You always appoint committee so I'm perfectly fine. I wouldn't add detail to that. So, I'm, I'm fine with just ignore. And, and, and I think it's understood that when we're doing a request for services that's grant supported. There's a whole, there's a whole separate set granting authority a plot that is our guidelines so I don't think we have to put that language in but I was just thinking this. The document is written as if we're building roads and we're building bridge, you know it's it's completely. We get into a very different world as I'm discovering when we're in the MSBA world where they get to rewrite our sentences in the RFS is not just content. So, we might not need this just, you know, it was like a disclaimer that this general policy. This is the general policy and they're may may indeed and there will be other policies that came when it's it's driven by grant. So, that's it. Dorothy your hand. It's, it's out if this is totally out of order. Just tell me. All of a sudden I'm thinking that we've been talking about capital projects a lot. And no one's in meant mentioned percent for art for a long time. I'm assuming that we did pass that, and that we will in fact be budgeting sums for that within certain limits which I've kind of forgotten all the rules, but I know that we spent a lot of time trying to get them just right so that money will it will be in the budget somehow. I mean, I don't quite know. If you have time we can sit and I can pull up the the four building project capital tool. There's a little drop down for a percent for our. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we are definitely. That's been incorporated. I think when we built that it wasn't a half percent. I think it's a half percent for now but but that's a good point. Well, that's definitely something we're building into the planning. Good. Thank you. That is a bylaw. So it's kind of already teeth to it, because it is a bylaw. Okay. So we're almost done. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so actually wasn't under so this comment was was Dorothy's and I think it was potentially added in a new section to the financial policies about the creation of a popular annual annual financial report. I don't think we necessarily need to add it to the to the policies but I think this is sort of like what Paul was saying earlier. There are a few ways as we go forward where we can use technology to maybe put things together in a way that are real easy for people to digest. I looked at the example. I think it was Denver was the example that looks more comparable to maybe an Amherst in terms of our capacity and what we could do. It's a 20 page document that just kind of pulled things from different places and put it into an easy, easy to follow format so, again, that might be a goal that we strive for in the coming years trying to maybe create like a condensed version of of information but I don't know if we would want to put in the policy manual at this point. I just think few people. They want to know there's a report, but then when it comes down to it few people are going to read it, but we Bob showed me some examples of, you know, New York City which you know it's a monstrous budget actually has like a 20 page report. So it's really just more for our outreach. Lynn has her hand up. Yeah, I just want to mention that evidently some towns in our cities in in Massachusetts are doing this. We saw that as an option with one of our bidders for the audit was to do that kind of a financial report. And it's still costly so I think we have to weigh the great goal but it doesn't belong here. So there's anything else. I just have a really minor one on OPEB. Okay, an OPEB for lay people. Or should we other post employment benefits or benefits other than pensions that the town promises just adding that because I can't tell you how many times. It's like, where are pensions. We're not talking this is OPEB is not pensions. So our benefits other than pensions I would just add those words. So, so the word other means other than something. That was just a simple for lay person. So now we're talking we're basically talking about retiree health insurance and to the extent we do life insurance. We're talking about other than pensions or something other than pensions that that would, and it's not even a definition is so much it's the sentence other are benefits and I'd add that clause are benefits other than pensions that the town promises, you know, so I was only going to add those words to that lead sentence Sean. That's it. Yeah, I don't think that's needed because if you read further at the last sentences and employees pension is not included as that is paid by a shared retirement system. So the information is right there cats. I guess it is pet but when you say other. Don't you want to know what other than I was going to make it even shorter or benefits other than I could do well I think it gets explained. So, I would have the same. I didn't have the same. I guess I would delete the third sentence and make it in the first but I'm, I'm fine. You know, the word says other and it's. So, I'm fine. That's it's all only to say other than it's kind of other than pensions but you are correct that the third sentence says pensions are not in this. We did not create the term up though it was created by the much larger world and trust upon us. You can leave it the way it is I just keep trying to explain what other. I forgot to take my hand. Okay. So, Yes, Kathy go ahead. No, no, I'm trying to take my hand down this down now. I think we've gone through the document. Yeah, so I can, I can do what you suggested, Andy I can do a track changes version to address a lot of the comments that were made and, and I'll review with Paul first and we'll, and, you know, we'll send a final version of what we feel comfortable with. And then it's up to the committee when again this is more of a recommend, you know, recommendation type vote. And back something in the next few weeks. Did we remember to tell you that you did a terrific job. Oh, thank you know again a lot of the, a lot of the, you know the nice thing about working for Amherst is a lot of things are already done it's just updating them on a regular basis. So a lot of the wording, you know, sure Andy helped write we just sort of looked at where there might be gaps and then, and look at some of our recent challenges and tried to update the document but again the framework for the policies were really strong and already existed. Still do a good really good job though so don't diminish it. And just to note, yeah I just want to note that it's a team effort that Sonia looks at all these things as well. A bigger, it's the big, the big you that we a team. Yeah, no absolutely. There's a lot of work in this. I just would question you again and Paul I think you're, you may well have said this to be careful about the section around procurement, because if we get too far away from what the black letter of 30 be. And things are always changing with procurement so it might be best off to to simplify to as you go back through it look at where you could simplify that section, or just incorporate by reference, what the state regulations are, so that way you're not, you're not drifting and you're not creating a, you're not creating a sequencer policy that runs a follow the Commonwealth or the either it's laws of rights. Thank you. Anything else, because otherwise, we should move on to other agenda items and I do know we have one member of the public. I'm going to just leave it right now that we don't have a specific time for scheduling public comment. But if the one person who's in attendance of meeting would like to make public comment if you raise your hand I will know that you raised your hand and then I will work public comment in at an appropriate time but I think we want to go on and get the fourth quarter report year end report done, which actually is going to tie us back to some sections of the policy that we just talked about. So that would be the next agenda item I would propose to bring in because I actually do see a link. So, you want to start a software. Sonya appears frozen. Is there a connection problem. No, I think she's just muted Sonya pull your little, your head set down. Yeah, I'm not used to headsets. Can you hear me. Yeah. All right, I would have been I would have done better a couple hours ago on this I think now I'm tired so forgive me now ahead of time. So we ended up the year doing really well, considering we started off 21 with a one month budget we were so unsure where we're heading with this budget, and we were even considering a second month budget. In the end, we ended up with a $4.8 million surplus between excess revenues and excess and turn back of expenditures. I had this all planned out with bullets but now I'm tired. So when I started to do this report. I was going to state that this is an outlier year but then I realized the last three years or outlier liar years. So I decided to put this chart here so that on page one, which is a visual of the last six years between our budget what we budgeted what our revenue surplus was and what our expenditure surplus or deficit was. And you can see that from 2019, we returned our expenditure surplus was pretty large. And our revenue surplus was large in 2019 which is mainly due to the health insurance surcharge paying back. When we switched over from self insured to fully assured. And in 2020 of course COVID we had the deficit in 2021, we ended up with a revenue surplus and that's because we reduced our budget significantly for 2021 with COVID in mind and we had a zero increase in operation. In our operational budget we reduced capital percentage, and we reduced OPEB which in turn, we reduced all the revenue estimates in our local receipts pretty drastically. Recovery happened better than we expected. We had no budgets in. First of all, I'll tell you on page six is all the detail for the revenue surplus so you can see that in a lot more detail. And then how the revenues performed by category. We had zero we reduced the local receipts budget significantly, but our revenue actuals actually came in a lot better than we expected which was a great thing. And then our expenditure surplus was also very large. It was 2,047,000. The bulk of that is from our employee benefits. We saved a lot of money under employee benefits because we had a lot of vacant positions, and we had a premium holiday. So that helped there. I have all these notes I'm trying to decipher decipher now because I had it for three different years. On page seven and eight, you can see the detail of the money that was turned turned back by functional area, and in general government we returned 551,000. And as I mentioned it was a premium holiday in vacant positions in our employee benefits was the bulk of that and, and there was some deficits in the finance budgets because we had three major three major retirements in finance this year so there were payouts for that. Public safety 652,000. And that was due to the vacant positions in the police department and the fire department had lower operational expenses and overtime because calls have gone down. Public works it was public works, functional area work continued as normal for them so there wasn't as much of a turn back and that was the same for planning conservation and inspections. And then community community services we had turned back, because we had turnover in the health department and veterans benefits that we paid out or less than budgeted. And that's been turning down over the last few years anyways. The recreation expenditures are down significantly due to close programs and turnover. The elementary school also turned back $658,000 from their operational savings. And that was mostly due to the shutdown for COVID. And if you have any specific questions for the school I direct that to Doug Slatter at the school, the finance director. And that was in debt, because we bonded permanently this year. So we had some short term interest savings. And we had a deficit and assessments which is normal. The state never gets the numbers accurately for those. And I'm going to stop there with the general fund. Do you want me to continue with the enterprise fund and just ask questions at the end or does anybody have any questions on the on the operating on the general fund. Just my question. I would propose that we do the general funds and then all of the enterprise funds as a group second. So there any questions that others have regarding the general fund budget, Dorothy. I want to say a word of encouragement to Sonia who is tired. As you go through this, I knew what you were talking about. So thinking about over the past three years, all the teaching that you have done at our meetings. So you've done a great job. And I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much for that one hand raised. The only happy one to go ahead. One question. Well, a question or statement, it looked to me like the golf course is making money. Is that correct. It looked like revenues were up, and we've been good on expenses or breaking even so it was a question. And then the second one, Sonia is UMass we got nothing from this strategic payment and I know that COVID payments were down so it looked like there were two blanks. So was it we were down like $280,000 is that correct the way I'm reading them. First I'll answer the golf course question. We, we cut the golf course budget that was one of the reductions for when we started fiscal year 21. So the budget was less. Okay. And we also had no budget for revenues. We figured the golf course would be closed and no one would be using it, but that was wrong. A lot of people ended up going there. It was outdoors. It was getting people out of the house. So we ended up getting more revenue for that year. And on UMass to treat strategic partnership agreement. That was, I don't think we have an agreement in place at the time right now. So there were so there were payments made directly to the schools under the agreement right that exists now the schools get, I think it's 200,000 or so directly. So that's one of the areas where staff sort of staff whose jobs may have changed a little bit because of COVID, they chipped in and helped cover the golf course so we were able to cut their, the budget a little bit because we were able to backfill it with other staff. So there were other people in the finance office and people in other offices on the senior center, who helped run the golf course. So it did do well COVID did a lot of weird things and one of them was charity charity held it well last year so. Well, it's still had a ton of people out today I was out walking on it so I think we've got a probably because the other golf courses have closed. We've got a, it attracts college students and families, a big age mix and some women. Thanks. Move on to enterprise funds. Before you do. Because this is what I'm going to, but I have it's actually related to this, but the part of the budget we were just talking about. It's more observations and wondering how we're going to frame the discussion of this because I can hear other members of the council asking these questions what it's about cannabis tax and whether the cannabis tax, even though we didn't have a budget because we didn't budget amount. We have no basis for creating a number, as I recall is the reason. Now the question is going to arise about expenditure of it. The second piece that then flows from it is what does this mean to what might be recommended to the reparations fund and when will you make a recommendation to us, given the information we've just received about the reparations fund. And I think the third thing that suggests to general comment again that comes back to the first particular part of the budget is that in the end if we do nothing else than the money, anything that ends up in free cash ends up in free cash. We're getting an indication it's going to be a fairly large amount and we can transfer it all to some one or more of the funds, the stabilization funds. But we now have two and so get back to the issue that I raised before. So the whole bunch of policy issues that are going to flow from how we deal with this and just wonder if you've given thought is to the process to have this conversation. Sonya do you mind if I start. Go for it. So on the cannabis revenues remember there's there's two streams so there's the the tax money and then there's the impact fee money. So the tax money wasn't budgeted enough white 21, but it is budgeted enough white 22 going forward. So that's a category where there won't be a big surplus going forward because we are budgeting budgeting that to support the general operating budget going forward. So impact monies we are not budgeting that does show up as a surplus. But remember, the impact monies can only be spent on certain things. And so Sonya is keeping a track record of every year those impact monies and what falls to free cash and potentially transfer to stabilization. She's got a running tally of that and so at some point and you know potentially this fall or spring. We've got to come together and think about how we're going to come up with a plan for how to use those impact funds so those are in our reserves but they have sort of, you know, a caveat attached to them that we have to use them in a certain way. So again, that's part of that surplus that is sort of restricted. And then the to your second two questions, the, you know, the plan we discussed a few months ago was when we do the free cash certification process and we do a transfer stabilization. The plan is to transfer roughly $200,000 of this surplus would go into the reparation stabilization fund. The rest would go into the general stabilization fund, but looking at this, looking at the surplus will be able to make that $200,000 transfer as we discussed I think was back in June or July. So I think you answered all the questions. Yeah, I think. Okay, so I'm sorry, you know the comment. Lynn. So one of the one, one of the anxious moments for people as we passed this present year's budget was the issue of funding the additional crest people responders. And I think as we look at what is it we want to do with these funds. We also need to be looking at where we stand with our present budget expenditures. My suspicion is that we have ongoing unfilled positions. And so at this point, we're going to still have some money in the FY 20 to two budget. Thank you 22 budget that actually can cover the quote additional four positions for crest. But as we look at our reserves, we should make sure that the FY 22 budget has that money in it. Okay, that's my only comment. Yeah, that's a good point when we did get a grant. We do or we do have a allocation from the state for those four additional responders. But to your point if there are any additional costs that we'd want to keep that in mind. Move on to the enterprise funds. So on page five. Okay, go ahead. So on page five of the report are I did another chart for the enterprise funds only to show because of the ARPA funds and to show that we use some of those ARPA funds for revenue replacement. For the enterprise fund, we had a revenue deficit of about 415,500 but returned expenditures of 223 so we had a net deficit of 192 418. We were a lot we were able to cover that with revenue replacement funds from ARPA so we ended up with a net zero deficit on the water side. At the point in time we can't use revenue replacement for water and for water fund. So we have a net deficit there of 420,000, which is the net deficit that will reduce the balance and retained earnings this year. And we have enough money and retains retained earnings to cover it we had 1.7 million as of June 30. So probably go down to about 1.4 million for the end of this year. If we didn't have enough money and retained earnings and we would have had to put that on the recap and raise it on the tax rate. I just just to let you know that's how that works. So we had a valid waste fund, we did better than most years we had a revenue surplus, we spend our, we expanded the entire budget up to $5, actually $4 and 98 cents. So we ended up with 40, almost 49,000 in revenue surplus and that will add to the retained earnings and that balance and I, and according to go for more and people were using a landfill a lot more this year probably because they were home cleaning their yards during, during the epidemic in the shutdown. We had a pension fund. We had a revenue deficit of 327,000, and we were able to return expenditures of 48,006 with the left us with a 278,600 deficit. So that we covered that with ARPA, we covered it with 288,686 and that extra 10,000 ended up happening because of an expenditure that we were able to back out after I'd already done these entries. So that's where we ended up with the enterprise funds we did raise our rates. As of January, both in water and sewer, sewer rates increased from 460 to 490 and water rates increased from 420 to 460 and we hope with the water rates with the rates going up and the college is back in session that our enterprise funds will do better this year will be keeping an eye on it. And that's pretty much all I have on the enterprise funds. So any questions. Kathy has a question. It's a question comment Sonia, the use of the ARPA funds. Are those basically the same as we saw in June where you said we were going to use some of the ARPA funds specifically in these ways. And as I'm remembering our policy we, we said immediately use it, and then we were going to come back and look at ARPA for piece. So I think if, as you use them, it might be good to we're about to be in October to think of doing some kind of a third in November or, you know, just in the one pager poll I'm not talking, you know, to this is the ARPA funds this is what we've spent this is how much we have would Monday be soon enough. Oh, are you getting it on Monday really. Oh, yeah. Okay, so I've done. So that's exactly where I was going Paul that that we are using it but we're using it as we told you we were using it and here's what we're going to have great. It was really nice to see that you could get to zero deficit with ARPA that except for water. Yeah. Thanks. Adding to that real quick. So the, the deficit numbers are a little better than what we were anticipating using ARPA funds for so that was good it was a little bit smaller but deficit. As Sonia said we're not sure if we can use ARPA for water yet there's some weird rules around water if we can use it for water we'd like to. But right now we've held off because we're not quite sure. And then it'll be a month or so but there's actually the the reporting requirement for ARPA is once a year on October 31. This is the federal reporting requirement. And you know if that produces a nice, easily understandable summary, maybe that's something we could share out or post we created a section on our finance page. Maybe that's something we could post once a year or periodically that shows how the funds are being spent, in addition to other things that will do to communicate that. And Sean's making a presentation to the town council on Monday on ARPA. This could be a stupid question, but with the Congress and the Senate playing Russian roulette with the funding the country. Are we expecting ARPA funds that are supposed to come which might not come or would come late because of this budget drama. Maybe, I don't, I don't know if it would directly impact future money we've already received the first part of money that's supposed to come to us which was about $3 million or so so we've already received some of it. I think that's separate from that issue but I could be wrong on that. Good question. Anything else. I don't want to hear anyone else. Okay, so anything. Last opportunity to comment or ask questions about the quarter year and report. And we will send along to the council as we normally do. And of course, council may have its own questions when it comes up, but it'll be a fairly brief commentary on what what our discussion was. So at this point I want to get the public comments as we have one member of the public there public comment can be on any matters that are in the jurisdiction of the finance committee. Welcome to express their views under our policy one of three minutes since it's only one person the audience I would certainly say the three minutes is appropriate that the person wishes to offer comment and that the committee will not engage in the dialogue about issues and the comments can be on any matter that is pertinent to the finance committee. So I'll just pause for a second to see it's the member of the public Mr. raise your hand and I think that the answer is yes so could whoever is managing the meeting bring in and it has happened so please say your name for the committee and then what you'd like to offer in comments and welcome. I felt a little awkward being the only one here and not saying anything so I don't actually have any public comment but hi everyone I'm just here to learn thank you for doing all the great work you're doing appreciate it. So, thank you. I appreciate you're being attentive to the meeting and so. And I think we can go back to our own agenda of the evening. So just a second, I will get back to the middle of my screen at the moment. So we've covered the fourth quarter report. So we're down to the next thing is what Sean if you want to say anything about the budget calendar that you've worked out and what you think are the needs for future meetings for this committee fitting in with the budget calendar process as you have developed it. Yeah, so I will send out a more detailed budget calendar at some point soon we just have to finalize some of the dates but the there will certainly be probably a meeting needed sometime in mid November after the financial indicators report to start working on budget guidelines for and and you know how that'll work this year with the with the council election might be a little bit. It'll be the first time we've done it so just figuring out how we're going to go through that process. So that's probably the next big meeting. There are a couple things on our radar that that we potentially would bring to a meeting like that some some expenditures that were unanticipated that we might bring forward. And we'll share more information nothing major but just things that we might need to talk with the finance committee about going forward. I think maybe, potentially in October if there's any follow up any special items that pop up but definitely in November to start working on the budget guidelines. So we, we would need to make sure that all members of the committee including the resident members are aware of the date for the financial transmitting, which certainly will be posted as a finance committee meeting in addition just because so we will have so their presence can be accounted for. Yeah. And I think the other thing I'll add Paul mentioned Monday it's not a finance committee meeting but Monday night there's going to be a couple topics that might be interesting to finance committee members there's the ARPA discussion. And the tax classification hearing where we talk look at the different tax implications for next year so. So yeah I think for the indicators report. I'm Paul I'm not sure if we've settled on a day I know we were looking either the eighth of November or the 15th but I'm not sure if we finalize the date for that meeting yet. I think, I think we said the 15th Lynn. Right now in the ever shifting future agendas list that looks like somebody's bad term paper. It is the 15th and we would have the public forum on the budget that same night. And, but I also have my hand up to comment on two other items. On the calendar for the council. I have budgeted or put in that we would do financial indicators and that this council would adopt them, because the next council always has the right to revamp them, but to go to the next council with a blank slate. I think is really not doing them a good service and as we may remember when we were on the council and making it up while we tried to fly the plane. We had a set of budget guidelines and it was really helpful. So, I think this councils owes it to the next council to have a set of budget guidelines that comes before the council and is approved by December 21, which is right now our last meeting. The other question that I have, however, is, and I'm certainly willing to listen to other logic on that, but I right now I'm seeing it that way. The other question I have and that is Paul, will there be things in the presentation on Monday that need to be referred on ARPA that need to be referred to the finance committee that would cause us to have to meet before we start discussing guidelines. Sean, Paul. I don't think so. Again, the approach we're taking, I think is that Monday night we're going to present sort of initial thoughts on allocating ARPA funds, and then we are going to do some public engagement sessions in October, where we get feedback from the public on those allocations. And then we'd come back to the council in November with, you know, revised plan that reflects any, any of the feedback that we get. So I don't, I think because we have that public engagement piece built in I don't think it needs to go to finance committee in between. Finance committee members are certainly welcome to participate in those sessions and if you know the finance committee felt it needed its own sort of meeting to do that we could certainly do that as well. I don't think it's going to be necessary. I know we met to accept the funds. But as far as I recall, that is the only action we have taken with regard to ARPA. And I didn't know if there was anything required either in the charter, our financial guidelines or the ARPA grant that requires additional votes. If it does, then it seems to me that the finance committee will be asked by the council to advise them. We don't have to answer this today. Yeah, there's nothing I'm aware of right now but if there if something does come up again this is sort of a unique grants and you know this, there was a ARPA meeting today and that question was asked several times by different communities. We're on the right track where the council has accepted the grant and authorized the expenditure of the grant funds. So we're treating it like we treat other major grants. But if there's anything that comes up along the way, we'll certainly adjust as needed. Okay. Those are my two. I'm just building on lens. If Monday night Paul you're talking and you and Sean are talking about this. We did draft and then read draft and the council saw a general policy guidelines on how the two stages of ARPA money and think so we might want to put those in the council packet again for for Monday night, just to say that we visited this once and trying to think about this and now and now you're coming back to us with the first first allocations as per I can't remember is I know we spent a lot of time in finance and we looked at it and we all agreed on it. I don't remember whether the council had to vote on it or we just presented it as a document coming out of finance. I just don't remember. It was, it was just presented, but I think it does need to be in the packet I'm sure he has made note of that. Okay, the other thing Athena has reminded me and that is, I'm not clear that we fully pulled all of the members of the council that meet when we do the financial indicators which is the Jones library the school committee and the council. And in polling we initially were doing this on the eighth and we've now moved to the 15th. And she's indicated to me that there is one person from Jones library who evidently cannot make the 15th but I think we need to make sure that all people have responded to the poll. The council will meet on the 15th regardless. So it October 15 we're talking about. Yes, November, November. Yeah we don't do financial indicators till November. So then, and then, and we do public forum about the budget, either at the same time or very close to that time. It gives me a sense of how quickly we have to write our report if we want to get it voted on by December 21. Yeah, I'm going to have to go through and look at the regular Tuesday schedules which are the Tuesdays that are not CRC Tuesdays and make sure that we have every one of them listed and announced back to you in an email. And make sure that I get on to that really quickly and see if that's enough meetings to do what we have to do because I think in the past. We've a lot of two or three meetings to get from the beginning process to the end with the final version because we do drafts and then we look at drafts. And Andy, I think we only at this point have two meetings scheduled in December and so the council should be looking at a draft on December 6, so that we can adopt it on December 21. And Sean, and I just want to go back to the issue of any ways it would be better if we did the indicators on the eighth, I just need to know. I mean, it's really, Paul did ask me if we could move it to the 15th and on my schedule and we're trying to do the forum on a night of the council not schedule yet another night for the council. Paul. Yeah, so. So, Mike Morris isn't available on the eighth. I think Sean McGonough is out of town on the eighth so that's why the eighth we're looking at other dates. The council meets on both the eighth and the 15th. So, and I know they're going to be we're not going to get everybody for whatever day you choose. Right. I think we need to go with the 15th. Thank you. I think we need to have the schools superintendent of schools there we need to have our finance director there. And we'll make a video and it'll be a regular meeting and whoever's missing is going to have to just watch it. It's usually only about an hour at the beginning of a meeting. So, some people wanted more time to discuss last time. So we'll stay with the 15th for it for the financial indicators, and then going back to Andy that that now gives you a sense of what we need to do as a finance committee. Yes, so I think that's practice based on prior experiences. We do a lot of polling about dates because there's too many people involved. By the time you put it all the different boards and committees, just announced a date as Lynn suggested, and I think we've kind of identified what it is and go with it and this point, that's the best we can do. It might be good to just generally announce it because there will be new counselors who will be counselors elect at that point, but not members of the council. And we want to make sure that whoever might be in that category is at least aware. So is there anything else that we can talk about right now but scheduling of next meetings. Yeah, but I do think that based on how difficult it was to schedule this meeting, which included consulting Dorothy's teaching schedule and other commitments Pat has made we probably need to see whether or not Tuesdays from two to four still work for people. So I think that would be a great problem with Tuesdays to the four. It's fine with me. I have to check how long my class goes. I think I will be able to do that in November but not in October. Yeah, we're talking about really the pressure is going to be on once the financial indicators meeting takes. Yeah, are you talking about Tuesday. Yes. Oh okay I apologize I'm getting tired also I can do Tuesdays from two to four. Okay, or longer, which they usually go. Yeah, I can do Tuesdays from two to maybe quarter for if, if I leave a few minutes early that would be okay. Well that's a decision that you'll have to make you'll have to see how the process runs. But the goal is that I will continue to work with the chair of CRC and make sure that we're on alternate alternating dates and that we are not duplicating dates in which CRC needs and that's the process that we've sort of been working at right now. And it's because I think Dorothy you're the one who's on both committees presently. Yeah, just, I have a new pickup duty on Tuesdays but I can maybe even make it a schedule for but I couldn't stay a minute after but it'd be better if I left a few minutes before that song. Okay. So, covering that then the one thing that's left is that and Lynn might be the best person to explain this at this point. We had a decision at the last council meeting that allows each committee to make one of two choices about the future meetings for the remainder of the year, the calendar year. And that is, whether to continue to meet as virtual meetings, or to do hybrid meetings, and each committee was asked to make a decision as to how I wanted to proceed. Or had been very precious and putting in decide whether to continue meeting virtually if allowed by law and council policy. Just the way that the posted agenda reads for this meeting. So, with that, we need to do it and I will just, I think that all of the council members of the committee heard the presentation about how hybrid meetings work. If either Bob or Bernie need an explanation. And I think that we need to have you ask the question and Lynn who's really been the one who worked with Tina on it can provide the answer but otherwise we need to just come to a decision. Dorothy, your hand is on this topic. In my book, I had a lot of different dates in pencil with question marks. So I just want to know the date of the next meeting or the next two meetings if you have that. A lot of those dates were because we had trouble scheduling this meeting. There are no meetings scheduled right now. We're going forward or trying to schedule it. And at this point, unless we decide we just schedule one around something like our brother that really talking about trying to make sure we have plans for November but let's concentrate on the question about. I did look at the RC calendar and I know which ones are available. Continue to meet. Virtually or meet in person with a in the hybrid format, which means that we're also doing at the same time along the public and presumably members of the committee to participate. We need to participate remotely if need be. So, I think we need a decision on the committee is whether we want to just stay entirely remote for the remain for the remainder of the year and then we'll plan accordingly. To stay remote till the end of the year. I think that's easier on staff. I'm not completely sure. So I wouldn't mind here hearing from Paul and Sean and Sonya, but I, I'd like us to make the decision of meeting remotely. I think it works for the public and it works for us. We had to jump off to for family obligation. We will do whatever the committee wants to do it, whichever you choose as we can accommodate. The way we've set it up. It's actually to minimize staff demand. And to also allow counselors and the public to either attend or remote or in person. If you retake, if you do attend in person. It will be messed in the town. I recognize Kathy because her hands up and just say that I would really welcome a motion. Because then we'll have something we can deal with and with this meeting. That. Thanks to Andy, I was going to make a motion to continue to meet. I'm going to go back to the meeting to the end of the year and I know we don't have the date yet, but there are a couple of days in November, including the 16th where I'm going to be in a meeting. Around the school building project for an extended period of time and that might make it hard to physically get down to town hall. I'm going to go back to the meeting. I'm going to go back to the meeting. I'm going to be meeting. Zoom. And I'd love to see everyone in person starting next year. But. You know, just the one comment. Motion. My motion is that we continue to meet. I'm just seconding Pat, but I'm, I make a motion that we continue to meet in zoom. Until the end of the year. Second. Okay. I don't hear any discussion. If there's no request for discussion now hands off. Then we're just going to go around the committee. And the two members who are present members can express how they, what their preference might be. The committee or counselors. She'd go ahead and vote. And we'll see where we are. So start with Dorothy. I move that we stay remote to the end of the year. So let's see your favor of the motion. Yes. Okay. And. I'm going to hold on for a minute and see what others want to do. I support. Yeah. Hi. Hi. What the motion. He spoke motion. Yes. Bernie. Despite the fact that John promised us free parking. I'll support the motion. That's a different topic. Actually an affordable one for whatever we do come back. I will support the motion. In. Lynn. You didn't call in Kathy. Kathy. Yes. Yes. Then I'll make it unanimous. Thank you. Okay. So I think that we have it. There's no. On the anticipated topics that I'm aware of. Does anybody have an anticipated topic? And if not, then I think that we are adjourned. And I thank you. It's been a very productive meeting. Thank you everyone. Thanks. I really would like the date of the next meeting. I do have to plan ahead sometimes. And I wrote down the dates when CRC does not meet. And. Two of them are bad. Do they meet on the 16th of November? No. 16th of November is good. It seems to me. I don't know. It seems to me like that's our first meeting. It's a day after the financial indicators. Well, and we don't want to meet. I don't think on the election day, November 2nd, nor do we really want to meet November 23rd, which is right next to Thanksgiving. So that leaves October 19th and November 16th as. Good meetings with CRC does not meet. Do they meet on the 16th of November? No, 16th of November is good. It seems to me like that's our first meeting. The day after the financial indicators. And what does CRC does not meet? We are going to have a problem with Thanksgiving and we are going to have to talk about that maybe by. An email link and not try and do it now, but. We are under tremendous amount of pressure. It went between November 15th and. December 6. From what Linda said. To get a draft. guidelines, but together I will work with Sean to try and come up with something to make it as expeditious as possible. Right, so that's why then we really should reserve the 2030 if we can. That's the kind of planning I need to know because when I get asked by a child. What is happening on Thanksgiving? Are we coming or going? It would say it's not a good time to go, which I didn't say I wanted to go either, but it, you know, Thanksgiving is something we need to plan around. So if you think we might really need to meet, that's something that we should be, we need to know so. And I do remember we just said that we are going to continue to meet remotely. Right. Even if you're out of town. Right. It's helpful. It's helpful. Okay. I appreciate that. Okay, anything else? No, I guess we're adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you to our staff, Paul and Sean.