 Welcome to In the World of Winooski. In this episode, we're gonna discuss how the Winooski city and school approach the annual budget process, what's included and how residents can engage. Every March on town meeting day, residents get to vote on the annual budget for both the city and the school district. This is what your property taxes pay, or if you rent what your landlord, one of the things your landlord pays with your rent money. Today, I'm joined by the Winooski School Board President, Superintendent and my Deputy Mayor to give an overview of how we get to the numbers that you get to decide on and how you can engage in the decision. Welcome, Thomas, Robert and Wilmer. Thank you. Let me start by sharing that local government and school district are separate municipalities, meaning we have separate governing bodies and separate financing. So on the city side, a five-member council sets policy in direction for the city government, and then on the school side, a five-member school board does this for the district. Let me start with you, Thomas. Would you wanna tell us a little about the basic services that the city provides in Winooski? Yeah, I would be happy to. I think that there are services that everybody assumes that the city is gonna provide. Police, fire, taking care of our sidewalks, our facilities, our roads. But then there are other things the city takes care of as well, such as the library, the senior center, recreation, parks, pool, the Thrive After School program, as well as payments that we make for our partners, including Town Meeting TV, the Winooski Valley Parks District, the Regional Planning Commission, Leagues of Cities of Towns, Green Mountain Transit. So those are all things that people may not even know that we take care of. There are other things as well that go almost without saying, but the city manager, the clerks, all the people who work in Town Hall, obviously they have salaries that we pay, including things like legal expenses. And then there's other things that we have to pay for, facilities, engineering, as well as any long-term investments that we're making, such as the Main Street Project, as well as the vehicles that the city owns and any of those like replacements that those vehicles may need, or work that vehicles need done on them. So all of those things together are the things that your taxes pay for. Thanks, Thomas. Yeah. Robert, do you wanna tell us a bit about the school services? Folks might not know, there's more than just teachers in classrooms. Sure, I mean, there's long been an idea that the school is the center of the community and I think that's more true than ever before and just how much actually happens at the school. I mean, even just thinking about educating 800 Winooski kids with all individual different needs and a lot of special services and things of that nature is a complex and expensive process. But in addition to that, we even have medical and dental services and even recently we've started doing some tenant workshops in partnership with CBOEO in various different languages to ensure that tenants, renters understand their rights and their responsibilities as renters. When we're, is there anything you'd like to touch on? Do you think that I'm not thinking of? Yeah, you're right when both of you are right when it comes to educating students, the education systems and expectations both in the whole country and locally have evolved over the decades to include quite a lot more than probably used to be for a lot of many of our generations in the past, right? Nowadays you'd be surprised at the things that not only schools do, but the things schools are required to do that you would not think of that are intuitive. And some of those things can be anywhere from housing for students who experience housing insecurity to food, to mental health services, to transportation, to even legal services sometimes to either the list goes on and on and on. And so the educating part of the function of the schools is obviously continues to be an important one, but even that education, even the actual instruction is changing. It probably does not reflect what many people think of when they think of school. And that requires additional thinking in terms of how we use our resources and what we budget for, what we buy, what we plan for, how we strategize for the future. And I can go on and on. So schooling is a lot more different than probably many of us think of or than what probably the movies or the media portraying still. Well, that's a good segue too. I wanna talk about the things that we consider when we're thinking of how to budget for all of these services in the next year. Wilmer, what are the kinds of things that you're presenting to your board as what they need to consider in the overall picture of? Right, so what the board is receiving is at first and the most basic thing is how to continue to run the schools period. Because even if we were to just do what we're doing right now, if we wanted to continue to do the same thing next year, it's already a lot more expensive. So I'm talking millions of dollars more just to not add anything. If we wanted to not add a single thing but just do what we're currently doing, we're already looking at a need for much more additional money. And a lot of our viewers and a lot of our Winooski residents can take a guess why. Because we all feel it out there when we go shopping, when we need to pay for subscriptions, the most basic things we realize, everything's just going up and up and up and schools are no different. On top of that, our own employees are humans themselves who feel the rising costs and the additional needs. And the same paycheck that they're receiving right now may not necessarily buy the same thing next year. And that's why we do negotiations with the respective unions to ensure that we keep up with a lot of those needs. And so again, just running the schools as they are running right now will be more expensive next year. And that's basically what we're presenting to the board tomorrow, actually. And then we're presenting a couple other options that might impact the tax rate for residents in different ways. We will begin that conversation tomorrow. Thomas, we had our first discussion to set goals for the staff, the budget we want to be presented. Can you talk a little bit about the things that we looked at and what we considered? Yeah, I'm happy to. And I would just like to echo everything that the woman was just saying that we're looking at the same things or costs to do the same exact business that we've been doing before is going up. But the things that we looked at, our city manager prepared a memo for us. I'm a very detailed memo about the cost of running the city. We looked at our current capital needs and also our future capital needs and what those are gonna look like. We also took community input through formal and informal ways. So as counselors, we talked to the community almost daily to hear what they're thinking about what Windows Key needs. But we also had formal sessions where we talked about ARPA funds as well as our equity update. We took all of that information as well and that's what we used to assess the budget. And we do all of that with an equity assessment worksheet that we have. So we apply that worksheet to all of the decisions that we make so that we are sure that we're looking at the budget. Not only is just a financial document but we're looking at it through an equity lens as well. And then I can go into more of that if you'd like. Well, I was gonna say so coming out of that initial discussion, the direction that we provided to staff. Yeah, so after looking at all of that and hearing what our city manager had to say, we decided that we need to have a budget that retains all of our existing services. So everything that I spoke about before, the library, police, all of those things. But we also need to do a little bit of catch-up. So we're proposing a modest tax increase so that we can catch up on our municipal infrastructure's accounts. One thing that we hear over and over again is the concern that residents have with mobility around the city. So our sidewalks, our streets, all of those services. We haven't invested in that area for a little bit too long probably. So that's what we're gonna be proposing is just a moderate tax increase so that we can catch up there. And the city's leadership team is gonna be working through that proposal through now. We're gonna have our first meeting on December 4th, where we're gonna start looking at budgets. So city staff is working diligently away, putting together each of their budgets that they'll propose to us starting December 4th, going through January. And of course, council will look at each budget and we'll discuss what has been presented to us and we can make changes and throw in caveats and additions through that process. One thing that's really important to us throughout the budget process is continued public participation. So if you can come to a meeting, great. If not, we understand that it's difficult to get to them sometimes. You can email any member of council. You can call any member of council. We're really happy and wanting to have input from the public in this process. Yeah, and so we have December 4th and December 11th and then every Monday in January, we meet. We look at the budgets department by department, so like a public safety night, community services night. I think the school approaches it a little bit differently. Can you tell us about your process and timeline? Sure, so we've sort of started at our regular meeting on November 8th, we got a context presentation where we got to hear about some of the basics and how a lot of the different costs are going up, as Wilmer already alluded to, like the 16% increase in health insurance coverage and things of that nature. Then tomorrow night will be our first actual budget discussion where we'll have some real numbers presented to us. We don't do it department by department or anything like that the same way the council does. We'll have several different meetings on this. On tomorrow, then the following Wednesday, December 6th, our next regular meeting on the 13th and then the 20th and then the 3rd, we have a lot of meetings to discuss this, it's a complex budget we've already alluded to with a lot of moving pieces and then on January 10th, we'll adopt a budget unless something terrible happens. Throughout that time, same as you were saying, we're definitely looking for input from the public. One thing that we've done as individual board members, we've reached out to try to find what we call our budget buddies who are just members of the public who are interested in this kind of work, which is few and far between, but they are out there. And they're gonna join us just like board members to be part of the discussion. But we also wanna hear from more than just those folks. So same as you inviting people to come if they can, if they wanna email, call, et cetera. We're also gonna try to find ways to go out to various communities, groups and such and get input that way. And then once we pass the budget, then there'll be the usual continued outreach about that with dinners, some in joint with the city, another presentation like this, of course, and things of that nature. And the annual meeting the night before. What did I miss? I don't think you missed anything. Thank you. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the community outreach piece as both of our boards have talked about coordinating on that. So folks aren't having to go to two different places to engage in what they'll see on town meeting day ballot. And I should say to anyone who is watching this, we will come to you. I've been to a coffee hour in somebody's house before that they have with neighbors in the neighborhood, like we're open to meeting folks where they are. And so now through mid-January is an opportunity to learn more, share with us what your priorities and concerns are, and then come mid-January, we'll make those votes to whatever the budget is we're gonna put on the ballot. And then after that, we'll continue to do outreach so folks know what they're gonna see on town meeting day and what they're voting on. So town meeting day is Tuesday, March 5th. Feels like a ways away, but the time will fly. Yeah, so it will sit around the corner. Yeah. Like I said, we'd love to have engagement. We also have both of our websites, WinooskiVT.gov. I don't know, the school is off hand. WSDVT.org. Thank you. If you follow Frontparch Forum, we post stuff on there. The community newsletter that gets delivered to every mailing address in the city, we share information that way as well. We also have contact info on there. So as Thomas mentioned, you can call us individually, email us. You can find that information there or online. And then we both have social media. We have Facebook. You guys have Instagram, I know. Facebook too, I assume. Yeah. So there are many ways to get connected. And we hope to hear from you. We take information all year round, but now is just a pretty critical time. If there's something that you wanna make sure gets prioritized into our upcoming budget years, please reach out. Any final thoughts, anything we missed? Not that I can think of. For the collaboration and we also look forward to listening from the residents of Winooski, the community, because the budget will only reflect what the community needs if we have everybody at the table. So true, Wilmer. Yeah, I should take a step back. I should have thought of this at the beginning and really kind of, this is probably the first time some folks are seeing me in this new role as school board president. Oh yes, should have done more formal introductions. Several new faces. I should have thought of it too. So our previous board chair had to step away for personal reason, so I'm chair again. Some people may know that I was in that role many years ago, so. And also Wilmer is new this year. Wilmer Chabrera is our new superintendent. I started July 1st and it's just been a fantastic addition to the district. We're really happy to have him. So I just wanted to. It's been great so far. I'm sure we'll have a great first budget season working together too. Yes. Thank you all and continue to look out for those updates. Like I said, in the newsletter on social online and please reach out anytime. Thank you.