 And we are recording. Good afternoon. I'd like to call the finance committee meeting of November age 2022 to order at three minutes after 3pm. And welcome everybody. First, just say that pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 is amended. This meeting is being held by remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting. They do so. I assume we're by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public being permitted, but every effort is being made to assure that all members of the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. So I think that's a good point to make. Where technological means and this meeting is being recorded. So I want to make everybody aware that it's recorded. And that the recording will be available for people who are interested in seeing it at a later time. Next thing I'd like to do is calling each member of the committee. I think we can hear me and we can confirm. That we're hearing them. And once we've done that, then we'll bring in. Our guests to the process by introducing them and the other staff who are here for the first part of the discussion that we're going to have today. We're going to start with the street acceptance. I think we're going to have to wait for about 30 minutes as the time that I've been anticipating. And. Have some specific goals I'll speak to in that. In a moment. But for the confirmation that people can hear and be heard. I'll just do it alphabetically by last name. So. In Christmas. Present. Present. Present. Present. Present. Present. Present. Present. Shane. Here. I think that Walker is currently not present. So. With that said. I think that there are two people who are representing. The. Community association. What is Doug Dennell. And. So. I obviously could hear because we just saw him wave. And attorney Felicity Hardy. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. For some reason, my video is not working. Can everybody hear me? We can hear you. Can you see us or is the video blocked both ways? No, I can see everybody. When I came into the meeting. I got a notice in zoom that I was in a practice mode. Or I don't know, some kind of strange. Strange zoom. Message as long as I can be heard. That's fine. I just, I didn't know whether or not because I'm a visitor. I had some, you know, some different status. Athena's. Or anything that. Sean can do. I don't think so. Felicity, do you have a camera? Did you say you have a camera? I do have a camera and it always works. Is the, is the. Is it like a laptop I or a portable camera? It's part built into the laptop. Sometimes they're not open. You have to like scroll. You know, if it's open. I don't know. It seems like it's fine. Zoom is saying that I'm on video. So. Yeah. No, it doesn't. Be that my laptop is old and. Is being finicky. So. We can hear it on fine. We can hear you fine and it's nothing on our end. Okay. Okay. So, um, That's a, the other. Present is. Christine Brest. Who's the planning department. Planning department in Guilford morning. Who's here from DPW. And then. We have Sonia. Aldrich and Sean, who are. From the finance department. So those are the. Who's present. What I wanted to do was kind of. I don't see. Paul yet. We know if Paul's joining us. Yeah, he will be here around three 30. I don't think he'll be here for this agenda item, but he'll be here for the next one. Okay. Cause I just wanted to make sure that. We had an opportunity to bring the committee up to date. And there was a lot of work that. I have done in trying to. Get a better understanding of the background of what happened. Of the sequence of things that has happened. And I had some things that were added to the packet for today's meetings. And I welcome. Doug and Felicity. Being able to contribute what they want. To contribute as we go through. And trying to get an understanding that that is what primary goal is, is to. Bring everybody up to date on. A series of things that have happened. I think we talked a little bit last time about the. Origins of when the. Subdivision was approved. But. The question of how. Discussions have gone with the pond. The role of the planning board. And the recommendation that the planning board. Had. Out of their meeting, which. Chris can tell us about. But it's also in the packet because her memo to the planning board. Is in packet for this meeting. And then. The efforts that the neighborhood association did. To try and pair the cut punch list with. Actual costs and Doug might be able to help us out of Felicity. And sort of introducing that a little bit. And then see where we are in a process going forward. So we can actually. Get to the end result that I think everybody is interested in. Doing so. This is a step that we just to keep this moving along. And. My last comment is for. One member of the committee has sort of had the question of. Why the finance committee. And I think we'll probably. Touch on that a little bit too. Other than the obvious that that's what the council did as they referred it to us. But beyond that, there were, I think that there are legitimate questions as to. Where the financial piece falls in some. Any, any questions about. What we're trying to do. Relations in the audience. Good to bring her in place. Can you do that? Or do you need to make me co-host. Thanks, Sean. Okay. Thanks, Sean. Hi. Yeah. Can you just confirm that we can. You can hear us. Yes, thank you everyone. Thank you. Okay. So what we're doing today is we're going to start out for about 30 minutes talking about. Street acceptance for. And then. We're going to spend the rest of the time. Following up on the financial indicators. Discussion and then. The first part of. Trying to get us towards. Which is the next piece is after that. So. Back to. Upworked in Kestrel. We last time had. Sort of the background of the development of the. Of the project and. That it. It came stuck along the way. And. Sean, you know, the, our son, you know, the amount of money that's in the account that was deposited. From the. Property. That was sold. It was. That amount was around. 20 something. Yeah. Chris may know it better. There's some amount of Ness grow around 20,000 or so, but. Yeah. Chris, I don't know if you have that number off. Chris has her hand raised. Yeah, Chris. The last time I checked or the last time I was informed about this, we had 23,000. The original. Deposit was 20,000 and then it's gained. Interest over time. So it's around 23,000 at this time. And being held in escrow by the town. So that's the amount. And the, when it was originally set up, the thought was there was going to be more money. In the account. But somewhere along the way with the original. Developer. Passing away when he did and the transfer to Tafino. Additional amounts for not collected or added to the account. So that's part of the problem that exists there. And. It's my understanding and Duggar Felicity may know. Contribute to this one. Or no, there was. An amount that was to be paid by. The developer. As each lot was sold. And then. The developer. Somehow that. That did not happen. And. Kind of stuck there. Felicity. So what happened was that towards the, once the subdivision was built. The planning board. Established a bond. For the developer to post. And as. The developer was supposed to be. The developer was supposed to have been posted over time. But apparently what happened was that the full bond was never posted. With the planning board. Doug can correct me if my memory is wrong about this, but I believe the full amount was supposed to be $120,000. Not $20,000. So the developer was about $100,000 short. And so. And I believe that there would have been adequate funds to ensure that the developer finished the punch list. And the roads would have been accepted in the ordinary course, but that never happened. Doug, do you have anything to add? Chris. I just, in this moment, I'll just add it. I believe the number was actually 130,000. That was what the board originally, the planning board originally voted. And I think that was in. In 2001. And then the other point just to clarify that you had said. Mr. Chairman about when Doug Cole died in 2010. He was to Fino and then, but to Fino continued on they, I don't know how they rearranged their business, but they did continue on. And we've, we've been trying to get the road. We've been pursuing to Fino since around 2012. So even though Doug did die and that was, that was definitely a problem at the time. There's a lot of times gone by since then. Thank you. Thank you. Chris. So I just wanted to clarify. I don't think it was an actual bond. The practice of the town has been that after the roadway is built, you know, more or less, except for the top coat. And we allow up to about half of the lots to be sold. Then when we reach the 50% mark, we start collecting escrow money. And so in this case, the plan was to collect escrow money on the last 13 lots. And that's where the 130,000 comes from. It was 10,000 per lot that the town should have collected every time they were asked to release a lot, but they didn't do that for whatever reason. I wasn't working with the planning board at that time. So that was the amount and, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't really a bond. It was, you know, take the money from the developer, put it into an account in the town market that it was for this purpose. And then move on. So, Doug, did you have something to add? Okay. So then it's my understanding that money was collected by Tafino. Treating them as a corporation, not as the individual of Doug Hull. And that money came from the sale of lots, but the portion that was to be conveyed to the town, did not get conveyed after the first 30,000. Mr. Chairman, the idea is that the money is to ensure the performance of the developer's final obligations to finish the subdivision. That's what the money is for. You know, if Tafino had finished the roads and finished the punch list and everything was done. And used its own money to do that, then the money that would help be held in escrow would be released. But as we say that, that, that did not occur. So that's helpful. So then it gets to the second question and. That's where. Guilford also can be helpful. So that's where we are now with the identification of the. Punch list. Because. That's the sort of the second piece. Guilford. Do we. You're muted now or. So the punch list has been back and forth a few times. But I believe in your packet, you actually have the, the list. Do you need me to show it or. Do you think you have it later? Do you want Guilford to show it? I have it. Let's put it up and you have, and then Guilford can confirm. I think somebody needs to allow me to share. I don't know. I keep getting that I just host disabled participant screen sharing. So try it, try it again. Okay. There we go. Punch list. That's the. Right. I'm getting there. You just had it. I did. Okay. That's the punch list. And then we have the estimates for. The next thing we need to do is to name the topic. And Kestrel. Right. So this is what we expect the needs to be done for Kestrel. It. It would, if it was a normal in the normal process, the road would be perfectly paved at this time, but we know it's a little older. So we're just saying. To crack seal the entire road. Activity is sort of preservative. It's not. It's not a long term fix. So we'd start off with the crack seal for both the roads. And there's trees and sidewalks and you can read down through it. The only thing that. Number 13, the ADA sidewalks or ramps. Those weren't required when the subdivision was built. That's something that's changed over time. So the punch list has. All these items. And then if you look at the, you want to scroll down Lenton. Kestrel, I mean to hop brook. I can. Down. Hold on. And this is the list for hop brook. And again, it has crack seal the whole road. And then I think the ADA. Is on there as well. No, I don't see it on here. I don't see it on here. This is the, this is what a town engineer has walked through the development with the developer. And this is the list of everything that needs to be addressed. And then the estimate is from Warner brothers. Of how much needs to. How much it would cost. So I can show the estimates. Do you want me to do that, Andy? Yes. Can you see the estimate now? This is for. Hop brook. Can you see it? Yes. I can. So this is. The number of the bottom, which is the total is actually the estimate for both roads from Warner brothers. It's for Kestrel and hop brook. And some of the items are. Mixed together in the two estimates. So you have to see them kind of. Both, but one 33 is what they're thinking. This was done back in 2021. And we're seeing, we're seeing at least 15 to 20% increases in prices right now. So that number isn't exactly the number. We would use. So you're saying that in 2021. I'm sorry. I can't raise my hand. In 2021, the estimate for the total punch list. As it was understood to be at that time. Was $133,415. Correct. And that this is only with sealant, not with a total resurfacing. Correct. And, and that's both roads. It's both roads. And if you add. And if you add some, if you add for inflation, it's probably around 200,000. And today's cost. Right. Can you give us a sense of. When you seal a road. What kind of life expectancy. Are you looking at in terms of. Having to finally repave it. It depends on the road, but most of the times you reseal it once and then within five to 10 years, you're, you're paving it. I have a quick question. Of Guilford. The. When Warner Bros. Does this work encompass everything that's on the town punch list? This does. Yes. Okay. So we can use this as a proxy for the cost of. Of the punch list that Jason's prepared. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Excuse me. May I just interrupt. Jason told me that this punch list that was prepared. As a cost estimate does not include crack ceiling. That's what Jason told me. He said crack ceiling is hard to figure out as an. As an estimate. So this estimate does not include crack ceiling. According to Jason. Can you scroll back up to the front page of the estimate? Or the. You've seen it now. No. So Jason. Yeah, Jason's right. There's no crack ceiling on that. Warner Brothers also doesn't do that work. Do you have an. Estimate. Or is not. If it's not in the list. I would actually say if you use the price for the, the 2700 for the ADA ramps, you're probably pretty close to. What the price would be. It's only probably for those two rows. Anywhere from 25 to $3,000. Okay. I'm going to continue on with others who have raised hands for a moment. Sean. Guilford. Do these. Estimates. Is this pretty much everything that was wrong with the road when it back then. Are these things that. Are, you know, we're wrong at the time and would have had to be fixed. As part of a punch list back in 2006. Or are some of these things. Things that have happened over time. I'm trying to get a sense of, you know, if we, if we had done our part back then, what would be the, what would have been one of those items that we would have made sure were fixed before it was finalized. And what portion are things that have just. Wear and tear that's happened since then. A lot of the issues with the catch basins. The gutter inlets. Some of the settling around valves and so forth. The sink hole was actually a problem before. Most of this, except for probably. In 2006. Yeah. Most of this except the crack ceiling and the. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have time as well. Okay. So it may make sense to leave crack ceiling off because that wouldn't necessarily have been an issue back then. That's something that's happened over time. Right. Yeah, it has. Okay. You can lump it all together into about 20 and about $200,000 and probably everything. Doug. Yeah, I just like to add a couple of things. One, this estimate. I had this estimate put together as a number of times. I had this estimate put together as a number of times. That was an estimate of the diligence two years ago. So. This was generated. Because I took the time to walk the roads with one of brothers with town engineer. This list was based on the punch list that Jason had generated. because the town or somebody other than Warner Brothers can get a much better cost per foot at the scale of a town. But this also includes what was originally part of the, there was three, depending on who you ask, three to five items on the original punch list in 2006, 2004 to 2006 that were not complete at the time when the road would have been accepted, but they are also included in this. So just I just want to kind of clarify that that there was the original outstanding items as well as some items that need to be cleaned up on the as built, which are the surveys for the two roads in 2004. So those those items are also on this list but then in addition to those three or five items depending on who you ask, there are these additional 37 say items that are a result mostly of just time going by. No. No, there were other issues there were some issues at the time and the list the short list of three whereas it was sort of a compromise list that was brought together if you want to know everything. Many of these issues were going on in 2006 as well. So, sorry. I think I'm hammering, I'm following up on the same theme that what wasn't done when it should be done and our best guess at the estimate of it, versus what has happened since whatever was supposed to be done originally didn't happen and Chris, I think that was part of a discussion at the planning board also, you know that if some of this has developed over time. That's less the developers fault, although if the developer didn't do what they were supposed to do. At the outset, it contributed to more rapid deterioration or related problems. And I'm just looking for of the 200,000. How much we think the developer should still be on the hook for and I realize you've been trying to get it forever. And how much if everything had been up to snuff and the town had taken it over we would have been since 2006 doing some work on these roads Gilbert although some roads in town probably haven't been touched since 2006. That had nothing to do with this development. I'm just trying to sort the 200,000 out on negligence at the original failure to perform at the original and and that 23,000 Chris all of that can be used toward this 200,000 ish correct. So, you want me to answer that Andy. Yeah, the 23,000 is available and to Fino has also committed to doing three items that are listed on a short list. And the estimate for that is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 So if you add, you know, 20,000 that he's committed to do and 23,000 that he's got in our account. That's 43,000. So he's more or less committed to do about $43,000 worth of work. And may I just say one more thing. I don't think that the planning board got clarity on what things were needing to be done in 2004 versus what things need to be done now I don't think there's any clarity about that. So nobody has that information as far as I know. Okay, thank you. Okay. So let me learn. I guess one of the issues that I have with the fact that the money isn't there. Yes, the town can accept some responsibility because we didn't pursue, although maybe we did. But anybody who knows that there is a commitment. They can't accept the money aside, even if they didn't get a bill from the town. So the fact that we're now looking at what should have been $130,000 when all the lots were sold. Even if the town didn't bill. The developer knew very well that that was the commitment. And I'm a little annoyed that we keep feeling like this is a town fault. I'm not annoyed. I'm just perplexed that this should be seen as a town problem because we didn't bill. Versus. Own a developer problem because they didn't put the money aside. And I'm not annoyed that they didn't put the money aside. But for me, the whole issue goes back to where is the $130,000 that should have been collected. And that's the amount of money. Whether it should have been collected and it was some place and in escrow and. You know, earning some. Interest or not. But if the question before us, and this is to me, is if we. You know, pass a motion or something to. Have the town manager negotiate this so that we can accept the road. Are we basically sending him to the negotiation table and saying upfront. You know, we the town are willing to. Accept $90,000 plus in debt in order to accept this road. And I have a serious problem with that. And it's at my, my heart goes out to these, these residents. I'm just very. Questioning. The ethical nature of the developer. I don't know. Just to Fina, we have $23,000 out of a hundred and 33. So it's just, you know, still I was. A hundred and a hundred and ten hundred 13,000 dollars because. Those lots have never been released from escrow. This is one of the reasons why I think I said last time that we need to have town attorney. Consult on this. Because we may be able to recover this money. You know, I. Attorney Hardy, I appreciate that your hand is up, but. If we end up in court. It ain't going to be representing the town. Sorry. You know, the question I had is, is how is this communicated. To the developer. You know, was. Is there a process in place back in 2004. That released the lots from escrow. Or not. And you know that. What was communicated to the developers is. Is, is to me is important, but it seems to me that the developer still owes us his money if, if they were supposed to put the lots in escrow and never did. Yeah, so two things I think, you know, I agree with everything that's been said, I will say, I do think the town does bear some of this responsibility. I don't know if you have a guesstimate, but if, if these things were done back in 2006 or 2007, they probably would cost a lot less than $130,000. If that's what they cost in 2001, right. We're probably. Half as much. Maybe. It would cost less. Rises prices started to go up around 2007. Okay. So, so I think here in the conversation is a complicated issue. So, so I think, you know, staff have discussed this. I've talked with the town manager. I've talked with Dave Zomek and Guilford and Christine. You know, our recommendation is to. Ask the town manager to negotiate with Tafina and the residents and reach some sort of mutually acceptable agreement. To move this process forward, because I think there's a lot of unknowns and until we kind of empower the town manager to, to see what's possible. We're not going to get those answers and see, we're going to move this issue forward. Which I think makes sense. And I'm going to come back to it in just a second. I want to hear from Kathy and Michelle about their questions. And then because I think that you're. Sean, I appreciate you bringing that up because it is where I wanted to get to. In a moment, but Kathy, did you have a question. No, I just want to build if we're sending. The town manager into negotiate. He's not a mediator. He's negotiated on behalf of the town, not just to see if that two parties. I'd send him in with a bottom line number, at least a range. And we're being offered additional Chris said an additional 20 to 25 into the 23. If I go back to what we were owed, that was what Bernie was talking about. We would have had a hundred, another hundred and 10 sitting in escrow. And we've got a price tag of 200,000. So I think we should. Should not settle for anything less than a hundred. You know, so go up on his offer from, from where it is now. And whatever leverage we have on it. Or anything less than a hundred and 10. So I just feel like there. It, it sends an unfortunate signal. That if, if you, for a variety of reasons, you wait long enough, the 10 will just take it over. So hopefully we also have a case study that this will never happen again, but I just, I would like to send him in for the finance committee saying. We're starting at an offer of 25 in addition to the 23 we've got or 20, whatever that number is, Chris, and get it up. That's where I would. I think that's the, the, the terribly worded recommendation I would make in terms of, of what I'd like to send him in with, but that's the sense of it. Michelle. Thanks. I just want to make sure I understand. So. What Lynn was saying, I think is that there was supposed to be money set aside. I don't know if we would have to build an escrow and some agreement between the town and the developer. I don't know of any. A legal reason why we would have to bill a developer for them to. Be in. You know, to, to, to fulfill their agreement. So I'm just trying to understand. I think it sounds like that money got lost track of, but why is that not money that we can still pursue. If there is an agreement in place that says that that money is owed to the town. So a couple of things I, I, Mr. Chairman, I would just. Suggest to the committee that. So I would just encourage everybody to think about that. So that was one thing I was going to say. And to Ms. Miller's point, the way it works, Ms. Miller, is that when a developer does a subdivision project, the lots are released for sale. So I would just encourage everybody to think about that. So I would just encourage everybody to think about that. I would just encourage everybody to think about that. And I would just encourage everybody to at least for sale. Over a period of time. Okay. And generally speaking, the money that's set aside in escrow. Is a, I called it a bond earlier. That's probably not the best use of the word, but the idea is it's a, it's a way to make sure that the developer finishes what they're doing. The first couple of payments were made. And then after that, perhaps after Doug passed away. A process was begun where the lots in the meadow, subdivision were released. From the, um, from the, um, restraints that the town had put on it. Without Mr. I mean, the amount of time went on. So it's not really that the town is owed the money. What the town is owed is the performance. But the escrow is there to make sure he gets it done. Thank you. That's really helpful. If I could just ask a follow up, Andy, if that's okay. Um, so there wasn't any sort of lean or anything that was there that protected. The bridge between the developer. And the neighborhood, not the developer. No, no, no, no. It's, it's a, it's a responsibility between the planning board and which approve the subdivision and the developer. Okay. And the way it's supposed to work, Chris can correct me because historically I wasn't involved in this matter, but. happen is there's a there's a restriction it's called a covenant a subdivision covenant okay and all of the lots are subject to that covenant and that covenant prevents the developer from selling the lots okay without getting a release from the planning board and in this case what's supposed to happen was that every time the developer went to sell a lot they would put another $10,000 in escrow to make sure that the subject the subdivision rose got finished that's what that was where things broke down okay it's not like build or anything like that what happens is that the developer says to the planning board hey planning board it's time for me to sell you know a lot i'm ready to sell it please release that lot from this covenant and in exchange i'll give you the $10,000 to ensure the performance of the roads okay and we can't retroactively act on that covenant no okay thanks okay i'm gonna recognize chris and then i'm gonna take a pause to try and get our path forward and that i recognize that i i know that bernie and doug have hands up too um chris will we so this is kind of a follow-up to what felicity just said and i don't think that the town has a stick to use to get the developer to pay the money or to finish the road at this time because all the lots have been released so in my mind the mechanism to get the developer to pay more is either to negotiate with him and then in good faith since he does work in the town of amherst and wants to be in good graces with the town he may choose to negotiate or the alternative would be to um take him to court and it seems that taking him to court is going to prolong the distress of the residents and may not eventually be successful and will cost the town money so we've already been talking about this since 2014 so i i go along with the recommendation of the planning board which was to um authorize the town manager to negotiate a settlement and the town and the planning board also as an afterthought included the residents in this negotiation to see if the residents wanted to participate in having this road finished so it could be just the town and to fino who are negotiating or it could be the town and to fino and the residents who are negotiating to finish this road to come up with the money to to put this to rest so that's all i wanted to say thank you but you're actually there's one other thing chris and that is that what the planning board was was to suggest that the town council negotiate which is why think that one of the things that was confusing to me i think that was in error um i think that you know i put this language together for the planning boards to choose from there were four different choices that they could make what i meant was when i put the wording together was that the town would negotiate and i mistakenly put the town council so it really should be the town manager negotiating on the part of the town um rather than the town council but i think that was the intent of the planning board and if you want me to go back and get them to revote this i can do that well it may not be necessary because i think so as we can come to our recommendation which i think that we do ask the town manager to negotiate on behalf of the town councilor council committee can't effectively negotiate amongst other reasons for the point that uh solicit brought up that it would be doing so in public and uh we that's not a a good way to negotiate is through a public process where you have to do things through open meeting so uh it would seem that the appropriate thing for us to do is to ask the town manager to take this on and then report back to us and put our work um once we've concluded today unhold until we hear back from him so uh bernie yeah a couple of points uh from my experience you can have a bond issued by the developer um for a performance bond issued but that's not considered the best practice because if they they don't finish the work then you've got to go seize the bond and that's a whole that's a that's problematic my other experience is is the escrow money gets collected up front and it gets returned to the developer as work proceeds so that way you're sitting on their money and it's it's an incentive and i think uh one lesson from this is we and maybe all this has been fixed i don't know and i know that the planning department is certainly very busy but it would be a good thing to go back and look at the process that we use to ensure that we get the money up front or that we have a more aggressive kind of policy for collecting the escrow money um from from a developer uh the way that this had it is that and again i do wish that we had heard from uh john asherney uh maybe we can't and you know it's probably like attorney hardy is correct it's probably not it it's not a good idea come up with a negotiating strategy in in in public but i think the way we're headed is that we should we should suggest to the you know i have the town administrator uh the time manager try to negotiate out the best settlement possible in this um i don't mind the residents being included in those discussions but just keep in mind that they're not negotiating on behalf of the town okay yeah i was um when chris mentioned she gave the planning board four options i was reminded to go back and look at the memo that chris sent and um i that is one of the four options obviously we could also ignore this we could do any number of things um i just don't want to start setting a precedent where basically subdivisions don't get completed in terms of the roads and then because we care about our residents the town's picking up the tab and i said this in the last meeting and i'll i'll just repeat it again we don't need to be accepting any more bad roads in the Amherst we've had plenty um and our residents tell us that every day so i'm just very concerned and i definitely do not want to see us negotiating in public and i don't want to see us even suggesting the strategy in public but um in my mind you know this isn't the town's fault and yet we want to help our residents out sorry yeah i just i just want to add that um the it's not that it's the town's fault but the town is the governing body and this has been an approved subdivision since two i mean the late 90s and it has been the plan that this would be an accepted public way since that time it was built to those standards it almost happened in the early 2000s and then it didn't and primarily that's because Tofino has resisted that process for a decade and a half however the town also has certain responsibilities whether that's financial or not to oversee that those developers are you know that there was no statute of limitation of when this is getting done and so the town never governed in that sense and so now you have 28 property owners who are paying in property taxes under the expectation that they're living on a public way and here we are 15 years later and you know many of the problems that are associated with the costs of this are are a function of time and this would not have been the issue that it is today had it been more consistently pursued by both parties the town and Tofino you know 10 years ago five years ago even five years ago would have made a big difference and and i just want to add that the homeowners have been pursuing this actively as as hard as we can and with with the limited agency that we have for since 2014 thank you go for thanks i just wanted to point out there's only two subdivisions like this in amherst right now there's this one the meadows and there's amherst hills and i think chris can correct me if i'm wrong but those are the only two subdivisions that haven't been finalized that were laid out as public roads all the rest have either been private roads or they've been completed so these are the only two like this we do have some private roads that have asked to be accepted as public roads but there's no no subdivision that still hasn't finished except for these two the meadows and amherst hills okay um i don't think that there's much else we can do i know that paul has uh is now at least listening in on the meeting because i see he's he's joined to say hey paul i think that what we're moving towards is um a suggestion that has been made um by shawn earlier and i think that he had already just uh properly discussed it with you which was that the committee asked that you take over and negotiate with defeno and as appropriate the homeowners to see if there's a resolution that can be reached that will allow the council to move forward with this with the acceptance process and would that be acceptable yes that's our recommendation and i think it's a good and i think that the other thing that would be helpful for us to know uh is that chris had sent us a memorandum at the beginning when it was first presented to the council before referral to this committee and chris's memo was really based upon kp laws general advice to all of its client communities that um delineated a three-step process and the first step is to accept the layout of the roads that would be proposed to be accepted according to the plans that were developed and i think that we talked about that in our first meeting and so it would be helpful to know whether there's any reason why we couldn't take that first step and if kp law thinks that it would be appropriate to do so i think that it would be sort of something for us to consider to indicate to the homeowners that we are taking this matter up seriously so that would be if you could find that out that would be helpful i want to conclude this so that we can get on to our other agenda items but see a couple of hands up again so michelle really quickly gilford the two that you said have not the two the two developments that you just mentioned are they the same developer yes okay and the second one that you mentioned it's not the one we're talking about is that still is there any protections that we need to put in place given what we know about this developer or is that where is what's the status of that one the playing department dpw is working with him and getting things corrected and that one's actually moving differently than this one is i see okay thank you i'm ready to make a motion okay um sure ahead then i move i move that we ask the town manor manager to negotiate with tefino and to the extent um that the residents can be involved to bring this to conclusion that's the definition to the town council correct i'm sorry i'm that's right we have to recommend that to the town council change seconds so it's a motion is uh to recommend to the town council that it asked the town manager to negotiate with the phenone associates um and uh with uh the homeowners participating as appropriate to reach a resolution for this problem uh to michelle are we in discussion of the motion now yes okay um just building on what i was just asking gilford about and understanding that we don't want to negotiate in a public meeting i'm wondering if there's any benefit in having paul tried to negotiate both of the situations together if there's any leveraging uh that could be had with that i understand it sounds like that one's moving in a different direction but is there any strategy or i guess i just ask paul to consider that um in his process chris um on that one um we know what needs to be done and the developer has given us a check for $50,000 to complete the work which is more than jason skills the town engineer thinks is necessary to complete the work jason estimated around 25,000 so we have 50,000 in our account and um i think that that project um which is emmers hills is on the way to um being satisfactorily completed as far as the town goes there's an ongoing lawsuit between tofino and the homeowners which the town is not a party to and we really don't know much about that but i feel like that one is is on its way to being concluded so uh we have a motion on the floor it's been made in second is there anything else to be said on the motion so uh seeing none i'm going to uh that there's no request for further discussion just go ahead and uh think about which um because this is a remote meeting just uh so the our guests understand what's going why we're doing this this way it's required by the open meeting law there's there's a uh remote meeting that we take all votes um by asking each member and the other thing um for a vote and the other thing that you should know is just that there are five voting members of the committee who are the councilor members of the committee and there are three resident members who are non-voting members and so when uh we call on each member we uh asking for a yes or no from councilor members and we also ask our resident members whether they support it it um that um or don't support the motion uh that's reported in the minutes um it reported to the council but it's not but the vote itself is it has to be amongst estimated majority of the councilor members um so ready to vote? Lynn? Aye. I support. Matt? Support. Bernie? Or? Michelle? Aye. Kathy? Yes. And I'm a yes and then uh Alicia? Yes. So the vote on that is uh five to zero was the three resident members in support and uh with that I think that we're finished with this agenda item unless anybody um has any final thing that they would like to say though I think we need to get on to the uh financial trend report and the beginning of the next process. Yeah the only thing I ask is that if there are other motions the council needs to take that's part of the three-step process to please make sure I have them for the meeting on the 21st of November. Um but I think that what we had said was just that um the first step in the process is outlined by Chris was the definition of the roads and uh that uh we were going to uh I was suggesting that we not make a recommendation to the council and unless we've heard from town council that they advise that we do that. Okay thank you. I think that's kind of where we are unless there's this agreement. So with that I want to very much say thank you to uh Doug and Felicity and to Guilford and Chris for your help with this discussion. It was very helpful for us so that we could conclude things for right now with the finance committee. They come back to the finance committee when we have a report from Paul that he's ready to do so but um uh so and thank you Doug. I just want to express um uh thanks on behalf of all the home owners on the Meadows Homeowners Association for the Finance Committee and the town staff for uh hearing out our situation as thoroughly as you all have. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Uh well thank you both uh I appreciate it and um anyway um so we are really ready to move on to the next agenda item and uh so I want to thank those of you who joined us for the first agenda item. So uh last night we had the financial um indicators uh report and I want to take a few minutes to see if there are further questions about the indicator report and the uh financial recommend the initial recommendation and then um at least start defining the issues that we need to talk about for the guidelines. So uh it's really just opening for questions right now. Kathy. My first question is I would like to have a copy of the document and I just quickly looked in the packet Sean I didn't see it in the finance committee um if if it was in the council what I just missed it um. Yeah sorry so it's. I added it to the packet last night but I didn't I didn't think to add it to the finance packet for tonight but it is in the packet from last night. Okay um so maybe Sean you can pull it up but just when when the very detailed table flew by I won't say you floated it by but it was when you get to the back on the revenues I didn't understand um I wanted to understand on the local receipts. Sure. How you come up with and this is the question I asked last night if people weren't there um if you look back to FY20 actual we were at uh almost eight million it dropped off then went back I don't know why it jumped up in 22 and then it went dropped back in 23 budget so I I'm asking about that line but more generally we got the fourth quarter report for the year that we just completed and revenues were higher than we'd estimated and expenses were lower and I didn't go back and double check whether receipts were part of that Sean you know in terms you know just so cross checking so it's just this pattern on receipts I don't completely understand um aid the fluctuation and whether this is an extremely conservative uh number and you'd expect if the economy doesn't go belly up that it would come in better so that's that that's my one detail question I have a couple others but this was more a picky you and one about the revenue side yeah and is it okay if I spend a little time going through this because I anticipate this question based on what Kathy said last night so I think it might help if I just go through line by line and give some of the thinking and and you know what might change over time and and where there's conservatism and where there's uh you know where there's not is it okay if I take a little bit time Andy okay um so on your screen so in general as I said last night local receipts those are are mostly economic driven revenues so they are the ones that will fluctuate the most when there's an economic downturn or there's an economic uh boom these are the areas where we will see uh the most drastic changes because they're directly driven by activity here in downtown and throughout town so so just in general keep that in the back of your mind that these are our revenues that vary the most um so starting with motor vehicle excise tax so we've budgeted 1.6 for now for FY 24 uh that's an area that I could see potentially going up as we go through future versions of this you can see in FY 2021 we brought about 1.7 FY 22 was an abnormally large year um where you can see it came in much higher than the prior years um one thing we did put in place recently that we hope will increase motor vehicle excise tax over time is the the parking permit system where we are sort of incentivizing uh residents downtown to actually garage their vehicles here and that would contribute to this number rising so as we see the numbers come in in FY 23 that's something we might bring up uh as we go forward the way motor vehicle excise tax works is usually a one or two large commitments um that will make up the bulk of the number and then you know we'll have some information to base that on because we can compare that to prior years to see if those commitments are larger than in past years again this is a number that will go up if there's a lot of newer vehicles in town they're they're paying the higher motor vehicle excise fee um we do have some concern because of the uh the sort of the difficulty and the lack of inventory for new vehicles that this that might push this number down in the future that's one of the reasons why we're being conservative here is you know I'm just thinking about our town vehicles we can't get vehicles right now the ones that we need um you know for at least six nine months um so that's just something to keep in mind here that that could influence this number to go down because there's less newer vehicles and the and the corresponding tax is a little bit lower going to Sean can I just add something to that um if you if you look at the fourth quarter report in the detail on there you'll see that three hundred and thirty two thousand dollars that this is from the previous year so we're still collecting from the previous year too if you look what was actually collected for the um current year in twenty two it was one point six so just kind of have to look at that too because sometimes there's lags coming in and I'll just jump in here because I think this is really is one of those economic indicator um lines because you know as people stop buying cars if they feel tight you know then that I think this is one we want to be conservative about we can be and just people know I wasn't being critical of it I do under I think this is the correct way to do a public budget yeah and Kathy I think your question is this is the area that I think is worth the most time being spent on because this is what really kind of reflects our community here so I think it was a great question and I'm glad we can go through these uh so hotel motel meals you can see what we're projecting for 24 is pretty consistent with what we brought in in 20 and 22 21 that was again where we had the big dip because of pandemic and a lot of things were shut down um this is a number that will keep bumping up when we see the numbers come in higher so if we see really big numbers you know through the first couple quarters this year that could go up a little bit but I don't see that number changing much because it's pretty consistent with our experience uh cannabis tax so cannabis tax was high you can see in 20 and 21 it dropped down in 22 when one of the dispensaries switched away from being a recreational dispensary and I looked at the first quarter receipt for 23 and it's really low so I just don't know if there's a shift away from sort of recreational sales or if eventually the the new recreational dispensaries in town will will push this number back up but the cannabis tax number is actually one I I think we might end up dropping if we don't see the second quarter uh tax payments for can recreational cannabis sales come in if that's not higher than than the first quarter I think we'll end up having to drop that um so that's one that might be a little bit too high at this point but it reflects what we thought we were going to get based on 22 um penalties and interest uh so that one again it's pretty consistent with what you see in 20 21 um and what we budget for 23 uh 22 had a really high um actually I think Jen mentioned this last night uh we collected a lot of tax title uh payments um and the corresponding fees that go along with it so there was a sort of a high again unusually large year in 22 um but that's not typically where that number is and so those are type of things we don't build into the budget it's great when we get them and it helps um build reserves but they're not things that are we can rely on every year uh pilot we know exactly what that is every year that's uh right now the only thing in our pilot section are our payments from our enterprise funds for their property so that's that number is a known number fees so these are impact fees that the vast majority are cannabis community host agreement fees these revenues are restricted in their in their use so when they come in we hold them they go into our reserves and our plan is to recommend something to you later this year on how to use those but they're not general revenues that they're by law they have to go into our general fund and go to free cash but in terms of what they can be used on it's not the same as other revenues where they can be used on anything there's restrictions so we're coming up with a plan of what we think would make sense uh for how to use these and the new cannabis legislation that recently was passed will likely eliminate or all or most of this revenue is what we anticipate the rules that were in place when we first created the community host agreements have been changed significantly and will again it will result in reductions to this revenue source long term so um this isn't a source we showed here because it is a general fund revenue but it's not something we that supports our operating budget but you will hear more about that in the spring uh rentals this is for rental of town space this number is pretty much a no number based on who our tenants are and what their rental agreements are departmental revenue uh so those are things like the rec department and you know fire department all those types of fees so a couple things to know you can see the number for FY 24 it's consistent with 20 and 21 again 22 was a spike I went in and looked at some of the variables that drove 22 to be higher than normal one thing was about was $70,000 of COVID relief money that was when they were giving municipalities money to help with the when staff were out and took the COVID leave so that number had a $70,000 of money that was a one-time thing that we're not going to get every year there was another something that we do periodically related to our liability funds where if we overfund something we release it it's a an accounting adjustment but it results in these sort of temporary uh increases in revenue in in there it's a sort of an accounting maintenance account so so that was a temporary thing and then the last one was oh sale of fixed assets we had about 20 or $30,000 of fixed asset sales um which is not something we rely upon for our budget every year because it's sort of comes and goes based on what's up for sale so when I took out those sort of one-time type revenues or infrequent revenues it brought it down pretty much in line with what we've budgeted the one other thing we're being conservative on in departmental revenues that's been driving the numbers up the last couple years as cherry hill has been doing really well like way better than they were the prior that you know pre-pandemic and so we have been slowly increasing cherry hill revenues but we're we haven't increased them to for example what we received last year because we're not sure if this is a temporary increase or if it's going to be a long permanent increase so cherry hill is one of those areas where we're being a little bit conservative we are increasing what we're projecting for revenue based from compared to the prior year's budget but we haven't increased it all the way up to where it was last year because it's so much higher than it was the prior couple years of experience licenses and permits so we brought that up significantly that's tied directly to all the development that's going on in town and hopefully the future development that will create revenue in this category so we have brought that up closer to what the hour has been the last few years special assessments is what we collect from UMass and the five colleges for PBTA offsets they pay a portion of our regional transit assessment so that's a we don't know that number right now we keep the prior year's number and what we'll do is we will get the exact we'll we'll get an estimate in December from the transit system that we will update this number with so we'll have a better figure there fines and forfeits again that's pretty consistent with what the history has been there FY 21 there was a really large amount of noise violations that were collected I don't know if it was an accounting thing or what but there was a huge increase in noise violations collected that one year which seems like 21 would be the year we wouldn't collect a lot of noise violations because of the pandemic so so so that was a little bit of a an odd thing but it's been in line with experience investment income so we've been trying to increase our investment income revenues slowly over the last three years I think when I first started it was around 60 000 we've increased it to 90 last year we're bringing up to 100 you know I'll talk to my treasurer and we'll see again what we think we're going to collect over the coming years but we're always a little conservative with this because you know how quickly interest rates can change that so the investment income is what we collect on our bank accounts base essentially and 20 you'll see a big year and 20 I think was the best year we ever had and it was because the treasurer had a whole bunch of CDs lined up that all came due in 20 FY 20 so all the earnings for those CDs all was recorded at the same time and our new treasurer is trying to outdo that year so that's the good news is our new treasurer is trying to is trying to beat that year so and then the last section is miscellaneous so this area has fluctuated a lot in recent years so back in FY 20 that was where strategic partnership agreement payments were held that was about 120 000 as you all may know the town no longer gets the strategic partnership agreement payments directly we don't get those anymore but the university does make payments directly to the school system so it was a little bit of a switch where the town doesn't get the money there's 200 000 that goes directly to the schools new money for them but we've lost a revenue source so that's one thing that's different the other thing in that area or the other big thing in that category is occupancy fees so occupancy fees have fluctuated wildly in the last few years this is the agreement we have with the hotel on campus that they make estimate they make a seven percent or six percent occupancy fee occupancy fee payment to the town and during the pandemic we received zero last year we received about 80 000 much lower than what we received in prior years and given the enrollment concerns there and the sort of the space concerns we've increased what we expect to receive a little bit but we're still being cautious on that until we see the revenue numbers go up more than where they've been and then the last thing there that drives that number up sporadically is something called supplemental taxes it's when there's a development that you that we can do a supplemental tax bill to it's not something that happens every year it's infrequent but when it does happen it can be a significant amount so for example if there was a new development and we valued them at one point in the year there's an opportunity for the assessor to go back and collect some supplemental taxes for the remainder of the year and when they're able to do that they were those revenues get reported here in the miscellaneous section and so but again that's not an every year thing it's sporadic so we don't typically budget it and so that's sort of a breakdown of our our local receipts thank you Bob is your question about local receipts here about a different topic a different topic let me just ask real quickly is there any questions about the local receipts report from other members of the committee yes I don't see anybody raising hands at this point Bob go ahead then yeah I I have a question about the expenditure side and it has to do with the table that you had on salaries and benefits I think it's not that one is it that one Bob well there's a there's a table not there's one that's detailed shown where you show the pension piece but you don't actually break out health insurance I don't think it's somewhere else in the table was it in this presentation or was it in the other I think it was in the report not necessarily presentation okay well what's your question I'll try to pull it up well the let me just the the question it's there's a chart in there that has total employee benefits total health benefits total retirement benefits and what I noticed was the total retirement benefits almost doubled from 2013 to 2022 whereas everything else was you know kind of in a reasonable range and I'm wondering whether that's just an artifact of you know all the changes that have been made in the retirement programs or whether that's something that we we need to keep our eye on in terms of retirement benefits kind of growing very rapidly yeah no that's a great question let me bring it up and I try to explain it a little bit last night but this is a better opportunity to be more clear let me just I've got the report up just trying to find that chart it's number 11 I think is that right yeah so you're talking about this one that has the retirement benefits were 3.8 and now they're up to 7.4 that one right yeah yeah yeah so our so this is one of the things that I mentioned when we were looking at the pie charts and why operating budgets have been squeezed a little bit and that miscellaneous section of that pie chart went up substantially so the pension system our increase each year is somewhere between six to eight nine percent and it's on a large number so if you take a you know pretty big percentage on a you know a large number it's a huge amount each year and so the reason this is is because in you know for many years municipalities and communities were not with holding enough money from their employees to cover the benefits that they promised them for their pensions and combine that with people living longer that there just wasn't enough money set aside so retirement systems have been forced to have actuaries come in and basically value what those obligations are to current retirees and future retirees how much money needs to be set aside and then the retirement systems not only have to withhold or assess enough money to make the benefit payments themselves but they have to assess money to build up a reserve so that they have enough money on hand to make to be able to satisfy all future obligations as well it's similar to our OPEB study but it's for retiree benefits and so when you look at our current pension assessment the majority of that pension assessment or at least half of that pension assessment is actually for this what they call unfunded liability for past shortages so this will continue for quite a while this will continue until the system is you know primarily fully funded at which their estimating will happen around 2033 or 2034 the good news is once the system is fully funded the anticipation at least by many municipalities is that our pension assessment will drop significantly you know by millions of dollars potentially once we have fully funded the system and so that's that other chart that I showed let me go back to the the one Sonia explained this one here so this blue bar this is the funding level of our pension system and so our pension system right now is about 62 percent funded as this goes up and when it gets to you know I'm not sure if it's exactly 100 percent or somewhere over 90 that they target when they get there the hope is that our pension assessment will drop significantly and we will at that point only have to make the payments for sort of our for our current retirees and no longer for that unfunded portion but until that time there will be large increases the other thing that impacts our pension number significantly is it's it's the the way the assessment works is it's divvied up based on the salaries of your Hampshire County employees so pretty much everybody in the town is Hampshire County is a Hampshire County employee meaning we belong to that retirement system at the schools it's about a 50-50 split maybe a little bit more where the teachers and some of the administrators belong to the mass teachers retirement system so it's a different system that we don't have to pay into directly and the rest belong to Hampshire County so they look at the value of all those salaries and they compare it to other members other member towns in the system like Belcher Town and I think South Hadley and many other communities and they divvied up based on that so our salary levels contribute to how large our pension assessment are and if we add new Hampshire County positions that also contributes to what portion of the assessment we represent so the point I wanted to make last night or for when we think about FY 24 we're going to see our pie our slice of that assessment grow as we add the salaries for the new crest department because that we're adding about 10 positions there they're all Hampshire County that's going to increase our slice of the assessment so you might see that we're going to see that cost grow a little bit more than normal in FY 24 right but the rate of growth is that going to continue until we reach that you know 2033 or wherever yeah no I can share so the the Hampshire County Retirement System they have they hold a meeting every November all the treasures go and they will share their their payment schedule or their funding schedule and so they you can see what they're projecting the amount of money they need each year is and you can see what the growth and the and the obligation is each year and so it is expected to continue to grow at a pretty significant rate until it's fully funded and the stock market makes a huge impact on that so as you know as the stock market does well that you know the value of their assets grow and that can help boost up their funded percentage so they'll take a step forward and then when we hit a recession or a crash on the stock market you know they'll take two steps back and they'll drop down so so it is uh you know it's it feels like we're not getting closer because every time we make gains you sort of fall back a little bit yeah well given what happened this year in the stock market we probably could five steps backwards okay thanks Javi I think I think Lynn had her hand up before me Andy I'm assuming as with most retirement systems that when our retirees reach 65 they go on medicare is that correct for health insurance yeah so but we're talking what we're talking about right now is the actual pension that they receive but for health insurance we if they're medicare eligible they move into medicare and we adopted a special program last year trying to reduce costs where we now incentivize you know we pay the penalties for people that have not moved into medicare we move them and we pay any penalties because it's cheaper for the town okay thank you definitely back to you okay um bob thanks for zeroing in on some big numbers Sean I just I had a question when you just said the teachers are in a different retirement system than hampshire county when you that line that bob was focused on is that cost in that line no so the town does not pay we do not so the mass teachers retirement system is state funded so we do not pay an assessment directly for mtrs or mass teachers retirement so there's no cost there's no cost for the teachers in that number so there's no cost for the town either so is it over in the school budget that we're not seeing or is there there's no there's no cost at all to us to the town or the schools for mass for teachers retirement again there's a cost the global us in terms of the state there's paying for it through taxes and so on but there's no assessment to the town of amherst for message for teacher retirement if the town or the school okay and then my other question on linds i'll ask it as a question but i think it's something i saw people reach the age of medicare we pay their medicare share of part b i think which was actually a pretty unusual from my years ago so we pay a wraparound coverage we're paying for benefits that's not in the core package but i think are we also paying the actual the part b i'm getting too techy here but it's not in that that fee has been going up um and i just yeah um so so i think you know our hr director would be the best one okay who's been our hr director for forever would be the best one to speak to it but we do reimburse for for part b and one of the you know one of the the things that amherst has does is is we do have strong retirement benefits both for the pension through hipster county and for health insurance amherst has made a commitment to its retirees and so we do have strong retiree health insurance benefits yeah so i wasn't it's just one of the things that pushes it up faster lin even when they hit medicare age because that that has been increasing to cover the cost of medicare yeah thank you yeah the one thing i'll just say that's that's interesting is for retiree health insurance um our medicare rates have actually stayed flatter gone down the last several years so what's pushing up our health insurance costs are is not the not the medicare rates it's the it's the the regular ppo hmo blue crossbow shield rates yeah medicare just got a great breathing room as the elderly stopped having elective procedures during covid because if if they went into the hospital they couldn't go back to wherever you know it was it was like a one time people were just astonished at the drop off in medicare medicare which isn't expected to continue well that's i think that's worth talking about that our health insurance projections then because that's probably the biggest driver in our budget right now uh because we've seen a big in our we went through um utilization rates just a couple days ago and the um use is way up for as you can imagine everybody who had deferred going into a hospital or getting procedures and what's happening what we're told is that people go in get a procedure find other things that they didn't address so all those things are now piling up and that's why they are um projecting eight percent the range is probably going to be bigger than that um we felt comfortable putting eight percent in but that actually gives me a little bit of nervousness but this is the best information they have at this moment in time and people were avoiding even doctors simply doctors appointment so yeah there's a lot of pent up demand it's it's pent up and then uh well we don't need to go into this it's it's a pressure point that unfortunately is coming back um and the hospitals are trying to recoup through private insurers the fact that medicare is tight on the way it pays i mean we heard that with our emt people they said medicare's payment for the ambulance ride doesn't doesn't come close to covering it um not that private does either although that is expected to increase that's that's other good news is that that is supposed to increase the the medicare reimbursements on the ambulance side so i just had before i wait for someone else but when you were showing the um the coming year you've gone ahead and done 10.5 for the capital allocation is that correct yeah so that's what i saw so there is a in terms of what's available for operating budget salaries benefits and everything else um we've gone up on capital as we talked about i mean i i realize that's a decision point that's part of our finance financial guidelines but that's what's in the charts we were looking at yes okay correct okay thank you um very quickly and then i'm actually interested in the kind of next discussion um do i assume none of our employees as active employees with the town pay into social security okay same as the state got it thank you okay um what i want to do real quickly is that we have four people in the audience three of whom are counselors and uh so this is not the complete public comment section but if there's anybody in the attendee group who has questions about the financial indicator report that was received last night um they should feel free to raise their hand and i'll uh get them recognized because i want to try and stay with themes for a bit but we will come back to general public comment okay so um seeing none i think the one other thing that i wanted to do for the benefit of our resident members of the committee for uh bernie and that would involve last night i don't know if you stayed on after the financial indicator and we watched any of the meeting itself where we received where we had public comment but during the public comment section we had a large number of members of the teacher's union who came and spoke in a very some very passionate presentations about frustrations that they have with how labor negotiations are proceeding and of course labor negotiations are we don't know because we're not a party to the negotiations so it's uh there's nothing you can do but to project but it would seem that in part it's available funds you always negotiate with what you project your revenue to be we as one member of this committee who asked the question there was not a question as much as it was a suggestion that more money be allocated to the schools and that not be an even amount percentage-wide is across the board for each of the expense pieces and there was uh we did not have any any real discussion of it there was a little bit sort of sympathetic discussion but no real discussion of it last night but it was a substantial amount of time in a very difficult thing for some members of the council because they're people that it's natural to care about our teachers who take care of educating our kids so I just wanted to let you know that because it's a context that is going to sort of get into some of the discussion we have going forward about the guidelines so I don't know if any other members of the community from the council side when they had to it I just said or just let it go on Kathy yeah I just wanted to just add you know because I didn't know whether Bob Ernie and Matt had been there but the focus of the comments we got were on the Paris um and on their their wage rate it wasn't on teachers overall so we um and and that was the story focusing on that entry level wage or that wage scale so it it just was it was um and my understanding is they are a subset of the larger negotiations so that's the only point I wanted to make um that it was a particular subgroup um that's it I'm shellice here in the two yeah I just wanted to note that there are some counselors in the audience that I know had particular concern last night or expressed that concern last night um and I also wanted to note that the question came up more than once about how and when we can have this discussion um and so I'm posing that to you Andy and maybe Lynn um I've heard some mixed things like well it's not our business to get into because it's contract negotiation um but then I hear that uh there are ways that we may be able to at least have a discussion about whether a larger percentage is attributed to the schools and then I hear that even if we are to do that we don't get to choose how the school will use that money so there's like a lot of complexity around this and I think particularly for new counselors it would be really helpful for us to have an understanding of what it is that we can control um even if it means having a discussion that doesn't feel comfortable or that we're not that we haven't it hasn't been status quo but like what discussion can we have and which pieces can we are not ours to have and then how and when can we have those discussions so I just appreciate a little bit of thought going into that so that we can be clear as counselors on that piece Bernie I'd be concerned about any attempt to do an end run around the school committee and they're negotiating um it's really the school committee's responsibility hopefully with guidance from good labor council um about what how what and how they want to settle so um I'm automatically concerned when someone does an end run or comes to the finance committee or any in or the council and says hey look you know uh do something about this it's really the school committee's responsibility um our prepuple expenditure is one of the highest in state I think there's only one other school district in western mass comes close to matching ours that's always a factor and school committees are authorized to spend their budgets for any lawful purpose so if we give the school committee an extra million dollars and they decide they want to um take everybody to the opera everybody goes to the opera um I literally have that have the tap in the belcher done when you're not to the opera but uh the symphony it's frank city hall and it wasn't a million dollars but we have a good theater department we don't need to take them anywhere you know so um so yeah I just would be careful about uh our questions about uh um people doing an end run well yeah so I think Michelle you asked the three appropriate questions right so what is the council's role is probably the most pivotal one um you know so this is the school committee's in collective bargaining with the teacher's union there's a process well established legal process where that you know they have been at it for a long time there's processes when you don't reach an agreement how you process that it goes through our because the mediation uh fact finding all the different processes and that's where they're working their way through right now um you know I'm I worry when the council members start to make statements about um the um deserved ability or whatever the town's finances are that's always visible into these discussions this information is public information that counselors are saying in a public meeting so that's all available I think it's important to know what the council's role in this situation is and that is you are the appropriating authority for the budget and so this the second question is can we give more money to the schools if you want it to and the answer is that's part of what your discussion is going to be about the budget guidelines is what how do you want to allocate the town's budget um but the third thing you said is we don't control how the schools spend that money and that's absolutely true it's a bottom line number they get one number and they can spend it all on increases they can spend it on you know whatever it is they they so choose um I think it's important to recognize that there are three elected bodies you know the the trustees the library trustees the school committee and um town council and you each have different responsibilities for different things so making sure people observe what their responsibilities are um you know the the I would assume I don't know and so I don't want to assume anything actually um and then also just as we start to consider this um you know I think the council is important for the council that understand um how it responds to things like this because um if um there are probably I have three I have three other major negotiating teams who if this is a successful strategy they'll be here in front of you in no time every every every union will learn that this is the way that you influence behavior in the town of Amherst and I think we have to be careful about that because the council has a role in terms of appropriating funds and choosing how that those funds are divided up and whether it's you know I think we've been very successful at saying we're all in the team we're dividing up the pie equally but the council has the ability to say we don't want to do that anymore that's a that's a conversation for you to have in terms of where your priorities lie um that and then once that those priorities established and we take that message from the council we run with it and we build our budget um so when you say two and a half percent this goes to the town that doesn't mean that every department gets two and a half percent it means we start to dig into every department say what are your needs what are your values we what we have to do these new initiatives how we build that in what are we not going to do so I think that um you know everything that council does you are high profile you you saw it last night all those folks you know 40 whatever people were there at night last night because you matter and they want to get your attention and you give them really very compassionate attention which is the right thing to do um but in terms of how you how actions you take comments you make um everybody you know I can tell you other school other um departments uh not departments other um employee groups are watching this see what happens with this because we're going to do it too so just I just want to just sort of like how this all works out so I know you know a lot of this but I just needed to say it out loud after last night's meeting Andy can I just ask one final I really appreciate that Paul thank you that's very very helpful I just have one clarifying question um so the negotiation that's occurring now and the budget that we're looking at for the future are they separate can I so one thing I probably might if I weigh in on that so I just want to clarify the the contract right now the schools that's being discussed begins began on July 1st of 2022 it was an FY 23 being the first year so what you're talking about are guidelines for 24 so so there is a little bit of a difference in terms of you know you're what you're thinking about in terms of guidelines when that would impact the funds the school committee would have available perfect thank you very much Sean yeah you know sort of several of the points that I was making at the end of the meeting last night again the president members today weren't there but pointing out that we are in a difficult situation because we start with revenue and which is we look at what revenue is available and then we're dividing up revenue when you get to dividing up revenue we're making decisions and if we decide to give more to one group because of a special need within that one group for the year it's got to come from somewhere else and so what is it that we're going to reduce reducing allocations for operations to other departmental areas you know within the three major groupings are and I frequently call functional areas or do you reduce capital because that's about the only thing we can really control because everything else is mandated expenditures and so we have that difficulty with the schools themselves we have to recognize that there's regional schools for middle school and high school and there's element elementary schools and so but the negotiations because it's a single bargaining unit it's not entirely separate question and so that there's a lot of issues plus as I as Paul just pointed out there's the flow over to what's going to happen and other bargaining units that have compelling arguments of their own so all of these are difficult issues that have to be worked through but when we deal with the guidelines we do need to think about this question which is why it's important to have a discussion and I think the last thing I just said for disclosure purposes you know I'm sympathetic to teachers my son was president of the teachers union district that he was working in probably was president for about five years so I know all about this process I heard hearing about it many times from that side too but you know we have to do what's appropriate Paul I just want to add one other thing is that so for the town side we have three bargaining units that have settled three that have not settled so we've settled with DPW two units at the DPW in the firefighters and some of it is there there's a trust in terms of how we treat the the next set of bargaining units you know unions often try to get what they call most favorite nation status which means they get the best deal that the town cuts with anybody else we always resist that because everything is a standalone agreement and we also will prioritize different things and and well you know every bargaining unit can every bargainer can do that and say we want to put more money here versus there and when you look at individual salaries you unpack all the salary ranges and you say this needs to be adjusted so there's flexibility it's not just often across the board but I think that's being true to our bargaining units that have already settled is an important value for me and so that's how we but it doesn't preclude us having I'm not negotiating public here with anybody obviously we are always open to any proposal from any of our units so well thank you so the reason that I'm led with this is that that second page which is on the budget priorities for the for the expenses side that's really what the guidelines principally are dealing with because the revenue side you know is largely spoken for already and you know we can get into questions about whether some portion of our reserves is needed supplemental budget whether we take a different view on the override question that the recommendation that had come yesterday was that we not consider an override for this year and there was a little bit of discussion about that but we are going to have to focus on the expenditure side and at the next meeting I think that's really what we're going to be largely digging into I think that the other thing that happens in the that I mentioned last night on the expenditure side is that they're also what kinds of unique projects because I think though we've generally said is that maintaining current services that are relied upon by our community are important and that it's a high priority and then to the extent possible these are other things that are important that's how we tend to deal with the guideline draft and the guidelines that ultimately get enacted by the council so those are the you know kind of the roadmap of the major decisions I would urge you to go back and reread last year's guidelines and I can send them to you afterwards because I think the last year's guidelines are helpful to understand where we're going to be going or this year's guidelines too I mean it's a it's been a useful sort of template if you will to work from so that's sort of the process piece that's coming next and we really are going to have to get into those questions including the one that we've had some discussion on on each of the line items for how much goes into operating budget how much goes into capital whether the division is equal it's really important that we look at the expenditure page and whether you feel comfortable with it and what else we want to say and that is the discussion that we're going to have today was sort of to help us get started but not to have the discussion itself but I know we're not going to have that discussion today I'm feeling very concerned about even the slightest message that suggests that we would cut the town's budget meaning we lose positions and how that sounds to our employees and so I want to just be up front I'm not in favor at all of changing this formula and I do not want to send a message to our employees in all levels that we are looking to cut because if we start out this budget season with that message out there we're in serious trouble and my sense is we are fiscally okay we may have some challenges my sense is that Sean probably can also tell you at this point whether he thinks you know we can fund our continue to fund the programs and the safety and so forth that we presently have but let's not start sending a message that we're looking to cut this town's budget to raise another budget because that means people are worried about their jobs and they should not be I've said all I can say I just want to come in and emphasize a strong agreement with Lynn I think in our evaluation of Paul one of the things that many of us picked up is how multitasking our municipal employees are we have been we are really tight on the municipal side and Bernie you said we are high when we compare to per student or per resident on school spending we are not high on the municipal side we're low on the municipal side and it's been a tight budget for good reasons I'm not saying that we're not but I think we have to be focused townwide we've just added a crest department we've added DEI we are we are managing with extremely tight resources um so I I think we need to be thinking townwide and just so everyone knows when the library comes in one of the things the library has been doing is going to a group called under 20s under 20 doesn't mean age it means if you don't work 20 hours you get no fringe benefits um as their strategy for so we've we got these budget pressures all over the town um so I I think we we need to be really careful and um do what's right for the whole town yeah I have one other topic I'm going to bring up quickly and then go back to public comment so that because it is getting to five or five um Michelle I don't think I understand what you meant Lynn could you clarify are you saying that in order to change that if we if that formula were to be changed it would impact other people's jobs because you just I know that sounds that is exactly what I am saying yes could you just say a little bit more about that like how that would how that happens when you look at a budget from a revenue standpoint this is how much money we have it means the moment you cut something one place or add something one place you have to cut it from another place and so the only way we can give money more money to any to the schools the library I don't care which it means we have to cut someplace else so the discussion last night that was so disturbing to me was people suggesting that we should cut our municipal budget to fund our schools now I'm all for our schools but I am not in favor of cutting one position from the municipal budget not one and and the minute we start playing with that that's exactly what we're going to be having to do because we are predominantly personnel and other things okay but just one quick follow up to that so is that the same as looking at our salaries across the board and making sure that they're equitable and in line with other municipalities like has how does the equity lens get applied across the board of all of our personnel do a salary study and then develop a plan to increase them over time if you need to or make adjustments over time and that is part of negotiations so sorry Linda so that is part of negotiations where you do one of the first things you do in negotiations is a salary comparison to comparable districts so I'm sure that has been done and one thing we've you know Paul is committed to is periodically on at least on the town side I'm not sure what the schools are doing at least on the town side doing a periodic look at the competitiveness of our salaries to our neighboring towns to make sure that we're not falling too far behind Northampton did something recently a few years ago where they did that and they determined that they were behind quite a bit and they made some adjustments I think we did it recently with one of our bargaining units as well so I think there's ways to do it and I as part of collective bargaining that's something that I think is always done okay and does that apply to like the equitable like so I'll just be really blunt here there was one public comment that was talking about certain salaries in the police department for example so yeah so I remember that comment I think the thing to be we just need to think about when those numbers are thrown out specifically with police that we don't know how many hours were worked to to make those numbers and we don't know who paid for the I mean we know the town paid but many with the police department many hours are paid through details meaning an outside entity pays us to then pay them and so that that's really private work that again we're sort of a we're an agency for flows through us but so so it's just one thing to be when those numbers are thrown out you really have to dig a little deeper to understand what really their salary is versus maybe they worked a lot of overtime because there were a lot of details in town and nobody else wanted them so again it can be a little not misleading but you just have to really dig into the numbers to know to compare apples to apples okay thank you so my last question that I was going to ask before turning to public comment is Cress I wanted to make sure that as you have constructed the budget that you've looked in field that continuation of the positions that we have created particularly in that department we'll get to fire later but the Cress is planned for the for the year for the current staffing yep so so just to give a little background how this works so we started this level where we get a sense from you all what you're thinking in terms of allocations to the high level department so town elementary schools region Jones library and then once we have a sense of that we take what that take that number and then we look at our detailed on the ground level expenses and we project it forward and see can we fund everything we currently have within the allocation that is within the guidelines so at this point you know until we know exactly what the number is going to be you know it's hard to say for sure but we're that's the plan is to fund everything we currently have next year and in addition to that the plan is to phase fund everything we currently have next year and also start to bring in those firefighters that you mentioned so that they're within the operating budget as well that so I think one thing that you know can support everything that's being talked about is if we continue to focus if we if there are any revenues that come in better than expected or stated comes in better than expected if those increases are put into operating budgets that will help the schools that will help the town achieve our goals in terms of funding new positions it'll give the schools more money to work with as well I think that's really where any new funds that come in need to be focused for at least the next year or two so I just want to say so that everybody understands what I'm getting at to make sure that my understanding is correct and that I've conveyed it to others and then I want to recognize Alicia hasn't had a chance to speak today but then she hasn't asked to and Lynn and then I do public comment but Cress we funded initially is through grants for the purpose of one-time expenditures capital build out of the bank center space for them and original original expenditures that were not expected to be recurring and that we did not build salaries into grants because salaries grant grants expire the where we were at an awkward place is the firefighters because that was funded out of our funds for those four additional positions and that DEI was funded by shifting previous staff positions into those so that again it was not anything that was based upon one-time funding so that Cress there is not a concern about one-time funding having gone into it that needs to be picked up with additional expenditures that the only place that that goes is is a concern is the four firefighters so if I have that wrong you'll speak up and if I don't I'll recognize Alicia Alicia thank you I'm wondering how did we come up with our current budget formula and for how long have we been using it so if you mean formula in terms of equal increases for departments Sonya you may be best to speak to that you've probably got the Andy or Sonya you may have the best history around the finances you know my understanding is that we've always wanted to promote collaboration among all the departments and to avoid pitting departments against each other and so when you do the same increase across the board there's sort of a shared interest among all departments as opposed to them having to lobby against each other for a higher increase like I can say since I've been comptroller since 2000 the year 2000 it has been this way and I'm sure it was that way before and it was always for equity to make sure everyone was getting the same percentage and was that true across to the schools and to the library as well absolutely yep yes you know that's uh when I came on to the original finance committee which is now getting close to 20 years ago those essentially were the same that we did not that and so the percentage increase has been pretty much the same every year for that entire period that I can recall it also allows departments to plan forward a little bit I know when I was at the schools you know the two and a half percent was sort of the the going increase in a normal year and so it allowed us to look forward and do some long-range planning that you wouldn't be able to do if there wasn't an you know sort of a common expectation each year so frankly the numbers that were the base have to go back to people who are no longer involved in town government and no longer can be consulted because some of them are not even live anymore I would expect but uh we really have to go back and look at very old budgets and try and see if we can see how far back it goes but that's a piece of research work not sure that I would have spent too much time on it so Alicia does that answer your question yes thank you um and I just have a follow-up question because so when we are or so what I got is that we can we have been using this budget process and it was constructed however much time ago considering all of the different departments in the town and so has there been any consideration to constructing a new process because we have new departments or do we just put the new departments into the same loop in the old budget process or how does it work since we have new departments that didn't exist when we came up with the formula can I try to address that yeah that's a good question so when we talk about equal percentages we talk about equal percentages between the libraries the schools and the town we don't mean equal percentages within those frame the schools then divide up their budget as they see fit and then we look at our budget the two and a half percent or whatever it is we get from the from the taxes and we look at our all of our budgets and uh including you know town hall budgets crest police fire and then we look at um what the salary needs are for each one of those they don't all guess get two and a half percent you know one department might have more people getting step increases so they might need more money another one might have everybody maxed out and and their salary structures change so each but each department is looked at independently and their needs are looked at independently we as a as a town have to keep our budget under the two and a half percent that the town council allocates so overall each of our departments is you know our whole project our whole budget will be under the two and a half percent but within that independent individual departments might be slightly different yeah and um my other thought about this whole thing is i've dealt with it over the years is that do you consider other factors outside factors um in making this decision i think that it's something we've always not pursued because there's a whole lot of difficulties in doing so the clearest example is falling enrollment in schools and whether falling enrollment in schools should be considered in the amount that you give to schools or should you decrease the amount that you contribute to schools you know there's a comment made about we have one of the highest per pupil expenditures in the commonwealth and certainly in the western part of the state um and that's very much true and some of that is driven by the fact that per pupil expenditure increases if you decrease the number of pupils that you have it's just pure arithmetic but then the question is how much of it is fixed cost and how much of it is variable cost but in the end you know i always answer the question to uh we're buying quality education and that's what it's about and uh so i haven't ever gone down that route but certainly it's something that i'm aware others have talked about and i've had some former counselors who've raised that question with me lin just two other comments one about the schools and that is that and i really garnered this from listening to the school building committee and the school committee as they set the program for the new school and that is we've really changed our approach to special ed in emerson we do a lot more in-house than we used to do and that also means we have more paras per students than we used to be because many of the paras are in fact in the special ed area all of that is still the school committee's responsibility i actually really urge people to go and watch school committee discussion and watch superintendent morris talk about the shift in how what we've done with our schools particularly as it relates to special ed but the other thing is that when i say people in you know keeping people in town all i mean all public safety i mean police i mean the four for additional fire people i mean our commitment to crest we're still in the beginning stages of this and trying to figure out what that model is and yet right now we know we don't have the staff we need so anything else that we can talk about today otherwise i want to honor the commitment to public comment so i see two hands up in the public comment side actually are both counselors it turns out though i anybody who's in the attendee group and wishes to be recognized i see three now i'm going to go in the order in which i believe that they raised hands which would be to start with shallony so far whoever's holding can bring shallony in and by the way i can't bring all counselors in because we would then have a forum problem i can only deal with this as public comment for that reason shallony hello yes thank you um i really appreciated hearing um paul's perspective and lin's perspective on this so i just want to make a couple of points because i was one of the people who was really moved yesterday and i still am so i just wanted to clarify what how i'm thinking about this so one definitely don't want to get in the middle of negotiations between union and school committee i think having those clear boundaries is really important as has been mentioned second i want to say we have a school committee and trusting them as our elected body is really important and not trying to you know like say oh they you know like whatever so we just that in my mind that's really important we have an elected body and we have to publicly and anyhow support them or trust them in what they're doing the third thing is there was a mention of salaries of teachers versus police and i just did a quick review and of course these are averages there's a lot of complexity in this information number of hours and whatnot but at least this is just because it was brought up seeing from the department of education the teacher's average salaries in amherst pelham was 85 000 and amherst elementary is 80 versus north hampton is 65 000 in pelham it's 70 in hadley it was 69 belcher town 74 so just just so that people kind of have that sense that we are you know we do value this is again in my personal opinion this is still low but but just to say that as a town we do value our education and educators which is why we offer better salaries than our neighbors um and police i looked at the same then like what is how are we placed with the police and the average amherst police is 75 000 north hampton is 75 and hadley 75 so in terms of police we're paying the same averages again this is one website more in but just as a i don't know for me it was like okay that's interesting that police we're paying the same as our neighbors but teachers we're paying way higher that's one thing the other thing i wanted to say though was it's the paras again that um the low salary which i think is a values discussion and it's not again just amherst it's not a school committee it's just collectively i think it's important for us to pause i feel it's important for us to pause and have that conversation about and it sounds like having it in the budgets where was that budget committee budget guidelines no budget something committee coordinating coordinating committee okay it's reading your lips a budget coordinating committee because i think having a someone represented it from the school committee would be important to give have be part of that conversation and figure out what to do and for that matter then maybe we need to look at the salaries throughout our and you know revisit that as a separate conversation of the lower level lower entry i don't know what the word is but salaries for that and there was just one last thing oh oh yeah and again like the what i also heard was this cola and the cost of living but there's also steps and other increases that teachers are getting which i didn't know about and so i think just it's just to say that we really don't have information when when we hear things i think it's important for us to listen and then be able to find where is the right place to have that conversation and also to support the people who are coming to us like hey we are listening to you and here is where you need to have that conversation here is what we can do just that clarity of role and we're all speaking the same language then and and helping each other that's all thank you well thank you shall we um whoever's uh managing to uh she bring Pam Rooney and since she was next in line so that we have Pam how you need to unmute yourself and welcome i thank you i i don't think i was supposed to come in as a panelist i have a very mundane question compared to what was just asked and that is for my benefit and for anyone else listening is there an actual phase called budget guideline development um or is this does this you know 40 000 put perspective uh is that just a general discussion and does that constitute budget guidelines if someone wants to participate for instance on the 21st is there also a form or uh any other venue besides just you know basically following in on the zoom call okay um that would be great to get an answer to yeah i don't um shun you've done with capital youth um yeah i do i mean it so so so budget guidelines it is an actual phase and it's a document it's a document that the finance committee will produce and it will be brought to the council and you'll vote on it um and i think what's important is on the 21st is whatever you hear on the 21st should be part of the discussion at this body if especially if you hear something uh in prevalence that there's lots of strong comments to a certain area um that would be something you would want to discuss and make sure is you know whether you agree with it or disagree with it that'll all get put into the budget guidelines um that will be brought to the council and voted on so the budget guidelines it's an actual document that you vote it's tangible and it's something that paul and i use to guide the development so it is a distinct phase and i think in terms of again people can can provide input into the budget guidelines or the uh either by giving oral comments at the hearing they can also email um counselors then and that can be forwarded to the finance committee for consideration they can email paul or myself um you know they can communicate it any way they'd like and in any for any format they'd like that really was i was going to just say we this is a time and this is one reason why we make sure people know this is the time for people to be emailing us to make public comment to use the online submission form to go to engage amherst.org to mention this at town count at uh district meetings if this is the time jeffy yeah i i just realized that counselors who just came on um the last time may not have seen the budget guideline document so what we could do andy is just share last year's you know that this was what came out last year um you know so you would get a sense of the document that the council then goes to work on and the council can send it back you know it comes out as a draft so there is a document that comes out of all of this and it would be posted but i i we discuss it in december and the new counselors would have all been seated in january so they weren't part of that last time around so i just think it would be good to share it to show what it looks like yeah i think that it was shared actually but um anyway lisha can tell us that lisha um sorry i have sort of a completely different question um but yeah so i think you know the budget process i mean going off of what kathy said it did happen before we were seated um and i think this is one of the processes that a lot of people in town are the most interested in learning um in terms of my observations from trying to participate last year and i think my confusion comes from why we ask town members to provide input in the budget process if we have no intentions of changing the way that we approach the budget process so i oh i can respond to that i don't think it's that there's no intention i think the comments again go to the people who build the budgets and they um have the opportunity to reflect that in their budget proposal um again an example is you know there was feedback and input around crests um that was ultimately put into a budget proposal under our current system um and there's been other you know there's been other examples of things that have been um discussed or put into the budget guidelines again for example the four firefighters was something that has been noted um you know that's we're working through putting that into the to the process so i think the the feedback and the process are two different things and i think our our process is set up right now to solicit feedback um get them to the budget guidelines and then that goes to the town manager to try to incorporate what he can i'm sorry i just have a follow up to that that was helpful but then i'm wondering and so how do those two pieces work together i mean that along with the initial uh formula that we use so how do those two pieces work together like do we just use the initial formula to come up with a baseline uh baseline budget and then we're using the feedback to make small alterations or i'm trying to understand how those two pieces go together yeah so um so i think we can talk i think we should dive into this more when we talk about the guidelines next time but based on the feedback you receive it may influence the decisions that uh or influence what you put into the budget guidelines so for example if you get a lot of feedback um at the at the forum to you know add new positions or to increase salary levels or to do something like that the the what i would translate that to is that we need to increase operating budgets and so that could be something that goes into budget guidelines to recommend that operating budgets are increased for example um if you get feedback that the uh you know vehicles are in disrepair or in bad shape or roads more roads need to be done that could be translated into the budget putting into the budget guidelines that more money needs to be put into capital um so i think we've put out sort of a baseline based on the revenues we have but now your discussion is to hear the feedback from the community and then look at the different levers that are in the as andy pointed out really the expense side of the projection we shared um that's just a baseline for you guys for you all to make recommendations against um so again that that's a starting point and yeah we will take uh you know the feedback we receive and then the guidelines that you all develop and adjust accordingly thank you um just wanted to actually address one other thing that came up real quickly and then back to the rest to the rest of you and back there's one more public comment we need to hear um budget coordinating group came about because for a while there was this um dynamic occurring at town meeting where um advocates for say the schools would come in and make a try and organize a large presentation and try and lobby within town meeting to get a larger slice of the pie at the expense of some other piece uh units or whatever and um it was not a healthy process it was not easy being on the finance committee which was at that point a committee of the town meeting um to have that kind of process going on on the floor of town meeting and um it was uh in order to get around that the uh then finance director in a couple of us on the finance committee came up with the idea of a budget coordinating group that would be representatives of each of the elected boards to try and see if we could address those issues in a different forum and then get unanimity so that we could have support from the school committee and library trustees and the select board going into town meeting to not have that happen and that that was the history of the budget coordinating groups formation and it sort of has just continued since since that time into our new form of government because it was incorporated into the charter um Kathy um you know I'm aware there's still a public comment but I just want to make one quick observation in my time on the council there have been not just tweaking the budget but there have been major shifts I mean when when you're talking about spending a million dollars more on something that you weren't spending anything on anymore um within the capital budget we have a sustainability fund we have a building maintenance fund that didn't exist before we've shifted we've shifted the way we we've got a climate change goal and we've shifted a lot of emphasis so it's it's um I talked last night about being in a box we're in the box of our revenues but within that I think we have been pretty remarkable as a town um and that's reflected in these initial guidelines but it's also reflected in the way the town staff goes out and gets additional grant money to support the efforts where we where we don't have enough money to do what we want to do so the I think all of these discussions have a lot of impact um on uh each year and over a four-year period since I came on there's been a big shift so I just I just want to say it's not it's not small when these are and and meanwhile there's kind of nothing we can do about health insurance which is the thing I used to work so there's this thing that's kind of sucking money out of us that we're not in control over but I just so I just want to turn it back to I think this is an important period that we're in in November um and um the the more input we get because we have to make choices and that's where we're we're giving if you have to make choices put the emphasis here or there so I think it's just really important to have that these these are not easy choices given that we're in the box of our revenue yeah I also as much as it's critically important that we kick off the fiscal planning for next year in November the reality is as counselors both at large and district counselors we're listening all the time and one of the really important things about both Michelle and Alicia pushing on this question tonight is you know I realize some of us have become a little too set in how do we do this so that we're having a hard time explaining it but you know I'm listening to my district I'm listening frankly as you know I go to just about every district meeting I can make and I hear in those districts what's important to them is it sidewalks in district three is that the condition of roads in district two and one you know it's just all kinds of things and so we bring that to the table when we start this budget discussion in November and it's part of what shapes how we think about things throughout and I think Kathy um you really focused on the changes that we've made in the capital area but we've made some serious and really terrific changes in the operating area and it's making our town be noticed and people are looking and saying look at what they're doing can we do that so and that's not been easily done given the constraints of the amount of money we have but as so as we go into this period or is now that we're in this period I just urge people to bring their how they've been hearing for the whole last year even as you were running for office bring that with you to this conversation that's all thank you okay thank you um could we bring Tony in hi Tony thank you for your patience hi thanks um yeah I missed some of the meeting so I apologize if my comments are out of place but I wanted to pick up on a thread that I think Michelle was getting at of wage equity within and across town departments it would be helpful if those salary studies that were mentioned could be made publicly available um so interested parties could look at that I don't recall seeing such a study before when I look at the gross pay from 2021 for town staff there were 49 employees that earned above $100,000 as Sean said that does not translate to their base salary as it could include overtime for roadwork details etc but it's still a very high pay to the best of my knowledge school employee salaries are not made publicly available and are only accessible by filing a public records request in 2020 I filed such a request so I have the fy 19 figures for the schools it can be a little confusing since there are separate spreadsheets for the elementary district and the regional district and the job titles are not listed for central office staff or any staff that support both the elementary and regional districts I have to add their salaries from each district together as still there are some earning more than $100,000 per year if counselors feel strongly that power professional pay scales and hours are too low as I do especially when I see Popeyes fried chicken pays $18 per hour you could communicate to the regional school committee that you would like them to review salaries and wages across the board as they work through collective bargaining looking at the feasibility of redistributing some of the funding from the higher paid employees to the lowest paid employees rather than trying to find a way for the town to allocate more to the schools as you know amor spends sorry as you know amor spends a lot more per pupil in neighboring districts and when asked why that is the superintendent has said that we have more staff and we pay them more certainly we do have more staff per 100 students than other districts but perhaps the paying more is more limited to those on the higher end of the pay scale while I would not support giving the schools a higher percentage of the property tax levy than they receive currently a more equitable distribution of the funding allocated to the schools in addition to a staffing review to see if staffing levels are appropriate could help address the pay inequality and pay power professionals a more equitable wage thank you thank you Tony so with that I think that we've pretty much concluded the agenda there's one two additional things that I can handle very quickly if you're willing one is the minutes we have a backlog of minutes and Kathy and I have reviewed four sets of minutes and made some minor changes nothing of major substance I don't know if anyone else from the committee has done those those are the first foreign dates a b c and d so they're the minutes of may 9 a 24 may 26 and may 31st and if we're somebody's comfortable if you're comfortable with moving them as I'm knowing that Kathy and I have reviewed them and made the minor changes will be thought of as appropriate I would take a motion on that otherwise I will send them out to the committee for future meeting Lynn I move that we approve the minutes for I can get pull up the thing so I can read the dates may 24 may 26 31 as stated thank you is there a second as there a second that it's has amended second Miller okay so any discussion on that it's not I'm gonna just quickly go through the list to get votes Bob Higner Matt Matt Holloway may have stepped away yeah I'm gonna go in support uh Bernie said yes okay cut that not as a yes let's see uh continuing on alphabetically uh Michelle Miller hi Kathy yes I mean yes uh Alicia Walker yeah uh Lynn yes and I think did we do Bob I think we did so it's unanimous um so the in the last thing that I was just going to say mention is the question of next meeting and what the meeting plan is and we had scheduled our next meeting for the 21st going on the pattern of every Tuesday following a council meeting 22nd 22nd 22nd right for the committee 21st for the council I'm sorry thank you we did schedule an additional council meeting last night but that doesn't mean we have to schedule an extra committee meeting unless there's a feeling that we could make progress on the um on the guidelines um the disadvantage of doing that is that the forum itself I believe is on the 21st and the extra meeting doesn't it comes before the forum uh so um as of right now we would have essentially two more meetings to do the first draft of the guidelines and if there's anybody who feels that we need one additional meeting this is the time to speak up because there's going to be a lot of discussion a lot of work in two meetings time Kathy so Andy you're you're saying we're meeting on the 22nd then then we don't meet again till the 6th of December that's correct no um go back and get my uh list up I had it in front of me uh I think I'm correct because um I am correct right Lynn yes so I think we might need another meeting on the 29th is because if we're get a draft that we can all work on done um we might need to because we have to get it done to the council we're we're trying to get this done by January is that correct I I just you know so I'm just looking at uh one meeting and then meeting again on the 6th unless we are make I think we need a tentative meeting on the 29th that we could always give up if we are just brilliant on the 22nd and get so far with our discussion that we are we've got a good working draft by the 6th that's just my thought um on because this is coming kind of late in November I support the idea of holding the 29th and I have a little bit of self-interest because I might have to miss a piece of the meeting on the 22nd but I do want to participate I I just have a family issue that needs me to be in New York but I'm going to try to be there so anyway that's what would be my suggestion to you and the only other alternative than I want to recognize Michelle the only other alternative to consider would be having an extra meeting a week from today to begin work but then it's before the forum I think it's too soon I mean I think we really need to have the forum happen and uh be looking at all of us looking at last year's draft so we come in with a framework yeah Michelle I just I wanted to follow up with you Andy um you mentioned last night coordinating with GOL on the town manager goals so I don't know if that's just something that you and I can talk about separately or how that plays into I wasn't exactly sure how you envisioned that I think we just like to know is what the proposal is coming forward on the goals and that we get that incorporated when you look at the guidelines now make sure that I get them sent out again tonight just so we don't people that have to go looking for them the question of what what it is that we want to have focused is a has a specific section within the last few years guidelines and we've tried in that section to say these are the highest priorities for additional things that need attention to make sure that there's coordination between the two documents but you know to a large extent we've not viewed that as a primary discussion to initiate in the finance committee we've tried to look at that as a primary issue to focus in the committee that's working on the manager goals got it okay thank you so um I think that what's most important than what you just asked and I appreciate you're asking it is the timeline of when you think there'll be sufficient progress on the goals that you can provide guidance in your dual role as a member as chair of that committee and a member of this committee you're in an ideal position to provide us a guidance and you have to tell us well you can do so okay thank you I will I will I will look at the calendars and then I'll coordinate with you and get back to you so we're leaving it though we're not scheduling a next term meeting for next week and so that we all know what the schedule is that said um any I have no unanticipated business to bring up anybody else says things that they didn't anticipate otherwise I think but we are holding the 29th is that correct yes the request is to hold the 29th as an additional possible date and to recognize that the 22nd is the next scheduled meeting and we're holding the 29th additional I assume that's agreed so that said I gotta think I can declare that the uh highest committee meeting of uh November 8th is adjourned thank you