 Okay. They not. Thank you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. We're going to call the meeting to order. It's nine o'clock on Wednesday, January 16th. Our first order of business today is to take an opportunity to thank a number of people here for putting together this fabulous new look for the town room. And having it be here for us as a new council. I kept hearing these wonderful little murmurs about how great the room looked, and other people even came by and peeked in. But I have to say, I did not actually come into it until the first day that we sat down, which was December 3rd. It is amazing. It's working beautifully, and it makes us feel particularly special. And what's really special is the idea that you were, the town was planning to put it out to bid, and many of you, all of you said, no, wait a minute, we can do that work. And you did that work, and we are really appreciative of it. So with that, we're going to just take a pause and do a little bit of ceremony, if you will. And then we'll move on to our regular program. Thank you, Lynn. So what we're going to do now is we're going to ask, we have a little certificate for everybody who contributed, and you'll walk up and take it. But there are no acceptance speeches or anything like that for you. So at the inauguration, I mentioned this story about how we were looking to reconfigure this room because we were figuring how do we get a Council of 13 into our room and allow enough space for people to participate in. And as we struggled through this, I mean, really Rob Mora came up with the design and the sort of layout, and it seems to work. We looked at a lot of other communities that have Council meeting rooms and they have lots of different models. Sometimes the Council is elevated like they're above everybody, and that wasn't the feel of Amherst, I don't think. But getting this room into shape was no easy task. We had to design it and build it and so it could accommodate 13 people so they could basically see each other and also for the public to see them. We had to create the technology so that everybody could see and that the public could see. And we had to have this room designed so that we could move forward towards more paperless operations so that everybody in the room could see the technology and the people at home could see what the Council was looking at. So the people that we're going to recognize have worked during the work day but in addition to their normal working duties, but many came in on nights and weekends as well. So we're going to start with DPW. So I want to call up our Carpenters, Daryl Hager and Everett Bergman if they're not here. I don't think they're going to be here. And then Dakota Willis and Andy Cody. So we have a water issue down the street and that's why some of our folks aren't here. From facilities, Ralph is not here, I don't think. Oh, Ralph is here. Okay, Ralph Hathaway and John Mbimbo. And I know Mary Decker isn't here. I don't think she's here. She's the person who is the night custodian for Town Hall, but she was in here every night after the people were working and during the time and also consulting with us in terms of what would work for her because she has to take care of the space every day. As long as it's not too late. So from IT, we have Sean Hannan who really did lead the charge. Brianna Sundred, Bill Glover, Mike Warner, Rich Dukiewicz. And James Soltos wasn't here. He's here, but he wasn't here to design it, but he saved the day on the first meeting, I think. So James, you get one too. From Inspection Services, we have Dave Waskiewicz, Dave Cody. John Thompson and Rob Mora. So thank you, and we applaud your efforts here. Okay, are there any other announcements or proclamations at this point? Then we are going to move on. Mr. Buckleman, would you like to introduce the next round? Yes. So our next, we're going to talk about human resources folks. If you're leaving now, you're going to miss out. How to clear a room. So our next presentation in terms of our orientation is with human resources, and this is a special day for two reasons. One is we have, this is the last week for Deb Radway, our long-term director of human resources. There's going to be an event at noon today. You're all welcome to stop by. And we'll have our more sort of formal presentation of things to her at that point. So that's an important thing. And then we also have the personnel board here, and I think just turn it over to Deb who's going to carry forward with her presentation and talk about the human, the personnel board. You have to. You want to push the button on the mic. And Tony, the last time I knew you, you were teaching at the university. Oh, there you are. You. So the human resources department is the human resources director, me. Joanne Mziacek, the benefits and safety manager. And Jennifer Moisten, who is our, we share administrative assistant with the town manager and you. This is also the town of Amherst personnel board. And we are having a personnel board meeting this morning. And four of the five members of the personnel board are here. And they are Dr. Tony Butterfield, chair. Jennifer Hoffman, representing the library board of trustees. Rebecca Woodland, an appointed member. Way over there. Oh, yes. The union employees representative, Charles Sherpa. You might know him, former police chief. So and excuse me, I would like to introduce Evelyn Rivera Riffenberg, who on March 4th is your new human resources director. Welcome Evelyn. She is here for her first official event. So HR, what do we do? We follow all kinds of state and federal laws. And also the Fair Labor Standards Act, the health insurance laws, wage and hour laws, the affirmative action laws. And we also follow the Amherst town charter, the Jones library, legislation, the personnel and human rights bylaws. We support all of these activities that you see up here. I'm not going to read them all, but our little two and a half staff plus the personnel board does all of this for the town of Amherst. In terms of the employee life cycle, we care for the town employees from when they're recruited to their retirement. What does that really all mean? It means we work with the department heads to identify their functional area needs. We define and classify jobs. And we do this for the part-time hourly, for the seasonal, for the union positions, and for the non-union positions. We help develop and implement recruiting strategies and goals for each individual position, all focused on that overarching strategy of how do we attract and retrain a high-performing workforce that reflects the diversity and the makeup of the community. That's our driving thought when we're looking for new staff. We partner with employees to meet their needs, whether it's orientation, performance evaluations, counseling, talking about professional development. We work with them, and we also support retirees. We have 250 retirees in the town of Amherst, and we support them as they transition out and throughout their retirement. We have six collective bargaining agreements in the town, comprising 79% of the full-time staff, two in police, police supervisors and police patrol, two in the DPW, DPW supervisors and DPW rank and file, Fire Union and the administrative and technical staff in the SEIU. We also have 58 non-union employees comprising 21% of the full-time staff. They are confidential, professional, and managerial staff. The HR department is at the negotiating table for all of the collective bargaining agreements, and we have five agreements that expire next June 30th. We have one settled with fire through 2021. We also have four individual employment agreements with the fire chief, the police chief, the library director, and the town manager. One of the things that the HR department and the personnel board have set as a major priority is professional development. Of course, we're a college town. You can't have a limit on your professional development for your employees in a college town because everybody wants it and expects it. Professional development helps people learn the core competencies of their jobs, provides career ladders, providing stretch opportunities for folks so that they can reach out and try and grasp that next rung on their ladder to advance themselves and their families. We provide group trainings, whether it's customer service or on some software program or a safety training. We do all the legally required trainings, the sexual harassment policy training, and all the other policies that we have to by law offer. We try really hard to leverage the resources available at our colleges to help keep the cost of training down. We have trained over 45 supervisors and managers through the UMass supervisory leadership development program. We partner with Suffolk University on their executive management program in Northampton right now. We partner with the Amherst College Safety Programs for OSHA-related trainings. We also have a very small educational reimbursement budget that we make available to folks who are pursuing work-related degrees. Tony, I've talked enough. You want to talk about... Well, the role of the personnel board I think is to support and enhance that the HR function in the town be of the highest quality possible and support what the HR director does and even more than that, to be ahead of the curve, to not just comply with regulations affecting the employees who work for the town, but to anticipate. And, for example, from time to time, the legislature and the Commonwealth passes new laws affecting minimum wage or benefits for people who work in the private sector and it's more or less been our policy and the select board has supported that. Well, if we're asking the private sector to do that, the town ought to be paying the minimum wage and offering sickly benefits as well. So, we have always adopted that and with respect to the sickly law that was passed a couple of years ago, we proposed our own enhancement to that, which we think fits the needs of the town and its employees as well. We've had happily a very collaborative relationship with the HR director and the town manager and usually there is, there has been a liaison from the late grade select board to sit in on our meetings and if the town council chooses to continue that practice, I think we would be very pleased about that. And all in all, we have stated in writing that we want the town of Amherst to be an employer of choice in western Massachusetts and that our pay scale should be pegged actually at the 75th percentile of what communities in our area are paying and so far we've been able to do that. Thank you. I would also add that the 58 non-union staff view the personnel board as kind of their union rep. They, the personnel board advocates and mediates and studies comparable benefits to make sure that we have a really attractive personnel package and I echo what he said about a great relationship. So why should you care about morale? Because employee morale is one of the most important metrics that you use when you evaluate the town manager. How does he get along with his staff? And the HR department spends a lot of time working on employee recognitions, communications, and activities. We coordinate the meetup with the manager sessions every couple of months for him to meet privately in his office with five or six staff just kind of sharing. What do they like? What are they frustrated about? What do they want from him? We put out employee newsletters. We announce all the employee changes and hires. We have potlucks for any and as we are doing today at noon, absolutely no good reason. And we are famous for them. They're really good. Have you ever had David Burgess' coin dip? Our employees are also very, very active in the Pioneer Valley, throughout the Pioneer Valley, supporting charities. Whether it's a bike ride, as you can see with the library staff there, or United Way, or Toys for Pops, or lots of different charities, that's a way that we can all work together towards the common good. We also, HR department coordinates all the employee initiated celebrations that are summer picnics, or employee years of service recognition. So when you're evaluating the town manager, ask him how he's doing on morale. And ask us. The other thing that we do is administer all the employee benefits for town employees and the retirees. Until this current year we've had a health claims trust. We've been self-insured for health insurance. That has changed this year through Paul's leadership and the leadership of the insurance advisory committee. We are now safely fully insured for our health insurance through the Maya Trust and Blue Cross Blue Shield. We make insurance available to any employee who works throughout the year, 20 hours a week or more. We share the cost with employees. And we also offer dental and disability plans that are 100% employee funded, but we get a group discount on the rates because we're a big group. We have that very active wellness committee that Joanne supports that puts on wellness committees. As you can see, we have that lower picture. We're having a planking contest. I think Sandy Pool... No, Dave Zomac won that. Was that a politically correct response? We have a very active insurance advisory committee that provides advice to the health trust administrator who's Paul. And that's comprised of a representative from every single town and school employee group plus the non-union group plus retiree groups. And finally, workers' compensation and safety. We take safety really seriously in this town. We do a lot of safety training. We can always do more. We encourage all of our employees to report injuries. Don't hide anything. Don't try and be brave. We want to know if you're hurt. We participate in the Western Mass Safety Group trainings organized by Amherst College. And the reason why I'm really bringing this to your attention is that starting April 1st, certain OSHA standards are going to start applying to municipalities throughout the state. And you're going to be hearing more about the town's need to focus on meeting OSHA standards. And this concludes my presentation. Thank you. Are there questions? I have one. And that is at what is the plan to move to the minimum hourly wage of $15 an hour? Good question. The state has, through the grand bargain legislation that they passed last year, is increasing the minimum wage incrementally, 75 cents or a dollar every January 1st until 2023 when it's scheduled to go to $15 an hour. Our library and LSSE staffs are the ones that are the departments that are most impacted by this. So we've worked pretty hard with them to try and mitigate the impact so they look at their staffing models, because this costs them money and they've got to manage with it. So 2023 would be the latest to get to $15 an hour. Okay, thank you. Other questions? Yes, Kathy. I'm wondering on the training programs and career advancements, does the town get any special rebates or free tuition from either UMass or Amherst College? I know, for example, when my son was in the high school, he was able to take calculus at UMass. He just took the course. Has anything like that been extended to town employees? Individually, not collectively. It depends on the program. It depends on the individual. Additional questions? We want to thank you for your many, many years of service. Some of us may see you later, but it's particularly terrific to see somebody have enjoyed their job and done what you've done. And we hope you enjoy the next phase of your life. Thank you very much. It's been a blast. Thank you. Mr. Bachmann. Thank you. So next we have a presentation from our finance department. And as you'll see from their presentation, it's really a finance team. And I think that's what sort of the power of our financial department is that there are a lot of people who know a lot and have worked for the town for a number of years. And so I think you can feel confident that you've got some experienced people who are presenting to you. So start with Sonia Aldridge, who is our interim finance director and our comptroller and has been here a couple of years, I think. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I won't lie to you. I'm extremely nervous. And when I'm nervous, I mix up my words. It started this morning when I told my husband that the Sink clog was drained. And he just... On behalf of the finance department, finance team, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present the overview of the finance department and the processes. I'd like to introduce you to the finance team. I'm Sonia Aldridge. I'm the comptroller. This is David Burgess. He is the principal assessor. Holly Bowser, assistant comptroller, General Fatton, backing collector, Sherry Ruchet, backing treasurer, and Anthony, our procurement officer. Collectively, the five of us, not including Anthony. We've been here 132 years. So you have 132 years of experience sitting here. I've been here for 32 years myself. I started in the collector's office in 1987 and transferred to the accounting department in August of that same year. I worked my way up the ladder and I've been in this position for 20 years. The slide up here just shows the finance team. What it doesn't show here as a partner are the schools. We work very collaboratively with the schools. They are a part of our finance team and I just felt it was important to mention that. This is a quick overview of the finance... finance... excuse me. This is a quick overview of how the process flows in the finance department and this is in the order of the presentation. The assessor sets the tax rate and values the property. The collector sends bills and receives the payments. The treasurer deposits and invests the money. Accounting monitors, controls, and pays the bills. And we do a really good job with that. Just so I know. And the finance director uses all this information to forecast future budgets by analyzing the trends in revenues, expenditures, amongst many other factors. And now I'll turn it over to David Good morning. My name is David Burgess and I have been your principal assessor for 28 years. I've worked in appraisal and assessing for 36 years altogether. As you can see in my office there's myself and two administrative staff. The administrative staff are Roy Turatti who's been with me for 20 years and Theresa Boutalati who's been here for 22. As you're going to hear throughout this presentation, experience is predominant in this finance department. The major... We have the assessor's duties listed on the board above you. I'm not going to touch on them all. The major duty of the assessing office is to fairly and equitably value all the real estate and personal property in the town of Amherst every year for tax purposes. For the real estate this means that we are going to compare the properties that are sold from the prior calendar year to our assessed valuations that we're at. We're required to be at a level of 10% of market value plus or minus by the Department of Revenue and we do that every year. Every fifth year we can put up with the arduous attention of the Department of Revenue when they come in to certify our values. Through a lengthy process they will come in every, as I say, fifth year. It used to be every third year up until 2018 and market value of state guidelines of the 10%. The assessor will meet with you all again once every fall. You will be helping us set with classification hearing at which time we will determine if we're going to have one or two tax rates for commercial, industrial and residential. At this meeting we will advise you what the levied limit is that the amount of money we're going to have and the tax rate. I will mention the levied limit calculation later as another part of this presentation and we'll talk about it in June. Our other duties include the processing of motor vehicle excise bills the calculation of the bid bills, processing all personal exemptions for seniors, veterans, blind and surviving spouses. The assessing department also covers the town of Calum. We have an agreement with them and we've been working with them for about eight years. We do all of the same duties for the town of Calum and one of my staff works with the collector's office covering the central counter. The principal assessor, that's me we, I staff the board of assessors who meet once a month regularly and they are the signing authority for all that we do. With that in mind I'm going to turn this over now to Jenna Fountain she is our collector and she will be able to reveal the questions. Good morning. I'm Jennifer LaFountain Could you lean more into the mic? Sure. Is that better? So I'm the acting collector and I've been with the town for almost 20 years. I began part-time in the collector's office and working Saturdays at the landfill weighing in trucks and taking money for disposal until my position became full-time in the collector's office. I put myself through UMass Eisenberg part-time until I completed my bachelor's degree in business management while working full-time with the town. Along with me there is just over two and a half other personnel in the collector's office. Cindy's been with the town 31 and a half years Susan's been with us 22 years and Christine has been with us at our front counter since November. The collector portion of our department is responsible for issuing most of the town's billing. We are heavily regulated by Massachusetts general law for the majority of it. All of our billing is processed and managed in-house and it's truly a group effort to generate and mail it all in a timely manner. We work in collaboration with the assessor's office for our tax billing, the real estate and excise tax. We rely on and work with other departments to provide information to create the bills listed here under other billing. The collector's office is responsible for more than just the bills though. We are the first point of contact when entering the town hall. We help people find the area that they need to be at, whether it's for a license for a marriage license or an inspections permit. Four of the staff and one of them being from the assessor's office staff our central service counter in addition to their other office duties ensuring a pleasant experience when visitors come to town hall. Parking permits are issued at our front counter and we assist people with appeal information when looking to contest a ticket. I also provide in-person hearings the first Friday morning of each month. Timely billing and posting of payments is also very important. Not only is it regulated by mass general law it maintains a constant revenue stream for the town. The collector creates a deposit to be turned over to the treasurer which then gets posted to the general ledger in accounting. The treasurer and collector also work together whenever property tax bills remain unpaid. So I'm going to turn it over now to Sherry Boucher or Acting Treasurer. Good morning. I'm Sherry Boucher the Acting Treasurer, Assistant Treasurer at this moment. You pulled the mic towards you a little bit. Thank you. I've worked with the town of Amherst for 33 years. I started in the collector's office in 1985. Worked 18 years with them in the office and now working with the treasurer's office for 15 years. We're still all together so I do still work collectively with the collector's staff and customer inquiries. We need to have you move in further. Thanks Paul. I'm sorry. I also work closely with the accounting office with payroll and accounts payable. Many of the treasurer's functions are mandated by Mass General Law. This list is just a portion of what the treasurer's duties are. We don't have time today to go over everything. There's a lot. I'd like to talk about investments among the most important duties of the treasurer is maintaining the town's investments. The treasurer invests the money that is received by the collector's office in various departments, grants, funds and ensuring the best possible return for the town whether it be CDs, bonds, treasure notes. The returns from these investments help maintain the town's cash flow. The sound management of the town money aids in maintaining our strong bond with rating currently double A plus. We feel that this quote from our last bond rating in February 2015 really encapsulates the strength and responsibility of the entire finance team. The quote, we believe that Amherst's continued strong management will allow the town to maintain strong budgetary flexibility, commensurate with its formal policies and practices throughout the economic cycle. Moreover, the town's strong economy and property tax base should allow for revenues to remain strong and consistent. An endorsement like this could only be the result of strong teamwork and thorough planning from everyone involved in the finance department. One of my teammates, Holly Bowser, who will speak next to you will take over. Good morning. Like she said, my name is Holly Bowser. I've worked for the town just a few months shy of 20 years. I also started in the collector's office. I was a supervisor and then the assistant tax collector before I transferred to accounting and became the assistant comptroller almost 15 years ago. This slide shows our organizational chart in our office. We have five full-time employees, Sonia, the comptroller who you heard about earlier, myself, assistant comptroller. Teresa, our payroll and benefits coordinator has been with the town 30 years. Kim, our accounts payable clerk, and finally our procurement officer Anthony has been with us for about a year and a half. He has also shared with the schools and the enterprise funds as well to do their procurements. He's sitting here helping us this morning. He doesn't have a speaking part, but he was very, very integral in putting this presentation together and the slides together, so we want to thank him. Now we're going to go into a little bit about what we do. Again, we have many responsibilities and I want to highlight a few today. Payroll, which not only means paying all of our employees on time and accurately and according to policies, procedures, their collective bargaining agreements and applicable federal and state laws around employment, but also all the benefits that are associated with our employees. Teresa works very closely with the retirement board and all of our retirees, including their benefits as well. When they have insurance questions, they come in, they're looking for Teresa to help answer those questions. She also works closely with the schools balancing our monthly health insurance. Everything is balanced every month to the penny through our health insurance deductions. Accounts payable is responsible for getting all of our vendors paid on time. Working with the vendors, assisting departments with late notices, billing discrepancies, any research that may need to be done, as well as monitoring budgets and the amounts available to make sure that the bills can be paid. Our office reviews all invoices paid by the town. Every invoice comes through our office and is reviewed. We also print both the payroll and the AP checks for the elementary schools because they are on our books as well. The elementary schools are part of the general fund budget and their books are all mixed in with ours. Procurement is a very important and time-consuming role. It includes bidding, quotes, requests for proposals, contracts, purchase orders and always, always making sure that we're complying with the Uniform Procurement Act and state laws around bidding. These laws are constantly being updated so having a full-time person that's dedicated to this is extremely important to us. Invalid bidding and contracting procedures are very troublesome and potentially embarrassing. They are a place that we certainly don't want to be. We oversee the annual independent audit. We are constantly checking, reviewing trends, verifying, and we do audits in-house as well between the treasurer's office and myself, mostly sherry nowadays. We prove for accuracy all the collector and treasurer batches before they get posted to our general ledger. We're responsible for financial and state reporting, federal and state grant oversight. We're the keeper of records for all grants and that's just a few of the things that we do. Even the lists that's up there on the wall does not include everything. It's impossible. I mean, there's five full-time employees. We do a lot of work. So, on the next slide, we also are very involved in the budget process. Even more so now, over the past several years, Sanya has been the acting finance director and myself have been recently training and working very closely with our budget analyst who puts all those numbers and all those spreadsheets and all those things together to make that budget. And we've spent a lot more time on the budget over the last few years. From start to finish, from creating it to adopting it to balancing it and entering everything in our software system and matching all the votes and making sure everything balances to the penny there. And then there's the everyday budgetary control monitoring of the town's budget. We provide monthly budget reports to departments. We work and assist all the departments on their individual budgets as well as the overall budget. There is barely a day that goes by that one of us is not thinking about the budget in some fashion. It's on our minds all the time. We also provide staff assistance to the Community Preservation Act committee, the Finance Committee and the Joint Capital Planning Committee. And I'm going to turn it back over to Sanya to now go over part of that budget process. Is this on still? This is a flow chart of our budgeting process. A very wise man once said there are seven steps to a good budget process. And I'll give you a hint. He used to work here. Forecast, allocate, meet and refine. Meet and refine is where we're at today in the process for fiscal year 20. Finalize, present, that would be the town manager's purview. And then adopt would be the council's role. And then monitor which goes back to the comptroller role. This is a condensed version of the projection she included in the indicators report presented to the four boards in October, last October. This is the general fund only and it's important to note that this is a working projection. This is constantly changing as we get more precise information such as the governor's budget which will be coming out at the end of this week. There's two sections to this projection. Revenues and expenditures. We're going to start with the revenues. There's four categories in revenues. Property tax, local receipts, state aid, and other financing sources. This is a pie chart. It's a nice visual to see the four categories and their percentages. As you can see, property tax is the largest slice of the pie at 65%. Property tax is the most reliable source of revenue that we have. However, it does have its limitations as well. And that's what we commonly refer to as prop two and a half. Dave Burgess will go into greater detail of this later in the presentation. The second largest revenue source is state aid at 20%. It's been around 20% since 2012, but future growth or reduction remain uncertain. State aid comes through on the charity sheet. There's two parts to the charity sheet. Estimated receipts, which include chapter 70 funds, which is school-related funds, unrestricted general government aid commonly known as UGA. And then the second part of the charity sheet are estimated assessments or charges, if you will. And these include regional transit assessments in school choice and charter payments. Next state aid is receipts less assessments or charges. This is what the amount we actually have to appropriate for the operating budgets. It's great when we get more receipts, but usually it comes with increased charges as well. So it kind of levels off. The third part of the charity sheet is local receipts. There are both stable and unstable revenue sources in local receipts. Economically driven sources, such as investment income, licenses and permits, and motor vehicle excise. In a good economy, people are spending money, they're buying new cars, they're going on vacations, they're adding porches and stuff onto their houses, which brings in more revenue tends to go down. Our reliable sources are municipal fees and charges, fines, rental income, or penalties and interest. The final category is other financing sources. This includes free cash and stabilization fund. Transfer some other funds as ambulance receipts. We use ambulance receipts to help support our public safety operating budget. Overlay surplus, and I'll get into something. Our administrative overhead, our enterprise funds pay an administrative fee to the general fund. Back to our projection. We'll now focus on the expenditures. This is also in four categories. Operating budgets, capital budget, which includes debt service payments, fixed miscellaneous costs, and unappropriated uses. Again, the pie chart shows the visual. The largest expense in our budget is to the operating budgets, the town and school elementary operating budgets, the region assessment that we pay, and library tax support. Each budget includes salaries, operating expenses, and health insurance benefits. Capital. Currently, we have capital funding projected at 9.5% of the levy. Capital pays for debt service and cash capital. This pays for general fund debt only in what we call cash capital. Cash capital is the, we take 9.5% of the tax levy and then we pay our debt service and what's left is what we can actually pay cash for for capital. So if our debt goes up, our cash capital is going to go down. In addition to the above allocation, we can issue bonds, use reserves, state and federal grants such as Chapter 90 pays for road repairs and ambulance receipts have been used by ambulances in medical equipment. The next is fixed and miscellaneous costs and these include retirement and retirement and OPEB, which has other post-employment benefits. Final category is unappropriated costs and these include state assessments we talked about earlier from the cherry sheet reserves for abatements and exemptions otherwise known as overlay and we are required to raise between 1 and 3% of the tax levy to set aside to pay for abatements and exemptions and also our tax work off people get paid from that. We've always used 1% that's been sufficient since we have such a great assessor here that does a really good job for these, there's really not that much of a discrepancy and if there's any of that left over in the subsequent years, the assessing, the Board of Assessors can declare a surplus and we can use that as a funding source within the current year that we declared it, at the end of the year it will fall to free cash and then other amounts to be raised and that includes things like tax title are required to raise money to process tax titles and our assessment to the Pioneer Valley Planning Collaborative and didn't say much about the enterprise funds, I wanted to, the enterprise funds are self-sufficient, they run like a private business, we have water sewer, solid waste and transportation at the moment for enterprise funds, they pay administrative fees to the general fund and I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about all of these in the future and now I can hand it back to David on the Prop 2.5 The good news is that the musical chairs are about to finish I want to go over this Move the bank closer please, thank you Very briefly I'm going to discuss Proposition 2.5, these are the basics and one thing I want to point out right up front Proposition 2.5 does not refer to anyone's individual taxes Proposition 2.5 allows us to raise 2.5% over the levied limit from the previous year, in other words the amount of money we spent and then that is a portion over everyone else, and that can be impacted by changing values or changing market or demolitions or improvements Everything is under the levied limit except for three classes, we have two types of override we have the general override which is an operating override and that becomes a permanent part of the budget moving forward we have a capital override which is generally for one year we may use that for buying a truck for the VPW or the fire department or someone like that and that comes off at the end of the capital expense which is as I say one year for capital is a short term borrowing and then the debt exclusion and the debt exclusion lasts for the life of any borrowing that we do and others if we do any schools or any new buildings or something we have 25 or 30 years this will be on the tax bill for 25 or 30 years and over and above anything we raise on the levied limit it's outside the levied limit as we say I'm not going to try and go into a whole discussion on Proposition 2.5 but we have provided a link for the Proposition primer at 2.5 that's been done by the Department of Revenue and it's very good for many years they do an excellent job with their presentations so that's on there, you can see that the general calculation for Proposition 2.5 for the levied limit how we come up with the levied limit for the next year is that we take the previous year's levied limit we add the Proposition 2.5 amount that we're allowed and are always 2.5% of that levied limit we add on any new growth including the amount of money we have for the year that's found excluding any debt capital exclusions or operating budget overrides new growth is a large part of this and we are averaging 606,000 over the last 10 years on our basis the other thing we do and we're going to be talking to you about is the classification hearing that I mentioned earlier and we'll also go into a lot more explanation of the terminology about the budget at the classification hearing but we're going to determine whether to limit the tax on how much we can spend we'll have the option of whether we spend to the limit whether we're allowed to or not and generally Amherst has done that over the last my 28 years we've always spent to the limit the last slide that we have sorry, the last slide that I have shows you how new growth can impact the tax rate the levy limit really as you can see over this three year period we had large swings in the amount of new growth everything else is fairly standard for FY17 we saw a 62% increase in new growth over the previous year that's because we've got a large payment from the electric companies that'll only happen once in the blue moon so that doesn't really impact this and then it's stabilized the next year it's 30,000 this year we expect to see it up slightly because you may have noticed there's a couple of buildings getting put up in town rather large so we'll be including those and we'll be including a portion of peak and properties and then all the regular new growth that's going on in town and personal property we were just going to open you to something the last page shows a lot of links that we have for the different departments and schools that our IT department has put on and they are very good and they'll give you a lot more explanations and with that we'd like to throw it open to questions I'm sorry to cut you off Steve, question so the new buildings would be FY19 or FY18 actually they'll be spread out over the years because we assess June 30th so if they're only partially finished we'll pick up that amount and then we'll pick up the rest later on in the next year so it could be over two years that's why someone may say to me that's an $18 million building you should have $400,000 new growth it's not going to happen because it's not all going to be done by June 30th over the two years it could be $400,000 I have a test because the color of the paper was printed on originally I've been here a long time too yes and my previous organization used to run the cherry sheet conference every year most people hear the word cherry sheet and they go what's a sheet? it was literally before computers it was handed to you on a cherry colored sheet it's a physical PDF that is it with new growth we have a lot of tax exempt educational institutions that have been doing a lot of building does their new growth go into our tax levy at all or because they're tax exempt does it stay out? Andy there's one piece of two and a half you didn't mention that's the levy ceiling and where we are in relation to how the inflation is going to approach us to the levy ceiling eventually what that means what Mr Steinberg is referring to there's a figure that's called the levy ceiling quite rightly and the levy ceiling is 2.5% of the total valuation of the town so it changes as the valuation of the town goes up or down and we do sometimes go down because of deflation at the moment our levy ceiling is somewhere about $52 million and our amount of money we're raising and this is shooting hold on just a second I was going to say it was shooting blind but that's not quite true and we're at for FY18 we're at $50 million on our levy limit so we still have about $2 million in taxes that we can play with $2 or $3 million that we can play with our tax rate last year was $21.80 I would expect that it's going to go down a little bit this year and this is very early news so valuations have gone up considerably in the last cycle so I'm considering that we may raise the valuations as values go up the levy ceiling will go up and the tax rate will come down this is something I was going to explain in more detail at the tax classification hearing that we do Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Brewer are very familiar with it because of the number of times they've heard me at the meetings Questions Probably more than we can anticipate Yes, shall any Are the property taxes from buildings that are rented out considered residential or commercial? Very good question Mr. Steinberg considers everything that's residential and that's including the mixed-use buildings that are getting built at the moment the upper floors that are all residential will be valued as residential property the lower levels will be valued as commercial property and that again is one of the things and I'm not quite sure I keep saying the full council I don't know if it's going to be the full council or the finance committee that decides when we meet because each year you're going to have to decide if we are going to tax the commercials properties at a different level than we do the residential properties and we haven't done that in the past because we only run about 10% commercial there's very little commercial valuation but hotels sorry hotels are considered commercial apartment complexes are not Okay, thank you Additional questions Yes, Kathy Just to follow up on that so if you have a question that the top floors are residential and the bottom is commercial and you had two rates which we don't now they would be paying at two rate levels Correct for the first floor they'd pay one rate and for everything else they'd pay another And then do you assess the property value so if the first floor that's supposed to have commercial in it is empty right now and then it starts to get used does it change the valuation commercial property? Depends on why it's empty if it's empty because the person wants to charge too high around we're not going to change it we don't allow for bad management okay we create a model if I'm going to look along Main Street I'm going to look with retail sales for or rents for office rents for all of those things and if someone chooses to put their value above and can't fulfill the vacancy that's their choice we're still going to value it at the level of everyone else if there's a reason the building is not going because it's old or has not been maintained or brought up to date then we will adjust it yes Who manages our investments does the town or do we have an investment manager Sonia? We have an investment manager okay I'm sorry okay Shalini One of the things I heard during my campaigning was from seniors and fixed income and struggle with the property taxes have you ever considered having a differential rate for seniors on limited income is that even a possibility there's nothing in state law that allows us to do that however Amherst has been very active over the years and we provide the largest exemptions possible for all classes of seniors veterans blind and all the rest of it and we also provide our tax work off that's got a generous limit and we provide help for 35 people in that up to $1,500 a year but Amherst has also allowed that we will as much as double the state amount for the elderly and which I assume you're talking about mostly all the other classes of property and our long term applicants are nearly all at the 100% mark now so they've gone up considerably over the years for example the state limit for the elderly of 70 and over is $1,000 and before going any further there are no guidelines for that as well so Amherst allows $2,000 so we've been doing very well former town manager to this town manager have always pushed it just to follow up question are these deductions expected to be known by people like with most seniors know that these deductions are available we have them on our website and I work very close with the Council on Aging who regularly send out their bulletin and we put something on it nearly every year and we encourage people to come and do it at the moment and we might as well take this as an advertising people haven't tell about the 30th of March to complete an application in my office so we can review it and we will provide guidelines and have it help anyone that comes in to do it thank you yes you wanted to add to that please yes I just wanted to also mention that the financial service counter when people come in to pay if there is any expression of financial hardship we make every effort to work with the assessor's office to give them all the information on those exemptions and abatements that they might be eligible for so that's a big part of what we do at our front counter we try to help people with that and educate them on their bills and work on payment options so that they might be struggling does that include people who may have a change in circumstances divorce being one of the biggest ones I've heard of people talking about we we make our best effort to work with them as much as possible depending on what the needs are there's some bills that we just like motor vehicle excise that payment in full it's the state law but as far as real estate payments we do work with them Sherry has a direct debit program that she's been that's been here since what 1992 1992 and she can work out a monthly payment plan for them to help them stay current with their taxes thank you the administrative fee percentage the administrative fee the percentage yes you can get back to us on that one yeah I certainly don't know what's at the top of my head it's a very large calculation it takes into account a percentage of the town manager's time a percentage of the accountants time a percentage of the assessor's time a percentage of the very large calculation so it's not like it's 5% or 3% it's percentages of each department in the amount of time that they spend supporting those I can say that the water and sewer funds being our larger enterprise funds it's somewhere in the vicinity of 300 to 400,000 that they give back to the general fund each year and with the parking enterprise fund which is much smaller in the vicinity of about 100 to $150,000 a year that they give back but it's a very complicated calculation it's not just a straight percent is it federally negotiated or it is not it is a policy procedure that we have had in place for quite some time you know again based on the amount of time that different departments spend working in those funds and some people are directly allocated to an enterprise fund so we have to take that into consideration too great thank you and I just want to point out that it is in the budget book in all of the enterprise funds it shows the administrative fee and what the calculation is and it's many different percentages depending on what it is in here but it's all right there in the budget thank you so for major improved projects what is the criteria for deciding how to prioritize and for example if a bridge was broken down what you know how would you decide whether that's a priority and where would the funding come from when it's not expected deciding the priority is not my job that's the town manager's job and the council's job so I wouldn't do that they would come to me after the fact to see what is the best way to fund that and I would do some research and get back to them okay and the funding for that would come out of that would also be determined by the town council and town manager or it would be determined by the council and town manager with my advice yes additional questions yes Darcy I have another question about investment and I'm wondering if if you have taken under consideration either you're in your in-house investing or with your financial managers socially responsible investing I'm not quite sure what you mean by that yes go ahead we don't have state law regulates what we can invest in what the town can invest in is very regulated many years ago people were putting money into funds that were derivatives and things like that and a lot of towns lost a lot of money so that the state really cracked down on what towns and treasurers were allowed to put money into that being said it is within the realm possibility of the town I believe to set standards for what types of investments we put in so we don't I don't think we really have policies for retirement board has policies on socially responsible investments saying that we will only invest in green technologies or not invest in fuel companies or something like that our investor has a legal list that he can go by and mostly it's CDs and treasury notes mutual bonds they don't stray far from those because we're trying to stay in the safe zone it sounds like that's a more in-depth question because we know mutuals can be of various kinds and the choice of financial manager can be if you're deciding to invest in a socially responsible way a lot of that is connected to your choice of financial manager correct the town does look at that periodically two years ago we did go outside and look at other investment companies and people and ended up staying with who we had he's been doing a very good job for the town and that's where Claire McGinnis stayed with our firm who's our financial manager Abbey Capital we've been working with him as long as I've been with the treasurer's office the last 15 years okay other questions yes I'm sorry Evan thank you so I'm looking at this slide it's 10 year average annual new growth $606,000 the chart we have up there for 16, 17, 18 all of those are above sort of aberrant data point but I'm just sort of curious given many of the new projects going up in town, on university in North Amherst is there an expectation that new growth foreseeable near future will generally exceed that 10 year average of $606,000 yes at least over the next two years you're quite right there's a new growth in University Drive there's a new growth in North Amherst and the centre well there's going to be new growth on Spring Street and other areas around here we've already collected the new growth for the One East Pleasant Street so that's already in there that wasn't that big year so yes there is an expectation that it'll be a little bit higher additional questions I'm sure there's going to be many over time and we're going to be actually having our first meeting of the finance subcommittee of the board later today thank you very much thanks for everything you do for us and for the presentation Sonia you weren't too nervous really back to our seats and we'll begin welcome Sharon is our library director many of you already know her I'm going to go for it hi everybody there we go I'm glad you had a chance to have a break I really respect the amount of work that you're putting into all of this wow so I'm going to start today at the beginning why are libraries important so no matter what services libraries are providing today five years down the road the most important aspect of library services is working with the public we are in the people business and books are actually secondary to the patrons that we serve in any municipality the public library is the town's living room we are a community center it's where the community comes to connect grow play and share public libraries are vital economic anchors in any town we have 300,000 people walking through our door every year and when they're done conducting library business they're lingering and spending money in the town they're feeding the meters, they're eating lunch they're making photocopies, they're buying coffee the library's central location supports local businesses and information this is why libraries will never go out of business it's because we provide information information can become can be informational or it can be recreational and it comes in many different formats we as humans have gone from cave drawings to books six track tapes to streaming and from VHS tapes to Netflix and who knows what's going to happen in the next five to ten years but regardless of the technological advancements societies will always need information humans are always going to need to interact with other humans and so libraries will always be here to provide those things which leads me to the social justice aspect of public libraries so in every community there's always going to be the haves and the have nots and I know I'm preaching to the choir here but the beauty of government is that we're pooling our resources and distributing them evenly and it's a really powerful concept so regardless of age, race, sexual orientation or economic background our town is going to put out your fire, catch the bad guys plow your streets and give you free access to books and technology when the shelters are closed libraries serve as essential warming centers during the winter and cooling centers during the summer and then there's the technology piece I don't know if you've noticed but technology is expensive but access to technology is a requirement in this day and age and libraries are the only places in town where you can stay as long as you want use the resources and never have to bring your wallet and it's the Jones unique several things I always say the staff I believe that the our patrons are coming to the library because of the staff we are the 20th busiest library in the state that's not an insignificant statistic with the exception of Springfield all those other libraries that are doing more business than we are are out by Boston Worcester and then they're all around Boston all of our three buildings look like very sweet little Jones but on the inside they are used in astronomical numbers and that says a lot about this community the Jones also offer services that are not provided by very many other public libraries especially all at once the way that we do so our special collections archive this is bringing because it's in a public library it is bringing the history of the town to the people we have a dedicated art gallery which is bringing art for free to the people and we have an award presenting ESL program which is contributing to integrating our immigrants into this community then there's our programming which is top notch I don't think there's a day that goes by when we don't have at least one or two programs going on and we have two beloved branch libraries this last piece this long history of private support that we receive from this community not every public library has that support the Jones was founded 100 years ago this year because of a private benefactor he donated I think the number in today's dollars is 16 million but because of that because that practice continues today we are able to provide the types of services that most other libraries cannot so governance the Jones library is part town department and part its own corporation our six elected trustees hire the library director oversee the endowment and set library policy and as the library director hire the staff oversee expenditures and collections and enforce library policy all library staff are town of Amherst employees and I wanted to also note that every every other town department helps the library so everybody that you just spoke with works with the library accounting the town manager's office HR all library staff are hired through HR leisure services the senior center and I'm going to leave people out the health department thank you police fire DPW we are all the library is supported by all of these departments the buildings on the other hand this is where things get a little complicated I get a lot of questions about this so the Jones library trustees own the Jones building it's its own library staff manage the daily cleaning of the building and the grounds the North Amherst library on the other hand is owned by the town of Amherst and the property it's its own the library trustees do not pay rent there library staff are responsible for cleaning the North Amherst library and both the library staff and town staff work together to maintain the grounds and then there's the months in library building which is owned by the town of Amherst the library pays rent annually to the town of Amherst in order to be able to offer library services there the town staff are responsible for the daily cleaning and the grounds next I want to talk a bit about trends and holdings and circulation the four charts you see on the screen mimic nationwide trends and they tell part of a story so on the left you see the number of physical books Brianna oh I have to hold it so here so this is the number of physical books owned by the Jones library system which has decreased but the size of our content the collection size has increased exponentially on the right you can see that the circulation of our physical books has decreased but the circulation of our e-content has increased exponentially so there are lots of reasons why the nationwide for the nationwide decline of print book usage certainly our Google machines have contributed to this decline as well as budget cuts public libraries across the country have not recovered from the 2008 recession we are all weeding according to industry standards slowly methodically but we are unable to replace those items as quickly because there just isn't enough money so there are fewer books on the shelves available for checkout technology is another piece of this puzzle so it is changing at the speed of light right now so because of this libraries are having to purchase the same book in many different formats so that one John Grisham that we used to buy in regular print and large print we're also having to buy it on book on CD and play away and digital and so it's eating up the book budget more quickly one other point I want to make about the circulation stats has to do with the statistics themselves so for all our digital content we have to run circulation reports and this content is provided by lots of different vendors and of course each vendor reports those statistics differently which makes it hard for librarians to compile and then analyze the data because we're not always comparing apples to apples so what one vendor calls a view another vendor is going to call a session and one session could include dozens of inquiries but they're not necessarily being counted so it's an industry-wide problem there's no easy solution but the point is that people are downloading information that they used to find in books books that they used to check out so in many cases we're not able to track the number of inquiries and clicks that people are you know doing but these charts do not tell the whole story so books are making a comeback I'm not sure they ever went anywhere in Amherst but according to data from the American Sellers Association and the Association of American Publishers the number of bookstores in the United States is on the rise and e-book usage is declining hard copy book purchases are growing and sales of e-books are stagnant and I have this wonderful quote found in an article titled are e-books finally over when it comes to travel and convenience it's hard to beat e-books but it comes to a cozy bookshop visit on a Sunday afternoon followed by a cup of coffee and your favorite author nothing beats the real thing I think that sums up Amherst I was recently asked what I thought were the top five most important achievements the library system has accomplished in the seven years I've been here and certainly one of them has that we've accomplished is the programming explosion that we have going on at the library so the green chart shows the list of all the different programs we held last year there were almost 700 individual programs last year which is almost 60 per month and about two per day 57% of those programs for adults 32% were for children and 11% were for teenagers and regarding attendance almost 15,000 people attended our programs last year that's 1,250 people per month or approximately 42 people per day children account for 50% of our program attendance 32% and teens make up 18% of our program attendance we would never be as successful as we are if it were not for all our community partners we are so lucky to be located in this incredible town with such a huge heart the library is a member of the chamber Amherst arts night plus the cultural district and the bid we have staff liaisons on the historical society and the cultural council we run an annual food drive for food for fines program which is going on now we benefit the Amherst survival center we collaborate with the libraries at all the schools in this town the colleges the university we also host at the library Amherst community connections the legal women voters and the human rights commission so I always say we do not succeed alone I'm going to give you a quick overview of our budget we will delve much deeper during our budget hearings so the library relies on several different funding sources to make its operating budget 74 percent of the entire operating budget comes from the town appropriation and that money covers most of our personnel costs 14 percent of our budget comes from an annual draw from the library's endowment and that's valued at about 7.3 million today this money from the endowment is used for operation such as our annual CWM membership fee office supplies utilities building maintenance as well as for the remainder of our personnel costs that are not covered by the town appropriation or state aid ward 6 percent of our operating budget comes from fundraising and as I alluded to earlier this is a really high number for a public library we take this responsibility and privilege it really is a privilege very seriously so these trustees are committed to maintaining a 4 to 5 percent draw on the endowment unlike the 6 to 7 percent draws which were being taken in the early 2000s we know the endowment must live on in perpetuity if we want to continue to offer the level and quality of services that we do so when it comes to closing our budget gap rather than taking more money out of the endowment we fundraise you should also know that all our donations are used to fund books and programming as part of our fundraising efforts one of the things we've established is an annual signature fundraising event called the SAMIs the Samuel Minot Jones awards for literary achievement this year's event shameless plug Thursday April 26 at 6 p.m. at Amherst colleges Converse Hall we will be honoring Richard Michelson the Eric Carl Museum and Bruce Watson I hope to see you there and all proceeds from that go towards books and programming 3 percent back to the budget 3 percent of the budget comes from our annual State Aid Award from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners this money is used entirely to pay personnel costs not covered by the town 2 percent of our budget comes from the Friends and the Woodbury Fund so the Friends of the Jones Library System is the fundraising arm of the library and all money that the Friends bring in goes towards public programming and books another shameless plug they're doing mini golf and the library as a fundraiser on February 2nd it's all day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. come and play and the remaining 1 percent comes from funds fees and lost books for our expenses 66 percent of our budget goes towards salaries and 15 percent of our budget goes towards benefits so from FY 18 to FY 19 we saw a 23 percent increase in benefits costs and health insurance just like all the other town departments but from FY 19 to FY 20 we're expecting a 3 percent decrease because we will not be filling two of the positions two full-time positions and I'll talk about that a bit more later 8 percent of our budget is spent on circulating materials 4 percent on operations 3 percent on utilities 2 percent on CWMars that's our library card and interlibrary loan system 2 percent on building maintenance and the remaining 1 percent is on programming and special collections I do want to talk about state certification because for any public library without being certified it in essence turns your public library into a stand-alone island so I want to highlight this aspect of Massachusetts library life because it's so important not just because of the annual payment that we receive but for several other reasons so certification allows Amherst several benefits such as the annual state aid award and for us that's about $90,000 that's a big chunk of money for us Amherst residents are allowed to use all other certified public libraries in the state of Massachusetts for free and that's most of them there are only about 10 that are not certified the Jones can participate in the statewide interlibrary loan system and delivery this is a huge perk I bet most of the people in this room have utilized interlibrary loan at least once in the past 6 months and you know it's a vital service we can also participate in the public library construction program and the Jones can also apply for federal LSTA grants all because we are certified and so what are the requirements the town of Amherst must appropriate a certain amount of money each year to the library and the formula is up on the screen a figure of at least the average of the last 3 years municipal appropriation to the library increased by 2.5% so this is called the municipal appropriation requirement or the MAR and the town of Amherst meets that just fine the Jones library must also meet a set of minimum standards we have to be open to all residents of Massachusetts for free at least 59 hours per week at least 6 days per week we also have to spend a certain amount of money every year on books and this is called the materials expenditure requirement the M.E.R and for us that total is just over $200,000 challenges so I almost didn't include the slide at all I'm hoping it's making you smile but you know because the whole point of me being here is to give you an overview of the library and the library really is in great shape we are thriving but I felt like by not mentioning these couple of issues it would be the elephant in the room that I would be ignoring so I know you have questions so I'm going to briefly talk about it yeah okay so the the first my minion has to do with the health insurance cuts if it weren't for the health insurance problems last year our financial standing would be excellent we the library is a really good place donations have doubled in the seven years that I've been here state aid is funded well by the state and the endowment is expertly managed but health insurance costs have put us in a bind our annual state aid award no longer covers the deficit our share of personnel costs all our reserves have been spent on personnel so that we we are avoiding layoffs at all costs we've cut programming in half and instead of layoffs to people to full-time folks just retired and so we are just not filling those positions but as I've said before in order to close this gap we're focusing heavily on fundraising and then there's our buildings so as you know the Northamers library building needs a public restroom and handicapped accessibility it just does and then there's the Jones so don't focus a lot on this slide I just wanted to say that the Jones building is in need of extensive work to solve its safety efficiency and building system problems combine these issues with the fact that we are unable to serve the underserved in this community the trustees both former and current have known for over a decade that we need to renovate this building within the next five to ten years the town is gonna have to spend a substantial amount of money on the Jones building no matter what all our systems electrical HVAC fire suppression the atrium needs to be ripped out and started over they've all come to the end of their life spans according to an independent cost estimate by contractor not an architect the Band-Aid solution is gonna cost at a minimum 10 million dollars the result will still be an unsafe and confusing space but for 16 million Amherst will get a library that will serve everyone and will last the next 50 years I'm really excited to give you tours of the buildings answer all your questions and to work with you on our capital needs which leads me beautifully to advocacy so one of the ways in which public libraries across the whole state work to offset local budget cuts is by advocating on regional and state levels because we know that state aid is local aid so the Massachusetts library association the Massachusetts library system CW Mars and the western Massachusetts library advocates each helped bring money to libraries through the mblc in the form of state aid funding for networks that CW Mars funding for statewide delivery that's optima and funding for public library construction so library legislative breakfasts are held each year throughout the state so that library staff trustees friends and town counselors can come and advocate for library funding this year's Hampshire Franklin and Worcester district breakfast which is Joe Comerford's district will be held at the Jones and so I hope each of you will be able to attend if you will be in town I know you all are exhausted and doing so many things but it would be really great for our legislators especially since so many of them are new for them to see you here there it really is a wonderful opportunity to advocate for libraries that's everything thank you thank you very exciting and exuberant I'm not as exhausted as you guys are I know we were prepped for your exuberance are there questions and just to comment on this I am not able to attend but I've already made sure that Mandy Joe will be attending to represent the council but I urge every one of you to also attend this very important event yes Steve so my question isn't specifically about the Jones but it's about library-ness so in states I have functioning counties often times the counties run the libraries but are there any cases in Massachusetts where there are regional libraries so you realize you're in New England right so for the same rate so yes you're right those county systems work beautifully in the south I've been a librarian for almost 30 years now I do not see that ever happening in New England and especially in Massachusetts and a perfect example of that is all of the communities just in Massachusetts who choose to fund branches so everybody loves their library they love their community library and I think residents most residents are library lovers they see the benefit to it and they're going to continue to fund their individual libraries other questions could you tell I'm sorry Kathy it's a question I asked you when you gave me the tour thank you very much for the tour but one of the questions I have is along Steve's line of ways you might pool expenses and I know what the answer was but I'd like to probe a little bit more on storage the amount of the library that's used for storing things that you don't need direct access to is there any way of pushing harder on the five college system which has storage capacity or could we help as the town council to push harder because us building storage capacity either for municipal or for library when there is storage capacity sort of shared public space seems to me not a good use of money so I do not know how much only because I'm just a librarian I do not know how much this town could push or work with the five college system for access to their bunker so I genuinely don't know we have asked and their policy is that the bunker is reserved for their collections but as far as so storage I wouldn't necessarily call our collections in need of storage we need open access to our collections we are not an archive we're not an academic library we are here to open up our doors and our collections to everybody for any moment in time that they may come it doesn't mean that we couldn't house some collections off site but then you've got staffing issues you've got delivery issues you know going back and forth so it's not the problem with the Jones is not a storage problem the building is just crumbling around us so it's not that we're necessarily looking for more space or to participate in this grant program we have got to provide a library that will work for this community that's the only way the state will give us money certainly if the town decides to pay for the crumblingness on its own then it can do that and it will be able to house and will still be able to rely on interlibrary and it will be able to do that on its own so I guess what am I saying I'm saying our problem is not a storage issue it's a crumbling building issue thank you yes Dorothy I was interested in your use of the phrase that the library should be the town's living room and I agree with that and I'm wondering what your thoughts particularly in light of the new report from the state I had kind of like the idea of a first floor room with windows and light oh you mean the okay you mean the meeting room so Councillor Pam is talking about the MBLC the only requirement they put on receipt of the construction grant is that we don't have a large meeting room on the first floor I think that yeah we were disappointed but there was so much going on on the first floor I do agree with them that something had to give we want people to come in for their first vision to be a space that's big enough to house what's going on so the benefit of it going upstairs and to the ground level is we will be able to have windows but on the back end and the fact that it will be open up to the CVS parking lot which may or may not one day be a parking garage so people will be able to park there safely and no longer have to cross the busy Amity Street and they just walk in and they can use the meeting room after hours so I do think it will still be a space even with that move downstairs thank you for asking I wondered if you might like to introduce your trustees that are here sure I think we have trustee Bob Pam trustee Alex LeFave okay thank you great Chris Hoffman was here too okay trustee yeah for he's been around a while okay other questions yes I'm sorry I have two you talked about a actually I'll ask the other one first we're in the MLBC program and there's a list and all of that so I was curious and wondering whether you've got an idea of when we might be actually granted the money that the council will then have to potentially deal with and then the other one is you had a lot of services there a lot of programs a lot of services what are the ones that are used most what a fun question okay so let me start with the chart that I told you to ignore so this is it's a it's a draft timeline and it can change at any moment and with regards to the MLBC's public library construction program it another a new construction bond needs to be passed so this is one of the reasons that coming to the legislative breakfast is so important because we need to advocate for that the guess is that we will be given our money during FY21 so that's what is showing up there during FY21 so that could be in July of 2020 or later and what will happen is the MLBC will say okay Amherst you're up you're at the top of the list we've got the money you need to get your town's approval for your share of the money and so I put there trustees seek extension it depends on where we're going to be in a year and a half normally once we get the announcement we have six months to come to town council and get the approval if you guys are not ready for that if you're not in a good place we can ask the MLBC for a six month extension and so that's what I have assumed here which would mean in July of 22 as an example July of 21 which is FY22 we would need to get a commitment from town council for the 15.9 and let's say that happens that's when design development starts and we would move into temporary quarters this is a really important piece of this puzzle temporary quarters we're not going to be closed for two years by law we have to provide all the same library services that we are providing now so we will be doing that and we'll be working with the town to find a place to hang out for two years construction begins and ends in a couple of years after that so this is the guess it could change if the bond bill doesn't pass it'll take longer but there still are we're fourth on the wait list right now there are three other projects in front of us so that's the the building project and what services are provide and we hope that you have enjoyed the most is that what you were saying so oh well I hope all the staff aren't listening because it's not good to choose your favourites but I would say the children's room staff I've always said that in any public library the heart is the children's room I mean that's the activity that's the action and there's nothing more cute than all these little kids and books awesome you've got a lot of families coming to all of these events and so I would say that's the most active followed pretty closely by the adult programs I think we had I think according to the slide I think there were more adult programs but adult programs tend to attract fewer people you know we can have a magician and 150 kids are going to come but we don't have magicians for adults so fewer people come to that stuff other questions yes Kathy yeah I'll stay with the funding issue does the 16 million from the town assumes that you're also able to raise a substantial amount of money separately to get to the total yes great question so under capital campaign we've already done a feasibility study and it looks like we can raise 2.9 million and we'll also be going for historic tax credits for a total of 3.1 so you're exactly right so 15.9 I'm thinking is the minimum amount we would ask for the town anything that we raise this is important anything that we raise is going to offset that 35.6 million dollar budget the budget is not going to increase this is the price tag it's not going to change so if costs skyrocket cuts will have to be made does that make sense? I was just doing the math of the 35 million minus the 13 and it didn't come to 16 and you've got to raise the substantial amount of money 2.9, 3.1 and 15.9 it's very possible I screwed that up and then the 13.7 16 carry the 1 yeah I think it's all there 35.6 so the parts are 13.7 from the grant 15.9 from the town 2.9 from the capital campaign and 3.1 for historic tax credits two other pieces those four pieces equal 35.6 does that include the temporary headquarters for you? that is within the budget yes and where are you on the capital campaign besides your feasibility study? I'm so glad you asked we are starting up our feasibility committee again tomorrow and that's one of the things we'll be talking about is your timeline for the capital campaign? yes okay that's one of the things yes so you said the budget number that 35.6 is not changing but we all know construction costs are going up I've heard from previous presentations you've gone that the size of the building really can't change because of the library, state library rules so what gives? no that's a great question and the way the process works so I've only been involved in one of the project I was the library director when we built the Sunderland Library and so you set the budget and it's the only downside to the program you know if you were at home you would be able to make adjustments with your own checking account but municipal contracts work very differently so the money will be in a pot and slowly things change and move on and change orders are going to happen there's no such thing as a perfect building project and costs will go up sometimes costs go down sometimes when they're opening the bids they're lower than you thought smaller things can change finishes carpeting and tile we may want finish A but we may have to choose finish B there are those kinds of cuts that are made furnishings we could end up having to buy fewer chairs for example but it's so far out that it's impossible to say exactly but in my experience that's the way it ends up working and what percentage contingency do you have in there I'm going to say 5% but I'm pulling that out of my head I'd have to look other questions thank you thank you all so much and we want to thank the trustees for joining you we are there any comments from the council at this time then we do have a period for public comment who would like to make a public comment I just want to repeat what I always have to and that is we invite you to make a public comment we do not respond thank you very much my name is Kent Furber I was a trustee of the Jones Library from 97 to 2000 I started the annual fund and after a lifetime of work in the non-profit sector I've gotten back involved in the library so I will be very much involved in the fundraising that you'll hear more about I have three things to say first of all I'd like you not to come to any conclusions about the shape of this project or its funding because we're a long ways away from the kind of details that you are asking about secondly with respect to however offsite storage of books I just want to emphasize something that maybe Sharon didn't emphasize enough which is the this is not a research library this is a browsing library and it should stay that way and this town council should make sure that it stays that way our object is to attract people to the library to see what's there to enjoy it and not necessarily to provide access to everything on the shelves at all time but to provide enough on the shelves to justify the visit there and thirdly excuse me you made reference to the exuberance of our director I would like to second that and to indicate that that is precisely why I am involved in working with this library not Sharon's personality so much and why you should be involved with this library because as libraries are now in the process of being transformed we need a different kind of librarian we need a librarian who isn't a conservator only we need a librarian who says to this community this is where you should come to get together and to appreciate and enjoy the legacy that these books bring you that's a different kind of librarian than maybe we have thought we needed in the past and we're lucky to have that kind of librarian now thank you very much thank you any other public comment at this time let me just mention to the council I don't know where we stand on the poll but we are polling in February for another two to four hours to finish off the various educational opportunities that we've been putting together with the town and so please make sure you've answered that poll Andy did you have something I just wanted to say one thing to my colleagues on the council we've had some really wonderful presentations that have described to us the work of many of our departments and speaking mostly about for a second about municipal but also it refers to others we received in the material that was given to us before we were sworn in at that orientation session at the university there was a number of books one of which was budget book and mine is a little different because it's in a notebook style from my having been on the select board but I wanted to just encourage you to take a look at it again in relation to the departments that you have seen for example we started early on with public works and there was a number of different parts of public works that were described each of those is described fully within the budget book it talks about the mission of each of the departments we have it provides information about the accomplishments that have been made recently in each of the departments the short-term goals and long-term goals the accomplishments frequently contain statistics a lot of the police statistics yesterday on arrests for example are in the annual budget book so for those of us who've tracked annual budget books from year to year we can look at the trends and see the trends and some of those trends are within the material presented so if you really want to understand the tie-in between what we've been hearing and the budget I would encourage you to look at the town manager's budget book and the budgets for the library and schools thank you anything else at this time and just a moment Mr. Bachman can you tell us which other town departments we would be meeting with so the ones that have not had an opportunity to present include the council on aging the economic development department the health director there's one or two others LSSC those are the four big ones and town clerk she does have another town clerk town clerk yeah okay thank you anything else do I hear a motion to adjourn and a second got a second over here all those in favor raise your hand thank you