 Yeah, I'm going to, it's recorded now. I just pushed the button. So I'm going to call the Council, excuse me, the Council's Finance Committee meeting of May 9, 2023 to order at 5.30 p.m. And I want to just remind anyone who's watching from the audience that this meeting is being held by Zoom members of the public have access to the meeting by Zoom and please be advised that this meeting is being recorded. And I'm just going to make sure that everybody who I know is present can hear and be heard. We have several members of the Council who are present, but we do not have a quorum of the Council. And so let me just do that quickly. And I'll start with Lynn. Present. Anna Dublin-Gathier. Present. Anna. I'm sorry. That's okay. Bob. Present. Ed Hallway. Present. We know that Kathy's absent and I have not seen Bernie or Alicia. And members of the Council. Excuse me, I'm Dorothy. You're Dorothy Pam. I'm here. Pam Rooney is here. Yeah, I am here. Pam, you heard us. Okay. To acknowledge it. So let me just say very quickly. To acknowledge that I really appreciate the school committee. Being here for the meeting that was scheduled before. I realized that today is a Namur school committee day. And the meeting is. That meeting has been posted for that reason. We were not going to do public comment at the beginning of the meeting, which is. But it's become our normal practice, but we're going to wait until after we have a chance to talk about school budget. And we are going to go straight to that topic. And I know that there have been a series of questions. That have been put together. And that they've been transmitted. To the superintendent and. Doug slaughtered the school finance director. And I don't know if Allison has seen the questions. That were submitted in advance or not. But we try and get the questions. If we can, as many as possible. So. Anna, you have your hand up. I do. I have a quick just disclosure. I am filing a disclosure form with the town clerk's office. My mom is an employee of the Amherst school system. However, as this budget, the town council does not determine budget items within the school budget. We merely vote on the total budget generally. So I'm, there is not a conflict of interest here. No action that I take will impact my mom's salary. So I am remaining in the room for the conversation and we'll be back in a minute. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. And I see the Jennifer Cobb is not here. Jennifer, I assume you can hear us. Yes, I can. Thank you. Okay. So with that said, we have all received a cop. The budget was in the packet for today's meeting. And Lincoln was sent some time ago to members of the committee. And I think the other councilors have had a chance to see the budget. And I don't know if there's anything that you want to say in advance, Sean, or should I just. Yeah, I'll just quickly. Doug, I guess the best format would be to give a quick overview. And then there were a number of questions submitted for the school. So I think going through those questions, Doug. And then we can open up to the committee just to make sure nobody asked the same question that was already sent in. Yeah, I think the only thing I will add is in the conversations that I had by email with Mike. The wanted to give him the opportunity to get any overview also. And we wanted to focus on questions. And which he might have questions that he's seen. That he feels are particularly appropriate to him. He indicated that Doug could stay a little bit longer, but he has a hard stop at five after six so that he can switch gears and get himself ready for the school committee meeting. And I gather that Allison is also wanting to do that too. So what I would suggest is ask our superintendent to give whatever overview of the budget that he would like to give and respond to any of the advanced questions that he thinks are particularly appropriate not come back to that again and then see if he can answer the same question of Allison as chair of the committee. Actually, I think Allison is going to start if that's okay Andy. Absolutely. Yeah, I just wanted to introduce because I know and I appreciate that that the school committee approved and passed a budget that is different than the guidance and different than the budget that Paul, the town manager has submitted to the finance committee in the town council. So I just wanted to give that sort of super high level sort of rationale and sort of update folks on the conversation that happened within the Amherst school committee that drove us to that point. So we initially developed the budget with the two and a half percent guidance that we had originally received despite the conversations and very difficult conversations about the extent to cuts to level services. So cuts to existing currents and programs and services within our district. So yes, the budget is increasing, but our because our costs are increasing at a greater extent than what the guidance of two and a half percent was originally we had to make program cuts to our existing programs and services. So when we got the great news that the guidance was being increased up to three percent due to the changes, the changes in estimates and state funding. The school committee felt very strongly that given the extreme situation and because it's impacting the student experience, the cuts to programs and services that we wanted to try to preserve use some of that additional funding or to preserve those positions and services to lessen the impact on the student experience as much as possible. Because of the strong outcry from the community and continued strong pressure and comments that we're receiving from the community to not make cuts and to use as much of our budget to I mean, we have multiple open contracts right now. So we don't have that settled in terms of what our payroll is going to be landing at some of that is in contingency. But really wanted to honor some of the concerns that we were hearing from from the community in terms of the impact that the cuts to programs and services would be having on the student educational experience. So that is the rationale behind the I believe it's about 80,000 getting the exact amount of the difference between sort of the recommended budget from the town manager and the approved budget from the school committee, but that is primarily to help us preserve some of those positions and some of the programs and services in this existing in the current budget year. So I'll let Mike sort of explain more of that. Andy, is it okay to jump right in? Yes. Okay, so this fiscal year we have we're accessing potentially the last of our S or funds as her funds were funds given to districts and the three waves, you know, during the from the beginning till where we currently are on the pandemic, we were really thoughtful. In my opinion, our approach, I want to thank Doug and principals, you know, so we had to do some things like change the infrastructure of walls at Fort River and Wildwood so that the schools were had better ventilation when students return from the lockdown time. We spent money on air purifiers for the same reason we spent money on PPE, additional nursing staff so that students could return as safe as possible. But we also added some other items as well. And so while we did add a lot, we also knew that, you know, potentially there was going to be challenges fiscally in the future. And so in the approved budget, there's a little over $500,000 that we'd say for master to supplement the existing budget to maintain most of our level of staffing and services for the next fiscal year. We did we are reducing some of those positions that were added, particularly we have a special education teacher we added in the intensive need program. And due to enrollments that positions not needed anymore so that you'll see a reduction but that is the only special education reduction needed we know that our students with special needs have had faced in general more significant challenges than their typical peers during the period of closure and the period of COVID. And we will have to look at enrollments in the future but at the current time a priority of ours was maintaining that level of services and support for students with special needs. We also were able to maintain all of our mental health staffing and supports. It's no surprise anyone who follows schools or reads papers that the pandemic was particularly hard on children not just academically but social emotionally and so we maintained our suite of supports for students you know with the guidance counselor adjustment counselor and psychologist. We've also done a significant amount of reshuffling this isn't reflected in the budget documents but it's been another public documents because we have seen shifts of enrollment for instance Fort Rivers gotten a bit larger and the other two schools schools over the last five years have reduced so we right side some of our disparities between the schools which will enhance and make more efficient. Our service delivery at each of the schools. And so that was a couple years overdue but now that we're back you know a couple years in person. It seemed like the right approach to take. We did have some reductions of the appropriated budget in terms of para educators and classroom teachers and again. Those are somewhat based in enrollments but we maintain a five full time specialist teachers. And so that's a sort of a summary of where we are. Doug I don't know if you want to add things now or go into the questions I just I'm sensitive to the fact that Alison and I have about 15 minutes so if there's questions that are directly. For us to answer instead of Doug you know we have this window of time but there is a hard stop because we do have to get over the high school. Yeah I think the. One that really is direct to what we've talked about so far is question number one on the sheet and. For the other members of the council and anybody else who's not seen it. It reads as follows the school committee voted three to two on March 14 to approve the Amherst elementary schools up by 24. Budget adding $84,000 and changing the reduction in staff from four classroom teachers to two reduction of para educators from 10 to seven and strongly urged the superintendent and finance director to keep the three full time para educator positions. And I know that that's was. Popping from the minutes of the March 14 meeting. So the questions were how is the $84,000 determined. What is the cost to maintain two classroom teachers and three para educators. What would. What would happen to these positions and that by 25. So we're really trying to figure out what would happen to them and how it relates to the staffing part. Of the motion that was made and passed. On a three to two vote. At the school committee meeting. That's the Allison's hand this up. So. Yeah. Yeah. I just want to clarify the vote was three to two. That I'm, I can speak for myself. And I think that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. The vote was three to two. That I'm, I can speak for myself. And I think also my colleague. Who also wasn't. One of the two of us that, that voted no. It wasn't about the budget number per se. It was specifically about adding the caveat and the constraint. It was how we were going to use that additional money. The school committee. And we were doing that in the budget. We were doing a lot of funding with unanimous in, in sort of the desire for that additional $84,000. To read, to, as I, as I let off with to reduce the impact. Of the reduction in programs and services. Then the calculation. That number came from a calculation of. The dollar value of the 3% increase in the town operating budget. Hopefully our math was was reasonably accurate, but it was taking sort of that that difference of that half percent on the town proposed operating budget. What that total dollar was and suggesting that if that were to go all to the schools, whether it's the between the elementary district and the regional district. How, how would we, what would that dollar value be so that's how that, that's where that $84,000 came. And then looking at sort of the impact of where, where a lot of the reductions were being made. Yes, there's some enrollment driven reductions that were included in the initial proposal. And what we, what the school committee wanted to do was to reduce some of the non enrollment driven reductions and staff. And the, and the vote in particular was whether we were going to give guidance on which particular positions, not the number of positions, but which particular position. And certainly follow up questions on what Allison just said from any counselors or any members present. Seeing none. I guess the other question that I wanted to make sure there was responded. Did you have a chance to respond to Mike before you had to leave was the additional question that I sent you this afternoon. And just again, so everybody's aware of what it was. And according to the FY 24 staffing numbers, the total number of staff about the elementary and regional schools is 344 and that's elementary 308 and regional 644 and regional 336. That's 910 the total staffing number was 627 elementary 299 regional 238 from 2005 to today to the 30% decline in elementary school enrollment and the 39% decline in middle school enrollment, the 34% decline in high school enrollment. And yet our staffing numbers are higher today than the way we had a lot more students and asking for an explanation. I think actually Doug can answer that one I see his hands up before Doug does. We have a quorum now for the council and you might want to. I'm going to call the council to order and I since all the other counselors have been checked on. I will just ask Alicia on behalf of both the finance committee and the council. Are you present and can you hear us and we can hear you. Yes, thank you, Lynn. Thank you so much, Alicia. Just to answer the question a little bit I took a few minutes to look over some some historical data. One of the, one of the pieces that adds to staff is that we brought our food service program back in house. And so the staffing for that has added a number of people to to shy of 20 total, I think, to our staffing. So that's one reason for an increase in the number of staff. And that that increases but you know you would expect within a decrease in enrollment. We'd have an overall loss and staff and I think that as you look through that that sort of history you see the changes in programming that we've done and some losses and staffing that we've had. But what you also see is an increased need in some other areas like special education and in particular. A pair of professionals that that support our students in one to one circumstances or special programs and so that's, that's really the really short answer on on where those those additional sort of staff FTE's come from. You know, it's one thing to sort of identify it's nothing to do something about it certainly superintendent of I've had some initial conversations about about, you know, what do we do, we know kind of what what that what the driver is. How we approach solutions to that are an area that we need to spend some time on and think about deeply in the next year or two because it is a difficult thing. Right. Yeah, I think the only two things I'd add is one is this budget, you know, while the rest are funded reduces the FTE is by 17.42 so pretty significant reduction from FY 23 to FY 24. And the second thing to note is, you know, I think Paulson a memo. Thank you Paul for that just that we recognize that, you know, we want to maintain high quality schools and that we've got fiscal pressures and so appreciate both Sean and Doug and the town, trying to partner and thinking about how do we pave a path through to a future where we can maintain the level of support and staffing that the families and students really rightfully desire. You know, people move here for the schools and we can't do that without sufficient staff and and so that that that's the other next step on this front as well. Yeah. And I hate to do this I'm going to have to hop up at six so I just want to let you know now so I don't interrupt things and I did have a question for Doug just on that last point. Would you be able to provide us with teacher FTEs for the past. I would say five years. I mean, you know, like I think that that's interesting that food service workers. I just don't think I was aware of that but it would be helpful to know, you know, sort of in terms of core instructional staff if that, though it's true. Absolutely happy to do that. Thank you so anybody else who has anything that they want to follow up on right now. Because I don't know if getting back to Mike and Allison if you've seen the questions if there any, did you feel you'd like to be able to speak to where you have to leave since then Doug will be here. Follow up with some and some of those are just pure budget questions that he can, I know he can respond to. Doug actually doesn't have school coming me tonight there's no fiscal things on it for a change. So, but I also have great confidence and Doug did share his responses with me so I feel like he's got both a good handle the budget but also good handle the, you know, academic operations in the school so I feel very confident. But you know appreciate folks sensitivity the fact that Allison and I got to hop over to an in person meeting in a little bit. Allison I don't know if there's anything else you'd like to share but I felt very, I feel very comfortable with even the rest of the questions of Doug. I'm having not seen the questions, but I trust also that Doug is going to be able to answer the questions I probably wouldn't be able to answer them as well as he could anyway. I was, you know, I think the most important thing is to share sort of is to just state that that was the school committee intent and and and desire of not wanting to impact student experience as much as we're seeing, and that we were unanimous and that despite the appearance of that of that particular vote. Pam you have a question. I have a question and it was on the consolidated spending plan sheet. And I was looking at school administration and central administration so those are about together, a little over $2 million. And so they're roughly 30% of the regular instruction cost. If, if the special and another sheet there was special as administration. And I wondered if special ed administration is actually all included in the, in the school administration number. Or is it or is it sort of part of the, the big cost of special education, including all of its administrators. I can take that if you'd like. The short answer is, is that the special administration is largely contained within the central administration. At the school level, they're typically not an administrative roles there are a few at the elementary, a small, not even a full FTE that would be in school administration a little bit but but most of that special education administration cost is is in our central administration. So that's probably right. No, that's, I'll stay with that. So, turning again to the full group of counselors and committee members present. I can also have about five minutes left and if there are any questions that anyone has that you feel are particularly like to hear from superintendent. The school committee chair, please. So now on it. I was just I was desperately trying to Google so that I could find my own answer to this question because I'd like to be resourceful but I couldn't do it fast enough so I'm asking you now. When we think about our advocacy for chapter 70 aid and our per pupil, our per pupil aid that we receive. Is there any difference in per pupil aid for students who are involved who are enrolled in special ed in in terms of like the intense or more intense special ed programs versus those who are in regular instruction only. Is there any differentiation and state aid there. It is that something that you all or we should be advocating for, given the increases in, in special ed funding over the I'm looking at the comparison 2020 to 24. I think it's three, I think it's a 3% drop in regular instruction spending. I'm curious if that's an area of advocacy that should is or should be pursued or if that exists. I don't know who that's directed to and I'm sorry. So I can make what will probably be my final comment and then pass it to Doug so I was in a meeting yesterday with a bunch of other area superintendents. Hampton Franklin County with the new Secretary of Education. Dr. Tyler and you know, I was asked I was one of the people asked to speak our state representative and state Senator were actually there as well which was fabulous and you know I my topic was fiscal cliffs so tremendously fun. It was engaging and inspiring topic I think but you know my colleague spoke about some of the other fiscal challenges including the one you mentioned and so Doug can get into the specifics but in general there's there's kind of two frames on it one is what do we do for students who receive their education outside the district because their, their special needs are such that we, their needs can't be met in our district. We have different pieces, you know, our added district costs, everyone's in the state went up 14% this year that was state mandated increase that's, you know, way above, you know, what anyone was budgeting for what we've seen in the past and the attempt to ameliorate that that's been going on right now in the State House has benefited some districts and not others it's not like on a per student basis which might actually be like oh if you have these numbers students you get this increment. It's actually designed to be much more ornate than that and the ornate this means that whole harmless distance like ourselves have a limited benefit from that so, so that's like one really big significant variable in it. But as I depart I know Doug will talk about some of the other pieces as well. But thank you all for having us and good luck with the rest of your meeting. Thanks for representing us yesterday. Thank you appreciate it. Thank you. So just to add a little bit more to that. I think that, you know, if you look at the chapter 74 formula itself. Yes, it does have, it does have components of it that taking into consideration a number of categories of student. ELL students special education, etc, etc. However, for us because of where we sit relative to our current local funding or number of students, etc. We generally fall into sort of the, they call the whole harmless and so we just get a per student, a sort of addition to our base. But nonetheless, in calculating that sort of base amount is that those different kinds of students and so there are factors there that are part and parcel of the formula. Help us more. Yeah, it could help us more, but it would also help everybody else more. So it is there and it's a, you know, as, as Sean and Gannon can tell you to is a pretty complex formula is, you know, a lot of, of, they got a lot of political energy went into sort of finding that balance. Are there other ways, as the superintendent suggested relative to the out of district placements and the increase there to help mitigate some of those increases. There are some other avenues of advocacy that could have a much more direct immediate impact for us. Thank you. And yeah, I the chapter 70 formula is is a fun maze to try to learn so I appreciate you kind of explaining it to me in simple terms. This is a question for Doug, I wish I asked it when like an Allison we're here but have you heard anything from the Department of Ed that breaks down the governor's proposal for the fair share amendment. And in terms of what it might mean for school districts, or it means nothing for school districts has there been any guidance from them on it. There hasn't to my knowledge. I think the initial proposal from the governor put almost all of it into post secondary education. I haven't heard that that's changed so I'm not sure where you know that Senate ways means, you know budget came out today I didn't get a chance to look at whether they had any proposals in there or not. So I haven't heard anything to the contrary so right now, you know, elementary and secondary education. Benefit it. Yeah, I mean I've been having discussions on this topic. Also through my role in the fiscal policy committee at the MMA. I think we just have to recognize and continue to advocate for it. The MMA solution is a significant increase in the dollar amount per student for the so called minimum aid communities which is about 240 percent of the communities including us and some of our ones were frequently compared to like Northampton. The result is that if you take the governor's recommendation which was $30 per student that amounted to less than half a percent or about half of a percent for most districts. And then we're in that category, which is totally inadequate to become close to meeting inflation costs, and especially when you combine it with other funds available to cities and towns. It's a big problem. The question is how do you come up with a solution to it other than than that which the house ways and means to some and then back someone and cut the floors. It's just, we're now waiting in the Senate and some degree and just to look at the Senate ways means maybe budget later tonight to get a better understanding of that. The only other thing that I've been able to think about as I've gone through it is something that we have no power to do and it's just matter of creating a dialogue about it that is to implementations to an opportunity act over more years. So the larger amount could be allocated it's the legislature isn't going to give more money or has no more money because of the concerns now about revenue, then elongating the implementation of the student opportunity act to make sure that the legislative process and that's here, not just all schools and not just schools in the greatest need. I mean, it's a tough and complicated issue. Other questions on this topic. But then let's go back. You want to just go back to the question start. Sure. And I'll be happy to just kind of walk through each of those in turn and each one of the last questions. The second question and I'll skip some of the, you know, parts of it that are about the book that you got so the, there was indication in our, in our reporting that with the sixth grade middle school there's some economic requirements that require the district to lean on non recurring revenues until we do that so there's some efficiencies we can gain with moving the sixth grade by delaying that we're going to have to lean on some non recurring revenue revenues to do that and the question was will what would be the revenue right now that's answer funds. So we have as the superintendent indicated indicated about $500,000 worth of answer funds that we're going to use to help us. We're going to have the next fiscal year and that will help to cover some of those costs that that we will hopefully not have in the future once we move to sixth grade because of the efficiencies and overlap with with the regional district that we can take advantage of there. Any. Follow us on that one. And didn't Paul didn't you allocate some marker funds to help with the transition to the sixth grade to the middle school. So, I'm going to do I'm going to answer that one. Yeah, so when the sixth grade transition was going to happen this fall. There was a significant number. A couple different projects with the schools but the largest of which was providing transition funding for that transition. Since that got delayed. We're sort of having discussions with the schools around what happens to that funding because now it likely won't happen within the window of ARPA. So it's part of our sort of second round planning going on. I think we're all conscious and I think you'll be getting back to this question later too is the limits to the funds that we have from ARPA and us are and what we're going to do to keep things going when that with happens. Right. So Doug, I'm going to go back to you. I'm going to close Pam you have a question on this. Do we have a number for the actual cost of establishing the sixth grade at the junior high or middle school. I thought I saw a number somewhere that talked about the seventh through 12th grade as, you know, sort of a consolidated chunk. There was a number for that but there was no mention of the sixth grade so are we are we not going to wrap the sixth graders into the the regional school bucket. That's really the question. And do we have a cost for it if we don't wrap them into the budget. So what I saw was the maybe the administrative structure of teachers and superintendents and whatever. I can answer that to some extent so in our initial work in thinking about and working on the transition of moving sixth grade into the middle school building, you know, the conversations with the Department of elementary and secondary education, you know, they were very clear that barring a change to the to the regional agreement. The fact to operate the sixth grade is its own school within a school and with that separation, it poses some challenges relative to leveraging all of the of the overlapping staffing quite the same way you can do it but it's a little more complicated but there's a lot that we don't have to still do as an independent school for sixth grade, you know, from a reporting standpoint, staffing etc etc that that were part of the complications that that contributed to us putting a bit of a pause on this. That being said, subsequent to that we also have heard from you know the superintendent has heard from some conversations he's had with Desi around regional agreements that they're more willing to entertain slight adjustments to regional agreements as opposed to the traditional modality where they did if you opened your regional agreement was a, is a wholesale reconstruction kind of thing that took a very significant effort to do with that more targeted. You know, changes being allowed or being considered, you know, that gives us an opportunity to perhaps, you know, leverage that to help us out and and mitigate some of those, those potential costs that we'd have if we had an independent sixth grade school in the in the building here in the middle school building but those are, you know, questions we will be working on and resolving over the next couple of years and hopefully, you know, there might be a way to perhaps modify regional agreement to make it work better for the, you know, both the Emerson elementary and the regional school district. Those questions are pretty open at the moment on that front. Yeah. I wonder if you can share under the next question since another. Yeah, so the next question is, number three on the list was a bit of confusion about and I fully understandable and looking at the minutes on the reduction of in parapher. Her educators and then the subsequent school committee motion. So the school committee was was trying to. You know that the overall reduction pair educators is 10 FTE. And they would like, you know, in their motion and the addition of the 4000 that, you know, was all about restoring three positions they, they provided suggestion to the superintendent myself relative to who they thought that should be which would be the library pair, educators is who they were suggesting would be those three at all possible so that the total number of production was 10 they were trying to move it back to seven and those that difference of three in in their opinion and their participation to the superintendent was was the library pair, their professionals. You just keep going. Next on the list is it is a is a reference to the trend analysis under custodial spending for the district. And I have to admit this is this is this is definitely my fault. If you're looking at the at the graph that's under a trend analysis the increase from from fiscal 23 to 24 looks rather profound, and some of that's understandable by virtue of great, you know, steps and colis offered to the custodial staff, plus some additions to our summer staff and substitutes because of the increase in in minimum wage up to $15. But the biggest reason for the big jump in what you see on the graph is the fact that the fiscal 23 budget salary numbers were not adjusted to reflect the new contract. So the, you know, we were developing the fiscal 20. We were developing the fiscal 23 budget and started fiscal 23, and we made, and we resolved the the. Well, during our development of fiscal 23. We resolved the contract with the custodial staff, but that those changes weren't formally introduced into the into the budget. So I think we will make those corrections by end of year, obviously, but it does in this case, make the jump look a little higher because those are our pre settlement of contract wage estimates for that budget in there. So that makes the jump like 10% instead of more like four or five. And so that's, that's the real reason that that jumps as much as it does. So if you were happy to answer that wasn't necessarily this most clean description of what happened but it's really more an artifact of an update to the fiscal 23 budget that hasn't happened. So next is turned in also for special education idea it says the grant funds fluctuate between the three districts. Is that one grant to three districts and it's, is it common and the answer is yes so we have our regional school district serves as a financial agent for ID a which is a special education grant. That helps us in terms of just sort of management and people work and that sort of thing relative to that grant, which is a fairly large grant. You know, it serves as the financial agent for that. And so we have staff that work, for example, we have staff that work in our elementary schools that are paid from the region school district because they're fully funded by that grant. But the actual amounts for each district very a little bit from year to year based on student need and in our application to to the federal government for those idea funds and so that causes some variability there. And let's see the point I make on that. And no it's not very common. I would say there's very, very few districts that have a structure like we do. There are a few but very, very few and so I don't think it's common that that you would have a single district acting as the financial agent for three. I'm sure it exists in some other places because it's certainly allowed by the by the grant but it's not very common. So the next question which was about the bilingual education grant. And, and we're showing that we're not expecting any funding from that and you know how will that affect the common entities coming on to his program at Fort River. The interesting thing about that grant is it has been a grant that the state has funded during the fiscal year with the expectation that you will exhaust those funds in that same fiscal year. And as such we budget, expecting not to get it we've been fortunate to get it and it provides a tremendous amount of funding and opportunity for us to, to augment what we have budgeted relative to that program and and those, those services that we offer in and around so we budget the coming out this program, assuming we won't get the grant and then if we do which we have been fortunate the last several years, then we leverage those funds to enhance that program even more. It, from my perspective as someone who's trying to budget and plan and be thoughtful about some of the stuff it's a difficult circumstance, it doesn't make it easy to, to budget just because you can't count on those funds but but nonetheless they are very supportive of our program and augment what we already have in our budget. Have they made a budget decision for the next year yet or not that I'm aware of now. You know, unfortunately, we have a couple of grants there's a smaller one is we've gotten in special education more around mental health and say student services not really special education. I mean we the bilingual grant there, there have been years where we're awarded the grant in February and have to exhaust the funds by by June and you know how much money that is that gets harder to do and and try to be thoughtful about the use of those funds and so they haven't yet made decisions to my knowledge about that for the next year. All right. Question seven which is what happens with Esther funded positions in fiscal 25. We've a pinched we we have in this budget eliminated all Esther funded positions so those positions are are essentially being removed from our budget. So that all of the funds can be used for just general budget supportive of existing sort of programs and staff and so in fiscal 25. We won't have any of those to to to reduce. Question eight is do you do you do projected budgeting for future years if so what do you project and what is the adjustment strategy. What I've written is a response here is that with three of our 16 contracts, but not quite not settled yet. It's difficult to make good projections out into the future years. We do some forecasting in regard to that try to have an anticipation of what that's that's going to look like. And I think once we settle the contracts will take a deeper look at our projection for future years and I think that you know, barring any real strong changes to where we are from a revenue standpoint. I think it's going to be difficult to to maintain things exactly as they are. So I think we're going to have to have a pretty significant conversation about our programmatic stuff and and and what our programs are how we do it. And I think we're going to have to do a deep dive relative to that I don't think we're going to have a sudden drop in enrollment that lowers our costs significantly I don't think we're going to have a huge influx of money money or any other funding from the state that's going to sort of solve the sort of general trajectory of our costs and so we're likely to have to have a real deep conversations about how we sustain ourselves in the future keep our programmatic offerings, you know, competitive and and appropriate for the kids and and it's riches as the community expects them to be. So back to what Mike indicated earlier and Paul and Sean spoke to is that we're going to look to work with a small group of folks from the school side and the townside to look into some things we might be able to do relative to being more sustainable as we move ahead and ways we can leverage and and benefit from cooperative exchange between school and town and and think about how we might, you know, manager mitigate some some cost increases in the future and help us sustain ourselves out into future years. Other questions. Okay. Thanks Doug. I have a couple of questions first of all, could the questions, please be added to our packet. And second, Doug. Thank you for spending time on the responses. I want to go back to the common non test program, and the grant that you refer to that we don't know if and when it's coming is from state or federal money. Okay, it's a little, I mean I understand the need to budget in advance for the program, so that it doesn't go away if the funds don't appear are how much are those funds and when they do appear. My question would be, is there any opportunity to release some of those funds that are presently dedicated to the common on taste program to other program funding. So, so of course I didn't look up what those actually are. They have been pretty significant I would say as far as the grant funding there and I, and I don't think I have that easily hand but it is and has been. I would say, you know, $180,000, $200,000 kind of size of numbers that may be a little larger in in some years versus others. You know, there are some restrictions on what you know the grant can be spent on. There's some non supplanting rules generally around the grant so you can walk one thing for another so there's some limitations there. Certainly, you know, it does relieve certain stresses so it, it, it, you know, in the broader general effect is, does it have the rising tide lifts all boats in a way so if there are pressures and other parts of the budget. You know, can we make a shift to cover things that way. Certainly, I think we've been fortunate that that we haven't needed to do much of that. There are a tremendous number of, of things we've been able I think to add to the program by virtue of having that funding that really enrich it and, and make it even better, because we've been able to use that funding to get more materials and resources and, and, and do more to support the program that it wouldn't make the program not function or not be good. It's just better because of that and so you know we've been able to enhance that program I think in a way that's pretty significant. And that's, that's, you know, been really helpful and at the same time, because of the limitation of the grant we really couldn't sort of leverage it elsewhere but it does have a, a pretty broad effect. I want to be very clear I wasn't suggesting we use the grant money. But I don't think we use the grant money elsewhere that. No, that's not allowed. But the issue was that you have existing town, state, whatever, you have a distant existing other budget money that you've already used for the program, getting the money from the state to the commandante's program. And does that help release some of the already budgeted money for other programs. That was why, and you've answered that I just wanted to make sure I, I wasn't suggesting the miss expenditure of grant funds in any way shape or form. I think that's all. Yeah, did you have something. And, and I guess by now Doug's getting used to or is already used to my very half formed questions so Doug I apologize that this is another one of those. I was looking at the transportation line and I know that it's a relatively small, I mean 2.9% right, but I'm trying to reckon with a couple things and I'm hoping you can help me tease them out. So, we're up about $200,000 since 2020 in transportation costs. And I believe we started switching to electric buses in 22 right base I was looking at where the budget started to change. And so we're saving about 20 K a year it looks like on gas, but I'm curious how we, and I, and I believe I don't think you've gotten the newest we got a grant to help within a new electric school bus last year. I'm curious if you can talk about the changes, both in our purchasing of electric buses but also if that's impacted the contracts that we have with outside companies, and if you kind of where you're predicting the transportation costs going in the next couple years. Are they going to stay at relatively that 2.9% or do you foresee a change I mean I think that there's a lot of reasons to go with electric buses, the health of the planet being a really great one. And at the same time one of the big appeals to electric buses that hopefully we save money on fuel costs right, and I know that we're navigating some issues with maintenance of those buses but I'm curious if you've got projections on transportation and where you see that going. Or if you have any insights that I'm really missing. I was trying to just show the look at the difference because we're looking at about a 60 K increase this year in transportation, roughly. So I think the few things I'll point out here one is that we currently have one electric bus, which has, has had its, its issues from a performance standpoint but you know it's sort of a first generation for a new manufacturer so you know that's going to happen to some extent. And if you've been involved with the capital conversations, you know ongoing dialogue about what's, what's our next step relative to that. I think the thing I'll point out that that it's probably driving things more so than anything else is that we have a hybrid system how we do transportation. So part of our transportation costs is our buses to drive our kids around but we also have contracts with third party vendors that do some of it as well. And the contracts and the price and those contracts are have a built in inflation factor. So they're based on the sort of New England area consumer price index and how it's changed over the last couple months so for the coming year, that overall increase in the contract was about seven and a half percent, I believe if I remember correctly, I was going to say 7.94 but I know that's the health insurance so it's not 7.94. Seven and a half percent or just shy of seven and a half percent. So that drove drove all that out the other factor that plays into our transportation costs is how many students we have and how far we drive them so in the calculation of how to divvy up the cost between a regional district or our Amherst district. And she's very elementary districts that also are in and part of that system is driven by how many students and how far and so sometimes the cost increase are driven by how many students we have so if we've had an uptick. Or, or a sustaining of students in in our Amherst district in a drop in students in our regional district that's going to boost our cost. So those are those are multiple factors that all play into this a little bit. So depending on how you know generally speaking, you know our bus contract is is likely to stay fairly similar so as inflation goes it will go and then depending on enrollment will make a little difference as to how our trends will be. Certainly if we start shifting to more electric vehicles and I think that's a general direction we want ahead I think you know the upfront costs of those buses is pretty significant. You know operating maintenance costs are probably less. You know and certainly, we hope to sort of recoup some of that I think you know it's a different paradigm so we're going to have to think about our transportation system generally over the next couple years, as we strategize about how best to move, move ahead in that in that move to a more electrified busing and transportation system. Thank you. I appreciate that answer. I have a question. I have a question on buses. Similarly, but that is, are they are all the listed capital items that we've looked at through JCPC. Are they actually now incorporated into this school budget or are they separate so when I look at the percentage of money spent on on school, the 52% of the town budget spent on the school. What are those school buses are all those capital projects, the building maintenance included in your number. So the school budgets, don't include the capital capital expenses so any of those things that are in the capital budget, you know whether it be for the school bus or, you know, infrastructure or those, you know, large projects are all fully within the capital budget. So what do you do in our budget have, you know, some regular maintenance and and custodial services and utilities and all of that sort of stuff that is in our budgets or are, you know, sort of more modest day to day operational, you know, repair and maintenance of our buildings are included in there but the larger sort of projects are are in the capital project capital budget I should say and separate. I would actually add those in when we're looking at total cost for education. Yeah, I would, I mean, for all departments really, I mean, you could, you could take the, there's a pie chart in the capital improvement program that breaks down the capital allocation among departments so. Yeah, you could look at every department and adjust for for capital and changes from year to year so it's not as predictable as the operating budgets. I wouldn't add something while we're on that topic just the sake of the rest of the community and the council or who are present. What is being discussed is really applicable to all departments which is why there's a problem with the analysis that member of the public without in an email that was received by the council. I probably going to have to respond to his finance committee chair, because in, for the example that was focused on there was DPW. The DPW pie chart that was being shown only was a portion as turns out of DPW wasn't even the full DPW budget, and it didn't include any capital whatsoever. So, most of our investment, a lot of our investment in the DPW is, you know, the, the paving and capital costs that show up through the capital improvement program. So that was not an accurate portrayal of the actual allocation of funds for DPW. And, you know, is something that I think we need to correct for the council and for the public. And there were some other problems with it I'm not going to get into. This was just an opportunity to point that out. Dorothy you have a question. Yes. So, as after under COVID we've the state has given all kinds of extra money in different little accounts. And we know that that is as COVID funds is going to be gone very, very soon. So the state has reduced over time the regular amount of funding that it was giving. So do you have any clues or hints from people connected to the state that they might actually continue under some guys or I mean right now so complicated I couldn't possibly follow it. Don't know how you do giving some more funds to the to local districts. It would be called something wouldn't be called COVID money we call it something else, but is there any hints that they realized that people really did like getting and needed getting that extra money and want to going to keep getting it. Yeah, I think that that's a, that's an interesting question. I haven't heard of anything specific that anyone's talking about do I do I think that there's some appetite for, for those kinds of funding, absolutely. The local district would certainly appreciate some additional funding and certainly some of the conversations relative to, you know, special education and district placement is one area that they're trying to sort of recognize and provide some some support. I think there's some ongoing debate about how best to do that and how, how much it'll help a given district versus another but you know I don't know of any other sort of real active conversations relative to that I mean I think there are some around 70 for 70 formulas and, and the mass municipal association is, as Andy and Kate earlier is trying to advocate for greater funding there, but I don't know of any additional ones. And these are federal funds Dorothy so they typically come and then go away. The past times we've seen this we had our funds and the late 2009 2010. We had job funds at one point for the schools. And now we've got ARPA and answer but with federal funds. I think the past experience has been they come they are there for a short period of time and they help. And then they cause a lot of issues when they kind of disappear, which is what we're dealing with now. Exceptional was the in the supplemental they did do this, the school lunches and food program. Yeah, I'm just, since you know what one, you know, and the superintendent spoke about a little earlier but what really stands out is that the school enrollment has declined so much over the last, I mean maybe a period of, you know, 10 to 15 years, but and expenses have, you know, increased. So do you look at sort of project out have any sense of demographic trends and or if we were able to increase enrollment, whether it was families moving in would, and that would be more per pupil dollars from the state. Could that happen without actually increasing expenses so that that would be a gain in terms of a greater enrollment and help us reach our bottom line better. I think the short answer is, is that, you know, would increasing enrollment help us a little bit. I think it certainly would. The amount of state aid that we get relative to our students, you know, is has overall been decreasing so as a percentage of our budget the amount of support from the state is less than it was, and it has been declining for a number of years. That's also true on the town side of things. You know, if you look at budgets from 1015 20 years ago and the percentage of budget that was carried by the state resources that that came to cities and towns. It's a much smaller fraction than it was and so that's a, that's a systemic problem both for schools and towns, as far as their budgets are concerned. I think the other difficulty we run into is that often the increases that you get or you might see relative to, you know, some of that funding formula. You know, don't capture the entirety of the cost. And so if you have an uptick in enrollment, but you know the town's property values are holding steady than the property tax that we collect is holding steady. You know, the limitations there are probably generally slightly less than inflation or inflation in a good year or so. You know, we're always in a sort of catch up mode. I could go on for far longer than anyone would like about property tax and whether that's a great way to do and fund locally. You know, our governments but I won't. Long before Doug was business manager, he and I would have those conversations and that and that office right there. So, that's right. That's right. So it, it, you know, sort of back to, you know, wouldn't, you know, steadying enrollments or increasing enrollments be helpful probably a little bit but probably not quite enough to really make a difference. Okay, thank you. The school choice experience so we know. Anything else because in the library then if no other questions. Yeah, I just, I want to express one concern and Doug you've, you've been pretty straightforward about this but I am concerned that we're not going to be up with the costs of the schools. I mean the cost of the schools are going up higher than the two and a half percent or 3% or whatever it is that that we have. And sooner or later we're going to hit a wall, and we're going to have to do something and you mentioned, you were going to need to do that and it's a concern of mine. The other aspects of town probably are kind of chugging along, but the school system seems to be a real issue. And I don't know, there isn't, I don't have a solution for it. I just want to express a concern that that I think we need to figure out how to maintain our schools at a high level in a sustainable way. The other question I have is, as we bring the new elementary school on board and start to think about closing down the other schools. I didn't see anything in the documents on how much we spend on each of the elementary schools when you add it all, you know, what do we spend on Crocker farm what we spend on Wildwood. And maybe it's there I didn't see it. But I think it would be helpful to have that information. So we know if we're closing that school that, you know, obviously some of those expenses will go to the new school but some of them won't. So I think that would be a helpful thing for us to understand how much we're actually spending on each facility or at each facility, including, you know, staff and all that. So I don't expect it right now, but I think it would be helpful to have that as we go forward. Yeah, I think the more straightforward things that we could look at our sort of those operational expenses and I don't think we have a good sense of what the new building set of costs us for some of those things some of them will be hopefully much less expensive as we have a much more energy efficient building. But I think some of the, you know, sort of basics of what we're spending now on things like utilities and infrastructure that sort of stuff custodial staff. So the other ones that are a little trickier is like how does the staffing change like how much reduction what we really see, we will see some, you know, efficiencies in in our classes and that sort of thing and I think back to your original comment relative to what are we going to do to kind of make ourselves sustainable I mean we have, you know, it, we have an expensive proposition because we have a lot of people and people are expensive. And I think that how we structure ourselves and how we go about trying to deliver those, you know, those educational programs to kids is is something we're going to have to look really deeply at over the next couple years and, and, and I think in concert with the conversation that, that we're going to start pursuing on the more infrastructure like things I think relative to, you know, ways to combine with the town or, or work with the town staff to find ways to streamline ourselves are going to definitely be conversation we have to have there's it's not, you know, we'd like to have them we're going to have to have them, because I think the economic pressures are just there. And there's no, you know, sort of mana from heaven to help us out in regard to that so you know this there's definitely some, some, some work to be done and, and things we have to think about and and we'll probably have to make some really hard choices about what has most value to us. You know, whether it be class sizes or what we offer a whole host of things we have to balance in that. And back to your other point, I can, I can definitely try to put some things together as far as what our schools cost us we do sort of categorize our expenses, mostly that way so, so we can kind of put those together we tend to on the sort of composite sheets kind of switch them all together. We say like school administration well that's all three schools, as far as the elementary, you know, but we do have those broken out for specifically to the buildings and so I can put a little something together in that regard and get that to you guys as well. Yeah, I think that would be helpful to know. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to make note that we did receive a memo from Paul, providing some additional explanation about the fiscal sustainability working group, and that I've asked that that be added to this packet and also to the packet for the Council on the 15th. And I think that along with our regional discussion that we just where we have talked about needing to take a hard look at the whole infrastructure issue of the two height, the two schools, and what's coming up there. I'm assuming some of that will get folded into that larger discussion that Paul is proposing and his approach the superintendent about. I'm not asking for the comment now just hopefully hopefully we will. Yeah. Just an explanation there was a memo that was received by counselors this morning, and I will send it to Bob Matt and Bernie, our resident members of the committee. I'm going to send it to you tonight or tomorrow morning so that you see it and that's what she's Linus referring to as being added to the packet. So, you know, what the process is that Paul is developing to identify this I don't know if you want to say anything else for what the memo right. Very brief memo is just sort of outlines a little bit more and slightly more detail about how we would like to move forward on it. And if there are questions we can answer that. So that said, is there anything else for schools otherwise I think we can move on to library and which is the other topic for tonight in public comment just see if there's any public comment. So Doug, thank you very much and again, thank you, Mike Nelson bring been here and for you hanging on. All right, I will let them know and thank you all very much for taking the time out and asking a good question so thank you. And I'll be back in touch about those couple of questions you guys raised and some data that you wanted to all send that along. Thank you. Just so you know, and you can convey this along that we're in a mode right now of meeting with the functional, you know, schools library and then various departments. And May 23 will begin to shift into the discussion within finance committee about what our recommendation to the council will be. And that's what the process is so fact that we didn't have a discussion about, for example, the school committee request for the X for an additional $84,000. It wasn't that we didn't hear it, but the finance committee wouldn't didn't anticipate that this is the stage for discussion. So thank you. Understood. Thank you so much. Okay, so we're going to switch to library but let me just ask real quickly. We do do public comment at every meeting I indicated the beginning of this meeting that we were postponing public comment because the superintendent and the chair of the school committee had a limited time here but it is important. And so if there are any members of the public who would like to offer public comment. It should feel free to raise their hand but it doesn't have to be the matters that we're being discussed today, but any matter that's relevant to the finance committee. And anyway, shape or form and certainly welcome so I'll pause for just a second to see if there are anybody who raises hands from the attendee group who would like to make comment. Seeing none. I think we can move on to the library budget. And at this point I'm going to make the same disclosure that I made earlier about schools. And then I'm going to actually turn the meeting over to Anna. The chair since Kathy's not here as vice chair, I appreciate that you're willing to take this role on. As most people are many people though. My wife is a part time employee of the library working at branch library is and is a consequence. I have consulted with the ethics commission and found notice with the town clerk, making public that there is this circumstance. However, I don't believe that anything that the finance committee will be recommending or the council of the acting on is a is going to affect the employment or benefits. If I were to receive by my wife if they were then I would only remove myself from any of the meetings. However, because of that circumstance even though I'm not going to remove myself from the meeting. I did ask Anna to chair the section so I'm turning the meeting over to her. I appreciate that I want to welcome Sharon sherry who is the library director and Sharon I believe that you're the only one here from the libraries is that correct is there anyone else that will be joining you. Well, I'd like to recognize library trustees Bob Pam and Lee Edwards. After my presentation, they may have something to say so you could bring them in now or later. I don't have that power Sean are you able to do that. Yes, I'm sorry just grabbed water did you ask to bring in. Pam and Lee Edwards. Thank you. Thanks Sharon. Thank you to folks who are with us today, the budget and Sharon's presentation is in the packet and available on the website. And so without further ado Sharon I will I will turn it over to you and then we will start with the pre prepared questions, and then we'll go to any other questions from the finance committee or counselors. If that sounds all right to everyone here. Will you let me share my screen. Yeah, Sean will. I think because again I do not have that power but you should have it if you don't let me as a kid as I say no. No, hang on. I'm coming and welcome Bob and Lee. Nice to have you with us. Okay, so right now I'm going to share my screen. I have a PowerPoint presentation. I have also, it's a quick presentation, but I have also received your questions in advance. And so what I've done is I've interspersed the answers to those questions throughout my presentation. Great, thank you. Thank you. I got too many things in the way now. Here we go. Multitasking, here we go. Okay, so on your screen are our revenue sources. 75% of the library's total operating budget will come from the municipal appropriation for FY 24. The town appropriation is only used for staff salaries, benefits and the rent for months in memorial library. The town appropriation does not fund things like books or maintenance utilities or programs. State aid will account for almost 4% of our budget. And that's an important bucket because we need those funds to cover the staff salaries that the town appropriation does not cover. The budget is going to come from donations to the friends, the sale of merchandise like t-shirts, meeting room and printing fees and grants, and for FY 24 the big grant is a multi-year federal grant that was awarded to our ESL department. Well, percent of our library's operating budget will come from the endowment draw in FY 24. And for FY 24, the trustees again approved a 4% draw rate. Now, when we say that we are withdrawing funds from the endowment, the Woodbury funds are not included in that calculation. The endowment and the Woodbury fund are treated separately because the Woodbury fund spending is determined by the friends of the library and that's a requirement of the Woodbury bequest. With the exception of the renovation of the Woodbury room 10 or so years ago, the friends have historically taken a 4% draw. Usually it's a little less than that from the Woodbury fund every year. It's about 25, 26, $27,000 a year. And those funds pay for library programming and circulating materials. On June 30th of 22, the endowment was at 8.2 million, and the Woodbury fund was at 660,000. 66% of the library's FY 24 expenses will be that of personnel and almost 13% for benefits. Almost 9% of our budget goes towards the purchase circulating materials such as books, magazines, all our digital content. The facilities will account for 3% of our budget maintenance, another 3% and programming is a 2%. I know you cannot see this, but the library's FY 24 budget was approved by the trustees on March 15. The FY 24 is going to be complicated for us. It's because of the building project. So for half the year will be located in the Jones building and for the other half will be in a swing space or an interim space. So our salaries and benefits and programming figures, those can be projected relatively easily throughout the year, regardless of where we're located. The building related costs like our building systems and equipment and grounds, HVAC maintenance utilities, those are going to change halfway through the year. But in crafting this budget, we've been very conservative. So if anything will spend less. Overall, we're proposing a 7% increase over FY 23. And this is primarily due to the $61,000 that will come in through that ESL grant, not counting that grant the increase would have been 5%. Under expenses, we're showing a 6.7 increase to salaries. And that, why this is, is we'll be filling two of our four vacant positions, and we're going to be making full time, one of our part time over 20 positions. And both of those efforts are going to help to reduce our reliance on part time under 20 positions. And because we're filling two out of those four vacant full time positions, along with the fact that the town health insurance costs are rising. Pretty bit for FY 24, there's going to be a 13% increase to our benefits line. We're going to see a 0.8% increase to materials and a 10% decrease to operations and this is primarily because I took a line book processing and I moved it into the materials category. However, we have also reduced deaf development and some office supply lines. We're going to see a 9% decrease to our annual CW Mars assessment. We have a 30.6% increase to maintenance and repairs, and a 2% decrease to utilities. Programming is increasing by 138% again that's due to the ESL grant. And the special collections budget is being level funded. So a quick note about our special collections money market account. That account is from a variety of sources that has been collected over the course of many years, primarily through donations. There's a balance of approximately $50,000 in that account right now. And it is all of that money is restricted for use for the preservation of our archives that the collections. Given new sources were showing a 3% increase to the municipal appropriation in accordance with the town manager's directive. A 5.7% increase to the endowment draw, even though the rate is remaining at 4%. And a 151% increase in the use of state aid and that's what we'll be using to cover the salaries. Now that the friends are responsible for the library's fundraising efforts these the next two lines on your screen gifts and grants and friends and Woodbury, they're pretty much starting to mingle with each other so we're heading towards that will just be one line. We are not including Sammy's income for 20 FY 24 because instead, we're planning a major capital campaign event. The grants are applied for by the staff, but the restricted gifts and donations to the friends and the Woodbury funds that those are all now under the umbrella of the friends. So when we calculate the increase or decrease in the reliance of those funds, basically both of those lines should be added together and for FY 24 the end result is a 25% increase. Many thanks to the friends at the library. And for all of you who donate to the friends. The sale of merchandise sale of goods is has been transferred to the friends they are now in charge of buying our, our merchandise buying and selling our merchandise so that line is zeroed out for FY 24. We're collecting a 30% decrease to fees and lost books, and this is because income that we are receiving due to loss books has been decreasing over the years so we're just we're being conservative. Also because we won't be in the Jones for the full year we won't be taking in revenue through meeting room fees. So we are increasing our use of our be in our funds by 100%. I was glad that you asked me about this question. So be in our stands for building expansion and renovation account, and this dates back to the 1993 Jones library expansion renovation project. There's about $8200 in this line. $84891 is restricted to the North Amherst library building so I'll be working with Jeremiah on transferring that money over to him. So the town can spend that on the building and the remaining 3300 is for the Jones library expansion project this this new one that's coming up. I'll give you a quick update on the Jones library building project and the capital campaign. We have completed design development and expect to receive a reconcile cost estimate in late May, early June. We will then move into the construction document phase and receive the final cost estimate late November. We would then go out to bid in late November and award a contract with a general contractor in February 24. The construction would begin in March of 24, and then 18 months later give or take the grand opening celebration would take place in December of 25. So as long as that timeline is a delayed, the trustees would owe its final memorandum of agreement payment to the town in July of 26, and that is the same time that the town would receive the final disbursement from the MVLC. Because we can only receive one MVLC disbursement per fiscal year. If there are any changes to the timeline, it would, it would push back the final MVLC disbursement to July of 27. Speaking of the trustees share of project costs towards its goal of raising 16 million the capital campaign has received grants, earmarks gifts and statements of intention totaling almost 5.8 million. I wanted to also point out that we submitted our first Massachusetts historic tax credits application for which we expect to be rejected and this is the norm this is what happens 99.9% of the time for the first application. The benefit to submitting early, knowing that we're going to get rejected is, along with that rejection, we will get comments and suggestions and requirements, the things that we need to change. And so we will address those comments in our August application. We will continue to apply every so it's three times a year every January, April and August each year until the end of our project. And we can receive about $2 million from these efforts over these next few years. Also, as you know, we've been working with Senator Comaford and Representative Dome over the past year in an effort to receive additional state funding for the project due to COVID related cost escalation. And this could result in the neighborhood of an additional $4 million ish. That was, that was all my prepared comments. I'm happy to take more questions. Thank you so much. Sharon just to confirm there weren't any questions. Okay, I was gonna say, I will turn this over to Lynn because I also want to thank Lynn for being the person who compiled the questions on the library. And Lynn, were there any additional questions that you had before we open it up to the committee. First of all, Sharon has, I think, addressed all of the questions. I do have one that kind of expands beyond that. And we can probably go ahead and take down the presentation. But the response to the questions are in your packet as well. And I want to thank Sharon for those written responses in advance. And for incorporating into your presentation now the responses to those questions. So, but I do want to push on one and this is really a question for probably Sean and Paul. Because it, to me it's a little confusing to see. Money related to the actual building in the budget so I'm trying to figure out how does that sort out when we do the renovation expansion, although what I'm hearing is the renovation expansion line in this budget is from the previous time. Yes. Yeah, so, so to clarify, it's not, it's used for repairs, building repairs. And, and basically what I'm going to do the money for the Jones expansion project. So if I'm on council votes again, I will work with Sean and I have several other funds. I forget what the total is, but I will basically be cutting a check and sending it all over to Sean, so that those funds can be used for. So keeping a separate account of the building and the renovation and expansion. Yeah, under a separate accounting I'm looking at Paul I'm looking at Sean I'm we have a so we have a few things so we have. A fund that's set up dedicated to the library building project within that fund there's a borrowing which is the authorization that for the town share. There's the grants funding, which we have the first payment of and that will be where we store any of the grant payments in the future. And then we have a donation account and so any of the fundraising any, anything like that and I think there's already been an initial payment that goes into this donation account. It really depends sort of on what the nature is of what Sharon sends us if it's again if it's fundraising, we would put in our donation account if it's something else we would classify it based on what it is. But we would make sure it's dedicated to the project. And then because we now have to big capital projects moving forward. I'm going to ask Paul and Sean, on behalf of the finance committee, how do we now see those accounts. And will we see them quarterly like we do the regular fiscal updates or how will the finance committee and the town council. See accounts associated to major building projects. Yeah, no, it's a good question. What I recommend and we can figure out a way to do this is that there's going to be reports and there have been reports that are already given to building committees, dedicated to these projects and we can make. I don't know what I believe posted but we can make them available to the finance committee and the council so for example, once a month, the opm for the Jones library project presents a budget overview of how the project's doing from a budgetary standpoint. Again very early on so there's not, it's not super exciting at this point but that same type of thing will happen with the school project and so I think, sort of recreating it. So those reports, and then answer any questions you have in my goal is not to undercut question or anyway suggest that the building committees aren't doing their job. It's just that in both cases, the town council has authorized significant money. So we need to make sure that the finance committee, where we've always agreed large capital projects are, if you will, funded from or recommended from or whatever. We just need to be, you know, have updates as well. Yeah, no that's a good. Good idea. Paul and I could make the town manager report to maybe make sense of something. Yeah, but we can put, we can put those documents into the finance committee's folder every we get the monthly from this building committees and the building committees look at that each building committee has to approve every invoice that is spent out of those funds. Those are, those are actual actions by the building committee. And then as in that process, you know, there is an updated sort of progress report on all the finances so we guys, you know, I'm not sure if you want to talk about them at every finance committee meeting you're welcome to do that but having them in your packet might be a good way to store them in a way they're also on every both school, both the building committees websites as well. I just think that some and, you know, the chair of the finance committee and so forth can discuss, you know, do we want kind of a quarterly update at the same time we look at the budget quarterly or something, just so that we continue to be good stewards of the town money. Right. It's huge. And you have representation on both of those committees as well as you know, that's exactly right. Yes. Thank you. Again, I, I'm done with my questions. Thank you. Are there other questions from the committee, either finance or council committees. Yeah, Bob. Yeah, this is maybe a question for for Bob Pam rather than for for Sharon but I'm, I'm interested in the stability of the endowment I know that in the past. I talked about the endowment may be tapped. If the fundraising doesn't quite reach the, the finish line. And I just want to make sure I know that I saw on the graph, there was a big drop, everyone lost money in the stock market at that time so was that sort of just the stock market or was it, you know, kind of more of a, you know, are you concerned about the long term stability of the endowment. I guess that's the question. The answer to the first question is yes that was the stock market. I'm not taking anyone. The table is it you tell me what the economy is going to look like next year. I can't give you an answer on that with the long term expectation is that the, the endowment will grow at least. I can't say at least at roughly the same rate as our withdrawal rates. So, you know, four or 5% is a conservative conservative estimate of what happens when you invest money. And that is essentially what we are doing we're doing it in a conservative way. The other half of your question is where the project is moving forward and if there are delays in receiving money through our fundraising. That could be a draw upon us and we have been talking about the possibility to get external sources through mass development through other kinds of activities that would be practical, useful, which would not endanger the operations of the library, but which we would still have to repay over a reasonably short period of time, but it would then mean that the endowment itself does not take a sudden and immediate hit. I can't tell you how that will all work out but you know that is where we are going with that and that will obviously depend upon the success of the fundraising. Thank you. Thank you Bob Jennifer. I have a question that I might have been in this budget and I just wasn't seeing it but there will be some expenses associated with the library having to move out into different locations. And is that in this budget or is that something that. No, that's in the building project. Okay package. Yeah. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions for library director Sharon Sherry Bob Pam or Lee Edwards. All right, well, we know that they're always happy to answer any questions that do come up but we appreciate you all taking the time today thank you so much for the thoughtful presentation and for responding to the questions ahead of time, we appreciate that. And with that you are free to enjoy the rest of your Tuesday. I'm going to turn it back over to Andy. Okay, thank you well I think that we're pretty well done with the agenda for today because it was the principle of the two topics that we discussed. I don't think that we have any further minutes as of today that I wanted that I can take up. And I have no anticipated matters to raise so unless anybody else does and like to raise anything else. Just say two quick things. So I'll post in the packet all the questions that we've received so far that we have responses. So I don't include the sets that you heard tonight and some of the capital ones from previous meeting and so on. And that's up that we are likely going to be rescheduling the public health department and the fire department to a later meeting. They originally scheduled I think for actually Friday, but both of those departments have conflicts so they'll likely be the 23rd. So if anybody was looking for those heads up that they're going to shift. But otherwise, the public safety and community services is the major topics of Friday and all other departments and possibly fire, as we haven't given confirmed yet. We're switching just public health so the public safety of course includes crests as well as police dispatch. In addition to fire. Animal control. So, that'll be Friday. Oh fair I'm sorry, you're right. That's Friday. Yeah. Yeah, your question. I do have a question, Andy, would you be able to send out I hear the update about fire I could not find an updated version of that document with the dates I know that I am the person who's collecting the questions and writing the memo for public safety and I'm not able to be there for the bulk of the meeting on Friday. And so I wasn't sure if you had an updated. List if I had missed that somehow and I apologize if I missed it. But I also will use this time to just remind the counselors who are here to please send me any questions that you have on that section of the budget because I want to make sure that I got I get them out and now it's Tuesday and so I'd like to get them to the to Sean tomorrow morning to you know give him at least 24 hours to consider that. And I'm going to send an email to the council as soon as this meeting ends but Andy if there are any other public safety folks who also have a slight conflict Friday, I would not be upset if they needed to move that as well to a point where I can be there and I apologize that I'm not able to be here for the full meeting on Friday. And I'm going to have to answer that question because he's the one who keeps tabs of who can be there when. Yeah, I think everybody else. I haven't heard anybody else is unavailable and given our sort of tight window. And Andy was actually planning on sending out the revised schedule that you mentioned. He's got an update I just need to confirm with fire before he can send it out. I definitely did not mean to suggest that the department heads needed to readjust their schedule. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to confirm did you get the questions I sent in. Yeah, yeah, I received them and they've been sent off to go for it. Yeah. Thanks. What is the date that the general discussion will take place. The finance committee starts to make its recommendation. We still plan to start on the 23rd and then follow it at the next meeting after that. There is a consolidated budget planning calendar. And I was going to update it. I'm still waiting for just final answer about fire department availability. So even though there appears to now be a presentation that day it'll be presentation and the beginning of discussion. Yes, it will be and there was a very difficult topic that was raised. No, I think we'll hold discussion, even information about how we can proceed with that issue which is of course the school committee request, additional funds and what the options are that are available to the council and things like that will not we won't get back to that till the 23rd. Jennifer. A very quick question. So whenever we the committee meets on Tuesdays it's this time 537 30. Yes. One to four Friday. Okay, thank you. Yes. As I say, we have a consolidated budget calendar and it was Lynn's permission all sent it to the entire council and it's approved by Sean, which should be tomorrow. Yeah, I also just want to bring up that when the finance committee begins to develop its report. We go back to the people who did the thorough review and the questions, and Andy asks us to draft some initial portion of the report around that. But sooner we get some examples because, as you can imagine with all the different people writing it looks like apples and oranges and then Andy has to make it look like lemonade. So, it's really important to understand that we still have a writing assignment that goes with our being the person that raised the questions. Okay. And I know I personally always want to go back and review the tapes and so forth when I'm trying to do that because I don't take all the specific notes I should. And real quickly to Lynn's point people whose departments that already presented you could you could start working on that now if you wanted to, so that it's not a crunch at the end. It's not you can't finalize until we have our last discussion, but that report will be due to the finding to the council on June 1, and will be then discussed at the council meeting on June 5. Did I get my dates right. Actually, I think it's due the 31st, because it's due 30 days after we receive the budget. I want to try and share screen to show where the document looks like now. It's written as the 23rd was going to be the initial discussion for the finalized recommendation and then finish that work on the 26th. So actually, if there are any issues that come up that are identified on the 23rd, we won't vote on them on the 23rd, but we try and vote on the 26th so that we have a complete set of recommendations ready and then 30th is when we have the final meeting to try and review the budget draft as it's been put together as of that day. So we do need to get it to the council and, you know, whether I think if you call it the 30th, the 31st, it's probably the 31st is the actual date. Yeah, I'm going to adjourn the council before I do that I just want to thank the counselors who have come who are not on the finance committee as well as the ones who are are as you I think observe because I think some of you were also here last year. This is really a great way to learn about our town. The financial budgets really provide lots of good information. So thanks for spending the time to attend yet another committee meeting. It makes so much more sense the second year than last year I have. Council is adjourned in the finance committee is also adjourned so thank you and see you on Friday. Thank you.