 So, I invited the time manager with the thought that he could talk to us about what the select board voted on with respect to override, but the select board did not, but still, he has enjoyed to come and tell us, talk to us about the override, what the possibilities are, what's been going on, and answer some of our questions that we may have. I noticed that line carding is here, and I was hoping that we'd have a school committee member present, so to hear our thoughts too, so that you can go back and see what you can make, and let them know what our concerns are. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you, Sandy. Thank you very much. Hello everybody, nice to see you all tonight. I'm going to go through a couple of different documents that I sent out earlier today, one of which you may have, I believe, seen before, but I think it's just important to talk about, and that is a set of scenarios that the Long Range Planning Committee went through over the last few months and culminated in these numbers. I sent these to Tara earlier, and again, I believe you all may have seen these before. So first I'm going to say this is our current best guess of where to stand. I will say that the numbers up here were carefully and methodically worked out, and that they are wrong. Like all of our forecasts, as soon as you put it out, they change again. And in fact, one thing that we know is that the House Ways and Means came out with its budget today. We do know on the revenue side there are two public numbers that are out available right now. One is the Chapter 70 number, the amount in the House budget is the same for Arlington as it was in the Governor's budget. The other is unrestricted general government aid. The amount in the House budget is about $40,000 less than was in the Governor's budget. There are a number of other accounts, not nearly as big, but that can sometimes have an influence, particularly the amount we're charged for the kids at Arlington Center Charter Schools and the amount that the state gives us back. So we should have those numbers sometime tomorrow. That will be the House number. We'll see if that gets tweaked at all in the House deliberations. My best guess is that it will not change the Chapter 70 number. I think that's pretty much settled on. The House decided to put more money in Chapter 70. However, that more money is going to towns unlike Arlington that are minimum aid communities. In the Governor's budget, those communities got $30 per student. In the House budget, they're getting $60 per student. So they added money to Chapter 70. We, however, because of the dynamics of Chapter 70, because the amount of our foundation budget, in other words, what the state says it costs to educate students in Arlington, is going up faster than the state calculates our wealth, the combination of our property and income taxes in a very complicated form. We let the state comes up with our foundation budgets going up faster than how much they're demanding for us. Therefore, we had a huge increase in foundation aid about 10 times as much as if we were getting minimum aid under the Governor's budget. So it really makes a difference if your foundation aid can go up. One more thing I'll say about the process. So the House will deliberate its budget and be finished with that by the end of this month. And that Senate about mid-May will come out with its budget. Whether the Senate adopts the House numbers or the Governor's numbers or comes up with its own numbers, we just have to wait and see. And then at some point, those two bodies have to come out the conference committee report. So by the end of June or maybe even early July, you never know from year to year, we'll know what our final numbers are. In a way, frankly, it doesn't really matter. We are very close to knowing what we're going to get if we shift a little bit here or there, higher or lower. By the time we have to know, which is in the fall, when we set the town tax rate, there will be other numbers like our new growth and our free cash and so forth. And so really new growth will be the one that matters that will tweak the numbers. The important thing is the town meeting pass a balanced budget based on one particular set of assumptions. We sort of all agree on that. Having said all that, I'd just like to point out, and again, if this is all old news for you, forgive my repetition, but we started out with current status where we have a no deficit for FY24 or FY25. For FY24, we need to use about $600,000 worth of money from the stabilization fund. Next year, we need to use another $11 million, which would leave about $4 million left over for FY26. All the spending assumptions that we've had in previous long range plans are the same. The only tweak I made to this plan was to assume that an FY24 would have, instead of the original $750,000 worth of new growth, it would have a million dollars worth of new growth. And the assessors tell me even this early on that they're very comfortable with that because of the number of condominiums they've seen coming on and the new construction down by MIRAC, the new housing there, enough of that will be on the books by the June 30th that will be able to tax a portion of that building. So I'm comfortable and they're comfortable with that million dollar figure. If there are questions as I go along, please let me know, otherwise I'm going to keep going. The next thing to look at would be what the asks are that were discussed at the Long Range Plan Committee. So the school committee asked for various increases, which you can see on this line. It's about six, something million dollars, a million dollars in their FY24 budget, $3.1 in FY25, $1.7 in $26, right? Was it $1.7? Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. At one point, okay, I know why I'm asking that. At one point, I had $1.6 in $27 because that's because this is my quite a plate sheet and I was playing around with numbers. For various increases there, there's also $600,000 worth of increases on the town budget starting in the FY25 budget. Those would be for increased spending on roads and sidewalks, some money set aside in the DPW budget for potential increases to the waste disposal contract, some money to be able to change over how we deal with some of our fields. Our grass fields now, we use chemical fertilizers on and so I put some money to be able to go to an all organic system for our fields and then depending on how much is used between those two, some extra money to go into our open funding, hopefully for the site to fund health insurance for retirees. This also has a change in that it assumes the normal increase in spending on the town side of 3.25 percent, school side of 3.5 percent, but revised lower increased estimate for SPED going forward starting FY25 was 6.5 percent. I had assumed in this case, I believe I did it in the last one too, yes, that there'd be a five percent increase in state aid next year and the long range plan has had various assumptions over the years. Sometimes we've just had one percent increase for the future. A few years ago we did five, four, three, two, one assumptions. We've kind of gone, you know, we've just tried different things at different times. Based on the fact that there's a tremendous amount of money coming into education funding under Chapter 70 under the things called the Student Opportunity Act and given that Arlene is still projected to have increased enrollment next year, which is a major factor in calculating your foundation budget, I thought it was a safe bet to assume five percent increase and then I just went back to the one percent after that. Again, when I say high, this is all in concert with the discussions of the Long Range Planning Committee about what these assumptions would be. If we add these funds and we need to have an override, that override would need to be $7 million in order to last for the next three years. And if it were to last four years, it would have to be $11.2 million. So traditionally, when the town has gone out for an override, we have gone from anywhere from three to five years projected before we need to have another override. And that's ever since the town started its override process and what I would refer to and people around the state sometimes refer to as the Arlene Plan for having an override, socking money away in the override stabilization fund, and then kind of getting to a balance and then taking money out of the override stabilization fund until you drain it down again and then need another override because we have had a structural deficit in our spending, which I'll talk about in a minute. So those are the two scenarios that have been discussed in the Long Range Planning Committee and the consensus among the committee members was that we would want to have a three-year override, partly because that kept it to a five percent increase over the current levy. And although the town has had overrides that are larger than that on a percentage basis in the past, the consensus was that we would try to shoot for five percent and keep that down. In fact, because of that consensus, both the numbers in the school line here for additions and the town line for additions came down from the original ones that we had been looking at and discussing because there was a cap on how much the Long Range Planning Committee was willing to ask the voters for. So any questions at this point? Otherwise, I'm just going to go to my best case scenario and explain what that is. All right, so best case scenario. What I did here is I have the exact same spending assumptions as in the prior two scenarios. I have that same seven million dollar override in FY24 and another override three years later in FY27. That would also be five percent of the levy at that point. That's where I came up with that on-ball seven million eight hundred and nine thousand seven hundred twenty nine dollars. That will probably not be the amount that we asked for in an override, but that is five percent of the levy. The other things that I looked at here were I assumed what if we had new growth at a million dollars every year instead of just a million dollars for one year and having it go back down. What if we got a 15 percent increase in chapter in our state aid in FY25? I came up with the 15 percent because that percentage would get us the exact same dollar amount of state aid increase that we have that we got last year or that we're getting this year. It's about two well almost three million dollars. And then I decreased that to 10 percent and five percent year after that assuming that there would continue to be increases in Arlington's chapter seventy eight because of the Student Opportunity Act. There's also been some discussion about the potential for the millionaires tax and more money for education. I don't know because they have not yet said how they're going to allocate that money. The rumors that have been floating around Beacon Hill and the Mass Municipal Association and some of my friends and colleagues in other cities and towns is that they are not likely to put that money into the basic chapter seventy formula that there's been a lot of talk about putting it in things like early childhood education or maybe college education you know the university system higher education. Again those are the rumors that we know now and again there's nothing definitive has been put forward. I think they are the state is somewhat waiting to see how much of that money comes in and when it comes in. They don't start collecting the money from anybody until he or she earns a million dollars. So unless you earn a million dollars on January 2nd you're not paying that tax yet. It usually for somebody even a high wage worker it's probably not going to take it's probably going to take until at least this spring before any of it starts to show up and then depending on how people file their taxes if they do estimated payments or or if they hold off until paying more of that taxes later we may not know until you know half by three the year before that money starts to roll away. So I did not assume that that was going to occur here. The other spending assumptions are the same and I put this out because in looking at some of the past projections that we've done I think one of the things that I found is that we have tended to be very conservative in our estimates. Now I am a conservative financial person. I don't think it makes any sense to make wild assumptions and then hope they come true. Those in fact would be a disaster if they don't come true. On the other hand I think if you're thinking about where we stand in the future and what the threats are to the town's financial position I think it is worth it to look at a best-case scenario to say all right as we're going forward from FY 24 let's say we have an override this year and nothing else changes how are we going to track things like how much state aid we get in FY 25 or whether new growth is at a million dollars. Once you make a projection you can see whether you're online to stay with that or whether you're deviating from it and I would say that the assumptions that I built built in here are not unreasonable assumptions. I could see based on our history of state aid getting the numbers here I could see based on new growth and the amount of building permits that we've been getting lately that we could get a million dollars. I'm not predicting that that's going to happen but I think it's a not unreasonable within the realm of what reasonable forecasts are to say that we could come out this way. It could be somewhat higher it could be lower but I think as we're thinking about things it's worth thinking about what the realm's possibility are. All right I'm going to go off of these sheets and then go on to the sheet that looked at our previous assumptions in just a second unless anybody has any other questions. So I've got one question. So how do you I mean you're saying we've been budgeting conservatively and then we are putting in these assumptions about state aid and about building permits that are a little bit more optimistic. Are you once you're confidence level on those if your confidence level on the more conservative estimates was a hundred percent is your confidence on these 75 percent 80 percent 90 percent and and what's the look back telling you like whether the last five years of building permits tell you that informs your position on a million dollars in new growth. So I would say that the original assumptions the first numbers I showed you I am very confident that those we will at least bring in that much revenue. But I think there's a different question that you really need to ask and that is what's my confidence level but those numbers are right. I think they are frankly probably more conservative than what's really going to happen because we have you know one percent assumptions about state aid given that for the last few years the governor under Baker has always said that unrestricted general government aid would go up at least as much as the state aid revenue has gone up and it would be extraordinarily bad year if state aid state revenue went up one percent. So it's just that's just not there is another billion dollars within the student opportunity act that needs to be distributed citizen towns and so again using those cultural I think ultra and overly conservative numbers I think are too low to to be realistic so do I think we'll hit those numbers for sure do I think we'll do better yes do I think that the pot do I think there's a possibility that we could sit hit these numbers I haven't cal I have no way of adhering to calculating that number but I would say there's at least a 50-50 chance maybe there's a 70-25 chance that we hit these numbers let me go to the other sheet and I think that will answer your question so let me ask you one more follow-up question when you look at the state budget and you look at huge material and the housing proposal at this point are you seeing any priorities that tend to lead you to believe that state aid to cities and towns will be a lower priority in this administration than it was for Baker no I would say that is not likely I think Baker had a strong commitment to cities and towns I think particularly with Lieutenant Governor Driscoll who used to be the mayor of Salem in there they will continue to support and frankly I also think I've just been reading a book about what makes Massachusetts unique and one of the things about Massachusetts is that the governor in fact is not the most powerful person in the state according to this book the Speaker of the Houses and particularly in election years the House and Senate have strong incentives to make sure that there's enough state aid being spread around so I think hey everybody real there's a political commitment to cities and towns there's also the Student Opportunity Act which is huge and huge of money which is there not only because of a general commitment to state aid to local cities and towns but because of the threat of lawsuits from school departments like Brockton which are been horribly underfunded over the years and feel that the state's distribution of aid to schools is unconstitutional and so the state had to pony up money under the Student Opportunity Act to raise that number for the Brockons of the world but the legislature can't just give money to Brockton there it had their 351 cities and towns the Speaker has to count votes and if you're giving money just the Brockton then Arlington and Needham and Amherst and Mount Washington are not going to be happy so you have to give everybody some money so I so I think the Student Opportunity Act is here to stay and it is a major infusion of money and it will play out for the next five years. Okay so just one more quick follow-up then and again I'm trying to gauge your comfort level because I think you and I think about this the same way which is that being conservative and closer to right is better than wild ass assumptions so would you say that this is if somebody on the select board or somebody here said no no I think you're all wrong you should up everything by 10 percent you would say totally not comfortable with that whereas these numbers you're comfortable predicting as a best-case scenario not budgeting for but predicting is a best-case scenario so I'm just trying to gauge your comfort level here that's correct I think you said that exactly I think that's for my question oh I just I just had a question that new growth so when there is no number of new growth it are we assuming the 750 are we assuming so the the the default is that there would be in the current year there'd be 750 and then it goes down $50,000 a year so 750 600 etc okay all right and so I guess following up on Annie I mean so your comfort level with this best-case scenario is looking at for the next few years the numbers are a little higher than what we usually budget but I do know so it still it reverts to serve a fairly conservative formula in the out years so it's possible that the best-case scenario is still will still be fairly conservative that that seems fair or not I would I would say those five years from now or something like those 1% of state aid are probably I do I think that's lower than I I mean I I completely agree with everybody that having conservative numbers is absolutely the right thing to do that we shouldn't be overly you know optimistic when we make our budgets but but but we also have to keep in the back of our mind that we are being conservative right and that there is for example 34 almost 34 million dollar difference between what we're predicting in FY 19 and what we're predicting what we got in FY 23 don't steal my time any further questions on what Sandy has covered so far Charlie and so so Sandy can you just walk us through since we didn't get a copy of the detailed plan that you that lies behind these summaries how do you get from revenue of 212 million in 24 to 218 million in 25 which is difference of 6 million dollars well that number yeah it's the same number in all of these spreadsheets I think I know I sent spreadsheets to various people but it's just the normal growth in fact I think it's going to be the same numbers that you see in appendix D in the finance committee report that Alan has been putting together so that has a 5% increase in state aid for FY 25 it assumes that there's going to be a million dollars of new growth in FY 24 and then $700,000 of new growth in FY 25 and then I think there are just the normal amount of incremental increases in local receipts that we have from year to year we usually assume there's like another hundred or $125,000 of increased motor vehicle excise taxes and other such fees or fines at the town flex anything else Charlie I'm just so that so the the chapter 70 increase of 15% in the best case scenario is shows up as a reduction in the use of the of the override stabilization stabilization fund that is correct all right I'm going to just a quick question when talking about new growth I hear condos and fees I think is the town doing anything to find new growth or to increase in ways or is it more just sitting back and saying okay we'll just see what we get well yes and no I mean we have the ways we can encourage new growth is to encourage people to build things that weren't there before and so we try to work with developers to encourage them to look at land in the town we I think our inspectional services department tries to and I think increasingly has been successful under my chiampa that both helping people taking out building permits to get those building permits but also then holding contractors accountable for what those building permits are worth and that's why we've seen a pretty big jump in that revenue the other thing that the town has done in the recent years and I think we'll continue to look at is we've changed some of the zoning to allow people to build things that they hadn't been able to build before so you probably at town meeting in the last few years seen proposals to allow more mixed-use development i.e. let's say in the the business districts you know capital square or town center or Arlington Heights or along Broadway if somebody wanted to take those one-story buildings and we would hope to keep businesses on the first floor but build residential above that we've already taken some steps to do that and once you do that then you just have to then wait for the right developer to come along and and do that you know if somebody were to find some big piece of open space in town that's privately owned and put a bio lab there like what they're doing like crazy in Watertown now you know what I just give you that example because Watertown has gone from kind of a sleepy little budget to one where they are building new schools just based on their new growth and not getting MSBA money and not having to do debt exclusions because they have so much new growth Arlington's challenge frankly is this just not a lot of open space for us to to do that sort of thing I think that's a good conversation for the town to continue to have as we look at our zoning and what we allow people to build here it may be the case for example if we adopt MBTA zoning and we allow people as of right in certain parts of town to build multi-family housing that they will take current two-family houses and turn them into four-family houses but again that depends on the owners of those properties being willing to do that and some developer coming in and wanting to do that so I think we are trying to make it an option for people to do that kind of building in town we are somewhat limited because we're pretty built out but I'd say that's what we're up to now and what about all the empty store fronts and if they're empty they're not bringing in revenue that's correct so we are one of the first communities in the state to find business owners if they there are ongoing conversations so there's a I don't know how public this is so I don't want to get too specific but I will say there's a large empty store front right now that there are discussions with a restaurateur who would put in a large restaurant and a shop next to it and so forth the old what is it? average american shows? not your average shows thank you I always get confused there's a taute that's going to go in there so yet one more place to get fattening delicious so yes we are trying to work with people we have an economic development well we had an economic staffer who's now running for mayor but we have that position for exactly that reason so we try to to help people along who are interested in building an art so I'm going to make this a little bigger so I somewhat have to give Jennifer Sue's credit for making me think about this stuff so thank you Jennifer but I wanted to look at what the history of our assumptions about our growth and our budgets has been since the last time we had an override so I looked at the long-range plans printed in the finance committee reports from previous years those are all snaps in time they change over the years but I figured let's just have a consistent source to look at so this shows a number of things first it shows back in FY19 or 2019 we were debating that an override we thought that by FY24 we'd have a 17.8 million dollar deficit the next year it was still about in that range but the year after that it was down by seven million dollars and then by last year in this year we know that FY24 was in balance in a similar regard the next year we thought that there'd be a 24 million dollar deficit in FY25 that came down five million dollars that came down 12 million dollars and now there's no deficit in FY21 we think there's going to be we thought there was a 24 million dollar deficit in 26 last year we thought it was down to 20 it's down to nine we'll see where it goes next year so I think it has been the case that there has been a history of assuming big deficits in the future and that over time they do not turn out to be the case so what does that mean well the second thing I wanted to look at was what's our revenue in town you will not see these numbers in the long range plans because what I did is I took the total amount of revenue in any one year then I backed out the amount that's in there for debt exclusions so the debt exclusion numbers just go to debt exclusions these numbers go to uh to fund the town the school etc the general fund so in 2019 we thought we would have 181 million dollars of revenue by 2023 we now know that the FY23 budget and this is in bold this is actual there's 194 million dollars so there's a 13 million dollar increase in general fund revenue between what we assumed 2019 and what in fact turned out to be the case for FY24 there was a 19 million dollar increase so over time the amount of revenue available to us that was substantially bigger than we originally thought what about spending well in FY19 we thought that by FY23 school spending would be 87 million dollars it turned out to be 84 million dollars so it went down by 2.8 million dollars from what we thought we thought for FY24 it'd be 91 million dollars it in fact in the budget that we put out it's at eight million dollars that went down by three million dollars so school spending has not tracked as high as we originally thought it was going to be so school spending is not much driving a deficit town spending similarly we thought in 2019 that this was where the numbers were going to be they are in fact lower town spending has come in lower than we had projected use of the override stabilization fund we thought in 2019 that by FY23 we would need 13 million dollars we only need three million dollars that's a drop of 10 million dollars at that year this is a little whack-a-doodle because we thought we used 41 thousand dollars because that was all that was left in the override stabilization fund so that's all we could use same thing for that year then when there was enough money to use more we thought that much but in fact we've come down to only 588 a substantial reduction pensions are virtually the same for what we originally projected we really thought it was 13.3 was 13.367 an increase of 33 million dollars in the FY24 and increase of 65 so that's been on track insurance uh at last year was a little bit higher but this year was $707,000 lower state aid we thought there'd be 23 million dollars then we in fact got 25 that was 1.2 higher for FY23 then remember that goes into the base for FY24 we're four million dollars higher than we thought. Minuteman has been a problem frankly that has escalated and this is just the operating side of the Minuteman assessment not the capital side because the capital side in the long-range plane is all debt excluded so the operating side of Minuteman has gone up substantially um that is uh because frankly Minuteman's budget goes up a fair amount every year and because since 2019 Arlington has just captured a large and larger share of the number of students that are sent there that will start to flatten out in the next few years because they're full and there aren't that many kids from other cities and towns coming so that should mitigate some um and then I just wanted to look at um tax just tax revenue not overall revenue but just tax revenue exclusive of debt exclusions again in both those cases we're bringing in more than we thought so I wanted to share this with you because from my point of view um given that most spending I looked at all the big ones insurance pension school and town those are all pretty much lower than we expected them to be so I think over the course of years we haven't had a spending problem we've constrained our spending I know Adam and I both tried to keep spending in check we have added some positions but not nearly as many as I get pressure to add from the population from the department heads from some of you we have had to say no over and over again and try to live within the constraints that that 3.25 or sometimes lower as presented to us same thing with the school department if you talk to school committee or to the superintendent they will tell you over and over again that they have constrained their spending um and so um and you know they've done any number of things like the I know spend for example is a very controversial issue and I do not intend to be an expert on the school budget in fact I always tell people if you're on the town side and you talk about the school budget you'll you'll just lose you'll be wrong but I will say this the school department over the years has done a lot of work to transfer kids who have been outplaced in the very expensive out placements to bring them in house and to change how they staff those so that they in particular have had more full-time teachers and fewer aides and so forth so they've done a lot of work to manipulate that to keep costs down while providing those students who are legally entitled and as children deserve a good education to get that education so I would say both on the town and the school side there's been a lot of efforts to to constrain spending so spending has been pretty much at or below what we predicted its revenue and the use of the override stabilization fund that has been both higher much higher in the revenue side and using the override stabilization fund much lower than we expected so that is why when I presented that best case scenario I think it was important to see that if you are too constrained in your thinking about the future you're just going to make decisions that are overly cautious and that is as bad as making a decision that is overly optimistic you're trying to hit the sweet spot somewhere in the middle you want to be cautious about it conservative in your revenue estimates but not so conservative that you end up making bad decisions about the services that the public constantly demands and about then making choices or putting choices to the public to allow them in an override to vote on how much they're willing to pay for the services if they're getting and to hear from them whether they you know they won't like do they want another children's library do they want some of the things that the school committee has been working on in this plan so that's those are the numbers that I wanted to share I've been talking for a long time now I appreciate your listening to what I have to say and I will happy to answer any questions about this or about anything in the town budget that I can answer the rest of my ability I know that Charlie has some slides of your own but before we get to those if I just want to open it up to any questions totally yes so this look back obviously covers the period where we had a pandemic and you know what was the effect of that of these various numbers in particular was the arpimony that came in was that included in the revenue for two years for FY 23 and 24 there's five million dollars in part from money and essentially what happened is our local receipts went down we filled the gap between where our local receipts had been and what we had been spending with that arpimony until we could allow the local receipts to come back so they have in fact been coming back fairly strongly um and so I would say it's relevant just to know that money was in the 23 and 24 budget but I think going forward for now completely just reliant on our local receipts those have made a comeback and I think that therefore we can count on them to continue to to be there okay but the revenues numbers here in section two do include the arpimony for years that it came in yes just one other comment on the long-range plan admitted man since that came out I've always noticed it's three and a half percent forecasted out and it seems like we it's always more probably because of the enrollment going on but we can with the enrollment smoothing that happens we could I think we could probably get a more accurate number than I know in a manner context of these numbers is fairly small but it's a fairly small eight or nine you know seven or eight million dollars of operating significant so I think that might help just make the plan look more more solid. Thank you. I had a question on item three the school funding where it's not this is related to I guess the topic was asking about the pandemic effect so the fact that we see almost three million less in spending for FY 23 say them was predicted back in 2019 how much of that is related to the fact that the enrollment did due to the pandemic and it didn't quite catch up do you know what I'm saying is is this enrollment related so we some of it is in that we cut 1.4 million dollars out of the school budget in FY 21 I think because their enrollment had gone down so the first year after the pandemic we didn't affect the school budget but then we did catch up to that but now as we reset them down to their new level as enrollment is increasing we could then add those new students back in for our calculation but yes. Thank you. Any? Um so I'm sorry I lost my care but Chris come back to me. John. Thank you. Now if you look at the you know the comparison of the budget the school budget you know set three four or five years ago to the school budget it does seem like it came down I mean I'm not sure I perhaps that related to you know higher enrollment expectation but but the but if you push that aside and you actually look at this school budget you know forget about what they thought it was going to be three four or five years ago but the actual spend for the last three or four years it's gone up 14 million dollars so that's it's gone up hasn't gone down and there's also 80 new FTEs in the schools and I've actually reviewed the budget I've sat through all the presentations this year and it's pretty clear that the rest of the town does stick to the 21.5% give or take they're kind of chugging along you know nothing no major increases whereas the school does it's a pretty significant increase in fact if you take those 80 FTEs and you just think of what they're going to cost so what they cost on a regular basis if you say an FTE cost the town when you consider the pension and healthcare a hundred thousand dollars that's eight million a year if that's high you want to say it costs the town 75,000 a year that's six million a year so when we talk about a seven million dollar override I feel like we're really talking about those FTEs in the schools and maybe they're great maybe they're appropriate but I think that's really what the override comes down to where those 80 FTEs you know based on what I've seen I've seen everything else is kind of just chugging along whereas wow that's where the eight million dollars is does that make sense so uh I don't know about enough details about the 80 FTEs to be able to directly answer your question yeah I will say a couple of things sure so we do have limits on how much the school budget can increase by three and a half percent for brick general education seven percent and then six and a half going forward for SPED and then half of the average cost of each new student for increases in enrollment when you factor that all in it means that the increases in the school budget have been probably about somewhere between four and a half for five and a half percent per year the town budget has gone up on average three point two five or less frankly and the estimates for pension and insurance are respectively six and five and a half percent so um our our general revenue increases based on our own tax capabilities and so forth we probably go up between three and three and a half percent per year what makes a difference for us is when we get more state aid um and in as much as that state aid is related substantially to our student population so student population is both a driver for costs and a driver for state aid so uh I think again over the years thing that has really made a difference to us is that we have seen increasing enrollment Arlington has got the second largest uh enrollment increase over a 10 year period of any school district in the state the first is Nantucket by the way so if you have friends in Nantucket tell them they need to come down but people moving in with Sandy I don't think it's the first rate well yeah no it's it's it's frankly it is the workers to tend the lawns and the kitchens and so forth yeah but Arlington is number two so the school enrollment the last three or four years that I'm looking at back has actually gone from 6,047 to 5,987 so it's the last three or four years where I'm you know mentioning the increase in the FTEs and the increase in the budget to school when it's actually gone down so it went down one year and then each year after that it it's gone up some more six or as if you look at say Newton it's it's really gone it's continuing to go down so Arlington is different than say Newton because we are we have a dip and we're continuing to expand a lot of communities in the state have flat or declining enrollment over the last five years over and above what happened with COVID so I think I think the thing that is important for us to think about from a financial point of view is and what do we think is sustainable in terms of annual growth in the school budget on a percentage basis if given the numbers I just denunciated there is a structural deficit there's a gap between but it costs to provide the services that we provide and the revenue that we get and so from time to time to close that structural deficit the town's traditionally gone ask the voters to increase the spending and I would say that that you know again that's a political question and if they do go for an override now and if I my best case scenario in the future we have another override in 27 I would just know it I don't know if you noticed that but the deficits then in the future are in the two or three million dollar range as opposed to the 14 or 20 million dollar range because in the future school enrollment is projected to sort of flatten out yeah so would my kind of summary be somewhat accurate when I say that the seven million override would relate to the increase in the school budget and what is everyone else's seems to be you know so I wouldn't yeah I would say the override most of that money most of the increases that we'd be asking in are enunciating to taxpayers and voters about relates to added money that the school department would want to put in I would say however even in the bet in the first scenario I showed you we don't have deficits in the next couple of years but at some point in the future we would need another override because again there is a structural deficit in the town so the I think the question is do you wait to later to have an override or do you add to certain spending in line with the strategic plan that the school committee has laid out and ask the voters now if they would like to support that so and then again it sounds like this budget is very conservative and so it looks like all the bills are paid through FY 24 all the bills are paid through FY 25 without an override and then FY 26 there's a nine million dollar deficit so you know I figured the FY 24 budget's done here it is in April you know if there was 4.5 million of savings in FY 25 and FY 26 you could push the override out for three years so has that been considered well I think that was a big part of the discussion in the long-range planning committee is when to have an override it has been the town's practice not to wait to the last minute to do an override partly because if you do a smaller override a year early and sort of bank the money and then so again a lot of discussions around that history and I guess what I'm reporting to you is that the consensus so I'm trying to report to you the consensus of the long-range planning committee as opposed to Sandy Poole are saying this is what we should do but the consensus was it would be better to have an override that took effect in FY 24 both to respond to the request from the school committee and to do things early enough before we really run into we hit the crisis point right you know like in 27 okay thank you very much you're very welcome I remember my question yeah so I was also going to ask you about FTE so we sometimes here talk about the increase in headcount as a driver of this project I'm looking at the town side similar to the school side numbers and we are coming in under on spending the projections that we had in 2019 and yet you know we've added headcount so how are we doing that sneakily I think it is even though we have added some FTEs we have been I think the big thing about town spending is collective bargaining so we have settled contracts that are high enough to be able to retain and attract staff but are affordable so our basic pattern of of colas in this three-year period has been 1% 2% 2% all contracts had then some other gimmies for example and ask me the DPW workers and so forth we are having a very hard time hiring those people and so we did a market adjustment for FY23 and 24 for them to bring them up that is one of the reasons that in FY24 I couldn't say yes to any departmental requests for any new staff because we used it all up and making those adjustments in the contracts but again we did adjustments you know we went up but not crazy up we went up enough to keep our spending in line with what we knew our projections were and to some extent because of turnover as senior people leave and you bring in junior people they come in more cheaply and so we've had slight increases in staffing but the main thing about keeping the town budget in mind is your collective bargaining and on the school side I'm you're telling me you're not familiar with what the headcount's been happening on the school side but does it seem realistic to you that we would see this drop in spending over what was projected five years ago if they added 80 people last year I would respectfully defer that to somebody up to Liz or Michael Mason because I don't know anything about the details of those 80 positions so you might as well ask me our carburetor I mean I don't know that either we did is that a question on the keys to the school it's actually you can parcel out the details from the budget so I actually have some idea I don't have a full idea but I have some idea about where they are yeah but I just see any details that people wanted to have I would encourage you to talk about it. They were within the limiters that we declared yes okay so their general contribution has been as agreed to in all of the override agreements over the last however number of years and they have lived within that budget similar to the one that counts yes and I guess one other thing I would say in the last override you can see it in the financial plan there were commitments that the school committee made the tune of about 2.8 million dollars for increased programs and so it wasn't just an override that maintained the status quo it was an override that said we're going to expand the things that we do and I just mention that specifically because I've heard some people say that in the past the town has not had overrides that do anything but avert financial disaster with the status quo that's just not true we have had overrides the last override in particular I wasn't here before that but where we did say to the voters we want to do more stuff do you want to support us and let a lot of the voters to decide that yeah I think our questions about the 80 FTEs have been very vital to school committee members in the future down the road we can get some information or address Charlie I'm going to have some discussion points that you want to raise then I don't know if you have questions you want to ask first thank you I'm sure yes I have a couple of questions first and then I'd like to address those slides that are sent around maybe so first of all Mr. Poole so you constantly correct the consensus of the long-range planning committee but this is your recommendation this is not the long-range planning committee I might correct that the long-range planning committee as I understand it doesn't keep minutes doesn't take votes and isn't governed by the agreement all of those things are true that doesn't mean that there is a consensus and in fact I am not allowed to advocate for right I can just report the discussions that came out of the long-range planning committee so although if you were to ask my personal opinion about this do I think this is the right thing to do I would say yes but in reporting that you just select for it and allowing them to decide whether to put a question on the ballot but on reporting is the consensus that is developed within the long-range planning committee and you know when we finish the meeting are you know usually the chair which was Steve DeCorsi from the slice board will just sum up where he says things and so forth and so that is that is how it works and that is what I understand that you made reports that the board has led me that I'd recommend to override right I made a report to the board of the select board that said thank you thank you that said that the consensus of the long-range planning committee was to recommend a three-year override for FY 24 and that the amount of that that overreact would need to be would be seven million dollars I will say I did calculate that seven million dollar number I am the guy who does the numbers but I was not making a recommendation to the slide board I was reporting the consensus for the long-range planning committee I noticed in the charts that you pressed out that nowhere is it shown where the what the override looks like if we do a seven million dollar override and have no additional expenses and make the assumption the conservative assumptions and then compare that to seven million dollar override with the more optimistic assumptions and I raised these questions because assuming that there were no additional expenses then the effect of the difference in your assumptions would be to reduce or delay the need for a future override it is true if you haven't presented that I haven't seen it flood board I haven't seen it too finance committee I will say I have shared the spreadsheet that I used to make this forecast I've shared it with some members of the finance committee I've been in the past I've shared it with you I'd be happy to share the latest version with you I'm happy to put it out on the website so anybody can play with it and people are can look at their own you know what it's the numbers that I ran for the long-range planning committee were based on the questions the long-range planning committee members were asking and the consensus around the political questions that they were trying to resolve uh one of those does not to not have an override or to have a seven million dollar override without any increased spending um so that just wasn't something that they were asking you you repeatedly say that uh you know the voters are in the side whether we want to have this extra spending or not but the way I see this override is going to go out there with the commitment to from the select board and the voters don't have a choice as to whether what the program is and and then so a voter says oh we have a deficit structural deficit we have to take care of that we vote for this program put out there by the select board and then when the next year comes around the select board will announce that well the voters voted for this money so we absolutely have to spend it and and that to me is very troublesome I'm just wondering why we don't have a recommendation that says voters you can vote the seven million dollars and you have this effect on your um future outcome of increase in taxes or you can vote the seven million dollars plus the additional expenses and have an alternate effect um if I may please thank you so uh every time at least since I've been here we've had an override there is a list of uh commitments that uh select board makes to the public um again you can see that in um in the manager's budget in my letter or in Adam's letters there was a list of the things those commitments or a combination of cap on setting that 3.25 that's three and a half percent and the spending so forth of spending this last time around about 2.8 million dollars that we said would go to the school department for the various things that Mr. Foster I know that you are and uh for the money that we put into the town budget to increase road repairs and to facilitate senior transportation so um I also think that when we had when COVID hit and uh originally we were going to put I think it was 800 thousand dollars in the school budget that the second year after the over it was going to be 800 800 600 600 we couldn't meet that 800 the second year we could only give them an additional 140 thousand but there was a consensus uh among the long-range planning committee uh the members who were there and uh including very strongly yourself I was there and you advocate for it and what you said was we call the voters but this is what I'm not talking about that history I'm talking about where we are today well but I am the point I'm trying to make is that it is not at all unusual to say to the voters this is the plan that we're going to put out and this is how we're going to spend the money we're asking you to support that and then once the voters say yes then I do believe there's a obligation on the school committee and on finance committee on the slide board and on the panel manager to follow through on that and spend the money that the voters voted for and your questions seem to imply to me that there was something wrong with that and yes they're not given a choice but Charlie it's the select board that puts it on the ballot the select board decides the form of that question that it could the select board could have a menu of one two things 20 things but that's the political decision that they that they make it's and that's the way we have always done that and we have as my memory is we have never given choices we have given a question up or down so why why would this be any different and and are your questions more directed better at the select board that might be the case but let me show you why I think this is different okay if you can take a look at that the slides that I put up there if you can put the first slide up that the third one split the back so that's the chart of our tax increases that I sent that out a couple weeks ago to most people and I believe that that's uh you know the compound base is about five percent a year and the next slide is just shows where our per capita income growth is bandages 3.8 percent a year so our taxes are going up faster than our per capita income growth and the the third slide it's on this is on the sheet of paper that I passed around which um so what I did is I took the from the documents that you sent out this afternoon I took the school ads and the town ads and looked at the impact on the taxes based on a 3.5 percent annual growth of the schools and a 3.25 percent annual growth of town and each year these compounded elements um increase in the tax base so where it says at the bottom here the yearly total impact that includes the impact of the prior years raised plus um multiplied by three and a half percent three point two five percent plus the new ad from the current work current year's work hairs so the line that says total yearly impact shows the impact in the on the taxes incrementally from time zero for each of those years and it rises from one million dollars in the first year to almost eight million dollars in the fifth year so the total increase comes out to 27.7 million dollars so that's what you're asking the taxpayers to pay more over five years with those increases and forget your positive assumptions or your negative assumptions I'm about the about the revenue assumptions this is a pure expense discussion okay so the the net present value of that if you discounted at the town's cost of money which I assume is about three percent is about 25 million dollars that turns out to be 12.6 percent of the fit in other words that what's the net present value mean means if if we what's the effect today of all of these expenses on on the taxpayers and that's a 12.6 percent increase over the 23 budget or 16.7 percent increase over the 23 tax level and I just think that those are huge numbers and I'm trying to understand why the long-range planning committee or why the town manager or the select board is not looking at these expenses and the profound impact they have that's my question rhetorical perhaps but you can try the answer I would just say when the select board makes a decision about putting the question before the voters they will say to the voters something along the lines of do you want to vote for a seven million dollar increase in taxation it will go to reasons x y and z and you get the vote yes or no and it will show the average impact per household and then the voters get to say yes or no and make their decision whether they want their property taxes to go up that much every year or not that is how prop two and a half works and you know I when I don't have any control over that that's just a lot that's how this is and and that's the political choice that part two and a half makes us thank you just having said our long-range planning for several years I have seen lots of spirited discussions with writing point of views presented I have never seen the town manager driving the decisions I've seen the town manager being and I've seen you've been in the room and you've done the numbers um be a servant to the other people on long-range planning or making their case so I just want to work that out there and I'll also note that there are two members of this like board attending get us on yeah Annie and then Brian so over the course of this year's meetings of the long-range planning committee we did look at scenarios that did not have the schools asked for them and then we looked at the app was the long-range plan with the school's past and then the long-range planning committee had a lengthy discussion about whether or not those asked for justified should we do them etc etc and the consensus of that committee was we are going to forward this particular scenario three years with these numbers to the select board for consideration it is true we didn't take a vote but if we had taken vote the vote would have matched the consensus now second thing to note in for 2019 we held an override was a menu override there were two exclusion questions and an override where we were very clear that we were adding 2.8 million dollars firstly you're not going to be 2.8 million dollars of new taxation in order to increase services in the schools and that question one the taxpayers were presented with that question everything we did to campaign for that override was very clear that we were adding money to the tax base to add services in schools that this was not just main payment services and that question in the past was well over 50 percent of the vote and I will note this was a June election where we had something like 13 or 14,000 people voting in a town election the election that elects those of us who have held elected positions in this town it's unusual for us to get more than 6,000 people to vote so there were people voting in that election who don't normally vote for the political infrastructure at all but they voted for that particular effort we do not lie to people about why we are asking them for a tax increase no ever a campaign that I have never worked on have we ever hidden how we intended to use that money including when we were adding services just one personal privilege I didn't use anybody lying so I object to you using that term well we didn't hide what we were doing with the money and you did say we are not telling the voters what we're doing I'm saying we're not telling the voters what I'm showing you in this piece of paper all right that's it that's beyond now we're really having two arguments going to people Brian and then John um I've been in a county for 44 years I taught accounting for 15 years I have a degree in economics and nowhere were the words structural I'm concerned that we when you look at a problem only look at the revenue we need to look at both sides of this has what has been done to examine all the expenses across the board everywhere as we know when we budget we budget conservatively because we know that there's going to be excess cash at the end of the year because of vacancies and everything else I think we need to really look a lot harder as because these three years are going to be nothing compared to the next three years after that if and I don't know what the town has done to say okay if you want we have a problem on spending and we have a problem on revenue I think that's a fair question I didn't come tonight prepared with a list of all the knows that in general but we have constrained spending every year as I say every year we ask the departments what they would like what they would need and when I say what they would like it's not because they're hiring their cousins or because they just want to have another person in the office it's because they have heard from residents from elected officials from appointed officials from their own experience that there are things that they'd like to see more um I'll give you an example uh the library for several years has been asking for more children's librarians we've been able to say yes to that to some extent and the one we've said yes it's usually been like a half an FTE um where they've been asking for three FTEs so you don't ever see in a budget three more children's librarians which I am sure if we gave them to them they would make great use of but we over and over again have had to say no like we can give you a half an FTE this year and let's see what we can do next year there I there is uh almost no department in the town that I can think of that can't make that similar argument but and that we've also had to say no to for our things there are things that we do that I think we need to do better than we do and we've had to say no to those so if it would be useful to put that into perspective to give you I can literally show you the list of things that people are asking for specifics yeah okay I just want to know that the town has addressed that problem along with all I hear is we don't have enough money I'm sorry that's just not an answer businessmen comes to me says I don't have enough money you cut the expenses that's the first thing you cut before you raise revenue so I think I also I teach a class on budgeting uh and what I say to my students every year is what budgeting is all about is there are always more demands than there was revenue and I think the question in Massachusetts under prop two and a half is do the structures of prop two and a half allow for that revenue side to rise fast enough to meet the legitimate demands not the wishboard demands but the legitimate demands and uh over the years the town and I do believe that the one side the environment of the structural deficit has been in public discussion from town managers from slight board members even from finance committee members uh I've seen it in writing that um under prop two and a half we just cannot offer the services that we do today and that we need to expand into the future without asking the voters from time to time for tax I don't have a problem with asking the tax man yeah I mean that's what we're supposed to do that's what it was written into the law I just think that before we ask for the money we need to say we've tightened as much as we can and you know with the departments with the tax rate current already applied percent I'm not sure that's true I well I you know not the tax rate the average tax bill uh army 10 if you look at us compared to the town manager 12 we tend to spend less than those other communities um we uh it's a good deal to live on it's way cheaper from a tax basis than any community around here except Cambridge and Somerville because they have huge amounts of commercial growth but the average tax bill in Belmont or Lexington or Winchester or most of the other western suburbs all the other suburbs where people are deciding about where to send their kids to school is way higher and I think that is one of the dynamics that the school committee has been looking at because frankly one of the ways we've been able to get away with it over the years is that we do not pay our teachers competitively with those other surrounding communities and that is one of the reasons I think the school committee you know we've gotten off cheap over time on the town side I will just offer my assurance to you that we have uh for very hard to keep spending in control and if it would be useful I'd be more than happy to sit down with you or any member of the committee to just go through what some of that history has been um I'm going to give you one more example of my life and that's the treasurer's office when I first came in here there are a lot of people who said the treasurer's office has too many staff you need to cut the treasurer's office and I initially agreed with that uh there are a lot of things happening in the treasurer's office over time uh I think we finally got fully staffed about a year ago so that was in my six or seven year tenure we finally had full staffing and now we still have now we have two differences but anyway we brought in a temporary treasurer somebody who's retired that's been in treasury business for years and his feedback to me was that yes there is a large staff but he thinks that our treasurer's office keeps up with its functions better than any office it has seen and I have seen other treasurer's offices around the state where they fall behind in things like bank reconciliation and I'll be fine fall behind one month you can certainly appreciate when you start to fall behind it's not just a month everything gets worse and worse so I have shifted my view and I now think that we I would not try to cut the treasurer's office staff because I think staying on top of those numbers reconciling uh to our receipts and to our bank account every month on a timely basis is worth the money we spend on that and I would fight any attempt to try to cut that back so yes we haven't cut the way some people might have thought but I think that's the right decision only one comment about the treasurer's office because you know I review that budget it's not growing in two and a half percent it's growing less than that so it's it's we need to look where the issues are that's treasurer's office even the extracurrency is here John yeah I was just going to read the the override from 2019 um you know the override would permanently increase property taxes by 5.5 million to pay the operating costs of the town and school departments so to me that seems like we need the money to just provide basic functions it doesn't see I don't see anything about an expansion of service it is in the letter and I'd be happy to point it out okay thank you yeah I appreciate that also grant all of the campaign we're in should be all right right any the reason any I'm sorry I'm taking a first grant uh thank you how do you say the um the town 12 how many of the other magical members of the town 12 have a debt structural deficit well I would say probably all of them uh the the exceptions are need them because need them has a very strong um commercial industrial base having worked in the city of newton and knowing where 128 runs and that all of the commercial space is on the need inside not on the newton side I know that need them has a lot of commercial sex uh I think there are other communities like uh that are you know much more residential like a Belmont that have structural deficits and have had to have uh overrides on a periodic basis so I think it depends again I mentioned Lexington before Lexington every year has about two and a half million dollars worth of new growth we get a million dollars Lexington is two-thirds our population but they are a rich town because they have areas in town where there are a lot more businesses than we do also in Lexington if you build a new house it's a two million dollar house automatically so their new growth is totally so um I guess I appreciate some of the distinctions between the town 12 you know but but that's kind of the point is that is your lexington's part of the town 12 yeah no no it's not so how many again um of the town 12 how different are we well what we try to do is when we sat down to hit those 12 and we did it in conjunction with our unions with the school committee members with the slight board members to reach a consensus we tried to pick a range that were similar to Arlington so there are some poorer there are some richer but all are somewhat similar um I would say again of the 12 that need them is probably the one that is the richest and least like us because um they they just have taxing capacity that we don't see others and much more so that's a need to be outlier not Arlington this okay thank you so just a quick question to clarify on commitments when you go for an override my understanding when we were discussing that school committee budget at the time example with special ed there was a commitment of seven percent I think my understanding is that's a commitment to budget not a commitment to spend is that can you explain why I mean I would think to the average voter when this left board on the ballot says it's a or literature or wherever it shows up but commitment I think most voters wouldn't distinguish between a commitment to budget so years and years ago I don't even know when it started uh there was a number picked out or what spend spending was and it's been increased every year by seven percent the reality has been um that some years it's been higher and some years it's been lower and different people will tell you what that number is I think the school department doesn't look at its spend spending based on that number but rather than the needs of the students it serves as it should if a student needs to be outplaced uh and a severe needs that they outplace that student they also I think have had a commitment to try to in place as many students as possible because it is both financially advantageous and um I think the idea of inclusion and so forth has its own advantages for special ed students the school spending on special ed gets to be particularly hard to make just a simple argument about because their spending is on students and some of those categories neatly fit into what you might call special ed but if you have a student who had been outplaced and now is in the school and maybe has an aid but is in a regular classroom it at spending on that student uh in the classroom have looked like regular spending it doesn't look like spend except for maybe that eight so I would just say in that regard and I brought this up in the language playing committee I think at some point we need to really look at the formula and just come up with a single number for the school department for an annual increase um that I will leave to my successors uh but you know from time to time the long-range plan does need to be looked at and uh so that might be one way to deal with that issue that you conduct. Yeah um you mentioned when the coal increases number two was one one two or something like that with inflation now being much higher how does that play into all this? The argument that we have tried to make with our unions and is that um Arlington has adopted a slow and steady approach as opposed to some other communities for example during COVID where they offered zeros but we didn't offer zeros we kept giving them increases so our argument to them has been stick with us we're not going to get huge increases any one year but we're not going to zero you out and that's been our history and I would say for all unions except the police union that has led to several contracts um so so far so good you know we have a new set of contracts that start negotiating next winter with the next round um and we'll see but that's the mystery. Okay it seems like that's an exacerbation well yeah I mean I mean all the talent are going to be subject to it so that's exactly right and you know we do need to pay enough to be able to track and we'll take the staff and that will be part of the calculation. Yanny did you have a question? Oh I'm sorry I apologize to John for losing my time. I was just wondering if something I say is correct so what I usually tell people when I talk about the structural deficit is I say it's driven by three things. Stead cost insurance and pensions that do I have that or is there I mean missing something or is that not right with me as well. Well um the the thing that has driven by increases probably has been school enrollment and enrollment right. Yeah mid school enrollment has again second life. Fats is growing school system in the state uh and uh so that has really driven spending increases. I think uh health insurance we've done a very good job of trying to keep that under control and as you see the numbers here it hasn't risen as quickly as it has in the past. We have programs to pay people incentives not to pay kind of health insurance and people take advantage of that and we probably need a lot of education with our members about what the issues options are. Certainly pension costs going up six percent a year you know that's twice the rate of our revenue increase but it's just the way it is. Okay is there anything I'm missing is there anything else? No I guess I would say hard costs generally you know you mentioned inflation. We've been able to keep our costs in line for example our energy costs have not gotten out of control but when I was in working in Newton that was a budget buster. There's not been a budget buster here and that's both of that stays the same. Our trash contract we've done very well with that. We have a trash contract coming up. I think we will likely want to restructure how we do our trash collection and I'm hoping that that will help contain costs. So you know those are the kind of things you know Brian was asking about for what we do to contain costs. It's things exactly like that that we spend a lot of time on. Right but some things we don't control over. Thank you. This is all very interesting I'm surprised no one has brought up this idea that we're looking at another override in three years and that override is only expected to go for two years. Is that that's okay. I just yeah so right now it's a good question. I think it is so the question will be in 2027 if we have that same five percent override by that time will it still just be a two-year override or has very typically been the case we push out the number of years that override last because things come in better than we originally anticipated. I think the other thing that is very important in looking at those numbers is that the size of the deficits in the future are much smaller than the ones we're looking at now. So even if we had to say have a six percent override in that year to get it to be three or four years you know the gaps it's going to have to close are much smaller than the ones we would have today. Any questions about the override or if you allow me any questions for the town manager period about any lingering issues the question is changed. So what is this so the slack board had a presentation about this and what was there. Oh yeah good question. So I think they my guess about what this like board is thinking about is having override probably in the fall there's been talk about October but no dates have been brought up. I think it would be likely that it would take a vote on that in June as opposed to waiting to the middle of the summer when people aren't around and that it would likely be at seven million dollar figure that there's still ongoing discussions. I know the school committee and the school department are having about what their needs and asks are. I don't really see day much change in the town number but that looks like the political process going forward. And following up on that I asked representatives of the school committee to be here to hear these questions and I'm in June before we break up for the for the year. I'm going to invite schools to come to our meeting and bring us up to date as to what they're thinking and what their asks are going to be. So we'll have an opportunity to hear more concrete things more fine things maybe then before we will be asked to weigh in your name or whatever override it is. So that will yeah probably our last meeting in June that we'll talk about at the time of that, Annie. Just because we've got a lot of new people here and I'm assuming we're going to be in keeping with past practice which is that once the select board has declared that there's going to be an override we take a vote as to whether or not we use the committee support that override and whatever the majority votes for then becomes the position of the finance committee. Now we are constrained by practice in campaigning for candidates because we don't want people to be concerned that we're having outsized political influence because we support a particular candidates from particular offices. We're like the individual campaign on issues but the position of the committee will be whatever the committee votes and so let's say the committee voted not to support that override despite how I feel about it when asked the official position of the finance committee is we do not support this override and then I'm free to work on the campaign. Am I correctly describing our past practice? I'm wondering just at some point every once in a while people mention the fact that they feel like we're being retroactive in the way we approach budgets. We don't really have a place to be proactive but I'm and it may not even be in our charter to be proactive however I'm wondering if it might be worth it to either of an entire group or a smaller group look at some of the expenses of the town and look at if there's other ways of potentially reducing them not in the next year not in the next six months but maybe in the next two to five years and get creative about that and in order to do that we would have to get some homework done amongst ourselves and potentially amongst department heads and or HR and so that's a question I'm throwing out and I couldn't make a motion for it or not because we missed casual discussion but I wanted to throw that out and that may be worth discussing as a as a group at another meeting yeah before we break up for the I think that's a good idea any other questions with the town manager? Thank you chair. I would just like to comment on first of all what Erlen just said I think the school committee in the select board are really responsible for those things I don't know that as far we shouldn't be in there trying to micromanage the department that's just my personal opinion and on the question of the two-year override so you know my view is that the the decision of how much the override is when we when we have it and how long it lasts it's you're moving to debt chairs around on the Titanic okay the real number is the real question is how much more are we spending that's the question and and and what we have before us is this huge number which I think we need to discuss sometime in the future. Any other questions? Anything to offer? I did have one. I was going to talk about new growth and how that does lead to more revenues but it can also lead to more expenses for more people how much of to the chapter 70 money you know how much of our like student budget our school budget does not cover or I shouldn't say maybe you know how much would an increase in chapter 70 you know cover the increase in all it really depends on whether we are getting foundation aid where that our foundation budget has gone up faster than a required contribution or where that we're getting minimum aid which doesn't really cover our costs so if years where we've gotten minimum aid you've gotten about a one percent increase in chapter 78 years where we got foundation aid we got to set last year we got 17 and a half percent increase so it it totally depends on where we fall on that scale and then there's probably infinite variations after that so give me a call sometime we'll have a couple of coffee to talk about this. Percy or Lynn is there anything that you want to add or say I know as I just said we'll have a more likely discussion in June but is there anything you want to say anything to Mike the group? No we look forward to talking to you June the one thing I think Sandy didn't mention is just going way back to the asks in addition to changing the special education increased from 70 to decreasing from 7 to 6.5 percent we also gave up in FY24 $600,000 of one time covered money and in FY25 $300,000 so the total asks are actually almost a million dollars less than what you're seeing on the just the numbers that you're seeing from here. All right thank you very much. Thank you all I don't come to the finance committee that often but I always appreciate talking with you and hearing your questions even if we don't agree about everything I think it's important for all of us that we get the numbers right and understand how they work and I know everybody in the world is trying to do the best thing for the citizens of this great town and I thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. Thank you. All right all in favor of moving the minutes of April 3rd again. Oh sorry let me pull them up. Okay Josh has his hand up. Alan are you for the minutes? I think you were absent that night. Yeah I'll abstain I was absent that night. Thank you Adam. All right. 14, 15, 15, 4, 0 against E2. One more item I'd like to I want to take a revoke of a warrant article just to be safe and this is the cemetery appropriation for funds article 58 we voted to transfer 210,000 for perpetual care to the cemetery commissioners but we do not specifically vote this an appropriation of 75,000 for perpetual care to the capital budget paid for a excavator. So arguably we took that vote within the budget but I'm just going to make sure that we do it formally. So all in favor say aye. Any opposed? All right and Josh did you vote yes? Yes. Thank you. So that's it Tara, Al Jones and I are working on finalizing the Fincon Report which we hope might be done by tomorrow and Tara's been doing a fabulous heroic job and Alan is being Alan. So hopefully that will be ready and sent out within the next few days and then we will not meet until the night of Tom the 24th. So we still haven't figured out where but it'll be 730 somewhere near or in town hall. So every night we have any week we meet. Every night unless there's clearly nothing unless you send a note saying that half hour from 730 Mr. Tom the 28th. So watch your email. So watch your email. All right if no one has any other business, if you're looking to adjourn, salute. All right all in favor say aye. All right you're done. Thank you.