 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. So I'm going to call the meeting of the Finance Committee for December 17, 2020, to order at 2 o'clock 3 p.m. And welcome to the Finance Committee, which is now one member less than before, which I'll say something more about in a minute, but first I want to say that pursuant to Governors Baker's March 12, 2020, orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Law Chapter 30, Section 18. This meeting of the Finance Committee is being conducted by a remote participation. And in order to satisfy the remote participation rules, we have to make sure that everybody can acknowledge that they are and can hear me and be heard. So I'll just go through the list, Kathy. Yes, here can hear you. Lynn. Yes. Pat. Yes, Dorothy. Dorothy seems to have stepped away because her room. Her room is empty, Bernie. Yes. And Bob. Yes. Okay. As I was saying, just for the public. Dorothy. Knowledge your presence. I've been on the machine all day. Teaching. Okay. We know you're present though. At least physically. Whether you're still in class mentally, you can't tell us. I was going to say is that for anybody who's. Member of the public who's watching. We have one member who resigned from the committee for personal reasons, Sharon Pavanelli as a resident member. And the GOL committee of the council. When it's meeting tomorrow, we'll discuss question as to whether to fill a position and how to fill a position. If there's anyone and including anyone in this committee. Who's not on GOL has an opinion that you'd like to offer to GOL. Please don't hesitate to do so. The term. Ms. Pavanelli was in expires in June 30th at the end of the year. Fiscal year and so in 2021. So that's part of the thinking that the committees can have the GOL committees can have to go through. So with that. I also have one additional agenda item that was unanticipated. And I've sent an email to the members of the committee should have received a number of emails. I hope that everybody's had a chance to check their emails. And he has an email from Sean and a couple from me that have various attachments that can kind of move today's meeting along I hope. So with that. Andy, I have them, but I just printed them five minutes ago. I mean, when I get something the day of the meeting and I've got classes that day. It means I don't get ready for the meeting. Okay. Sorry about that. I think the one, but actually it's not that bad and it's a good thing. The two that are essential for the discussion that you have not seen before some of them you've seen before and we're being sent. Because they're attachments that were helpful to the resident members of the committee who aren't don't receive the council packet. The two are the last one that I sent out had two attachments to it. One was in word and it's a list of suggested topics that we should talk about in our first agenda item which is the those guidelines that we want to make to the council for the next year and a series of policy issues. I think, but what my thinking about that is is if we use that list and or a list that is mended as you may choose that we then can talk about each one and then as the result of that is that we will be I think that I will be able to do a draft for our next meeting that is based upon the conversation and Sean and I did a memo that Sean sent to you, which is for the agenda item that immediately follows, which is the as much as time as we can spend to talk about the inventory issue and it's just the list of inventory items. But when I can put it up, I look forward and put it on the screen you can the memo that I sent that has the list of possible issues for consideration. If you know what I'm referring to. Andy, could I make a suggestion. I have that memo and it truthfully it looks fascinating. I find size too small. I know sometimes people use a small font size. They're embarrassed because it's a long memo. But I'd rather it to be a longer memo and bigger font. And so also when it goes up on the screen. It'll be hard for anyone to read it because it's a small font. Dorothy, you can change your screen view to be bigger. It's a new option way up at top. And you can do instead of fit to window you can make it 100% original and it will pop out as a much bigger print. Andy, I have a separate issue. And I'm just checking I have a, I guess it's a future agenda item so I want to make sure that there's a placeholder at the end of the meeting I'd like to bring up issues around the hiring freeze that we set in the police department. And I'm not sure where to do that. We can put that in there also under an anticipated business. Though I'm not sure that it's a, it's any more a finance committee issue but at least we can talk about it briefly. So I think the question on this memo and of course the problem is a list. I hope that you've had a chance to at least look through it. And whether there's anything that you think doesn't belong in our discussion, or conversely something that you would like to add to the list, and we will come back at the end. If there are additional issues that you don't have that at the end that if you've thought of an additional issue, we can also add it at the end so the first run is just if you know of anything immediately that you think is missing or anything that you would propose to say otherwise I would suggest that in order to get this moving that we just go through this and I will just, as you're looking at it, say that it was developed by going through last year's guidelines that were adopted in January. And I cut the pre COVID guidelines, and I just highlighted each section that I thought was something that we needed to talk about again and then adapted it in order to have us be able to have the list but it is modeled after last year's pre COVID guidelines. And I'm not sure you know everybody else was involved, but we actually ended up doing two sets of guidelines, because we had to do an amended set of Council guidelines after the COVID crisis hit and we were into a new budget reality. And these documents. I have sent to Athena to as I sent them to use to get copies of them. And I don't think she probably had a chance to put them in the packet but I'm sorry Andy, I just wanted to pop in real quick and say they are available online to the public now. So they are in the packet and packet is available on the website under government but count time council to finance committee. And then you can find the packet there so with that said is there anybody. I see a bunch of hands up. And I'm going to take them in order and see him Pat. I'm sorry I should have taken that down. That was my interruption from before. Okay, I apologize because I just got my participant list up Kathy. You asked about I'll just do a couple that I'd like to add and I don't have a place for them but we heard we've heard that the collective bargaining agreements are open where there will be. I would like to put a discussion of that just brief a couple sentences and it's in the context of where we're living with a flat budget, a flat dollar budget and there will be step increases so I just would put it somewhere and I don't have the best place for it. And then it may go under your other capital needs category but I'd like to have a sentence or two about the possibility of setting up a maintenance fund. You know that if we are if we are investing in a capital project or we have that we put some money aside to be drawn down and just raise it as a question of whether or not we should do something like that. So that's probably under that piece. And then this one I really don't know where it goes, but we have a category called community health and safety and we have racial equity and social justice, and we have asked the town manager to come we the council that to come back to us in February with a discussion about staffing and potential alternative staffing and we froze to positions. So it's under one of his goals, and it's either a subheader, but we're, we would be expecting to see in the guidelines and this gets down to a subset of the guideline, something about as a making allowance for it so whether he's talking about an expanded force or a reduction in people we call police and in addition to other kinds of people I don't know what it is but just some mention that that's a piece. And two others. I'm trying not to get this too big but under new gent revenue generation suggestions. One thought I had and this was not original to me Lynn actually mentioned it. You know, maybe half a year ago. We have an open slot in the town called economic development officer or person. Should we in some way think about that person being dedicated to grabbing grants for us, you know, a grants getter in an era where we need them. So, focused on getting us grants, not just on what else we can do. So I wanted the word grants in. That's it. When and I talked about a idea of when you have to help me with this but it's, you know, if you wanted to make an investment. Now, and I'll use solar or there might be others and you think you're going to get paid back by lower operating costs later with it. There are revolving fund where you can take a loan out of the fund, and then pay it back as you accrue the savings could we set something up like that in town, because as I understand the budgets. You could save money but you couldn't necessarily keep it for the following year. So I'm going to go back to pre cash. So it's an investment with so it makes a loan to do the investment in expectation that you're going to be able to pay it back because and I don't know whether what it is because. So that's that would be an example for that. That's it. This is as we go through, but I want to get through everybody you Dorothy, Dorothy Pam and then Bob Hegner, and then Bernie Dorothy did you have something. Okay, I had muted myself. You know when we're going on our meetings was always I'm constantly being surprised at grants, and they pop up all over the place and you know I would kind of different with Kathy and saying make the economic development person the grant person because clearly all kinds of people are getting grants right now, but we don't know I think there must sometimes I think they have to be surprised grants, but I get the feeling that there are grants that people kind of know are coming or there's some kind of structure of it, but we in the council don't know anything about that. We only know about it when we get the grant. So, so many of these grants seem to me and I'm probably wrong but some seem to be nice things that are not the basics. It's like jewelry and not the clothing. If we knew that we were getting grants or had a good chance of getting grants for some things, then we might budget or think about, you know the basic spending differently. Because I just feel like we're doing this thing, at least as a council member in a complete dark room, not knowing that actually this expense is going to be offset with this grant and that one with that grant. Is there any way to have any kind of sense of how grants because clearly they're paying for tons and tons of stuff in our town. So that's my idea that I'm putting out there is a question in the comment. Okay. Thank you, Bob. Yeah, I wanted to add something to Kathy's discussion of the collective bargaining agreements, and that is whether we want to consider sort of a broad limit on overall salaries and benefits like in the, in the, the presentation we saw last week looks like the salaries and benefits are roughly about 55% of the budget each year over the last 10 years. Do we want to make that more of a target or a goal. If something is to discuss. And then, not sure where this fits maybe under the 11, but we should, I would like to make sure we touch on the potential decline in the school enrollment population. Okay. Just to go back and kind of recap some of the stuff that's been said, you know, we're going to be doing community bargaining agreements and I think it's important that we stress that the use of reserves are for non return expenses that we shouldn't be using a reserve funds to fund the operation of the town because I know from sort of experience. We're negotiating a CBA's unions will frequently go back to those reserve funds and say look you have the money. So I'd really want to, I'd really want to see a stronger statement about the use of reserves. That would be one thing. Kathy suggestion about revolving fund for projects. I really appreciate it because it's almost impossible when you start you put something in place, and you start saving money to track that, but I really don't think the Department of Revenue's rules will allow for something like that. But it's, it's a necessary thing to do is you, you know, as you put put cost saving measures in place you should be able to look at those savings and say where you're reapplying them. Again, that comes from that comes from sorry experience. The piece about grants I think is a good one I think we've got our priorities. And I think under each of those budget priorities there should be some effort made to catalog grants will advance those priorities so we're not doing grants on an opportunistic basis where we're doing we're focused on where we're looking at them. So having an economic development person to help pursue that would be would be helpful. And to get some overall direction and coordination grant grant effort. And I speak up, please. Let's go back to the solar fund. This is something that I know that Worcester has actually done is something Andy we discussed way back when we were doing the zero energy bylaw before I was ever on the council and before there was a council. So, I, before we say we can't do it, I want to actually explore and make sure that if there are other towns that have done it, we can. A good reminder because I find myself getting stuck in the town headset and not the city form of government headset and cities have considerably more leeway than towns do. So yeah, thank you for that. Other than that, people have pretty much brought up things. I'm interested in. At least. Okay, Lynn, thank you for keeping this for updating the list as we talk, you're, you're so much better at it than I am, which is my. So thank you. So I think we need to go back up to the top I would rather than try and comment on it with everybody said as they go along. I was going to just if I had any thoughts about what she said I was going to do as we were going through. So, going to the just taking him in order. We said in last year's. And sort of as an initial opening statement that a key factor that was very important to the council was physical sustainability, which can only achieve by looking at multi year planning. And that that was sort of an overarching philosophical statement about budget philosophy, which I think actually came. A lot of these things came from either the select board guidelines or the old finance committee guidelines that ended up in sort of a combined document that became our first year. And so we did the FY 20, which is the first time the council did guidelines. I don't know if anyone disagrees with the thought or thinks that in the context of where we are now with COVID budgeting, as I'll call it, whether multi year planning is still a goal to try and strive for, or I don't think it's achievable. So I'll just see if there are any comments on that. Dorothy. Well, when it comes to one of my pet topics, which is sidewalks and roads. If they're not in a multi year plan. The ones. They don't happen. All this happened this year in terms of sidewalks is brand new ones very much needed brand new ones. But people talk to me all the time about some of the terrible sidewalks that have been that way for years and years, and people report it and report it and report it. And so, I mean, obviously, they'll never, ever, ever get done if it's not part of a multi year thing where we're actually promised that will happen. So, yes, we want to have multi year. Yeah, I just started to add the words capital in there. And certainly multi year and capital have been and continue to be and it's actually built into the charter that there has to be. Charter specifies five years. If I recall correctly, it's five. Yeah. So that there is the requirement for capital. I think that what the question came up is whether the overall budget including the operating budget, whether it's, we should be thinking ahead Bob. Yeah, I do think that fiscal sustainability and multi year planning are important goals and important principles, maybe the principles more than goals but I think some of the issues that we will be that are lower, you know, further down the list like use of reserves, you know that that impacts or that has an effect on sustainability and on multi year planning. The collective bargaining agreements are going to impact multi year planning the school population so I think a lot of the issues sort to through X. I think sustainability multi year planning is a part of what we have to consider. Yeah, just building on Bob's, I think you use the word overarching or overarching Andy so this is like, this is the big label and everything else comes underneath it. And I like the idea of principles and when I looked at it. To the rest of the world as well as to us does fiscal sustainability in itself, talk about that we were least trying to meet essential needs. So we want to be, we can't go out of business as a town we can't bankrupt the town but is that part of you know in the context of trying to meet essential. We have to make some tough cuts but we're trying to. And how do I define essential needs. You know so later when we get to a school budget or something you know if we set a school budget that if the enrollment does not drop. And the only and this, the only way to schools to live with it is to lay off people. We would need evidence they could still run the school. You know, before we would make that judgment so that's, I just didn't know whether sustainability already has the notion of it's, we want to be physically sustainable over multiple years because we've got to pay for essential services, or do we need to use those words anywhere. Actually, I had some thought about, as you were talking last year what the, if you didn't get a chance to read the guidelines that I, which was one of the attachments because that was a longer document. But the way that we handled it last year was we said that the current services that town provides are important to our residents and should continue. But that does not mean that there shouldn't be ongoing evaluation of all services and to try and make sure we're providing services in the most cost effective manner possible. I like that wording a lot and it was easier to write those sentences when you start with a fiscal budget at the beginning of year that was a current, a level current services not a flat dollar but yes, I like that wording. So I raised this mainly as a question, not necessarily to redefine it, but that the, we want to be fiscally sustainable to meet these needs and those later sentences, I think should stay in the document, I like them a lot. I'll just comment or two on this one. One is that, you know, we often sit here and we will be sitting here and we'll be talking about new things we'd like to see happen. Some of those things will come in response to the community safety. Some of those things will come in response to climate action, etc. So what we need to be very clear about is that we can't commit to something unless we can sustain it. And so there really needs to be that ongoing assessment of not just what will it cost this year, but what will it cost over time. And so and I think about this. I don't just think about what do we have now I think about of what else might go on the wish list. So, yep. So you would put sustainability of services or something like that. This is sustainability mean mean meeting essential needs. And then I'm saying if new program can we sustain it. So it's the questions that came up on if we fix the North Commons. Well, it does now 10 years now, we're going to keep it up. You know, that's just an example. I mean, you know that we can't just pay a lot of money every 30 years to make that that we let it deteriorate. I want to add a little comment I worked as a waitress years ago with an older waitress who did not wash her hair all week. And then she went to the beauty parlor and had it done. And I thought, that's a horrible way to live. So for one day or two days of the week, she looked great. And the rest of the time it just got worse and worse and worse, because it wasn't the regular normal, you know, upkeep that should be going on if you're working as a waitress so I totally agree that we have to change the practices of this town to be every building every piece of land that the maintenance hasn't been. And I know that we've got workers who are working very very hard. So it's got to be that they haven't been given the resources or or made it or put on the calendar in the right way, or they're having just constantly meeting emergency needs that they haven't been able to do that. I mean, I know they have done a lot of it, but they haven't been able to do as much as we'd like. So I don't, I want to take that back a little bit. Yes, they have maintained many many things, but we're not able to maintain things, many others as well as we'd like. Yeah, I just basically agree with the point that like to make the point that new, new efforts, new programs, new, new, new tactics don't necessarily mean new money that we have to be prepared. This goes with the evaluation piece we have to be prepared to say how effective is this and can we do things faster better cheaper or can we do things differently that gets us further along. I think maintenance is a is a very serious topic. Prop two and a half, when it first settled in, set up a perverse incentive. In other words, when you look at what first got cut in those budgets, after two and a half was maintenance efforts because if it broke, then people were more or less sourced forced to replace it. And I really think we need to emphasize for folks I think we think we do okay my experience here in Amherst. I think staff do well to to to keep things up. But I would, I like the idea of setting up a maintenance account, especially along with grants, because you can get a grant that starts you off with something, and, you know, find out that five years down the road you you've incurred a new cost. Actually, this has come up a couple times and so at some point I'm going to ask Sonia or Sean to tell us a little bit about what it is that is visible to put in regarding specialized funds, revolving funds or dedicated funds of that type, because we don't want to put something in there that can't be done Sean your hand. Thank you Sandy. So we'll weigh in as we go through each of these. And we get that one we can send in I can both check in I think in terms of the first, the first number criteria here that all those things look fine. For my point of view. Okay. We should keep moving because we do need to get through a lot of territory today. So, sort of implicit in this and because as part of the number one was, but I put it into a separate number was whether we want to actually say something about current services and the current services, like we did last year as I described earlier, services are appreciated by the community and it's sort of came out maybe as a presumption level, a reputable presumption but presumption level. If anybody disagrees with that, let me raise their hand otherwise, and I will go on to the next territory. I think Sean has his hand up. Yeah, Sean, do you have a lower it and re raised it just so I don't know how you want to handle this one. Again, our initial projections are for level funding, not level services. You know the economic situation stays where it is. And we do move forward with level funding. It's going to be really hard to meet level services. I think we had some positive things for FY 21 that allowed us to get by but to do that another year with level funding. Again, you're not saying that can't be recommended but just know that that would be a challenge with level funding. Are you suggesting and maybe I should see if the rest of the committee how the rest of the committee would react to this is to say that we appreciate the current services are important to the community. But if decisions need to be made. Then they should be clearly stated. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it because again this, you know where we from even going back to last year FY 22 was the year we expected to be very challenging. And there are some things that could go the right direction for us and make it not as bad but I think it is important to somehow get into your guidelines if reductions are to be made. Like you said to really clearly state the rationale for them. Any other thoughts, Kathy. Yeah, just building on what Sean said I looked at the wording of our original, the December version of guidelines. And I just wanted to change the whole sentence because it's not level services it is level funding. And to say, as the second year of level funding, this is going to be challenging and may require tough decisions therefore, you know, efforts to achieve efficiencies look for places where you can live within a budget but not cut. To acknowledge we are not funding at a maintenance of current service right up front when we use those two years in a row of this. And, you know, what I, what I, I think probably residents in town are aware of this but as far as I know, we have kept paying even though the buildings aren't open and aren't, you know, we have not had to do what you masses had to do with furloughs you know we've let some positions go empty. But there's a certain point at which if you're not open for business and you're paying people, some people are still working but I think we just need to acknowledge that we're in an incredibly unusual time, and this will be the second year of it. So I wouldn't disperse since do we recommend continuation of all current services, I would just flip that around and just phrase it very differently, you know, to right away say we're in, we're in a built tightening world where we're going to be living within flat budgets. And we're hoping that people can do what they need to do to live within the flat budget without cutting any essential services I, it was trying to wordsmith it my own mind to say that. That sounds like you've done a pretty good job actually. Thank you. Dorothy. There's a budget term which I don't know the name of but it's, you can't do something new. If you don't have any plan or budget for its upkeep. So here we are talking about doing the North Common which we all agree is a desirable project, but we have a new park at Kendrick that had to go forward because there were grants and timing and new park at graph park. And I'm looking at this and know, although I love the idea of fixing the common I'm thinking. This is like me going out and buying a lot of new clothes I don't need right now, even if I like them, even if I'm sick of to death of my clothes, I don't need them. And we've got to spend my money elsewhere so I. I think that this is part of. I need to make some changes. And I don't see that happening yet. Trying to figure out here. Is it related to related to services. Is it later on related to capital. Yep. Yeah, I mean, Dorothy you've raised the questions few times and I think it's probably worth having some response to it I don't think we can spend a whole lot of time on it today. The question that you've that's been raised in several ways is that are we being consulted about grants or grants being applied for because funds are available for a purpose or they being applied for strategically and how to get into grants drive our priorities as opposed to priorities driving grants. It's always a little bit difficult because you do apply for grants where you think you can get them. But it is a, it is a valid point that. I didn't exactly handle it, but I think at some point we, we probably should talk about it and I was going to actually bring up some something along these lines in a later discussion when we get to the questions of the financial consequences of the, but I'll cut the super proposal from what that we heard about last night. So we'll come back, come back to it within the guidelines and a little might even come back to it a little bit later. Anybody else have any thoughts they want to do that otherwise. What I want to get the next major topic is we did the town manager goals and there's several of us who were involved in the town manager goal process because we also run the GOL committee. But the council adopted for the town manager, which were also then understood to be council's goals so otherwise who wouldn't be asking the manager to work on them. And these are exact copy of the six goals that we ended up with in the process. And of course, one of them, and I'm coming back to this on purpose because gives Pat an opening to talk about something that she had raised earlier, before we really got going into this topic of the guidelines. And that is the one that's highlighted now. I think the word we had thought was is that there was going to be a process that was going to kind of define public safety as we have previously called it, and how it is delivered. And I think that the question if I understood and if I don't have this right path, I really need you to raise your hand is that you were asking whether the hiring of two police officers in January, makes sense if it precedes the recommendations that might come from the task force that is just starting to meet. So, if that wasn't what you were thinking, Pat, please fill us in. No, that's a very good way of stating it. I'm concerned because we made what I think was an important gesture. We were looking at people wanting to complete, you know, defund the police 52%. And we said, we said, no, there's going to be a hiring freeze until January 31, I believe. And that committee, the committee, the community safety working group is barely up and running it doesn't even have a full contingent of members yet. It feels to me very important that we maintain that freeze through this fiscal year, while that committee gets up and running, and really looks at what could be transformative. In terms of how we see we provide services that may or may not need to stay in the police department. I very much want to bring that back to the council and have us extend that deadline and I'm not sure what the process is to do that. Yeah. Let me respond to a little bit and then go back to Dorothy's, his hand is up at this moment to what the document we're working on right now is the FY 22. Guidelines. And the issue you're raising in some ways is an FY 21 issue. Because we adopted a budget in in the adoption of when we adopted the budget, we made that request that the time manager not fill a position, the two vacant police positions. So it doesn't quite fit into the guideline discussion, but that doesn't mean that the point you're raising isn't one that's worth bringing to the council. I agree with that. And I, Pat and I discussed this just very briefly right before the meeting. I suggested it be raised in in finance because it is a budget issue. And that then we need to figure out how to bring it to the council. Okay, so we'll come back. I'll get back to this is additional business at the end. In the meeting, but I think that we need to recognize that we've got the, that these are what the guidelines are is about next year. Dorothy, you had something you want to say. I agree with the topic that's been raised, but I just wanted to add something about our statements have to be with wiggle room in doing a COVID check with one of my classes at the end of the class, just to see if in fact it was spreading. One of my students is a police officer in Holyoke or Springfield told me 20 officers that he works with are now have that have COVID. And so, you know, I said, well, do your best to make yourself safe. He says, I have to work with the public. So just a reminder that we can say that we think that free should be sustained well so the committee can get established which I totally agree with but we have to make sure that we don't lock people down so that if there's a real problem with personnel because of COVID. Our police don't have the choice to keep it safe as we might like them to, that we don't get stuck in a corner somewhere. It's interesting, you know, part of the cares grant has allowed us to hire extra of fire in EMS. I think, Sean that's allowed us to hire extra police has it. We're getting near the end of it, it may be able to be used for that if there was a need. If there was a COVID related need I, I'm not sure if I've heard that we've had, you know, a similar experience to what Dorothy mentioned but if there was a COVID related need. We're going to use CARES money, again, qualifying that we're getting near the end of it and so the CARES money is less and less. Right. Yeah, so Bernie, I'll get to you in a second but I think that there's a practical issue with this too. The firefighters that were hired were people who were UMass students who were involved in what is called the student call force. So they had an association with the fire EMS department already and they had training. As a police officer, as we remember from last summer, there's a long turnover time between the point of hiring and when a police officer can actually provide service and be out on the street. Andy can I say one other thing real quick that I failed to mention. And when we do have staff, first responders staff who are out of work because they need to quarantine, or, you know, they have COVID or whatever it would be. Again, if it's related to COVID we can use the CARES money to backfill for those staff and we have done that. And that may mean somebody else comes in and works overtime to fill a shift on a temporary basis. But that we have done for both police and fire I believe. Yeah, Bernie. Yeah, I think it's important to understand anything you mentioned it that with a police officer you can simply take one off the shelf. Even if you're hiring a police officer who's been through the Academy and trained they still need to have a field training here in town. And that you're talking weeks or months before you can add someone effectively to the to the force. One thing the other thing is is I really would like to hope that the two police officers are the two police positions are seen as a good faith effort on the part of the council to take the task forces work seriously, and that people don't anchor on those two positions is that's what we have to work with or that's as far as we can go. So I think those two positions aren't necessary that will be necessary for the successful work of the police force. So I just my concern is is that people will will focus on those two positions and take that as some kind of a limit. And I would hope that doesn't happen. So I think in this one we're going to have to do the best we can in doing a draft, which is the next stage. The last two years is that I did a first round of the draft and then Kathy did math, massive editing his vice chair to it and that was then what ended up being the draft for discussion. We may be doing the same thing again this year. So we're going to have to do the best we can with it. I think the go back just a little bit. Yes. Last year we handled the question of additional. We said something like, here are some additional issues that you that are important to the council. And get we ask that you give some thought as to how they could be provided and that if additional funds become available that you consider these as items for adding to the budget. I'm not sure that all members of the council are going to feel comfortable with that sort of a statement this year. And we do. Do we need some sort of overarching statement about the additional priorities that are suggested through the goals. Yes. So you had something first and then I saw it and I see Bob Higgner's hand just real quick. I think one thing you might want to consider and the guidelines as if additional funds become available. And we can't maintain level services that those some of those funds be put towards maintaining level services, where it makes sense. So considering everything else that you have here in terms of reviewing operations and making sure we're doing things efficiently. But I think that should be at least one consideration. Yeah, I kind of going along with that I mean I just see that these additional priorities under number three are would be competing against the existing services, potentially. And if there is a requirement for additional resources in order to meet these priorities then those resources have to come from somewhere else. You know, we have to then not do something we would have done otherwise so I'm not quite sure how to word this but it seems to me that, you know, we're sort of got we've got a fixed budget and we can do as much of what we have done in the past, as we can or we don't do some of that and we do something different, but we only have a certain amount of budget to work with. And Andy I might just add for number, for number three. You know those could be, you know, budget additions but I also just view those as how the town manager deploys existing resources. And you may want to have comments, you know, related to each one but you know those overarching goals is, you know, they're not just about budget additions it's about how staff are used and how we support. The goals of the council so I don't, I don't know if necessarily every one of those has to be, you know, a budget addition item next to it it could just be how existing resources are used. I think that's valid. I think when we did this, we recognize. There might be some additional costs that some things were as you just described. But there's a lot of funding that comes from, doesn't come from the operating budget. For the capital budget comes from CPA funds and grants and outside funding. The climate action is probably a little bit of both, you know, each one has, has some aspect to it. Kathy. Yeah, well you did a perfect segue and and and as to Sean I think you've categorized all of these under additional priorities as if they were on budget spending. I noticed the way it was written last year you wove different things in, in terms of meeting different kinds of things but I think if additional funds this question if additional funds become available. To the extent there, this notion of an investment now that would save us money later falls into here, you know, so some, some kind of priority setting where last year we already talked about a priority of where you would spend it for second and third. It's a, it's a list of the, the next places so you know if, if we're about to have a disaster in some part of the current operating budget that's the one Sean just said we might have to put some money in but we, if we can invest in something that we can see a clear savings within the next few years. And I know we're not doing enterprise funds, but we had a brief discussion on the Centennial plant that if the design of the plant could also think about solar. How much would it save in the electrical costs and Guilford gave us the annual electric costs of operating that plant which were enormous. You know so I just so that that kind of notion that there might be some things that we could be prioritizing that way. So, I'm, I don't want to write this too long here but I think it's just a sentence and you've already got these efficiencies. This is where grants helped you a lot that if getting a grant, we just got that grant for the fire. For the ambulance, it will save us probably wear and tear and it will save us gasoline and it will save us in a way so that grant made total sense to get. We always get grants that have that clear payoff to our operating budget or long term life of something. So I don't see how this lead sentence the way you have it organized we can fix that later but additional priorities where you know the four big capital projects, all of racial justice, all of everything it doesn't all fit neatly under that but seizing opportunities would as a way of rewording it when we actually write the sentences. I think that what we're kind of evolving to is the understanding that in the Sean started us out with this way when we as a council identified six areas that we would like the manager to pay attention to we. It's sort of a recognition that some would require additional funding, some might save money, and some are just incorporated within how you do business with the current operations. And I think we can sort of point that out as an overarching thing that I, and I, I would be hesitant but I don't know how the rest of you feel which is why we're having a meeting. I'm hesitant to have the guidelines ignore this other document that we worked on very hard as a council, the priorities for the time manager for the next year. I guess I didn't mean to ignore it but I looked at the way you wove it in last time you, and it's not. It's as you just said it's not just budget so it's within the budget areas of each of these priorities, these are these are the top priorities to be worried about. We can make a priority. Excellent education, right, but we, you know, maintain our reputation our schools reputation so it's, it's, we were talking about new focuses or renewed focuses. Yeah. That's why this started out as being additional, then you're right I probably could have come up with a better word Sean did you have something else in Ghana. Oh, sorry, I will. I gotta put it down. Okay. So is there anything else that people want to say on this topic or we'll go on, keep moving through the list. I have to go back. I can get mine up to. So we had a little bit of discussion already in use of reserves I think that the other use of reserves question that was sort of implicit in, or I should say explicit in the presentation that was made by Paul and others at the financial finance meeting was that if we make if our revenues don't arrive is there anticipated that that's where we consider using reserves as was suggested for this year that if we didn't get the state aid increase that we were committed to using reserves at that point. But we had cited even in the may second round of the guidelines that we would only use reserves if there was a fall off in the revenue so that the budgets were being developed that we would try and at that point hold to those budgets. So is there anything else that you would suggest that we put in on under the topic of reserves. Just connected back with the four projects that and the third would be, you know, not for operations except if there's a shortfall and hold on to them for the expected need as we embark on the big capital projects, you know to re emphasize that we built them up to help be a support for that. That was pretty strongly stated in the guidelines this year the pre cover January guidelines. Yes, so just the people understand it wasn't like we were planning to die with and bequeath it to our beneficiaries. I think it was just for people who haven't had a chance to do so recently to go back and look at how we addressed it in the January guidelines, because I think it's pretty much the same thing that you just said. Yep. No, I think it was well expressed there but I just was putting it since we're doing rough outlines here. Anything else that people want to add on this topic. I want to mention one thing there was a discussion during the financial indicators meeting as to whether or not we should be looking at the level that's put aside for capital. And the also a question of as to whether or not we should review the maximum minimum that has been out there for a while. That Sonya was was the person that brought both of those up. I don't know Sonya if you want to chime in the second one that you mentioned. I think I said, you know a few months ago we are reviewing our financial policies that are out there and we'll come back to you at some point. That is one of the areas that we've looked at and have some thoughts on about what that right level of reserves is, both for the operating budget the general fund, but also for enterprise funds as well because I know that conversation came up. So, at some point we'll be talking more about that. Yeah, being the one of the sole survivors of that 2007 process that led to those current policies. I wanted to say that, at that point in time, our reserves were pretty low, and we were trying to use best judgment to come up with that five and 15%. But in the end, there was no magic when we were barely at 5% to what we did. So, you know, for the most part the base that you guys created was really, really good and really strong and set, you know, a nice structure. So really we just went through it and sort of said, you know, now that we are where we are. Does that change what we want to set for policies essentially. I know that I think much of what you guys worked on is still very much relevant to where we are. People want to say about reserves. There's one other thing and that gets back to an item that Bob raised at the very beginning, which was the reminder that reserves are not available for, should not be made available for current programs that would create recurring demands. And you did it and I think it was stated fairly specifically in the example that Bob gave about collective bargaining. That one to just say salaries is an example as opposed to put it on the unions. Do we want to revisit the proposed maintain reserves at the capital at 8% or do we just want to reinforce that or what do we want to say about that. I was going to bring that up and we got to number seven, but it was seven or I can't even remember if it was eight. You were in your current list is number eight. Yeah. What happened to it. Number nine. Okay, it became number nine. Okay, thanks. Meetings in there and I can move maintenance at that help. No, sorry. The numbers didn't have any magic. They were, they were thought. I think that we have overriding. I think that our general feeling has been to. We're trying to avoid operating overrides recognizing that we may need to go to voters for a debt exclusion override for most likely for a school and that there's a limit to how many times you can ask voters to consider increasing their taxes, particularly now. But I think that's been had been the thought previously. I just go ahead. I just, I would prefer not saying may need to go to voters for an override for the elementary school explicitly last time we said, an override for at least one of the projects are one to two because I think the jury is out on. We have a, we have choices. And, you know, I'm not going to jump right in on what I think is affordable or not but if we were at eight or 9%. Depending on what we do with the library we might be able to squeak out with the school but I just think we're going to have to confront. Are we talking about one or two overrides. And do we need to protect the schools by, you know, right so I just wouldn't mention which project it is. And the, the last year version said, we think we might have to do it for something. And we're hoping we get started on one of these in FY 21 which we clearly didn't. Do we think we're going to start on one of these big projects in FY 22 so. I actually agree with Kathy because I think that we don't want to. You don't want the council to feel like they're voting today, when they vote the guidelines. Yep. Yeah, so I just wouldn't name what we think we're going to have to do but it says, you know, use the override for big capital projects is the, a good way to phrase it, leaving it nice and vague as to which, or absolutely. Bob. Yeah. In the meeting last week, one of the counselors I don't remember, I can't remember whom raised the question about whether our debt service is at the optimal level. And do we want to address that here I mean we could put in something to the effect to say, we don't think it's good to take on more debt now, because we've got these big projects or just stay silent on it. The chair of trustees is the one right, sorry. It was Austin yet who raised that. I'm trying to understand the statement, because in fact, any one of the capital projects that is out there means we are going to take on more debt. What Austin was saying, don't take on anything else because we want to save it for the library. That's a different statement than we shouldn't take on any more debt. I think it was a, I shouldn't I'll use a neutral word. I think it wasn't that he wasn't completely clear in his own mind because he was saying why not do this and didn't understand that we were saying, we weren't saying we are not going to do debt we're just going to say we're not going to ramp up on debt before we do the big projects because then we won't be able to afford them. So I thought it would be good to actually follow up with him that it's not that we're not planning on taking on debt. It's just we're reserving the room to take on debt for the big projects and not eating it all up with financing everything with that. So, one has his hand up on this. Yeah, I mean, again, we can all try to interpret what he said I mean my interpretation was that you know we often show those slides about how low our debt is and how low a percentage of that we have. And I think his, you know, remarks were based on it you know is that really a good thing. I don't think it's, you know, for your purposes. I don't think it's a bad thing to have low debt but again that service costs are, you know, at an all time low or, you know, historic lows right now so whatever you put in here you may want to acknowledge that now is actually maybe a smart time to use debt because the real rates are, and that, you know, as we prepare for these large projects or if there are other large capital projects within capital, you know, where it makes sense to use debt. Again now relative to history is one of the more advantageous times, especially given how low our debt is in general, wouldn't put that under override, or I mean we put that concept goes in somewhere. You know the other capital needs potentially, or its own section or you can leave it out all together whatever you guys want to do but that was my interpretation is, you know, like now, understanding how low interest costs are right now is not necessarily a good thing that we have really low debt because we're not taking advantage of those low interest rates. We do use debt for some of the smaller capital projects and capital expenditures, you know, to come off the capital plan get bundled. And this is some short term debt that's in there versus the long term debt that requires a bonding. And I think there's a difference there that needs to be emphasized. What I mean by for the large capital projects means a bond commits the town to a 20 year or greater period as opposed to the one to five year borrowing that goes on to, to, you know, buy some of the equipment we need. Just on how low they are right now I was just looking 20 year is around 2%. Yeah, 30 years around two and a half for in Massachusetts for municipals 10 years looks like a bargain. My brother works in finance in the company he works for manages money for large corporations and wealthy individuals. And he's going nuts at the return on the box. He can't offer people a lot of return on their investment bond market and the me and the muni bond right market right now. The other thing too but avoiding on operating overrides operating overrides almost invariably fail. So we're going to look at the list of overrides that do our maintains the success rate is about a 10% success rate for an operating override. People are much more comfortable funding and using an override for a capital project where they know they're going to see something on the ground, and they know it's going to be paid off and a certain amount of time. The voters are more way more comfortable with an override for a capital project, unless you're a charlomotten you want to buy an ambulance. Yeah, thank you for that point and as far as the getting back to the debt limit. And then I'm going to call in Dorothy. We had a policy that goes back to my select board days with Sandy pooler was the finance director that we were trying to deliberately not take out that and let debt that we had paid off get paid off and full and expire so that we would have capacity for major project. And so the fact that we have low debt was actually designed policy. We're very, for that purpose, Dorothy. I want to comment thinking back on our own financial life, how you get in trouble, and you get in trouble when they offer you 0% for a year refinance all your money, and you won't have to pay any interest for a year, and then you go borrow money. And yes, it's cheap. Our interest is cheap but you still end up owing the money. Thinking of the financial crashes that we've had in our adult life. And they are usually preceded by a moment of euphoria like oh my God it's so cheap to borrow now let's just go do it. And then you do it, and you find that the debt can last longer than the thing you did with the debt. So, I just want to, to tamper the enthusiasm is what I want to do. Those are decisions that we're going to have as we go along and discussion that as we make decisions about debt going forward. That's her it's easy to put that in, because this guideline is about the budget, it's not about future decisions that need that are going to be made. Anything else on this topic, because then I should move on to capital. There's, I think we can lump two capital together if we want but we've really talked a little bit about four major capital projects earlier when we were talking about the time manager goals. Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm going to encourage that we now try to get into a long engaged conversation on this one, the four capital projects are still out there. Not an operating budget question for the year. So, are we, do we want to, the recommendation that was in the financial trend recommendations was that we stay with the 8%, whether we go to 8%, get back up to 8%. And that would go under the capital needs. Yeah, it goes under number nine whichever we're going to reorganize this anyway. It's the, it's the recommendation from a financial transfer portals where 8% came from. You want reactions to that. Well, as far as I could see, 8% was the remainder. You know, once they, once we did flat budgets with the assumptions that we had on, you know, property tax revenue and revenue from other sources. We're left with enough to put 8% in so to me is 8% is doable. If all the other things happen, and do we stay at 8% if we need to dip into reserves because our revenue shortfalls, you know, last year we clobbered capital, so we couldn't go forward than we went. So the one question I would have is, is that do we dip first into reserves to maintain services if, if state aid, or do we go back down on eight and I think I would sort of stay with the eight, because of the huge up the roads, the sidewalks, the queue that we didn't spend money on last year. But I'd love to see what the queue looks like because some things moved off the ask list over into the Community Preservation Act budget, some things that were on the list that we didn't get to in JCPC or now over at CPA. The front steps of the town hall, various roofs, all moved over to another place. That's a question, you know, do would we, if there's a state revenue aid fall, do we first go to reserves, or would we say we can't go to 8%. We're going to need to be at seven and a half. I'm asking it as a question. I think I'd rather stay at eight. Okay, Andy, if I respond to that. Yes. So I can see why maybe it looks like a plug figure because sometimes the 8% is a weird comes out to a weird number but the 8% was actually pretty intentional this year. We looked at what was deferred. What was coming up for FY 22 anyway, and 8% helped us get through a lot of it so the, so the 8% was actually intentional as a percentage that we thought could get us back on track, and make a lot of progress towards getting back to the 10%. But I agree with you, it we're actually getting in better shape because there's a lot of projects the ambulances on the capital plan, we were able to do that out of the ambulances seats fund. There was a fire truck that we were able to buy out of a gift. So the plan actually looks a little better than probably the last time the group has seen it. So I would also just, I would, I think capital is a really important part for this component for this year so I would agree with Kathy it sticking with 8% and not dipping into that, you know, to whatever extent we can and something catastrophic happens I think it's a different story but I think we really need to emphasize capital for this year's proposal. Andy, I'd like to stay. I'm sorry I'm not seeing because of me move my participant list covering the pictures. Then go ahead. I totally agree with this there is a point where we cannot continue to ignore repairs and new buildings are frankly, they're just going to come back and bite us. And so, it means we can't maintain some programs at the desired levels. That's what it means. But if we end up with a school building that we can't even occupy or a DPW or fire station that we can't even repair anymore which is about where we are by the way. Then we've gained nothing. So I really don't want to see a step below 8%. And I felt like Sean just gave us words that 8% at 8% we can cover some needs that we weren't able to do the year before and we can get. We can get somewhere rather than it's a drop in the bucket. It is a drop in the bucket but nevertheless, you know it's it's real money. So there's agreement on that. We should go on. I think I think that the challenge is going to be in the writing of it, but I Kathy and I worked out the writing we probably will get it fairly well, hopefully. You know anything else to be said on the capital on any pieces of the capital at this point. And now might be a good time if you're if you want for Sony and I to maybe weigh in on the maintenance fund and it sort of relates to the solar fund. Okay. But Sonya correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, the best vehicle or maybe not the best vehicle but one vehicle that could be explored for, you know, accomplishing those types of things could be, you know, like a capital stabilization fund. Several years ago there was discussion around a capital stabilization fund I think town meeting ultimately decided not to do it. They wanted just to stick with a single stabilization fund, but one way to sort of set aside funds specifically for capital, you know, and I think maintenance fund I think maybe large scale capital or large scale maintenance, like a new roof or new windows or HVAC work or something like that, which could also apply to solar, which, you know, is a lot could be large scale capital projects could be to consider capital stabilization fund, and then the challenge would be how do we put money into it. And that would be one way to sort of isolate money specifically for those things. Sonya does that. Yeah, I don't really, I don't really know what you're referring to with solar for capital funds. So if we wanted to, if the town wanted to make a, you know, set aside funds for sustainability initiatives such as solar which would be, you know, capital because of the cost of it, depending on how it's financed I mean, Okay, so you're not designating revenues from solar to go in there. This would be a vote from free cash basically to a stabilization fund. Right. Yeah, so this would be for the cost of solar or the cost of a sustainability initiative if we were to pay for something. But that would depend on the specific arrangement. And we kind of, that's why I was a little confused about what you're talking about with maintenance funds because that's what our stabilization fund is it's it's for capital I mean, we can create as many stabilization funds as you want but it's for any lawful purpose. And I thought that was our purpose was to have it for if you had to do a roof if you had some repairs and a building that you needed to do. So we're building our reserves also for the peak debt service on these four capital projects. But in my mind that's what the purpose of it is other than having a rainy day fund for this is where I, this is where I wanted to sit. I wanted to, that we should consider raising the bottom limit of the stabilization fund to 15% and never go below that so that we have it for a rainy day fund, but everything else to be for that maintenance fund. Yeah, I think that's the right discussion is, how do we know what's for the rainy day fund and what is for capital and right now it's sort of all together. Either fund or maybe, maybe it's something within the policies that kind of state that maybe there's a way to get to it that way as well. Yeah, I just don't know if there's a misconception out there that the stabilization fund is for all the large capital program projects. Well, to some extent it is if you go back to the point that Sean started with, which was when Sandy went to town meeting when he was finance director and recommended the creation of the capital stabilization fund. What I was trying to do was to say, we have these major building projects and part of the reason that we are putting aside the level of reserves we are is because we need to have that available for capital purposes. The town meeting that had speakers who said, but we always have the choice to use this stabilization fund for those purposes so why do we need to have it isolated into a separate fund, and rejected that proposal. But that was the discussion at town meeting. Yeah. So what am I supposed to be communicating here. When just right exactly what we said, it was very clear was just kidding. I thought it was too. Yeah, no, we're kind of, we kind of had a discussion there. I mean, I don't know what the, so all that was to say, you know, was in response to the maintenance fund and the Senate side resources for maintenance. And also set aside funds for solar that, you know, maybe the guidelines could be that we explore ways to do it, or continue exploring ways to earmark or isolate those funds. I'm going to go back to the people who raised hands after us in just a second but it's sort of like the percent for art discussion that got us into so much trouble with the legislature. There's limits that parking revenue has on how you can go out and go about doing these sorts of things. And who what the problem was is the town meeting. And that one created an expectation that was unmeasurable. Do ours mind. Kathy and then Bernie. I'm really happy with the explore ways to achieve this, you know, give us a memo back. And Sonya I completely agree that the civilization fund is earmarked this way but I also saw us dip into it to buy Hickory Ridge. And it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy a piece of land. And so it's clearly was not maintaining capital fixing capital it was, and because the money was there. And so I think, to the extent we, we now have this first time. And those with long histories can correct me but we had this capital reserve fund because we couldn't figure out how to allocate it this year because it's so small, but it can only be used for capital projects on an urgent need basis. If we don't use it all. I'm not sure what happens to it but I like the idea that we somehow recognize that there's a certain amount of maintenance that has to happen every year. So, giving us a memo back on how do we not buy the new truck if we haven't fixed the roof, or we don't, you know, it's a back and forth on some of these, you know, force us to stay with the fix it. Now we got to the point on the North Commons that the sidewalks are crumbling under your feet and jagged edges, but we clearly didn't have a fix the sidewalk fund available to repair existing sidewalks so it's getting a memo back on which kind, what are possible ways to do something like this to sequester money. So here the project itself can't finance it can be financed but then we've got the later remains of it to keep it to the upkeep is is on our budget. Sonya so you know it's so you don't have to answer it right now but there must be some way of making us live up to our we intend to do this. I'm terrified if, if I confuse everyone, I didn't say that this stabilization fund was just for maintenance fund. It is for all of the above it's any lawful purpose so taking money out to buy. What do we take money out for Hippie Ridge. That's, that's perfectly fine to do that here. I'm just saying if we build our reserves enough that we can. We have separate stabilization funds so it's clear to everybody, or we can have a spreadsheet saying, you know we're putting 10% for this 10% for this, and whatever we put in there we can designate which bucket it's going into. But it wasn't all meant for maintenance. I did think there's a question that Sonya if I have this wrong, so that the capital stabilization fund that was established this year was just a term of art to be used to say, we're going to have this bucket of funds that is going to be available for capital needs for the FY 21 and the town manager would make recommendations on purchases to be made from that piece of funds, but at the end of 21. It's not spent it reports to free cash and then can be reallocated for the next year but it's not a fun that has a lifetime after FY 21. Absolutely it does. It's not a stabilization fund. It's just a budgeted reserve. We didn't know which projects to to actually put forth. So we just put that pot of money into a capital and it's just, it's on the, it's on the general ledger and it's just called reserve fund and it's the $700,000 it just like repurposing old capital it'll stay there you can take it that's a funding source so you can you can carry that funding source over into next year. If we don't spend it we can fund some of those per some of those things that we didn't fund for fiscal year 21. I mean it can, I can close it out it can fall to free cash and if it free cash is over 5% we can move it to stabilization fund, like our policies say, but it, it's, it's just a budgeted reserve. It is. How long could you have a budget reserve continue. As long as we want it forever. Right, like that really much. I just had this conversation with our auditors. About three weeks ago about that budgeted reserve to make sure I was treating it correctly and they were on board with everything I said. It's budgeted reserve it is there, you do have to appropriate it. You do have to appropriate it to the specific projects. So it would have to go as a council order saying that we're going to fix the North Amherst school roof and the funding sources from this budgeted reserve. So if the council, and then I'm going to turn to Bernie because I know your hands been up. If the council wanted to do what was suggested earlier in this discussion, which was set aside money for maintaining projects that we undertake in the future we build a new school and we want to have funds to maintain it you could set up a budgeted reserve to do exactly that. I know, you know, I don't know if they would be fine with millions of dollars sitting there but in this way but you could what you could do also on a capital plan you can also have a budgeted reserve. Every year and if you don't use it at the end of the year you transfer to a stabilization capital stabilization fund. You could do that too there's a there's flexibility there. If you take 10% of levy for capital and you allocated everything you need for capital and there's say $500,000 you can move it. You can either budget a budget a an amount to go into the stabilization fund for capital whether it be a capital or you can leave it in the reserve but in the capital fund but you got to just expect you to spend that they don't expect you for it to sit there. I mean it's one thing to have a few hundred thousand dollars but if what I'm hearing from you is to maybe have a million dollars or more build up there. I'm sorry. And he has his hand up to. So, years ago, I was the treasurer for my condominium association. I had various reserves, replace the roof, etc, etc. Some of these were long term projects because obviously, we don't put a new roof on every year. We're talking about. Well right now the way I'm looking at the budget, the budget reserve that's in there for capital it's for all for it's any for any one of those capital projects that we didn't fund for fiscal year 21. So, I mean that was my, that was our intent and we did this reserve right Sean, is to fund some of those capital projects is, and to have it as a reserve that way so if something came up as an emergency we would fund it with that. Yeah, I don't think we would want to do this type of reserve for a long term, right here because we anticipated we might need to spend those funds this year. And for the long term, it would probably be in a capital stabilization fund or right, you know, a regular stabilization fund, just transfer to stabilization fund. Okay, Bernie. Yeah. Part of the thought behind the capital stabilization fund when Sandy was here was to send a signal to the bond markets. And we understood that we had certain long term capital needs that we're setting money aside for, and that we were prepared to fund a portion of those so you sort of disambigulate you rather than having this massive fund that has a bunch of stuff, a bunch of purposes tied into it. You isolate your the money that you have for capital so that you signal the bond market that you're, you're prepared to pay for this project. And that there's a fund there that's not competing with other needs. That's one piece. And the same thing actually goes for Oprah which we'll talk about later I mean you really what you're doing is you're signaling the capital markets that you're doing good and that tends to lower your bond that raises your bond rating and lowers your borrowing costs. I, you know I understand about budget reserves. It was a favorite thing I used to do the Department of revenue got very upset with me they would prefer that I created a million little stabilization funds rather than budget reserves. So I think Sony is concerned about that as well placed in a description of Sunday gave him a stabilization fund is the classic definition of it. But but think about, you know, you think about these stabilization funds think about the signal you're sending to the bond market. Yeah, that's helpful. So moving along. I think we pretty much talked about what we want to under capital. The next question I would have is, are we comfortable with the revenue projections that were in the, they were offered to us. So last chance to those questions with them. But I also recognize that we may have to go back and visit. Like we did last year. Yeah, I mean I think that what we're saying. Go ahead, Kathy. Just a second Lynn. We wrote a note in either version one or version two of last year's guidelines to get a report back I think this is one we're going to need a mid year report, you know a second quarter report because it's in many ways, but you know that we, we, we say on top of this, because it's the local revenues you have coming back up not to the previous levels but coming back up to where they sunk to, and what happens, if that doesn't happen is, you know the we're going to, so it's just, I, it's a sentence. Yeah, I'm totally comfortable with where they are now. It's just you're having to do educated guests and Sonya was 100% correct last year. So maybe she'll have another batting average this year that she'll be without she'll be batting 1000 on a best guesses best informed guesses are decent but you know you mess in theory is coming back. I don't know if that ever leave us will any of the local restaurants and hotels ever open again, you know it's a series of, we don't know, right. So, so that's, I would just put a sentence and a sentence somewhere in the report that says you know this is the best we can do as of November or December for what we think the world will look like an FY 22. Um, so anything else we want to say about new revenue generation. We've already did we had a little discussion earlier. Actually, I want to weigh in here because this may seem. This may be an area that the town manager needs to communicate to the town council in a much more deliberate way in all of the inquiries I've done into the town. Much of the grant writing is actually decentralized so for example the police department may be writing certain grants and planning may be writing other grants and DPA DPW may be writing road grants. Um, it's not clear to me and I also will just want to tell you I lived in a pure granted contract world for much of my career. I worked out to have a single person kind of being the grant getter, because somebody who knows highways can write a much better proposal for DPW and likewise somebody who knows policing and do the same. If you're looking for somebody who can help coordinate some of that. Yes, my organization ended up finally hiring somebody who is just outstanding at that. So I just want to be clear that we don't think that a single person should be the expert in those various fields of town services. But more importantly, what I do think we have to watch out for is having grants commit other town funds without understanding completely. And, and I, you know, I think we are all very very well aware that the previous legislative body, the town of Amherst committed with proposal for a library, and we are now trying to figure out how we're going to deal with that. So that's an example of looking at what is the proposal that is going in really asking of the organization and are we well aware in advance and looking at the impact of that commit that matching commit. My two cents with you. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm exactly what Lynn said that's that is our structure, the grant writing is decentralized when opportunities arise that, you know, align with the department's initiatives they apply for them. We have a central person in accounting, Holly Bowser is most of you know who helps the facilitation of the grant or the administrative side of the grant in terms of applying for it and managing the reports and supporting, you know, keeping the files and things of that nature. But in general the actual seeking of grants is done by each department. There's another thing that's under I, which is we've no indication and I'm not asking for one right now that but that in the budget development process that the manager will make the decision to go ahead and hire an economic development director. Unless he's explicitly said it to somebody else. I have not heard that and when you have a vacancy and the tight budget in your as we do for this coming year, something that at least you'd expect them to think about. So I added that sentence and I'm perfectly happy to take it out, you know that a it assumes we have one and be Lin's term on, I always met coordinating rather than this is the one person who does it but if we don't have that person and we're not likely to have them in FY 22. Or, or current. Yeah. So I didn't mean to jump that I just, I, I don't know whether there are opportunities out there that we don't know about everybody's radar screen is up. I do think being strategic everything we've said I think is right about grants grants shouldn't drive our spending later we should be going after grants that are already totally in line with things we want to do. The reason I don't actually, I want to leave it here I don't know how we're going to address it in the guidelines but the business community is very focused on somehow or another. We should hire an economic development director and that person should be going after grants to improve downtown, for example. So this is a, this is a conversation that's larger than the group of us sitting here. Okay. Sometimes I think there's a probably a way overblown expectation of what that person could possibly do. Yep. Sorry, I will lower it. Okay, I didn't know if you had anything to add to this. I think we're getting towards the end. I think we're getting towards the end of the year. Is there anybody, any reason that anyone wants to do other than has been done in prior years and this done in this year suggested guidelines of having even percentage increases recommended for each of the segments with the adjustment for the schools for the reasons that we all know about now. We're saying flat budgets right. budget across the board and with the stated somewhat differently for the elementary schools because of the whole question of how we account for the charter charter. And that's not the town charter charter schools. Andy, can I just have a quick thing about this one. Can I can I say a quick piece. I do think that this is a really important one that the increases are equal for each department I you know working on the school side before and on the town side. I think this really helps all the departments feel like part of one larger unit and not competing with each other. I've heard of other towns that it can get pretty ugly, and we had not had that we all work really well together. And I think a lot of that is because of this. And in the past when one department has struggled had something unusual. There has been flexibility and I think everyone has been open to that flexibility but in general, the equal increases for departments I think has really helped the town be cohesive and smart with our operations. So it helps at the four towns meeting, being the one who's spoken for the town at four towns meetings to explain that it's an equal percentage. But it was, I think I had to put it on the list. Yeah. Anyone else. We've talked about earlier that Bernie gave us a strong reason why we support the OPEB recommendation. And I think it's consistent with what Don manager told us at the financial trends meeting. We're planning to move this back up aren't we. So this is a selfish one, Andy would be if again revenues come in better. You know, OPEB would be one area we would look to get our contributions back up to where we were before. Because we did reduce it by 50% for FY 21. We want to state that in the draft guidelines and some passion. Yes. I think the same way you said the other one where again, if funds become available, this would be one of the areas to consider for using those funds. Okay. So, then we get to the. This is a question we could come to later but anything that we would like to say to the manager when you present the budget, we would like you to include information about this. Mary Lou is always anxious to have a state something in there about how town departments work together and about staffing levels were heard things that she always wanted to have and that in the finance committee guidelines. Bernie you'll be able to remember those days. Sean, when we got finished with this year's budget, you specifically asked us whether things that we would like to see in the new and future budget documents. And I'm assuming that that continues to be something you're looking at. Yes, so I did get some feedback from at least one counselor of a few areas and we are taking things that we've heard at different points during budget meetings, and trying to incorporate them into the budget document so hopefully this year's budget document just naturally will have some more information in it. Hopefully that's responsive to things you guys have asked about. When I was on the finance committee, the old finance committee used to talk about problems so we never could resolve which was how to compare staffing levels where there's departments like the library that has a lot of part time employees and different departments measure percentage of FTE differently. There didn't seem to be consistency and how personnel was measured. Kathy. I think one of the other suggestions I'll have to go get my notes, Sean, but one of the other was to the extent departments have done been doing something around energy efficiency to write some sentences about it, reducing greenhouse gas converting putting on that that they note where they have done something. Yeah. So that that's something I'll know that the explicit way we've done that. That's new for this year's budget is more around capital in the capital request we've explicitly asked the impact of whatever people have submitted what the impact is on the town sustainability goals. So that's one of the other things that are not maybe explicitly capital that's something we can look into. Anything else. So we dropped a segment about how departments help each other. No, I'm willing to put it in. Take a look at the language from this year's for the FY 21 guidelines from January that I sent you earlier and I will use that language again. If you have any thoughts about it, shoot me an email and we'll just go on Dorothy. Perhaps this is the same idea are slightly different that what we've been doing during this COVID thing or what the town manager has been doing is he's been repurposing reassigning a salary of workers as needed to meet the needs of the town. So keeping flexibility and responsibility and keeping people working as opposed to layoffs. I think that's been something very good that's been happening. So, I wouldn't I don't have not suggesting language but commitment to the to the staff and it's working in a responsible and flexible manner to meet the town's needs, something like that. That's a good point. I think we can. It may not go into this section. It may go elsewhere in the guidelines, but it's a good point to get into the guidelines. And we're keeping people working, even if they're working out of their ordinary job is at least to this random staff I've spoken with has made employees field valued. And it is if anything it's helped help them in terms of their their seeing the town as a as a as a as an employer and a very positive light. It's been a it's been a good thing for morale. People feel valued. So just moving along being conscious of the time Bob is there anything else in the collective bargaining agreements that you'd like to see added that we haven't already talked about. I would just reword that to say salaries and benefits as a percentage of overall budget or something just at the end of it. Yeah. There's a lot of limit on salaries and benefits, benefit costs actually as a percentage of overall budget or something. Yeah. I just want to mention that there are people who are not in bargaining units. And so when we talk about collective bargaining. We also need to recognize that the non bargaining units need to be kept in a parallel step. Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah, I didn't mean to limit it to the collective I just didn't know where else to put it but put it is a compensation section of budgets as opposed to collective bargaining agreements. So that it doesn't appear to be focused on the unionized positions. So should we just say compensation of staff or what is it you wanted to say. Yeah, I think that's fine. I just think the reason I'm suggesting this is that you as you know the we don't know what's going to happen with health care costs with you know pension costs and you know that stuff can get out of hand real fast. If you don't have some things to say hey wait a minute. We only have this amount of money to spend this year. How are we going to do it. So that's all. The other is, we'll have to make sure that when we get to the reserves back to the reserve section to include something in the reserve section to getting back to that it shouldn't be used to bleed into operating budgets in any way including compensation because it doesn't require a cost aspect. In the community safety and social justice we've talked about now I want to come back to when we, but I think the let me go back to see a couple of hands up before we can draw to close Dorothy did you have something else. Kathy. Yeah, I minus more of an information request if if we did not, if there were no new colors bargained into bargaining contracts do can we can we meaning town staff can you tell me how much if no one is laid off. How much does the salary baseline increase because of steps. You know so current workforce with no additional money on Cola, but they get step increases. Does it go up by 1% 1.5% you know because we were told best guess on health insurance Bob is 5%. You know there's a flat budget and salary and benefits or some share of it right now and if nobody gets laid off. I just, I don't have any idea. You know so I don't know, you know, it's I know the answer will be different from library because they have a lot of part timers who don't who do or don't have the same kind of steps. So it's a, it's purely a question. I'd like it's for me to understand how tight is a flat budget. So it's an information request, not a something that goes in this document. Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure if there's anything, any reason why but for some reason, including collective bargaining in the guidelines feels funny. It'd be interesting to know if we've done that in past years. I'm just not sure how this intersects with negotiations and things of that nature. And, you know, especially if we start getting into specifics like colas and things like that. It feels a little funny and how that might, again, intersect with with the departments usually, you know, we, the guidelines set, you know, an increase to the departments. And then the school and then those departments have to obviously work within that, that limit. So, again, I don't know, I could be wrong it just it feels a little different than past years, but maybe it's not so it might be something we just want to look at how that's been handled in the past. I think Sean it's interesting you say that and I just know the way this presently states, it says to me, you know, if we think salary should only be 50% of the budget, that's all they should be. To me this does not say, we should limit collective bargaining. I think the way it was stated before it did imply that. Maybe it's the wording if it's been changed just better. Okay, and then this is a statement that does not imply putting our nose into bargaining but actually just on non unit staff. Okay. I mean, are you still uncomfortable with this because I understand your discomfort because I was very uncomfortable with the way it was stated. Yeah, I mean, I guess. I mean the other thing I was going to say is this sort of creates questions but this doesn't actually, we haven't actually discussed what the guidelines are for this particular one. So these are more, you know, for a lot of the other things, you know, we sort of, you know, teased out guidelines this one is really still in like the question phase of what is that broad limit. And I don't know what information is needed for that but I think that's another reason why this one feels a little different because it's not actually a guideline yet. Andy, can I just comment. Yes. Yeah, I, yeah, I mean, I deliberately wanted to leave it kind of high level and vague because there are many ways that one can achieve the bent that the outcome. And this I did not want to prejudice any ideas about how to get there. Okay. And this is just the idea of like anything else, you know, people costs represent roughly 55% of the town's cost. And that's been the same about the same level for the last 10 years, but it's never been kind of set as a target or a goal or that I'm just suggesting that's something to consider if it's not something that will be helpful then I'm happy to just, you know, to drop it. I just thought it would be helpful as a way to indicate that there are limits to what we can spend on certain things. Yeah, I think my point of view, I think that's fine. Again, I didn't know if it's if it's 55% the number that is being sets or as the again maybe not as a strict limit but as a target. Or is that still a discussion point and again I don't have actually strong thoughts on it right now I just, that's the part I was missing was, what was that specific number that is potentially being recommended as a guideline. And, and, and again I did not want to set a number because I think that should be set by, you know, the town manager, the superintendent of schools, etc. I mean, it's something that those individuals who are responsible for those budgets and for those staff should be the ones who come up with a number in my mind, but again, it was just a thought. So maybe this one reads something along the lines of, you know, town manager and staff need to be conscious of what percentage of the overall budget goes towards compensation or personnel and benefits, or something along those lines. And I think that's probably the best approach to take to it, because I don't want the guidelines to begin to look like they're trying to get into the collective bargaining process because we're not at the table. We will not be at the table. That's the responsibility of management. John, would you state that again, town and manager and staff need to be, you know, should need to be or should be conscious of the percentage of the budget that goes towards personnel and benefits or personnel costs, which I think is is a good one and we are because that's one of our, you know, we do our financial indicators we monitor, and I, you know, obviously that generated the suggestion from Bob so I think that's, that's a good one that makes sense. Yeah, I think that's what I was thinking too is we needed to come up with the right language to soften it. And I think that's a good way to do it. And I'm fine with that. CIO US I think. Yeah, we've got conscience now that's a good one. All sorts of variations on this one. No, no. You'll get it. US. So, where. It's late. I really got it. So I'm just going to do this. Where. Okay. Do we want to call this compensation of staff of staff or do we want to call this personnel personnel. And so with that said, I think the only thing that's left is the community safety and social justice. And turning the pattern this a little bit since she brought it up at the beginning. Can we leave it as we had it in the, for the purpose of the guidelines? And do we need to say something in a separate in our reports separately from the guidelines. About filling the two positions and to before the process is run and I think we're going to have a little bit of a discussion on that. I think that. I agree that they should be separated. And the council should be informed in the report about us beginning a discussion about it, but the, I don't see it as part of a guideline. So why don't you knock that 16 out of the thing altogether Lynn. I'm going to try and handle it separately in the finance committee report. The only thing I think it, I guess then it would have to say something. I guess I think it should be there as something that we're looking at during the budgeting process not specifically the freeze of the two positions, but what costs could be connected to community safety. This next year and I don't have an idea of how you. I just want to point out that it's already up in three. That's true. Yeah. And it's here as the other part of it. So we've already kind of talked about that. Maybe your stomach's a little. We just want to make one suggestion is to say something in the guidelines that we recognize that as budgets are developed around the issues of community health and safety. And that the, we hope that we expect that you will be conscious of the discussions that have taken place within the working group that's been established for that purpose or something like that. So, I'll try and write something along those lines. Thank you, Andy. So, um, is everybody satisfied with with the discussion that we've had today? Because I think this has been really helpful for making sure that we have a consensus on where we are with the guideline development and gives us the ability to do the draft and get it back to you to look at as a draft and the next time. We can actually pretty much stand schedule. So thank you. This has been a great conversation. The other thing that I think we needed to talk about is an additional item. I think we're down to just if I'm correct, we're down to one item not anticipated left and that's the Sufa grant. And, you know, it is my understanding of what happened is, is that are what this is about us is that there's some money left in the cares act, which was reported to us in the last finance committee meeting. I think it's a proposal that of how to use the balance of how we could use the balance of the cares act funding. Yeah, Sean. Yeah, so I don't, I don't think this is a topic that would normally come to finance committee but maybe because of the how it, you know, it came up last night is why it's here. But quite some time ago, you know, we were looking at ways to do communication. That's one of the eligible uses for cares act. And this was one way that was identified as a way of communicating health information to the public. You know, we can just go up in different locations, and we can push content to them so we can change the, you know, if there's anything that changes suddenly like a new health law or health regulation. You know, we can push that information to these signs, and they, you know, they have a rotation that they push out different types of information. And this is something that the town manager and Brianna, who I think presented last night have been looking at for a while. And I think it, you know, when we first started thinking about it, I don't, you know, I wasn't aware of the public way, you know, issues but I think that's why it came up last night. And so, so it's something that we've actually been thinking about using cares funds it's just taken a long time to get to this point. We have to move quite quickly on it if we want it to be able if we want it to be funded from cares. We have to move pretty quickly because it has to be by December 30 as the deadline for spending cares money. I thought we were talking about the sofa thing which were the which I'm confused right now, because I thought the grant was for the bus shelters. The sofa stuff was free for a year and we were trying to find out the costs, if we were to continue it am I, I could be, I'm old, I might be. I could be wrong too. Pat, I thought the signs were the, I checked out before that part of the meeting last night so I know the sofa portion part that I'm aware of are the signs. I think the shelters, I thought maybe we're talked about separately but maybe, maybe I'm wrong. I'll defer to you guys. They were talked about separately but one of them had a grant attached to them which was the bus shelter. Yeah, the shelters was downtown grant. Okay. Yeah, I think that sounds right so maybe I was way off on my original plan. Are we talking about the soup the signs are we talking about. There were two different proposals. The signs, which is a referring to a super because that's what was being dubbed by Brianna and her presentation. And my understanding of that was is that that was to be cares act to $300,000 for the first year. Yeah, it's not that much it's, it's, I think, around 20 to 25,000 for a certain number of signs I don't think it's that expensive. Okay, so that was my question that didn't get answered last night and I think what we were asked to do is come up with some questions. So if we're looking at this, they could get more information so I want to, even if it's free for us this year, coming year because I know the next year. If we like it so we're talking about a one year pilot that's paid for by cares. If we like it. What would it cost to continue it, and what information will we have to make that decision that's to me was the simplest kind of question it's a bit like what is it about, you know, don't build a building if you can't maintain it if we think these things are really cool. And suddenly we discover, is it 20 to $25,000 in year 23456, you know, and so we committed to this, and what was nice about the description is if we hate it. She, Brianna kept talking about four bolts into the concrete four bolts come back out and away it goes, you know, like it's, we're not having to pre wire it we're not having to do and z with it that they're easily removable. And it was both those get out information signs but it's also these charging stations, right, three of them. So charging stations where you can plug in your phone or your iPad while walking around town and the only question I had about those and it's not finance at all but I did. I'm one of the guinea pigs, or maybe everyone had to do with it security. I had to go get a badge of what I know and don't know from the town, a series of things. And one of them that warning was never plug your charging gizmo into a publicly accessible charging station because it can, you will be amazed how much of your information you have it was like a don't do it if you have anything that you care about on it so I thought, oh, would these charging stations be a new way for people to siphon our information off so that was not a financial question but I had a financing about both aspects on if we like it. What's your to look like and is your to through your 10, you know, what is the cost so are we. I'd be happy to have free things for a year so we could assess it and that and have them be removable so I don't have a question about this moving forward but I think we should do it, go into it with our eyes wide open on. How do we get enamored with these things they're in New York now these little they're not suffice they're another and not that many people stop by and read them. But it was, but I think there's no reason not to try out something like this they're they're super cool some line was purely on a year, what will it cost what's the ongoing contract costs to us of doing this. Now there are concerns about publicly or accessing the chargers, they were going to be put near the homeless shelter the Unitarian Church for people because they're not able now to charge their computers etc at the library and things that they were doing. It seemed like a good idea and waiting for a bus stop, you know was another place you know where you could plug in before you got on the bus for a long trip and you forgot to charge your, or outside the library which is an open now but I wasn't against them again it was purely a what's the cost of keeping them there and keeping them functional over time. I think those are the kinds of questions and originally there was some discussion last night about having us to a joint meeting with TSO in conversations that I had with Darcy over the part of a day since our meeting. I concluded that first of all that's not feasible given the time squeeze of getting the TSO's answer back to the council. Her preference was is that we identify financial issues that we think are important for TSO to be aware of and to the extent possible that we get answers back to TSO, which could come directly from staff or could come through us. Yeah, I did go online this morning and just looked up Sufa and tried to get some sense of costs but I couldn't find anything definitive at all. So it really may need to go back to Brianna and to, because she must have access to that information. Yeah, I'm looking at what we have and the first year costs is $25,000. I think the part that maybe there's some uncertainty is these signs have the ability to generate revenue as well and there's some revenue sharing piece to it that can reduce the cost to the town. So I think that's where there might be a little uncertainty in terms of future years but we can try to get more information on what's the base price each year if we don't generate any revenue. We can just say that Darcy asked us to send her her questions that's my question so Andy you can just supply it to Darcy and Brianna so that when TSO reports out they can tell us. That was it. And the same thing with chargers, not just the signs but the chargers charging stations. That may not be a finance issue though that sounds like. Social justice. The security of the charging stations to people who use them. Bob has his hand up. My question is who's going to manage the content on this and I saw in the briefing that they can sell advertising on it and it seems like it's, we're biting off a lot. Yes, of somebody's time to manage this. And so is that what the $25,000 is Sean. Sufa manages the content. I believe we have some ability to also sort of that the content to make sure that there's nothing being put up that we would oppose, but Sufa manages the content. But they wouldn't be managing our covert announcements so that we would push that I don't know. I haven't seen the how the technology works but we would either push that to them or we would have a way to push that out but but and what I'm looking at here clearly states that Sufa would manage the content. Thanks. I have my hand up. Yes, go ahead. Okay, my computer ran out of battery for a night so I missed a little bit of the conversation as it was running around finding plugs and getting back on. I just wanted to comment that I am not in favor of these signs. I am totally in favor of the charging stations, which are small and look like little tables that could be put near benches. Even in the pictures that we saw it just was some more messy stuff on the street. There's already a lot of messy stuff there's these little real estate things there's this trash cans. I don't like the color that's because they match the way waste finding signs which I don't find attractive. And it'll, I just think it's adding more chaos, and it's unnecessary. I think sometimes you get a good idea and it sounds like fun and I, I'm not for it, but I am definitely for charging stations, and the placement of them was was, you know, obvious and common sense and was good. Just another piece of internet content that you don't totally control. Like, you know, I used to love Instagram. Now they want to put all kinds of things on it they're putting ads on it, and I am it tires me out, have all of these. Yeah, time is tight, and I think it would be helpful if we kept reflecting on issues around finances, and not personal opinions about. Yeah. This will come back to the council. So it's not decision isn't going to be made by TSO. They're only making a recommendation of the council and we're only suggesting the financial aspects that TSO should be considering and information that we can get channeled to them to provide that so the finance isn't ignored Kathy. So can we ask, I'm not going to weigh in on what I think of these pat I agree with you but can we ask if it's $25,000. How much of that is the charging station and how much of it is these info things and same question for year two and three, you know so we're getting as a package deal. If we sever them. Does the price tag go up just just something about the two components of what's being proposed and have it as one price tag. It might be that if we separate them the cost of each one is more expensive, I have no idea but getting it separate as well as together. If that had not occurred to me to think of their, their two, two things we're getting here. What I have is the $25,000 is that the correct number. The exact cost is that I have here is $25,550. It does not divide between the signs and the charging elements. It does not decide for between them now. And that was a question that Kathy was asking if it could be provided which is probably something that Brianna would have to answer. And then same questions for subsequent years what is the cost to the town. Do we have do we have ongoing costs so we're going to have to bear once the out of the regular budget once the cares act money disappears and recognizing how tight we expect the budgets to be in the next couple of years how we feel about that and how that divides out between the two. Staff time staff time that it's going to take to manage this project and that's that has been considered. Whether there are other ongoing costs that we're not aware of. I think those were the basically the questions that came up. Yep. So I will write that as a quick memo back to John is finance director Brianna since she's one, obviously include Paul on it. Sonia just to let you know that the finance committee and is suggesting that these questions be investigated and reported to TSO for their consideration when they meet. I think it's Thursday their meeting. It laid like end of day Thursday. Now there. Yes, they're meeting at four. And we are not going to try and join their meeting that we're going to leave it to them. I think that name that's fine with Darcy is Darcy prefers it that way. Great. Okay. Anything else that needs to be considered. Since we have a meeting that night too. I know we have no public public comment. For the sake of the recording of the meeting I do want to note that we did have time reserved for public comment but that there's no public in attendance today. So is there anything else that anyone has. If not, I think that we can consider ourselves. Really quick, Andy, I haven't sent the invitations for the budget forum on Thursday, but I'll be sending invitations to the finance committee members so that they can attend and you can call a meeting of the finance committee together at the budget forum. Okay. For Bernie and Bobby, you know that this is something that's required in the charter each year and it's just being placed now so that any comments that come from the public are heard and I would expect but do not know that there will be some public comment probably on the police budget. Yeah. So, I think it's just a question of us being able to hear it so that when we look at our final draft guideline discussion that we're aware of what the public had to say. Do you need a quorum of finance to be there. Yeah, it's a council meeting so a quorum of council. Public forums or council meetings. Okay. Two conflicts. I'm going to try to be there for at least part of it. Yeah. I think the one we wanted to do was again call it as a finance committee meeting so that the resident members of the finance committee can be more than in the audience. If we don't do that then they're left into a different position for the audience. Correct. I think it's very nice if we can have it as a finance committee. So we will call it as finance committee meetings so that Bernie and Bob can attend. Okay, so nothing else then I guess we should consider sales. I think we should adjourn to 435 I'll call it just around give it a round number and we had a, I think a very productive meeting so thank you all. Okay. Bye bye everybody.