 Okay. It's just a few minutes after 5.30. So I'm going to call the Finance Committee meeting of April 18, 2023, the order which was posted for 5.30, and pursuant to actions of the legislature suspending certain sections of the open meeting law. This meeting will be conducted by a remote means members of the public who wish to attend the meeting may do so. I assume it by telephone, no in-person attendance and members of the public is being permitted, but every effort is made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by a technological means. And I also want to remind everybody that this meeting is being recorded so that you're aware of that. And with that said, I will go through the members who are present to make sure that they can hear and be heard and note that Bob Hegner had notified me in advance that he is unable to attend today. So just going alphabetically by last name, you know, Anna. Hello, hello. I can hear you. And Lynn. Present. Matt. Present. Ernie. Present. Kathy. Here. And Alicia. Here. Okay. And Alicia had to let me know just prior to the meeting that she's only to be able to be here for an hour. So I've offered to her since we had established in order for the agenda, that if she wanted to postpone an agenda item that she has particular interest in that she could let us know. Because I'm sorry that I know you've been struggling to find a time, but in any event, the first agenda item is to talk about two items related to the regional schools. Superintendent had been at the last council meeting and had presented the budget, which was then referred for the regional schools, which was referred to the committee. And the, this is the meeting and Dr Morris is not here. But that slaughter. Representing the schools is the finance school finance director is here to answer questions about the budget. And it's both the operating budget and capital budget are both items on the agenda. So with that said, Doug, do you have any thing that you want to say. Andy before, and you may have just said this, I apologize. The agenda does have public comment before we get into the regional school topics that you want to say that to the end. Actually, thank you for pointing that out. Let me just see. I didn't look at the attendee list. I don't know if anybody else has. Yeah, we have one person with their hand raised and we do have four members of public just in case they looked at the agenda and wanted to give comment, you know, thinking it would be first. Okay. No, thank you very much for pointing that out. And to notify all members of the public that we do have practiced at all of our meetings that we have a period of public comment up and trying to get it to the beginning of the meeting. So I would like to make it a more regular time. So appreciate the reminder. And please raise your hand. You'd like to make public comment. It can be about items on the agenda, but anything that you think that is important for the finance committee whether or not on the agenda items certainly you're welcome to raise your hand and we'll be glad to hear from you. And with that, I'll start with Tony Cunningham. Tony. Hi. Good afternoon. Hi, thanks, Sean. Yes, I was hoping to make this at the beginning of the meeting because I'm in the middle of making dinner. So Tony Cunningham North Hammers. My comments are on the funding requests before you today. Specifically, I believe funds to demolish the gas station on Montague Road should come out of the capital budget and not free cash. The town's financial management policies and objectives state that free cash and stabilization reserve funds are for unforeseen and extraordinary expenses and to sustain services during economic downturns. The gas station was purchased six years ago. I was at the groundbreaking of the North Amherst Library last June. The need to demolish the gas station is neither unforeseen nor extraordinary. And I would expect that funds for the demolition should have been requested through the joint capital planning committee last year or this year. I encourage you to reject the financial order to take the money from free cash and instead recommend that the town manager fit it within the FY 24 capital budget, which is not yet final. If the demolition is so urgent that funds are needed before July, then I suggest you recommend that Sean look into repurposing unspent capital funds to cover it. I think the part of this request that is for paving and landscaping to integrate the library and gas station sites. I think you should first find out more about how that fits in with the larger North Amherst intersection project. The last plan I saw showed a roadway going right through there linking center, Sunderland and Montague roads. It would seem unwise to spend money on paving if it is soon to be dug up for a road, which leads me to ask, if the town prepared a mass works infrastructure grant application for the 2023 round. I understand the application deadline is June 2 with the North Square development complete. The North Amherst library expansion almost finished and the Valley CDC housing project of ball lane in the works. It seems a very compelling mass works application to redo the North Amherst intersection could be developed. And the other financial order I want to comment on is the reuse water system. I'm glad you are rescinding the balance of the 5 million borrowing authorization. This capital project should never have been paid out paid for out of town funds in my opinion, as it was to benefit you mass. I would really like to see this, the town pursue getting back from the university, the $300,000 that has been spent on this project to date. Thank you. Thank you for your time is appreciated and the items that you reflect you, you talked about regarding an order. I'm sure we'll be discussed again when we get to the item but I sounds like you have other things going. Anyway, thank you, Mary. Join us and you can. You're on. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, Maria Kapicki South Amherst. We've just had a debate about the use of reserves to support the new school project. The people of Amherst were told by the town council that they will be the only ones to pay for it without meaningful help from the $24 million of reserves. Some of you said that was because that money is being saved for the fire station project, despite there being no evidence of progress toward that end. In the meeting, the orders on today's agenda were referred to the finance committee seeking to use reserves for other purposes, including as Tony just mentioned the demolition of a gas station that is in no way a surprise, a crisis or the fire station. I want to repeat the town policies and objectives that Tony mentioned. I was included in an October report from this committee stating that the primary objective of the town's reserve is to provide for unforeseen and extraordinary expenses. It further states that free cash in excess of the goal reserve amount should be used for non-recurring emergency expenditures or appropriated to a stabilization fund for future capital projects and equipment purchases or used to provide property tax relief. Again used to provide property tax relief. I submit that there is a very strong case to make to use more of the $24 million in reserves for the school project, which would be providing property tax relief, but not to use it to cover costs for predictable expenses that should be part of the regular capital budget process. In short, this committee and the town council need to apply your own fiscal guidelines on reserves consistently and not as a ploy when it suits some other purpose. Thank you. Thank you. Have the same comment this I made before and appreciation. So thank you for being with us. So anybody else who's in the audience who would like to be recognized. Can we get back to Doug Slaughter and Doug Slaughter. Is there any introductory comments that you'd like to make now about school budget, regional school budget. In capital request. I don't think so. I think the thing I'll say is it's, it's largely a change from when you last saw it at the four towns meeting. I think the biggest difference as I noted at your, at your full council meeting was the increase from 2.5% to a 3% increase in the assessment for Amherst, which then had a cascading effect to shoots very and the amount that they would would contribute to their assessment for the operating budget. And that our resulting, you know, that resulting increase of about $97,000 or so. At this point in time, we put into our contingency and control accounts because we're still negotiating several contracts and so we're not sure. We're ready to restore something from our, our sort of reductions list when we have that outstanding sort of potential costs there so it is in a bit of a. It's in a control account so that we can, you know, if needed be used to resolve that those contracts and how they resolve so that's what we've done with the additional resources that you gave to us. That's why they're highlighted in some of the materials you have today. And I think that that's where I'll stop for now because I think it's, it's been out there for you guys to look at for a while I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has about operating or capital budgets. I'm sorry to see if anybody has questions about the operating budget. Thank you, Kathy. Thanks, Doug. Needless to say real reading through what you gave us is a bit daunting, but thank you. I have a question just on a line to understand how you track it you have a line for contingency and a line for reserve. And you show that as for the coming year it's in the if I add the two together it's about nine, eight hundred and sixty thousand dollars and the year before it was 920. Do you show what happened to the year before. So of the 920, that was, that would have been the current year or if I go back several years to have a running account to say we were, this was what we were carrying. And this is what we had at the end of the year. We do. I mean, generally speaking, that contingency reserve lines are fairly small, fairly modest. They cover things like degree change, mid-year degree changes and, and traction obligations and retirement incentives, that sort of thing. So generally, you know, in the last three previously completed fiscal years, we had in fiscal 20 it was 61,000. In fiscal 21 it was about $2,000 and the fiscal 22 is about $1,000. Well, it's what we actually spent in each of those. And partly because we had other. Sometimes that's smaller because we use other resources when the rest within the rest of the budget to cover some of the costs we have we also don't incur those expenses always. The reason they're so large in the current fiscal year and in next fiscal years, because in both of those years. We're still anticipating the resolution of several contracts and those are where we carry a good portion of our estimates for what those will, what resources will need to cover those those those contracts and so they're fairly large. We're the current year and for next year because there's a, there's a pretty sizable chunk of money and therefore, you know, the resolution of those contracts. In most years, it's a fairly modest number in the sort of $50 $60,000 range. And then it depends as we go through our budget process whether things like sabbatical leads are are included or not we usually find out early enough that we can deduct that so I think that's it's a tricky part of the budget to look at and especially tricky to look at over time and, and certainly with the current year next year we have a lot of uncertainty because of unsettled contracts and so those numbers are fairly large. And then the reality is once we settle those contracts that month that funding that's there will end up in our payroll accounts up the top of the chart as it were in our consolidated spending plan so hopefully that helps paint the picture a little bit. Hello. No, no that that answered my question on that I'm just waiting to see I have a couple other questions so I just want to see whether other people have questions before I take take up more time. Yeah, Doug, would you call back to your statement earlier when you talked about the two and a half to the 3% and the impact on shoots Barry, and just explain that a little further and please. Thank you. So, you know, we have a less, less formal but certainly consensus opinion about how we are going about our assessment method at present time. And so we use a five year average of our minimum local contributions. And then, once we've sort of assessed that amount of money, then we use our, our regional agreement method which is a five year rolling average of students. The portion the cost to each of the districts because the one other piece that we put into that formulation is that we have a 4% guard rail that we apply just to moderate increases to communities both positive and negative. In the current year so for fiscal 24, both Pellum and Leveret are at that their increases were greater than 4%. Even before the change that you're asking about so we knew that they would be unimpacted by because they'd still be held harmless I guess is one way to say it not really but held to a limit of a 4% increase so those would hold still. And so with the increase in the funding that Amherst was available to put forward in their assessment. The impact was that Shootsbury was asked with a higher assessment as well. Technically all four would have gone up. But because we use the guard rails then we held Leverett and Shoots Leverett and Pellum to a 4% increase. But that increase for for Shootsbury was about $9,050 or something about that. So I reached out to once we knew that you the town of Amherst had the original resources available I reached out to Shootsbury to get some feedback because this was, you know, a bit of late breaking news it's not unmanageable but later than they were expecting it after we'd had our four towns meeting. So I reached out to him to see about that impact, and whether their, their select board finance committee etc had any comments relative to that. And was assured by the town administrator and issues where they talked about it, it was fine that they could manage that additional increase. They had other reductions in other areas of their budget overall that allowed them to, you know, easily take that into consideration this year and, and at the same time they're still less than 1% increase over last year so you know they really felt they they could and would be able to cover that additional increase in in their assessment. The thing that keeps coming back for me with the guardrails is the extent to which the smaller schools are protected with the guardrails. And that you respect and we really want to thank you for respecting the fact that we have said initially 2.5 and then 3% and I, some point in time. It would be useful to just understand what, for example, Pelham and lever would it would be paying if they. I assume the chart now shows what they would be paying since we upped ours to 3% except for the guardrails at four. And in, in one of the handouts that had the ability to motion there's a, there's a figure with blue stripes across it. Yeah, the left, one of those shows the, the amount that that Pelham and lever would be able would be charged if we if we didn't have guardrails. Okay, so you can see that that full impact for them. Thank you. Thanks, Doug. I think you touched on this when you were responding to Kathy's question and I apologize if I'm being redundant so with with contracts that have yet to be settled. And what I'm hearing is that you are estimating you're estimating a budget, and you are I'm assuming estimating high, or kind of straight down the middle I'm curious how that shakes out. And I apologize if this is too kind of big picture but I'm trying to figure out how that shakes out and how that impacts member towns. And then I have a separate sort of irrelevant question that I think I should just email Paul about with with changes to that so yeah contracts and can you just give me a quick overview on how that, how that works, the timelines of all of it. So I have a really large crystal ball that I use now. But I figured what we know is that we, we generally have in each of our contracts, a grid, which has lanes and has steps involved, but we know where people sit on the current structure. And so what we generally do is we, as we go from one year to the next we say, we take a snapshot a level services snapshot who's working for us right now. And we basically give them all a step, and, and, and see for where they are on the, on the salary grid and then usually the other piece that's factored into one year to the next is a cost of living increase. And so we made an estimate of what we think that cost of living increase would look like, and, and we basically, we do that we are estimating, to some extent, what we think you guys can afford you meaning the town of Amherst, the town of leather, etc. So we, we understand and recognize how prop to the app works, how new growth works. We listened carefully when you guys are, are doing financial forecasting in November and, and talked about what we think is going to have a state aid and all of those things and so we're factoring that in. And we're trying to pick a number that, that, you know, is, is within the realm of possibility. And, you know, the other thing that's a big unknown for us is that we don't know how the negotiations are going to necessarily turn out so there could be. If you keep your structure of your salary, it's the same and then it's just a cold that's a pretty straightforward kind of apples to apples. But if you restructure which we've done a few of our contracts recently because it's been a while so we restructure. We still have a sort of totality of available funds that we're still working from as, as we go through our process of negotiating. As well as understanding, you know, and always keeping in mind as we budget, sort of what, what resources are, are available so we, and when I did an initial estimate, basically we stepped everybody to the next step. And we did an estimate of a cost of living increase that we think would not result, which seemed reasonable relative to the sort of constraints of which you and the other three communities operate. And then we cross our fingers and hope the best at that point in some respects I don't mean to be glib about it but at the same time you know we're trying to, you know, can't put a 12% cola in because it's just not possible for any of the four towns to tolerate that kind of an increase to salaries so you know we try to pick a number that's, it's functional within the budgets that people are going to be operating within. So when we're looking at this budget, and we're also hearing that there will be positional cuts. It's not a level services budget then right if you're cutting positions because isn't that cutting services in some way. Or is that different is that different because you're expecting other educators to pick up the workload. So it's not quite level services, I will say, the tricky thing this year is because we've got, you know, some federal grant monies from from COVID called as their funds with those grant funds that are funding a lot of positions. Right. So what we're doing is, is people that are currently funded in the current fiscal year are currently funded from that. Not exclusively but largely that's where the cuts to positions are going to happen. And so then that frees up what we would have used from answer on salaries to then be applied to the budget more broadly. But it is, I mean there are fewer people working for us than there are now, as a result of this, and so it's not level services, it is. So if we exclude the kinds of things we're doing with us or then then those services are held fairly harmless and again, you know, that's, that's not diminished the work that gets done there but it with those extra funds and and we're going to miss that and it will have an impact and and so we're trying to in in some of the choices you'll see in that in that list of ads and reductions you'll see some positions that sort of show up in both places in both an ad and a reduction and the idea is that well we took it off of one source of funding, sort of this external source and put it on to our other most of those positions are reduced so there's some some trading back and forth based on on enrollment so those kind of things. But largely it's funded positions are funded by grant that we're going to go away in a year anyway so it's, it's sort of an early version of that reduction for the city and, and yeah it's it we're going to be less than than what we were this year. Thank you for bearing with me as I run at the learning curve. Thank you. Yeah, I want to pick up on the concept of level services but segue to some questions about enrollment. If enrollment declines. At some point staffing, you'd expect staffing to decline, you know, not necessarily in each position. So, so I don't know how what you call that but it's different than I think a if enrollment was going up and you saw staffing cuts or there was stagnant. So enrollment is down about 100 total children since two or three years ago 300 and a large amount. So I was trying to track thank you for giving me the time. It looks to me like there's been a shift in the budget, and I can't see the special needs versus regular, but the during that five year, the five year time period where I can see dollars is special needs. And the regular account is we're spending more than we're spending for regular so I don't know whether the special needs group is growing, and the regular is declining, or the regular is about the same, you know so I'm trying to get some sense is the definition of middle and high school changing that was question number one and I'll just ask the other one we I don't have a, how many over, you know the last five years or 10 years how many are going to the charter school from either the middle or the high school, how many are coming into us are going out of us on school choice, you know that flow of in and out from public, which would give me a better sense of what the underlying. Some of what the story is on what's what's happening because I know charter takes a lot of money out of the school system, probably a whole lot more. Well I know a lot more than you see as a decrease in expenses. One child, one student leaves and suddenly $24,000 less is spent but but I think getting some kind of analysis would be useful so I'm not asking for all of that right now, Doug but that is looking over time. You know, are we starting to adjust staffing to where the actual enrollment is is the big question, and then is the, is there a shift in enrollment away away from regular towards special or is it special is special growing, and then where does charter fit into that whole equation. So I'll say, I'll take that last part first I think in, in, in this regard I think our, the number of students we have going to charter schools has been fairly stable over the last few years. And so the, I think the primary just a raw number of kids standpoint we've been pretty steady with that which is, is encouraging because then it makes the sort of impact, a little more predictable in some respects, when we have a growing population which was the case. A couple of years ago, especially when charter schools were new and there were a big, you know, number of schools were formed and you had this sort of every year increase in the number of students. That's much harder circumstance because you're trying to project and predict how many, how many you have but we've noticed that we've had a fairly steady level, you know, plus or minus one or two students for the last few years and so that's helpful to us, because the impact is stabilized isn't I will say that you know the outflow of money to two charter schools is significant. But it's more predictable because I think our enrollment in those in those programs has held fairly steady. And ideally we'd like to, you know, bring more of those kids back, or not lose them in the first place with some grade, you know, you sort of lose some. We do get some back, but what we've had a steady state the last couple years I would suggest and I'm hopeful that we can continue that if not shrink that population. Back to your other questions around some of the population shifts and we've got that sort of thing. And again, this place in the charter a little bit because again, you know, if you look at charter schools, I think the, the number of special education students that they have and severity of the needs of those students is probably. And this is a very, very broad generalization is likely less than what we have to work with here. So the kids that that, you know, and I'll pick on Springfield because they've got a science and technology charter school in Springfield. I doubt that they're attracting a lot of, you know, highly, highly needy students from a special education standpoint, they might, but it oftentimes is a complication that's that's too great to to manage in a charter school so I think that's one of those, you know, when you have a charter formula and some of that sort of stuff that gets a little problematic in my opinion so that's a little bit of an opinion by me personally so I think that's a little bit but. But as far as our population in the building and special education costs. There's a couple different pieces to that I don't know that we've had a strong increase necessarily the number of special education students. I think and if you ask our, our, our student services director they Brady she'd say that the acuity or the significance or the complexity of some of the kids needs have increased over the last couple years the pandemic's not done us any favors in that regard. So the level of need, the kinds of support kids need has gone up. We've increased our costs there, to some extent. I think strongly impacting us for fiscal 24 in particular was for our district placements that are out of district. Those costs for those programs are set by the state. We have a 14% increase this year on those, on those costs so even if we held the number of students fairly steady which we do. And with the programs that we operate within our, within our district we have a lot fewer out of district placement students, but nonetheless those those were pretty significant increases in those costs for the coming year and that really, really impacted this year's increase I don't know if you looked at the special item particular but it's double digit increase in costs and that's a lot less driven by by those costs in special education that have also risen and needs we have for students, because I think the severity and and acuity of the kind of problems and, and supports that they need have increased. So it's a it's a combination that I think that the raw headcount hasn't changed that much. I don't know the costs that go with those kids has gone up a little more aggressively than some, some of the other regular education costs. So again drives that that piece of the budget a little harder than, than the regular education costs to the question of sort of reducing overall enrollment going down and sort of impact. It's sort of a stair step method, you know you don't. You lose 100 students you can reduce it by exactly 4% or whatever the magic number is it's not doesn't work that way because classes aren't, you know one kid, right so class sizes are of a certain size. I think what you see at the middle school this year in particular you look at the reductions and, and, you know, they're, there's a half a team which is to teaching staff that's, you know, part of that is being leveraged to go to a dean's position, but, but the ability to reduce those two staff, sort of regardless of our budget we would have probably moved that forward as a reduction we need to do because we just don't have students to merit it. And certainly that's a cost we can't incur at this point in the country so it keeps our class sizes, even the reduced number students are class size you're going to hold fairly common to what they are this year. I mean for those and I think that's the, that's a difficulty as you continue to have declining enrollments, you know, what's our programmatic structure we're trying to be, are we still able to be a comprehensive high school. And we offer the broad, you know the breadth and depth of courses that we offer. We can change our paradigm around certain things would be special education, regular education, Sarah, all those things are on the table and we see the, you know, if you look at the fact that we're leveraging over a million dollars and in one time money to help balance this budget. And that's where we start, you know, fiscal 25. There's a, there's a real deep philosophical set of questions we're going to be asking ourselves as we go into fiscal 25. How are schools supposed to look like how we stay competitive relative to charter schools and, and choice to other districts. And, and how do we keep offering the things we want to offer in our program. Those are, those are the hard questions coming up for sure and things were, you know, already started to think about it in some way because we can see the writing on the wall as they say. Hopefully that paints a little bit of that picture on some of those topics. No, you did answer. And can I just follow up with one question. I think I know the answer to it still. If the sixth grade moves up. You know I understand what you ran into in terms of you need to treat it like a school within a school, but can straighters take language courses could let switch graders take art courses could they take music courses. And I know that those, those programs would have somewhat more potential we bust robust enrollment. Because you just have three grades and six graders are, in my opinion, more than capable of doing the music and art programs and they could certainly start a language if they didn't already. And they're not already coming up out of the common on taste program which they wouldn't be, but is there the potential for doing that. I think there's some I think that's some of what has been discussed. You know, I'm not as familiar particular I know they've spent a lot of time thinking about how to potentially offer some world language and introduction to that for sixth grade because there's some, some staff, you know, in the building already doing it for seventh and eighth grade that fit together and yet still keep you know the the appropriate balance and not. You know we do have Palomar and shoot spray they're going to have some pairs joined and so we don't over advantage certain kids over others in some respects that's part of the mix to. But I think there are some economies there I think it's it's around you know some shared staffing, I think we're hopeful for that and I think we're still exploring that a little bit, what extent. The licensure plays in a little bit but there's a fair amount of licensure that sort of fifth, eighth grade so hopefully a lot of people that you know where we can leverage that overlap and rationally pay some of them from Amherst and some of them from region, you know, we'll definitely do that whenever wherever we can. I think the hard thing is the administration piece because it is its own school to kind of build and have some of these other staff that you know, sit in those administrative roles and hold that responsibility and report on those things. You know, don't go away so you know you kind of trade one thing for another in some respects so hopefully in the in the net we end up in a positive place financially but but it's, it's moderated by the fact that it's a separate school. And I think, you know, the superintendent said this to is that there's opportunities for the state has has taken a little. Find your view to targeted types of modifications to regional agreement and so that that may be an opportunity to sort of rethink how we, how we work with this sixth grade in our, in our middle school building and whether we can potentially find a way and be partnered with our other departments to do this but can we, you know, make a small adjustment or small adjustments to the, to the regional agreement in a way to bring that sixth grade in and, and, you know, sort of get the benefit of shared staff without quite as much overhead of administration so those are all, in the mix, I would say and we're still trying to get a little more sense of that but it's, it is a question that is not just daunting as it once was because it formerly with with opening a regional agreement it was a very big and like the and, and expensive prospect to do and, and if we could be, I think, kind of focused in that regard and again this is something that myself and the superintendent can't really initiate it's got to become school committee and Council and and select boards and that sort of thing that that sort of want to move in that direction but you know that that may be an option that makes that sixth grade move a little more viable and financially beneficial across the board. Thank you. Thanks. So, I want to pick up on the sixth grade move and just make sure I understand that because, but you just said, because desi has perhaps made altering a regional agreement, a little less onerous. That we, when we move the sixth grade to the middle school, we may actually be able to treat them more like part of the regional district. And then the question is, how do the other three elementary schools. Plan to play in that. Do they, you know, will we become and are we looking at are we having conversations about the possibility that we will become a six to 12 regional school in, you know, two years or whatever it would be. So that's kind of what I'm hearing is that. Yeah, I think that's right I think that the desi is a little more open to narrower adjustments to regional agreement so that's, I think the official, I think that opens up wide variety of potential outcomes. It could be that we make Amherst the only one that's a sixth grade to 12th grade and everybody else stays with seven to 12. I mean I think we want to explore that whole range of options I would suggest, and see, you know, the, the willingness and, and interest by the other communities I think would be part and parcel of that conversation. It could be that yes six to 12 for the whole of all four towns might be the direction we end up. It might be a thing where it's not that and I think we, you know, each of the towns going to have to explore that question and then collectively have to explore those questions together. I think that, you know, the, the financial piece of that is, is pretty significant. And, you know, if you sort of think about when you have a single school, you know, Palomarie single school and levered or a single school and choose very you take one seventh of that out of building. Some things aren't better off, you know, you still have a full time nurse, you still have a full time librarian or whatever circumstances I mean there are certain positions that don't get reduced by one seventh and you do that. You have a sixth grade, you know, and what do you do with the staff do they get hired by the regional districts and, you know, there's some economies there that that reduce the classroom needs perhaps and so there's a whole host of questions that go with that and some of them are first year problems you sort of want to make you know the transition years the hard one, but some of them are also sort of what's the more systemic, you know, impact on that school is staying in the, you know, in the kids that are staying in the building that's in the in the in those towns and in Amherst with three elementary schools. That's a, that's a more modest impact and quite frankly need the space in some schools, and it's necessary for the new building at the Fort Rivers site, you know, because it's a case, it's a cave out school so you know, in Amherst it's a pretty clear direction we've got in the need to move the sixth grade. I think for the others it's a more open question but I think we got to engage those towns in that regard. Right. And but I'm correct that we've laid that move until the new elementary school opens. Yeah. Okay, which makes lots of sense. I have a totally other issue but go ahead Doug. I think it'll take us that time, the sort of two years of time, because we're going to build a building whole thing. I'm presuming that the overriding will pass. So we're going to build a building and there's a lot of things to go with that so I think sort of in that same time framework, you know the series of questions around the sixth grade, being part of a regional school district and how to, you know, address these questions and ask them and get those results. That's all part of the two year process I think and so we'll simultaneously deal with that as long with getting the school building built and try to manage the budgets we have to. Okay. And so I, this is really a research question, and I'm not clear it's even fair to ask it of you. But I do have some serious concerns about the comparison of the demographic makeup of charter schools versus public regular public schools, and whether it's leading to segregation at some level. And I didn't know whether you were aware if anybody was looking at that or if that data, I'm assuming I could go on the desi website and find that data. Yeah, you can I think you know the charter schools report their their enrollments and their groups of kids, the same way that we do. And that data is all sitting there and and available and I think it depends on the school to I mean I think some schools. Some of the charter schools are much more parallel to to say our district or parallel to other districts. Some are not and I think, you know, I think that. And there's good and bad about that I don't want to state one thing or another about that but it but it also you know there's conversations and action that people want to take around the, the funding formula I think that should be a factor in the consideration of that in that funding formula. Because I think it's, you could, I think you can make a fairly simple argument that it places an undue burden on the, on the home district. You know, depending on what charter schools are available. And I think that Mr mangana and I've talked about is that transportation is a big deal so it speaking of segregation so economically not just sort of special ed or other kinds of things. You know, if you've got the means to get your, your child to the Charter School you can go to Charter School if you don't have a way to get there you can't get there. That's a, that's a tough circumstance and that's not necessarily fair. You know, make these schools accessible to everyone so I think there are some, some definite questions in my mind anyway around some of those equity type issues that that arise. Right. Okay. My next other questions are more about capital so I'm. I wanted to try and move it along to capital I have one question on operating and then see if we can get agreement to just go and move to capital so that we can move through the agenda fully today. And then see revenue presumptions that you made on revenue that is not from town assessments course lawyer part of it is the lines of state support that you receive in the region has the same problem that cities and towns that were commanded to develop budgets before the state finishes its budget process. And as a consequence, we're sitting here, never sure about how much we're going to be getting for our unrestricted government eight or chapter 70, you're not sure about chapter 70 or regional transportation or other lines that are within the budget. This year as I looked at the cherry sheet was just published on Saturday for the house waste and means budget. There's a significant increase in one of the lines which is regional transportation, and I know from my role in the mass municipal administration, we're doing a lot of work and a lot of effort and trying to get a per dollar increase for the minimum eight districts, which includes the region and the town from where it's start the one number of 30 that was put into the budget. That's not been doubled and you know we're hoping that it's going to be getting up to the $100 mark that the MMA has sass. And, or the region do in adjusting its budget if that revenue comes in higher than you projected at the time that you put together the budget that you're presenting to us. So there's a couple of things we can do. I think with with with chapter 70 that difference between $30 and $60 per student works out to about $40,000 for us. So that's a, that's a pretty small impact in, I mean, you know, $1000 is, you know, a couple of paraprofessionals so I don't want to be, I don't want to diminish the size of $40,000 or the importance of it. But at the same time, it, there are other areas in which in our estimates of, of, of revenue where that can kind of balance out a little bit but I think the big one I would say and, and that I've been thinking about is is transportation reimbursement. Now we typically have, you know, we receive the money and we spend the money kind of in the same year. But we have established thanks to Mr. Montgomery's work when he was in this role. We have established a transportation revolving fund that allows us to treat it much like we do the special education circuit breaker which is you sort of earn it one year receive it the next year and you can spend the following year and so you do have a time limit on when you spend it so there's potential for us, especially if, if we have a bit of a windfall for lack of term or, or an overage in, in transportation funding in particulars. We start to build that, that, that revenue up and maybe move to a circumstance where we treat it like we do circuit breaker where we sort of park it for a year and use it and budget it explicitly to the dollar amount so that that helps mitigate that that sort of volatility that we see. You know, I think that, you know, I'm always hopeful if revenues come in higher than expected. In worst case, they, they end up becoming E&E because we can't spend more than what we authorized for on the on the expense side. The revenue sources can can be different than the budget we make estimates of those obviously some are under somewhere over we try to be fairly close and really importantly, sort of hit the mark relative to to our overall need there and reasonable expectation of income in that regard but any overages in the in that in those revenues that aren't budgeted as expenses can be either. And I say, you know, sort of put into like the transportation revolving fund and then leverage for the coming year, or they go to E&E and our, our part and parcel of our, our budgeting for the subsequent years. And so we're trying to, you know, strike those balances and understand that that revenue is as it comes in to make our choices and make our plans around our E&E spending both in the current year and in our subsequent years and as you know, there is an upper limit on how much E&E there is and so if we have been overly conservative in our estimates of expenses then and our E&E gets too high we're compelled to give some of that back to the communities. But I think, you know, this maybe a good segue into capital is that, you know, there's, there's opportunity to take that kind of those, those kind of revenues and think about capital projects smaller ones that we can fund that way and reduce the capital expenditure and the borrowing that we might need to do so those are all ways in which we might leverage revenues, as long as we don't spend more than we had authorized so that is a little bit of some of the options we have available to us. And I hope we can bring this question to move on to capital. Not so much a question is a comment I'm looking at the cherry sheets and the House Ways and Means Committee is allocating 4% more in state aid than what you're currently, what you're currently getting you're being more generous to the schools and the families because they reduced our general aid. So it's not, you know, all things, it's not a huge amount of money, but it may be welcomed and I'm glad to know that you're, you've got some contingency plans and that some of this might get set aside for future future use. So there's unless somebody has anything else let's see if the questions about the capital side. When you had said you had some questions there. Yeah, I do. They're not specific they're more. And this is no surprise. It's really looking down the road and how we're planning for that and are there, you know, obviously, we're all hoping that we continue to have a wonderful relationship with the mass school building authority, and that maybe they can help with some of the things that need to be done. But I'm very concerned about the long term picture of our debt for the regional schools, particularly when it comes at a time when the town of Amherst may be taking on more significant debt as well. Yeah, I don't disagree with you at all. In that regard, and I think that I'm hopeful that that even as early as this coming year, you know, we have a project that it's, I think it's HPC energy master planning sounds, sounds noble doesn't it. But I think the idea is, is that we can be with some with process like that. You know so there's a there's a couple of pieces moving here. One is, you know, we have two buildings that are 50 plus and 65 plus years old or parts of them are. And so they're in need of some TLC and there's no kind of getting around it and they're big and they take a lot. So I think that's one piece to keep in mind. I think the other is that, you know, we want to shift to environmentally more responsible in terms of heating, cooling our buildings, great greater comfort, greater energy efficiency, etc. And so some of the ideas with with a master plan like that is to try to, you know, come up with some more targeted and focused understanding of the direction we can take with regard to that which will refine the numbers and hopefully make them not quite so ominous, but nonetheless they may stay that with, but they'll hopefully be more grounded in fundamentals of research that we've done. And that's, that's another piece, I think back to the age of our buildings and this was a point raised at the, at the, at the four towns meeting, and I think the, you know, about whether to with a shrinking enrollment to be, you know, reconsider whether to move our seventh and eighth grade to the, to the high school space and a bit on building. Currently, you know, when we looked at that a couple years ago, the cost of bringing the existing building fully up to code was pretty prohibited relative to that I mean a really big number. However, you know, as I was talking in a regional school subcommittee on budget, and one of the members said well, there's maybe a tipping point on that, that it doesn't seem so bad, depending on what our real capital costs are to look at so I think we're, we're going to continue to make improvements to those things as, as apparently and logically as we can and then also continue to weigh those sort of more fundamental shifts and in how we utilize our buildings and how we might structure ourselves, you know, in our spaces and what it would take. So I think those are all, you know, questions that are in our mind and are in our thoughts as we, as we do this capital planning, you know, the current capital plan that you saw in the years out are kind of keeping status quo in a lot of ways. And I think, you know, we're going to be pressed over the next few years and it won't be terribly long because we're going to, I think we'll get a sense of whether MSBA will return to their accelerated repair program, because that's going to be critical for the roof both middle school high school windows and doors at the, at the, at the high school all those are, you know, that's a critical potential funding source to help us keep those buildings flowing and, and like I said the current sort of trajectory is based on a kind of status quo. If we see our enrollments continue to drop, we can see some sense of what MSBA might look like and what they might be able to fund in coming years. It may shift our thinking about what we do and how we, how we want to work with the physical space we have and what we do with the buildings we have. So those are all in the next move ahead and, and certainly are, are on my mind certainly on the, you know, superintendent's mind and our facilities director's mind, we're kind of letting those things percolate and swirl around a little bit in our heads and be aware of those and try to be cognizant of that. Because it is a, you know, if you look at those out years there's some pretty significant numbers and, and, you know, I'm pretty, pretty sure they're probably bigger than any of the four towns can afford, unless something dramatic happens that in a good way for the finances of all the four towns. So we're going to have to, you know, strike the right balance and think about, you know, these, these infrastructure changes in a, in a pretty profound way, you know, talked earlier about a paradigm shift and how we, what we do and, and how we do our program studies this, this is a, you know, an integral part of the physical plant process as well as going to be a paradigm shifts and how we think about our buildings and what we can do within them, and what makes sense financially for four towns in the district to move ahead. Thank you. Yeah, I actually had identified the same issue and I am concerned about developing a very, it was a very thoughtful capital plan where you looked at all of the things that the schools need over a long period of time, and then came up with a solution that did not have a debt repayment schedule that was something that was smooth and would therefore have some really unaffordable peaks for towns and unsustainable increases in some years and I look ahead and think she I'm not likely to be on the Council of Finance committee when it really hits hard, but I got to think about the town and whoever is going to be responsible for those decisions at the time and I really do worry about the sustainability of what's coming forward, which gets into the other question again is that making enrollment and the cost of maintaining to building to aging buildings. Aren't we continuing to kick the can down the road by not having a more serious discussion about combining into one building question. I think the thing is, is that, you know, we do need to, and I think the short answer, you know, in the short term answer is, it's still too expensive to collapse it to, but when will that shift and sort of when does what kind of factors, you know, whether it be enrollment or costs of maintenance and repair. What is, what is our combination factors that Nick tips us into a direction that may be different than what we have now I think that's a critical question that we've got to bring up and in some ways resurrect the conversation we had a couple years and I think that there are options that are involved in, in, like moving us, you know, moving a seventh and eighth grade or moving a six seventh and eighth grade across the street is a pretty bold change in, in, in a lot of different ways and you know, and so that's, but it's. I think as we look at those out years in the, in the capital plan that we'll sort of laid out, you know, the increases in cost are pretty profound. You know, they're smoother but they're still large. So, so they don't jump around but they, they steadily increase to, to big numbers in a hurry and, and, and I would, you know, to be perfectly honest, they're certainly probably too big for any of the four towns to be able to manage at this point so we've got to moderate those to some extent in the shorter term and obviously in, in the next few years really weigh those questions of, of where we go because I think there's some pretty profound questions about, about our buildings and our enrollment size and that's where something we really have to revisit those questions from a couple years ago, there's no doubt. Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to just continue on this same conversation and bring MSBA back into it. You know the, it, it strikes me that we need to be working at the state level with our representatives to increase the flow of money into the MSBA program, I mean I know it's a share of the, the sales tax but they squeeze back on the accelerated repair so that they could be up the, which we benefited from for the elementary school because they have the construction per square foot but not nearly to where the construction costs are. And then at the last minute we discovered this change in low income metric, which is tied to the MSBA reimbursement rate. And it's a 10% of the already reduced amount that they were willing to do and so it so I sort of have a question on that metric, because one of, because the free lunch and breakfast programs are driving it less as we get everybody on them, and mass health is a big one. Do we have a family with children and your employer provides you with health insurance. Your children potentially can be on your own policy, but they might also be eligible for mass health. And you just you leave them on your own policy. Do we do anything to assess that. At least last time I looked which is about three or four years ago when I knew this better. You still had the option to put your children on because of the children side of the mass health program. So it's, so it's just a question on, do we potentially have an undercount was my question. And is there any way of addressing that because that we're, you've probably followed this stuff but we're kind of just barely above a state average in the way the new metric is doing so we had what Sean we had one transitional year that they went up and then they went back down again. So if we got more money and MSBA, and there was an accelerated reimbursement program back on. Making sure that percent is as high as possible would be good so it's just a question of a strategy on the MSBA MSBA level that is related to this one. It's tied to this one metric in a way that I had not understood until we got into the weeds. Desi, sending the desi expert to explain exactly how it worked. And just to build on that. It would have to be something that would So that the comparison is that the districts free and reduced lunch number compared to the state average. So have to be something that only was unique about Amherst that wouldn't also be true of the entire state. So, you know, like you can probably explain it but the state has gone back and forth with how it captures low income information for students that used to use the standard free and reduced lunch forms. They thought that system was sort of not very accurate so they went to a direct certification method where, you know, literally Doug uploads a list of you know even when, you know before Doug was in his role he did this. So Doug would upload a list of all our students and they would compare all of our students to the state database for nutritional assistance and for mass, mass health and some other state assistance programs. And then they would send back here all your students that qualify and so. So they thought that was a more accurate system, and then they switch backs on time during coven Doug you probably know more about that. Yeah, I think that, you know, to some extent they, they should because they realized what they gained or lost in using that complete direct certification model was was the differential was more profound than they realized I think a number of districts, right, were so advocated on their own behalf to get a better, better metric involved and so they kind of went back, I think, I think one of the things we can do as a district. And this is really looking at, you know, all three that I work with is is be really as per lack of a term aggressive about getting those forms filled out. The direct certification is great in a lot of ways it saves a lot of headaches and a lot of chasing of people relative to getting forms filled out. At the same time it's imperfect, you know, there's still, you know, aspects of it, depending on how a parent fills out their paper form when they apply for snap benefits. You make a big difference as to whether or not we get a direct certification because of how we match things up and there's not a great system for aligning those sometimes we find differences. But I think that we also have with university and the colleges in this area, it really you have people that are temporarily or by virtue of being graduate students with children and and limited amounts of resources and they make that choice and, and they need those supports and oftentimes they're, they're not aware that those supports exist. So I think that's one of the kinds of things we can do around our framework just applications is to really actively seek out, you know, getting those forms people having to fill them out. You know, because, because again they can, they can refuse the benefit if they choose to. Identifying them is as being qualified is pretty important because it's not only for things like SPA but it also there's a title and grant money that's tied to that kind of number there's also a thing called the rate which is some support around some some technological supports that is very helpful for us. There are more reasons for us to spend some time and effort on on getting forms out of people getting them out, getting them back, because the, because the, you know, first and foremost want to get kids food and and inexpensively a possible. Hopefully we'll go to a universal free meals at a federal level I think it's such. A lot of people leverage spending by the government when they do that it's really been phenomenal I think for our students and across the Commonwealth across the nation to have done that but, but independent of that I think, you know, knowing the economic status of kids and, and the supports that come around with them on our radar, or building programs are pretty critical to you know districts being able to function well and provide the case of MSP infrastructure we need. So I think that there are things we can do to actively pursuing the data to help ourselves out in that regard, I think to your other point I think, you know, I would suggest, you know, MSP needs, you know, doesn't need additional funding, I think there's probably a lot of schools that got built when ours did, you know, maybe boomers and, and we're, we're a lot of schools got built in the late 60s and early 70s around people, you know, my age going to school and those buildings are going to be 60 years old, they need a lot of work, so you know accelerated repair program pretty critical and, and so I think the state. You know it's going to need to find some other funding sources than just a sales tax to support that so they need to find another other mechanisms to support the MSP a program I think that's getting a sort of personal opinion about that but for what it's worth. I'm not going to go into this topic too much because it's nothing that we can do about at this time and I certainly am interested in the topic because my role in the fiscal policy committee, the MMA. Are there any other questions about the budget because I think that we're getting along in time and we have a lot to do today yet. If there are no other questions about the regional school operating capital budget, we have three orders that we need to make recommendations on to the Council for the meeting. Next Council meeting I believe it's on the agenda. So I was going to take those make those motions but Lynn. I was going to ask Andy whether there's two options. Okay, we've scheduled public forums for the 24th. We have one on the regional school budget on the capital budget. And there's, I guess there's one that's also scheduled for the other items. Do you want. We can either vote tonight and then as we have done in the past. We have a moment where we just reconsider anything before it goes to the council and then have the council vote on the 24th. The other option is we don't vote tonight we do the public forums, we vote on the 25th. And we actually vote at the council then on the 1st of May. I'm looking for your thoughts on that because those options are available. I don't have a strong feeling because I don't think that it's think that we probably know where this is going to go either way. I think that's a good question of timing. If there's other strong if there's any buddy with strong feelings about this because my inclination would be just go ahead and make the recommendations tonight and let's get moving. Do you not agree with that one. I'm absolutely fine with whichever way you would like to proceed. Anybody who would object to taking that up because otherwise I'm going to go ahead and make three. Three motions get boats on those motions quickly. Then we have one other item that Doug's going to hang on for, which is the first of the orders that has to do with the cannabis impact. And because it's actually a request to then be able is, is Sean will explain, at least a funding request from the schools. So, I'm going to start by so I'm making a motion, or the first of the three motions. This is in regard to the assessment method. I move that the finance committee recommend that the council adopt approval order. FY 24 dash oh one, an order approving the Amherst helm regional school district assessment method. Second. The motion that is made and seconded. I believe that was Lynn. And I think we've had, there's no other plans going up requesting any final discussion on the motion I'm just going to go and proceed in order and get the votes I also want to note that as we as Alicia told us in advance she left the meeting. She left the meeting approximately 20 after six and should be noted it's not being present. So, back to the motion. I'll start with one. Yay. absent. Matt. Andy, I'm going to support it. Can I ask a question with my support though are we committed to re evaluating the 4% guard rail method annually just with the four times meeting and all that. I think that the answer is yes, because it was recommended as a one year. This is a one year request for a two year request to the regional assessment method and therefore it has to be back every year. Okay, thank you I that's what my understanding but I wanted to confirm that we're not, you know, going to just stick with this as a matter of course forever. I support. Okay. Let's say here from. I'm going to assume that my answer is correct. I will say though, I just have to say this being the second year we've used this method to hear Matt say forever. And I don't know why it just brings a chuckle to my soul when we've got a method that we've had for two years or nothing against what you said Matt I totally agree. We've had so many different methods the last six years, seven years that it's a success that we've gone to the same method two years in a row. Whether that's the method we stick with it. That's a success. Point point taken. Yeah. Bernie. Perpetual assessment question I support. Yeah. Yes. I'm a yes, which is absent. And so I think that we have. Or yes. None opposed. We have two members, one one voting member. And from the resident members, we have two members in support and one member absent. Second motion. I move that the finance committee recommend that the council adopt approval appropriation and transfer order. FY 24 dash to Amherst Pellum regional school district budget, budget assessment order, approving the Amherst Pellum regional school. I think we're good. Actually just the budget assessment. Second. There's a second to the motion to get by Lynn. And so moving down one Bob Hagger is absent Matt. Support. Bernie. Kathy. Yes. I'm a yes, leashes absent. I. And Lynn. I. I think same votes. I won't repeat what it was, but it. Do note that it was the exact same boat as in the last. Motion. And the third motion. I do note is not a mandatory motion, but one that we have done in the past as a matter of just take going on the record. I don't know what to do, whether we have an opinion about it, but unless we were actually, unless the council votes no. It happens the way that the rules work, but I move that the finance committee recommend that the council adopted approval order. FY 24 dash 03 a Amherst Pellum regional school district capital debt authorization. So much has been seconded. No hands going up. Asking for any. Discussion something non Bernie. Support. Kathy. Yes. I'm a yes, leashes absent. Anna. I. Lynn. Hi. Bob's absent and Matt support. Okay, so that and that's again the same boat. As on the other so Sean, do you want to do an introduction of the next item just briefly and then look in as Doug spur to explain the program. Yeah, so the town has been receiving impact payments from a cannabis dispensary since we had our first dispensary. It's related to the host community agreements and was part of the original legislation. The requirement for the impact payments is that they go if they're not appropriated that they fall to free cash each year. And so we've been accumulating these impact payments and free cash for the last three or four years. And then what we are proposing is to put them the sum of our impact payments today into a revolving fund to appropriate them into a revolving fund so they can be spent for the purpose of mitigating the impacts of the dispensaries. And so there's a couple that are being proposed for FY 23 that one I'll talk about and one Doug will talk about. And the other is that the funds are really restricted to being used for that purpose it's not it's not something we have the flexibility to play with. They're from the dispensaries and that was the intent of the legislation that they be used to mitigate those impacts the state just didn't have a good mechanism for how municipalities could track them. So we think by putting them into this revolving fund that will allow us to track them better. And have a single place where all these expenditures are listed and recorded for future use. So for FY 23 I'll do mine real quick because it's really simple. We've assigned some duties to an existing staff member to oversee the community host agreements. We have about four active ones currently for both medical and recreational dispensaries in town. And this person oversees the renewal of those agreements the terms of those agreements when the impact payments are due. They reach out to them if they're not paid on time. They deal with any issues associated with the with the host community agreements. So we've estimated that cost to be about 15 10 or 15% of that person's job or sorry 15 or 20% of person's job or about $10,000 that we would move to this fund and that would be something we would do annually which would relieve some pressure on the the operating budget. And the second one, I will turn to Doug which came from the schools. I'm muted myself and I had to find my mouse. All right. So, not too long ago the superintendent wrote a request for funding from those funds. Regarding some educational activities we'd like to do and also some equipment we'd like but I think that the broader thing is that we see this and so if you get them and I don't know that was in your packet tonight but but I'm happy to share that with you Sean if you don't put handy. But the superintendent kind of leaves out some of the rationale for an immediate use of some funding to do some training with some staff to get some curriculum materials and get trained upon that and then implement those but also some some some physical that we can use in the schools in particular so we've reached out in done a survey of our students and there's been some surveys in and around the area since the since the legalization of recreational use and medical use marijuana. You know, students have talked about the fact it's easier to get a hold of it that used to be the risk of marijuana use in particular through the method of vaping is considered that it's not many of them consider it's not risky behavior and so I think that one would suggest that that may or may not be true but but also they may or may not be well informed in making that that judgment of that and so I think there's some areas in which we do some curriculum work with kids to to fully inform them on on what is and what is not risky and and what are the implications and legal circumstances around marijuana use in the area and what is and isn't allowed. We think the partners, you know the the the currently active businesses in town have been very good about, you know, complying with the with the with the law and, you know, carting people and doing the same kind of things that are that are alcohol vendors do as far as you're saying to age appropriate groups of people and that's one thing but I think that you want to approach this from the standpoint of some education can do and and and would need to continue to do it in future years as well. One of the other things that we've noticed is that you know vaping is is a, you know, as a, I don't want to say this or preferred but it's certainly a expedient and you know easily concealed mechanism for, or, you know, for partaking in marijuana and so we put some vape sensors there are technology that can identify if vaping is occurring and say a restroom. And we put some of those in place we would like to put some additional equipment like that in place and then obviously over time we want to continue to maintain that essentially expand that I think there's been some of those kids that aren't participating in vaping of any sort with that. And they want to, you know, they appreciated having those vaping devices into the place we put them to date. I think our staff are able to identify and have conversation with students and intercede a way that's positive and appropriate for those kids and it's really not been a terribly punitive kind of thing it's been more of a, you know, educational aspect and this is an appropriate place and, and, you know, educating them on the on the the risks and having them understable fully and work with them in that regard and, and so I think we want to continue with that so in the in the memo from the from the superintendent, you know, he sort of articulated the short term plans over the next a few months and early into next year and the associated amount of funding that we need for that but then I think, you know, be remiss to sort of just do it once and be done I think we're going to have some ongoing and regular work we're going to want to do students are going to continue to cycle into our buildings from, you know, graduate, no one's commanded so, you know, it's a process that's ongoing with regard to that educational component and keeping our staff up to speed on on the changing landscape of, of marijuana use and, and various, you know, delivery forms that become more, more prevalent in different minds and that sort of thing I think so for those reasons we think that this would be a good use and would be really supportive of our schools and, and more importantly our students in, in, you know, making the good decisions and being prepared to make the decisions that they, they should be making in 2021 about this but but certainly in the until the turn 21 understanding the circumstances and in risks and consequences of their actions and so we're hopeful that you'll be able to support this with current year and then in coming years as well. To clarify the, the request isn't for these are the things types of things the funds will be spent on you're not approving the specific request you're the action in front of you is to appropriate the funds into a revolving fund. And then when it's in a revolving fund it can be used as needed on these types of expenditures. The host community agreement payments will likely wind down wind down over the next couple of years to probably be zero at some point, because of the new canvas legislation. And so we don't expect this to be a recurring revenue source but the good news is we've built up enough of a balance that we should have funds there to use for the, you know, several years into the future for for things like this. So let me ask a question and just on what you said moment ago and that is. Are you with special revenue funds in the decision for expenditure be made as an executive function of the town manager without further council action or will this come back before the council for expenditure from that fund. This would know the action by the council would be the appropriation now once it's in the revolving fund, then it could be spent by the executive. We need to vote to create the fund. Yes, and I have. That's what the order is right. And there is a motion I just want to make sure that there's any questions about what was presented and what was presented. Yeah, I do have one comment now it's just that. And I don't want to get into trying to tell the schools the curriculum but one of the things that is increasingly emerging is marijuana that's being sold on the street that's laced with harmful drugs. Perhaps, one of the things that we want to teach kids to do is buy from reputable reputable dispensaries and not buy on the street because of that very issue so it's just a commentary on what's going on in society. Thanks, Andy. This is something I've been interested in since we were talking about the impact fees. The cannabis revenue during the reparations discussions. I support this and we'll support the motion but I would just like to have a discussion. Hang on one second, I'm sorry. I'd like to know my I guess my my interest is in the public benefit of learning what are we defining as the impact of dispensaries so that's, you know I don't I don't think that anybody wants the council necessarily managing the program or the funds, but I am very curious just some sort of what metrics we wind up drawing to determine impact and you know what in other words what is that we're trying to mitigate. So that data I think would be interesting to the public good. Yeah, no it's okay if I respond to that briefly. Sure. It's a good question. There's obviously very tangible impacts, like the vaping curriculum like police details impacts on infrastructure. Some, you know, some communities have seen a lot of very tangible impacts, probably I'll remember Northampton when they had the lines, you know, around the sidewalk and police details and things like that. And then, you know, and then there's the sort of broader societal impacts which I think are less easy to quantify but still real. So it is a good conversation I think it's evolving cities and towns have done lots of different things or, you know, sort of considered impacts in different ways and I think we're still evaluating impacts we've chosen to kind of see what other communities are doing and hear from departments how they've been impacted. And this is our first sort of request to expend these funds, but it is not going question around, you know, how broad are the impacts from dispensaries. I don't know if Paul has any comments himself or seems not any. Any further discussion in recognizing it in recommending then the creation of funds and the appropriation to the fund. We're creating a fund that we're now looking as it's an administrative function for making the decision on expenditures from the fund. So that we should, I will be clear in what I write up for the on behalf of the committee, if we do this, if this passes to make that point very clear to the council as a whole. So if there's any discussion at that point it's appropriate that we have that discussion now. Otherwise I'm going to proceed with the motion so that we can get on to the next agenda item. Matt. I just request some kind of mechanism for the town manager to report back on what impacts are being mitigated to the council, I guess. I just seen a nod from the managers he said that. Yeah, that makes sense. I'm going to make the motion this was as I have it on a motion sheet. If somebody men said to be more specific on the point just raised. That can happen, of course, but I move that the finance committee recommend that the council adopt order F by 23 dash 16 a an order appropriating from free cash to the cannabis impact special revenue fund. So second. Second. So there's motion that's been made and second and certainly further discussion on the motion. I'm going to give a real pause here because we just had a discussion about one aspect. Oh, I have a question. Yes, go ahead. And I'm not suggesting we do this but is there an alternative where the council would would actually approve appropriations of these funds, or is that not is that not in the construct of the revenue source. So you could probably make it a stabilization fund. If you wanted to have that type of control. And then separate the funds again we propose this for sort of administrative efficiency and be able to respond to to issues like this one, given everything that you know, all of all that's in front of the council. But an alternative could be another, you know, special purpose stabilization fund like we've created a couple of them recently. I personally would not go that far but I would just I would recommend you know some kind of a public report so there's a public discussion about about the matter. I do suggest that the committee and then asked that the order be amended to include. It could be a request of with an understanding that the time manager will report. As expenditures are made to the council. Yeah, I think that sounds that sounds great and the ongoing reporting mechanism would be perfect. I'm willing to make that a an amendment. If Lynn agrees is the seconder. So Lynn, I'd like to, I'd like it to be that on an annual basis that so that's not considered something that he has to track weekly monthly whatever annually is more than sufficient. Okay, let's make it on that basis then so. The amendments of the we're approving, recommending that the council. And order up like 2316 a in order establishing preparation for free cash that is impact reserve fund with the understanding that the manager will report in like annually to the council on expenditures from the special revenue fund. As a seconder I agree with that. Okay I'm just writing for a second I'm sorry. So with that being said and that being the motion on the floor if there's no further discussion. Then Kathy. Yes, yes. I will be yes, of course. Lisa absent. Hi. Lynn. Hi. Bob is absent. Matt support. And Bernie support. Okay, so again, motion. That could be summarized as I run the prior motion so I will not repeat it. So, Doug, thank you very much appreciate your having been with us and have a good rest of the evening. Thank you so much appreciate you all Simon all work you do. Thank you so much. Thank you. Nice. Let's recognize Gilbert if he's still with us and then we need to take stock of where we're at when at that point because I know we're getting on in time. I just want to mention that both Michelle and Alicia are perfectly fine with delaying the item until next next meeting. Okay, I was going to ask that question. And, but let's go on and I'm going to actually ask Sean to introduce each of the topics and orders. And then let your first speak to them and the first ones I believe the person I'm being added in order. Solid waste enterprise fund. Sure. So there are, yeah, these are all all gilfords. I'm going to collaborate with them on so the first one is the solid waste enterprise fund. The one of the biggest expenses for solid waste are tipping fees it's basically what we pay haulers to take trash away from the And it's a volatile cost that is tied directly with the price of fuel. So as fuel costs go up, or if we just have more people use the transfer station and there's higher quantities. The cost goes up and one thing we saw at the end of last fiscal year, and it trickled into this fiscal year with higher fuel prices were higher tipping costs. And we are, when we looked at our expense budget we didn't feel confident or expense budget in the enterprise fund. We weren't confident we were going to be able to get through the year on the expense side without having an overage. So we're requesting $25,000 from retained earnings within the sell solid waste enterprise fund for the tipping fees, specifically for the tipping fees, but it will increase the expense budget to get through the rest of the year. So once left to pay for and I looked at it we had about $13,000 left. And when I looked at what we spent last year. That's how we got to the number. And if there's anything we don't spend it just goes back into retain earnings at the end of the year on the word coming from so it'll come from retained earnings, which we had sufficient funds to appropriate that amount and we're going to put in quite a bit back into this year because of the new solar pilot rental revenues that we have in the fund. So, we weren't quite sure when the when we were going to get our first rent payment when they were actually going to do the ribbon cutting and the timing of that it did end up happening this fiscal year. That's why 23 so we received our first rent payment that was not budgeted so that will go into retained earnings and then we have will be budgeting that going forward. And we're replenishing more than replenishing this amount of money at the end of the year, just from that revenue source. Go for anything you want to add on that one or maybe I'll just keep going unless you want to add anything. Now you're doing fine. Okay. Let's take, let's take them in groups logical groups just to compute them out. I have a question and that is, is there any change now is there direction downward in the tipping fees. No, tipping fees we got a notice from one of the hall, one of the disposal sites that they're almost doubling the price of for mattresses that are considered dirty mattresses that can't be recycled those prices have now doubled. They were $60 and I think they're going up to 120. So, the prices are just going up, they're not going down. I only asked because mentioned was made of fuel costs and fuel expenses have gone down since they were at their peak. Other questions of on this item or filter into the committee to see if there any hands and I retained earnings balance right now was 199,000 in that fund. There's no discussion no request for discussion. I'm going to make a motion move that the finance committee recommend that the council adopt order. 23 dash oh four C in order appropriating a supplemental increase to the town of Amherst solid waste enterprise fund operating budget for fiscal year 2023. There's been a motion's been made and seconded. And there's been no request for discussion I've seen no hands going up now so alphabetically, I'm going to start the vote by voting yes, and note that release is absent. Hi. Lynn. Hi. No. Is absent, Matt. Support. Bernie. Bernie, that was a support. Okay, and Kathy. Yes. So again, no same vote is in prior. Did you want to. Okay. Yeah. So. I think just for the record, Andy, let's just say four members of the finance committee voting members voted I one is absent. Correct. And two members to non voting members of the finance committee voted to support and one is absent. Yes, and I do know that that has been the vote on all. That has been recorded in bill bureau. That will be reported fully in both the minutes and in other in the finance committee report. Thank you. So then let's go on and go back to you, Sean. So we're going to be talking about. Reuse waters and not at the next one. Yeah, the next two, if you're okay with, I'll do as a pair because they're, they're somewhat related. So these are two. They're both related to borrowing authorizations in the sewer enterprise fund. So the first one is rescinding the balance of the reuse water authorization. It was originally a $5 million authorization. We have spent about 4.7 million. So we want to, or sorry, we've spent about 300,000 we want to rescind about 4.7 million not to freak anybody out. So we want to rescind the balance of that. And to a public commenters earlier comment, reuse water and billing for use water or something that we're going to be looking at over the coming years. And so that that will certainly be looked at. And the second one is the gravity belt. So the gravity belt's a critical piece of equipment in the wastewater plant. We originally had an authorization for 2.3 million to replace it. It was sort of bad timing just like the centennial project I think it was the same year where everything we had voted that year came in way below budget because of the cost escalation and because of the pandemic. And it was just the timing of how it all merged. So Guilford's worked with our engineers to get revised cost estimates in order to complete that project which we do have to complete. And we will need about a million dollars more so it's going to increase the what we want to do is rescind the original authorization of 2.3 million and replace it with a new authorization for 3.3 million to complete the project. And so the net, the net here is we're saving about 3 plus million or so and debt authorized in the sewer fund between these two actions, and it will get the gravity belt project complete. Guilford you probably want to add to that. The only thing I'd add is, the gravity belt thickness is what processes sludge so if you don't use the belt thickness, you actually just ship out sludge that is just mostly water and it just increases the cost for sludge disposal so this is a critical piece of equipment that actually thickens the sludge and allows you to ship out more sludge less water and saves you money in the long run as long as it's working properly. Bernie has a question, Bernie. The gravity belt thickener. Is that eligible for a low interest state loan like an SRF loan or is that something we're going to have to bond for. It would be eligible if we had applied at the time but SRF loans when we were starting this project were kind of hard, and we were kind of staying away from because our interest rate was good. And we're at the process now where if we went out for a SRF loan we'd delay this another year and a half. Yeah, we don't want to. You don't want to do that. No, we need to get it going please. We don't want to make any sludge jokes but we don't want to. Thank you. Oh, I could get really messy. Any more puns. Any more comments or questions. Kathy. I have a, an unrelated related question but I'm all for doing this, it's when the nicely thickened sludge goes leaves us. Does anyone work on recycling it and turning it into fertilizer and dirt. I actually saw this happening in Austria and a couple countries. And I know this is sewer but just in terms of thinking, where does a stop. I think my question was clear. Our sludge goes to one of the two incinerators that burn the sludge and make electricity with it. It goes mostly it goes to Hartford, and they use it. And when Hartford is full and won't take it it sometimes goes out east to Blackstone. There are places that do compost it but a lot of that's come to a stop now because composting sludge and using it for field applications or other such things has actually been one of the causes for spreading PFOS contamination. So it's not burning it right now is probably one of the better things to do with this your sludge. Thank you. Anything else and I have questions at this point. This was a unfortunately the three different orders here that we're going to have to go through really quickly. But I think we have to do them one at a time. I don't know if we would really be appropriate to combine them. You have an opinion on that Sean. I think because these are related to debt. I would do them one at a time. Just to make it super clear. Okay, I move that the finance committee recommended council adopt order at by 2313 D. The order recenting authorized but an issued bonds originally approved by vote when taken under council order 2109 D reuse water. Change seconds. Hey. So much been seconded. Seeing no hands going up. So we're going to go up to the order and on. Hi, Lynn. You're muted Lynn. Hi. Bob is absent. Matt. Support. Bernie. Kathy. Yes. I'm a yes. And Alicia is absent. So it's the same vote again. Yes. Yes. One voting member absent. Two resident members in support and one resident member absent. The next motion would be. I move that the finance committee recommended council adopt order F. Why 2313 E. An order rescinding authorized but unissued bonds originally approved by vote taken under council order. 21 dash 090 gravity belt thickener. Second. Second. Okay. Okay. Lynn seconds. And Lynn. We're going to the boat. Hi. Again, Mr. Hegner Bob is absent. Matt. Support. Bernie. Support. Kathy. Yes. I'm a yes. Alicia is. Absent. So it's again. For. Members. Yes. Voting members. Yes. One counselor. Absent and of the resident members to and support and one absent. And the last of the motions in this group is. The finance finance committee recommended council adopt order F. Why 2309 be an order. Approving and authorizing borrowing to fund. Capital projects bond authorization for gravity belt thickener. Second. And seconds. And so this time. I will note that Bob is absent. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Seeing no hands going up. Matt. Support. Bernie. Support. Kathy. Yes. I'm a yes. Leashes absent. I. And Lynn. Hi. And so it's quarter zero. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The resident members to and support and one absent. So. That group. Watching the clock very carefully. Because it. I think it's when I hit the two hour point, I want to adjourn and postpone agenda. Other agenda items to the next meeting unless there is. A request to not do so. That is not the case. I think, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for having killed her for having been with us. They, I don't think that you're. Unless. Going to stay through the last item. Yeah. He's go for it's been always helping support that project. Okay, Matt, your hand is up. So let me. Oh, Andy. I just wanted to, since you were talking about the timing right now. I guess when I signed up for the finance committee, I was definitely, I really asked what time the meetings were going to be and that three o'clock slot was sort of something that I could manage. I am worried that this may not be sustainable for me either. I realize the councillors need to come first in terms of finding a time, but this is a challenge and I know that we've heard from staff about staff hours after working hours are done as well. I would just hope that we keep an eye on this and not fix this as our ongoing time. I realize May is going to be a meeting heavy time and we set the cadence for that, but beyond May, I hope we can keep this conversation open and just continue to pull the various members of the committee. Thank you for sharing that and it is something that we need to revisit, and I was even going to bring that topic up eventually, but I think we'll postpone it until the next meeting as you gather. I'm trying to set a limit on tonight just because it was 5.30 and wanted to keep it to two hours if I could. Do you want me to keep going, Andy? Yes, Sean, why don't you go back to the last orders that we're... Yeah, well, and real quickly, if there is a way we could at least set the dates and times that we're going to meet for May, that would be helpful because I want to get the department head scheduled for the month of May. It's a pretty hectic schedule in terms of lining people up and making sure all the departments get in front of the finance committee, and so I do want to be able to put something in their calendar soon, so if there's a way that we can even get the dates and the start time set, then I can at least get that confirmed. We'll talk about that in a minute, but why don't you go ahead and... Yeah, so the last request is for 110,000 to demolish the gas station at 24 Monagu Road and make some adjacent site improvements related to the North Amherst Library project. I think the part of this that's a little bit unexpected is just the timing of when it would all come together and be completed. I think we do agree with some of the comments made by the public commenters and one of the things I spoke with Paul last week about was potentially changing the funding source to repurpose capital. We do have a sufficient balance where we could change the funding source from free cash to that. So I think Paul was totally on board with that. That's change if that's the committee's will. But the free cash can be used for one time capital purposes as well. So I'll turn it over to Guilford who can explain a little bit more about the timing of the project and why this is coming up now. So the timing is we're almost done with the library project. We are on schedule. We're supposed to be done the end of August. When we were talking about wrapping it up and how to open the new library, there was a lot of comments about, well, can we get rid of the gas station and have the whole site in the condition it should be in at the end of the project. Right now, if we do not take down the gas station, the project will have a parking lot that's half new and half old. We originally just were going to pave the parking spaces immediately next to the library. And those are going to be the parking spaces. But when we went through site plan review, they wanted a larger parking lot. The funds weren't in the project for that. So what we said is we would use half the old. We'd use the existing payment that was there kind of fudged the two together and make a nice to make a parking lot. A lot of people have looked at the library and said this is a great project. It's looking really good. It's would be a shame not to have everything finished when we're done and have half finished and then have more work that has to be done. So the request is really to take down the gas station. The fence will be extended where the earnings is storing cars that'll be extended to hide their cars. So you wouldn't see the cars and then the space between the fence and the library would be regraded seated and loamed and then the parking lot would be complete. It would be exactly as approved by the site plan review would be 20, I think it's 21 parking spaces is what they approved. So it would just wrap up the whole project and make it nice. There's actually some money in here also for fixing some of the sidewalks next to the property as well and the public way on the state highway and on the town highway so that's also in the next year. So that's kind of what we're trying to do with this and we're trying to make it so that when we finish this project and walk away. We won't have to come back to it and we can go on to the next building projects that we have to work on. What about the question that was raised. Regarding the potential plan I see about the potential plan of bringing the roadway across that way and reconfiguring the whole road that work. The way we've been working the entire project. Nothing being done at the library including the large parking lot that was required will impact anything we want to do with bringing the road into central and road into Montague road that won't impact it at all. Removing the garage actually helps move that project along a little bit because that's one thing that has to go away is moving that garage. I'm going to recognize others and if I want to come back if they don't raise it I'll come might come back to that a little bit more but Lynn. So, I heard Sean suggest that the source of funds might be changed and move to leftover capital money and I, given the observations that have been made here tonight during public comment seems to be like that's a wise decision. And so my first question is do we need to re issue this order or can we amend it on the spot. Do you have any thoughts. Paul do you. Yeah, so I think the order is the appropriation, the source of funds can be adjusted appropriately, you know, as the finance committee makes a recommendation. So, I think that's within the framework. Great. Thank you so my next question is, it's been a while since I've looked at the hoped for change to the North intersect North Amherst intersection. Are you suggesting that we would not be paving the area that might in fact become a road down the pike. Pardon, pardon the pun. I mean down a road. Should we finally change that intersection. In fact, the parking lot for the library will not encroach at all on the area that would be needed for the roadway. Okay, and then my final question is, I know that in the past we have applied for great mass works grant for this intersection when we were doing north village that application was not successful north. The application was considered too far away. Maybe it's the rupture. I just know we've applied them past. It was, it was a square. Yeah, North Square and we didn't get it. And so do we see this as a potential now with the new live with the renovated library, and the other project up at balling as an as an opportunity again are we still looking at balling being too far away. I think Paul wants to answer that. So when we when we applied last time after we were rejected we put we really did a hard work to try to get that grant we had the secretary come down visit the site. We talked with the governor about it. We pulled out all of our stops and it didn't get funded. These are grants that are but for the grant, the project wouldn't happen balling is going to happen, whether we get a grant to do this or not. I think it's a it's a challenge for us to get a grant we didn't think this was a competitive grant application this year and actually quite honestly, we have a lot that we're still digesting through we have a lot of projects in the mix right now. We didn't pull together a grant application for this without having, we, without having a high degree of success expectations, we didn't think it was, it was valuable to do that. So, so I don't think that this would be a competitive application. Yeah, if North. And just the other thing is we did meet with the undersecretary somebody after the grant application was not approved to understand where the weaknesses were and that was really what they had told us because we do when we aren't when we aren't successful with a grant application we ask them to come out talk us through where we could have made it better things like that. And it was really just the, you know, the traffic counts weren't strong enough to really argue for this and they were. We just, we didn't have anything that really compelled them to want to fund it at this point in time at that point in time. And so I would observe that ball lane is even further away the North Square. No, no, no. So, it's, it doesn't seem to be connected from North Square. No, from ball lane is north of the mill district. Yeah, but it's right on, but it's right on Montague road so so it feeds where where mill district is up on calls, you know, just in terms of the flow of traffic. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I think we need to respect the decisions of the staff in terms of based on what they've gotten this feedback and the competitiveness. These are not small applications but I, that's just my personal opinion based on years of writing proposals. Yeah, I want to build on this because Pomeroy, the grant you got for Pomeroy. It felt like a miracle because the compelling arguments on what was going to happen on traffic if you drive through their traffic doesn't feel like traffic ever compared to what we've got up in danger, not just traffic in danger. So I think the near misses up here are pretty severe. So I'm, I'm just wondering Paul, I'm not saying that we could get something and pull it together by June 2 because we also don't have full agreement on what it should look like, you know, other than we want to bring that road over, but with the smart light and the apparatus, getting serious about traffic counts before you mass goes away. Because this is, we are now getting backed up again where for a while that light was working beautifully, Guilford but you know the last, and it's only a certain times a day but waiting for three or four changes before you get through the light. It's not much better than it was, but it used to cross 116 it's getting backed up. So I think we should be pulling as much data together Paul as possible to make a telling case. And I think one of the things you're going to see on the comments on ball lane people love this project, but everybody is worried about 44 new or whatever the number of new units is with the potential increase of traffic flow where now that the middle district is full, as opposed to still waiting for people to enter the truck traffic the delivery truck traffic the UMass traffic is here, and you would not want to measure it over the summer. You don't want you want to be measuring it when you met. So it's just a real urging of building both conceptually and a database with a compelling argument. My, so my, my only one on the 110,000 I mean we would love to get the library, I'm up when I say we were more North Amherst we would all love it gorgeous, and to get it done. So Guilford I know you were pushed by planning to do a lot of parking places. I know those who use the library were astonished by that pressure, because people walk to our library. There's not a lot of parking at the library. So, I also want to think through when you put that pavement down. Should we ever swing the road in, there'll be another place the parking could go if we need that road, that intersection to be wider. I want to think of how you juggle all of that and I know you've got all the maps and you've got the width of it but, but just making sure we don't do anything that infringes on maybe being able to swing it out. And the only last comment I'll make is you, you had to do some I think it was running of the new waterline into the bathrooms where Sunderland road was temporarily, you couldn't go north on it you you allowed some passage. That intersection was felt so safe. When those cars, when you didn't get that crossing over of cars, it was everyone was saying, maybe we could just continue construction for what, and keep that barrier up. It was just noticeable when you were trying to leave here come up here that you weren't getting that coming over of cars. So just trying to think of it as a real safety, particularly if kids start walk if you were hoping that some of this housing will have children in it. And so just trying to think of paying attention to the counts and getting ready. So, that's just my plea on all of this, you know, get gather better data this time. I mean we have a way of counting that we didn't before without a special study we can just count, you know, cars. Thank you. Anybody else is asking this big I'm. This is the first that I heard about the number of parking spaces that was required with the permit and somebody had asked my opinion about that. It is astounded because unless one assumes huge events going on that are going to involve lots of cars in the community room on a regular basis for the library itself to need more than spaces, including street spaces along Sunderland Road is where they are now. We probably exceeds anything that I have observed in the Northambers library use and all of my years are using it. I don't think that it is increasing so that I really wonder if that's something that needs some time, some thought. And the other questions that I have. I'm not sure that I'm ready that I feel comfortable making the motion as it is for the order as it is currently worded, because the motion. The order is says be it ordered the town council appropriate $110,000 for the demolition of the gas station. I'm trying to reach through it quickly. And to meet such appropriations transfer $110,000 from pre cash for appropriation so it does have the transfer built into the order and if we're going to revisit that question, not the if but the how funded. I don't think that I feel comfortable making the motion. Paul. I don't know if Sean can come up with draft motion to start a free cash what words they could put in there. And I think in terms of the parking requirements, Andy the, the community room, go from correct me holds 49 people. And I think that's what drove the parking requirements they were assuming that not if there's an event there for whatever reason there's 49 people who are going to show up. They're not all going to walk. And that that's why I think how they came to that number. The parking requirement was definitely out of the zoning correctly out of the zoning requirements. And, and all the people who live up here said that's too many parking places, Andy. You know, even even if even if event was there, you know, in terms of the way we've used when we go to the pine street co housing and the big, the big co housing. There aren't it houses 40 people and we don't all drive. We won't but it, but this is a townwide. Yeah. It's not just restricted to North Amherst residency anything could be held there. Yeah. Yeah, we, it's, it's been observed in not just in Amherst but in other places that we tend to overstate need for parking and zoning. It's a problem that's been addressed in a lot of other places and we need to think about that. I know from my time on the transportation advisory committee did go for it's put a lot of thought into the how we make that whole intersection at all interchanges streets. Better safer, trying to walk through there which I've done is a horror show. And I trust that, you know, Guilford will come up in its crew will come up with a great plan to do that, which will then be second guest until for the next five years. And I think we just need to, we have a team different on Sol. Transportation problems in town. And this one should be a priority and we have to pay for it. We have to pay for it. And where the money comes from doesn't matter to me might as well take it out of free cash and try to redo everything this is the, this is what's been polished. At some point if there's extra money left over and capital appropriations, the council can move it back to free cash. Thank you. So, here's a, if you do want to amend the order Paul. We passed when we've. So we use this repurpose capital account from time to time we used it last year for the cost escalation fund for inflation and so it's just we call it the repurpose capital account essentially capital that's been closed, because projects came in under budget. The funds sufficient to cover that. Yep, yep. Yeah, no there's there was a balance of about $500,000 some of it's being. Some of it's being recommended as part of the FY 24 capital improvement program as well so there's not a huge balance since they're to make sure if projects need a little bit more they can, they can do that but we have a project. I think a lot of projects close out some funds this year so they're sufficient funding there to cover this. I think that's a much better way of doing it. I agree. So is there further discussion. Otherwise, otherwise, we'll then go ahead with the amended motion language being references the motion would be I move that the finance committee recommend that the council adopt order FY 2305 in order, appropriating funds for a portion of the town capital and the town of Amherst capital program demolition of the gas station located at 24 Montague Road and site improvements. As amended. As amended. Oh, the, the. Okay. adopt order. FY 2305 D. As amended. So we'll add those words into what I made is some motion. So it would read the promotion is the finance committee recommend that the town adopt order FY 2305 D as amended in order appropriating funds for a portion of town of Amherst capital program demolition of the gas station located at 24 Montague Road and improvements. So that's not been a motion that's made and seconded. Further discussion. Seeing no further discussion I'm trying to. When I just start with Kathy. Yes. I will vote yes. Lisa absent on a. Hi. Hi. I'm noting that Bob is absent. Matt. Bernie. Support. So the motion again is. Or in favor one voting member absent. Of the three resident members who in support in one absent. So. I think that. If there's agreement that we're going to meet on the 25th as planned, then it would make sense to postpone. The minutes that we plan to do for tonight. Or the next meeting so that we can. This meeting tonight. Is there any. Anything that people would like to raise and the other thing I just want to point out is that we are going to come back then to review and committee meeting days and times. But I think. Unless I. The one thing I'd want to hear because Sean has asked for it is if there any feeling about. Varying the May meeting dates and I have one other top thing I just want to alert you to it. Kathy. I, you know, you know, the dates that I'm. Not going to be here. I put all those dates that were sent out to us in my calendar. So I'm fine. But I would just like confirmation soon. For when I am here and for for next week that 530 is is a realistic time that we re reorganize ourselves for 530. So I just want to thank you. Lynn, whatever you can do to get confirmation on that because we're going to to have everyone working through their dinner time in May. On Tuesdays, if the person who needed the time change can't actually be here. That's just my request. And then the other thing I was just going to say, since I'm not going to be here for the first part of. I will be here for the third of May and then I will be back. I'm willing to take assignments for the days I'm here in town. And so you can give me those. And even if I will, I will. I would get my questions or comments on other sections in as quickly as I can. It's just, but the poll I may not have the whole budget book so I'm going to have to be reading online. Because I'm leaving here on the fourth, and I don't think I want to carry it with me. So that's just my comment shown on yours. I mean, those, all of those states worked for me for me, but now I'm seeing that 530 is is is a difficult time for people. So, so the way I have it is it's Tuesdays at 530, and they will frequently last till 830 and Fridays at one to one o'clock to four o'clock. Most most the Tuesdays and Fridays in May. And if that's, yeah, if there's no objections, we've got sort of a schedule laid out so I can get department heads queued up for that. And I confirm we, Andy, I don't know, have you been able to talk to Alicia about the 530 time is is the will it consistently not work for her do you know, because they think that was one of the reasons why we had shifted it and I think that it's, it's challenging for other committee members as well. Just checking in because it sounds like now it might not work for her anymore. I was the one that spent some time with her I will check back with her. It was my understanding that 530 was going to work and Andy and I found out late this afternoon that it wasn't going to work for more than an hour today. Okay, but okay I thought I had heard something about that being a continuous thing. Andy I will let you know that I do have something that has come up for next Tuesday that I will, I will not be able to be here. I may be able to join for the second part of the meeting but I'm not certain. And I apologize for that I found out about it recently. The second that I'm going to be asking for responses to at the next meeting is the issue that Kathy raised and that is that we need to decide who is interested in what sections of the budget and there's no reason that that needs to actually wait for the meeting we're not going to discuss it really in a meeting. So, I would probably going to do is send out a request that people send me an email with what their preferences are. And to get the information that way and just emails to me and then I'll report it back to the committee as opposed to having it as a full discussion item. Thank you and will you also be prepared for that email. We'll be prepared. And will you also when you do that just kind of give a quick overview of what that entails to make sure that we are adequately prepared to do that job as someone who's new to the finance committee. Thank you. Basically, to give you the 32nd version is to read to spend extra time on the assigned section in the budget book and to take the lead to make sure that core questions that somebody's really giving some thought to the questions that need to be asked about the budget aspects of the sections of government, and then to follow up and sort of take the lead with burst draft of that section of the committee report and I'll send out last year's committee report again so that people get a sense of how it came out. So that's what it's about. And Anna just on and on the questions is trying to send them in before we meet so that the department head has already seen the questions, you know so that we can. Sean gets us answers to the questions is the other way, you know that we can have a discussion informed by answers to questions, not just all. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. No questions out of the way, but it's basically gets a portion of the questions out of the way in advance. We did something similar at when I was on CPA. It was great. It was a good process. So that, so anything else that people need to tend to tonight, we have two sets of minutes. I should let you know that I went through the minutes and I will. The edits are really minor and I may just send out the edits and the packet for the next meeting to make it easier because I had a word and was able to do it that way, but they're really minor stuff. I think we can declare the meeting adjourned and appreciate everybody's participation. It's been a hard meeting, but we've got a lot of work done. Thank everybody. Thanks. Good night. Thank you.