 So let's acknowledge that the mining ourselves of that. We have. Speaker on the right. All right, so we have. So the select board voted on Monday night. We have a $7 million override on the ballot on November 7. They at the same time they made certain commitments. As to how it will be sent. Now, very simplistically. Two sides. One side is this override is going to further. The other side is that the town is in the business. Providing services. It's unreasonable to think that we can continue year after year after year and without having a need to deliver. Additional or other services. In terms of further future. The other side is. That the town is in the business. Providing services. The other side is that the town is in the business. So we have to think that we can continue year after year after year and without having a need. To deliver. Additional or other types of services. So those simplistically are the two. Sides to this. Both sides, I think. There. I think, I think we can agree that. There's, there's some truth in both sides. And I think we can agree that. We can agree that we can talk. With each other. About what a support or post is override. And also. Just keep in mind just maybe whatever side you're on. We'll come around to maybe just maybe. You may be wrong. So keep that in mind. As well as. Talk with each other. So I will. I'm going to go ahead and explain what. Generally what the commitments. The select board have been. Open it up to, I think Charlie has a presentation. And someone else wants something that they want to present as well. Allow that. Then we'll have a discussion. And when we have the discussion, right, please raise your hand. Don't jump in. I'm looking at you any, but you know. And I'm going to try. I'm going to try to guys, everyone. I'm going to try to make sure that everyone has no. So. It's not all the way close. It's not. There's a. There's a light flashing. Yeah. All right. So these are. The commitments. I don't bring them to you. Just summarize. There'll be no exercise. Discipline that provide quality. Commitments. No override prior to FY 27. Increase general education operating budgets by 0.5% annually. Continue to increase general government operating budgets. By 0.5% annually. Fund special ed growth at a rate of 6.5% per year. I have to respond to ongoing school enrollment fluctuations on future enrollment. I am three. Invest for our license. This is where. This is where the money is going to go. For the schools. To fund the school committee's strategic strategic plan that we heard about last week. There will be. The following schedule increases to base operating budgets. For FY 24 $1 million. For FY 25 $3.1 million. For FY 27 $600,000. For FY 28 $300,000. And the FY 24 increase. Which is 1 million will replace the current FY 21. Increase of $600,000. And the FY 25 increase will replace the current FY. One time. $300,000. Those are in budget. On the town side. The town will use $200,000. To add to the base budget for pedestrian infrastructure, including road and sidewalk with Peter. Now the 250,000. Will be allocated for DPW. To help. Cover to fray costs of the. Whatever the next trash contract. Will be. And add 150,000 to the annual contribution. To cover. To cover retiree health insurance costs. And then the rest is. In my vernacular boilerplate. Continue new tech with programs. Breakers. Public tax deferral options. And. Maintain this for reserves at 5%. So that is. The, the, the select board's commitment. To. As to. And presumably that will be. The campaign. Those would be what. The campaign to be all about. All right. Any questions so far? If not, then I think I'll turn it over to you, Charlie, because you have a presentation. Thank you. Let me share my screen. Thank you. Yeah. I'm going to skip. So this has been distributed. So I'm going to skip most of it. I'm just concerned about two things. One is having a total transparency with the voters. And secondly, securing our long-term policies. And by way of a, of a, I don't know what they will. There's little power, you know, in between parentheses and the newspaper articles, one of the reporters writing about the fact that. The guy he's exposing actually his uncle and brother, something like that. They have a little full disclosure. Okay. Thank you. By way of full disclosure, I was involved in the, in the development of the five year plan. Back in 2005 or so. And I also was told here in the 2005 override. Campaign, which basically use the five year plan as a way of. I posted a piece to the detail. I just wanted to say. I think we all know about how the, how the long range plan assumes a quote, a quote, required growth of. 3.25% of the town. Somewhere between three and 6%, a school committee, school department, depending upon whatever. committee, school department, depending upon whatever. And keep in mind that the law allows without going through the public growth of 2.5% per year. My view is that the recent overrides and currently proposed overrides do not address the deficit. They increase the deficit. So this is something that is very deeply discerning to me. Just as an aside, the growth rate of the garland tax pay or single-family tax bill has been 5.1% per year, past five or six years, versus an annual inflation rate of 2.44%. And I agree that within the last year, the inflation picture has changed, but it's pretty hard to compare anything because in some places, there are constraints where you don't feel the inflation, you don't feel in the future. Some places have felt it already, but the data that goes through 2023 is pretty straightforward, in 2022. As a point of interest, the garland tax if you compare it to the 10-manager 12 communities per capita income growth rate is 3.8%, which is lower than the 5.1% tax growth rate. So that's just, I think, a point that says that we're spending more than we, you know, in the long term can afford to spend. The other comment I would make is that I compared Arlington spending, this is data from the DOR municipal database, and generally speaking, is higher than the town manager 12 general fund spending. There's an enormous amount of data on that, and I won't try to get into the detail, but it's shown on that graph. The red line on top is Arlington spending. The gray line is the average of the town managers 12 towns, and the blue line is the municipal cost index, which is sort of a national average of spending increases. So what I'm going to talk about here is stopping what I call deficit spending, and I think our deficit, our approach allows the town, what we've been doing with the five-year planning processes, allowing the town to increase the infrastructure cost at a rate that's not supported by taxes that can be assuredly collected. And this builds up the deficit, and the deficit that we're looking at that is driving this whole question of the override is the deficit in 2026, and I believe it's about $8 million. We'll see that later. But the deficit spending assumes that taxpayers in the future are going to rescue the town and we're not going to have a private catastrophic financial situation, which to me is not guaranteed, and in fact, the direction we're going in is almost really a short catastrophic position in the future. So if you look at the table at the bottom here, where it says non-exempt shortfall, that's $8 million, $500,000 or $600,000. If we have no override and no debt exclusion, no increase in ads or whatever, those three numbers are the deficits in 26, 27, and 28. Those numbers together add up to about $47 million. So the town has to raise $47 million more just to cover those deficits within the five-year horizon, and that to me is pretty troubling. And by the way, it doesn't mean that we're not going to have more deficits in the future. It's just what has to be raised to cover those deficits. This is, by the way, from, you know, I distributed some versions of Mr. Poole's five-year plan worksheet today, and that's where the state comes from. So the second issue I have is transparency with the voters, and I think that the statement that Christine read to the, with respect to the select board's commitment ties this promise of new services to deficit, to solving the deficit problem. But as I will try to show you, it doesn't solve the deficit problem. It increases the deficit problem. So we have a, we have a strange situation where the select board, which is supposed to be the, which is the leading executive authority in the town, is leading us into a more exacerbated deficit situation. I think from a transparent viewpoint, that spending subject should be separate from the, from the overall. Now, I'll just stop there on that subject for a minute. So I had a conversation with the town council a couple of days ago. And what he said is, was sort of interesting because it's, you know, the way that we have been working in this town with respect to the five-year plan over the last number of years is that when the five-year plan comes out of the long-range planning committee, it goes to the board of select men. It's sort of accepted as gospel. Okay. And what I'm going to suggest is that it's not gospel. Okay. And it doesn't represent anything but some political viewpoints of the group people. Now, what the select board vote the other night, and I was at the select board meeting, does do, it says, and the town council has basically told me this, it says to the override date, which they did, and it says the override amount on about $7 million. The vote with respect to commitment on the spending is simply the select board's viewpoint. And the voters decide whether or not to support the $7 million tax levy. And then, and that doesn't mean that they're supporting spending more on the town, the schools or anything else. Okay. What the select board does not do, what their vote does not do is it doesn't find the finance committee. It doesn't find town meeting. It doesn't find the school committee. And it really doesn't find the select board because future select boards can change their mind. So it really has, it's a political statement. It has no legal effect on the override reference. And my view is, and I hope that the finance committee does this as we go forward in the future, we should be evaluating the proposed spending each year on its own merits and not based on the fact that it exists or does not exist in this five year plan that was in front of the select board in the last couple of weeks. Now, the manager has proposed to the select board. Well, actually, very interestingly, he does say that he didn't propose it. He says it's been proposed by the long range planning committee. But I would note that the long range planning committee doesn't take minutes and doesn't take a vote. So I don't quite know where this came from. But nonetheless, $7.3 million, this was included in the select board, so I guess that's where it came from. $7.3 million between the town and the school over the next five years is what they propose is the increased spending. But it's not $7.3 million. It's really $27.8 million because the first year of spending sits into the base and gets increased at 2.5% a year, or actually in our plan, 3.5% a year. And then the next year is $3.1 million goes into the base, and that's increased at 3.5% a year, et cetera. So the total impact is not $7.5 million. The total impact is the sum of all those numbers as they grow in the base over the five years, which in the future value is $27.74 million, $75 million, and the net present value is $25 million. That's a substantial number. Now that's the number that needs to be added to the $46 million or $47 million that's needed to make up the deficit that's already built into the operations. So in total, we're talking about $75 million over the period of the plan in additional taxes. And by the way, I would mention that that's with respect to the 2.5% growth base, that is, in other words, sort of automatically assumed under the proposition of 2.5, and that's another $22 million. So we're actually talking from where we are today, we're talking about raising the taxes over five years, $95 million, and $97 million, so it is. This is just a little chart that shows how the deficit increases for people who like pictures. And this chart shows how the taxes increase, what the percentage increase over the base level is over these five years, and in the fifth year it gets to be 18% higher than what it is today. So we're not talking about a $7 million increase, we're talking about substantially higher increase in what the tax level is going to take away from the citizens of the town. What I did here, okay, so this, this is interesting, can you see my person? I can't see my person. The line that says non-exempt shortfall, that is the town manager's basic plan without any override or any additional spending. Okay, so that's, that has an 8 million, 8.5 million, 17 million, 20 million dollar deficit in those three years, that gets you to the $47 million that I mentioned before. Now, if we add the, an override in there, that goes 7 million and then you increase that two and a half percent a year, so that builds up to 7 million, 720,000 by fiscal 28. Notice that we still have a deficit in fiscal 28, 10.1 million dollars without any additional spending. So just as a sort of a, a gedankin experiment here, I, I said, okay, let's reduce the basic expenses by 1%. So if we reduce the basic expenses by 1%, we can sort of, sort of say in the black by 2028. The message is that what we should be focused on is controlling expenses, not what the data of the next overwriters. I forgot what I wanted to slide here. Well, I think I, what I did is I said, what's the, what's the, if we took out the one time benefits that we had from COVID in ARPA and had no overrides and no aides, what's the rate of spending versus what we illegally can collect without an additional override. And that's what's shown on the vibe of this slide. It is a sort of just an informational piece of data, but it means that the, the spending is actually at a level of 68.6 million if we didn't have some of the one time chart, the one time benefits in 23 and 24. So, you know, my concern is that we need to have both the benefit of the taxpayers and the benefit of the professional staff in the town of the school, some stability in our finances. And the direction that we're going in is not to have stability, but is to increase the deficit, which I think, which I'm just fundamentally opposed to. And I say that having been on the other side of the sense of one time. So my, my recommendation is I think if we can do it, I don't exactly have, have a clear way of saying this right now, but I think that we, as a finance committee, ought to consider rejecting the override without a select board commitment to reduce spending, to somehow control the growth in spending, which we're just not doing. And then I think we should, we're not getting into the details of the benefits of each and every, I don't want to try to debate in one slide here the, the proposed strategic brand of the school department. But I think that we should reject this proposal on a long term basis. And only what's offered support on a year by year basis, if town management and school management control others, other cuts, other spending and have some sort of constraint and evaluate each year's spending block that the strategic plan is looking for on its own merits, as opposed to sitting here and saying, okay, we can give you a blank check of $7.3 million for the next five years. That's to me, not the way I think the finance committee should be shooting in here. By the way, there's not, the school is not 7.3 million, the school's about 6. Something in the town of $600,000. And I also think that we should increase the, we should reject the town's increased spending proposal outright. I mean, that, I think they made those numbers up so that they would have something to say that the override is benefiting both the town and the school, they could get along without that $600,000 and the world would not end. So in summary, our taxes, by the way, the 5.1% of year tax increases I mentioned earlier includes both non-exempt and exempt taxes. And we should keep in mind that those exempt tax expenses are not going to go away because invariably the town is going to want to do something about the Fox library or out of city high school. And there's going to be more major projects that are going to have to be funded with that experience. So that's where the 5% comes from, that number is going to continue to be higher than the 2.5%. I don't think we should be funding the services with the new higher spending, preservation of services. And I would really like to see this town and school leaders give more consideration to protecting the tax payers from excessive increases. And I think the solution here is that we should have an override every year. And if they want to spend more than the proposition two and a half, let's let the voters have their say on it. And if the voters say yes, that's fine. If they say no, they'll do it. That's my outlook. So thank you for your time. I hope I wasn't too long with it. Thank you, Charlie. Does anyone else have any to present? Presentation versus questions? All right, we'll start with questions, comments, whatever, Al, then Annie. If we were in a town that had annual balanced budgets, or at least close, you know, where you're jiggling at the end and getting it set, I'd probably support the override. But the school and town departments are asking for is not unreasonable. Unfortunately, we're not. We're in a town that regularly runs operating deficits that are periodically eliminated by overrides. It's sort of a failed plan, but it's gotten us through. And if you look at the long range fund, the long range financial projections, we face substantial deficits beginning in fiscal 26. I mean, we're talking about, you know, $9 million, $9.5 million, it varies a little bit, $17 million, $20 million. Huge. I mean, for a town of our size, just to keep what we have, just so we don't have to weigh off policemen or firemen or teachers, or close services. That's what we face. And in 2005 and 2011, partially maybe in 2019, that's what overrides were for. So we could keep maintaining the services we have without cuts. And the voters have always stepped to the front. We're going to need a substantial deficit, substantial override in two years, just to keep what we have. And this override is not affecting that. We're going to need an override. Maybe it delays a year, but, you know, we're going to need two overrides. This one, and then another one in two or three years. I am concerned that this proposed override will hurt the next override that we really need. This override is for new spending, not to cover the deficits. I believe that the current five-year plan with the amounts going to the town and school can serve both well going forward. I think the schools can make substantial progress within the current framework that they have in getting their available share that they already get. And, for example, I brought it up when the schools came in on the 31st. They put forth a proposal earlier when the schools originally presented to us, which showed about a million and a half dollars available from their share of what they get, and about another million, three million, four from efficiencies in their budget. And they had 2.8 million dollars for basically new programs going forward for fiscal 24 next year's budget. That's a lot of money. Now, I'm not saying that they're going to come up with a million, three of new efficiencies every year, but it's, you know, they're spending 80 or 90 million dollars. They can keep working and keep working. They can make substantial progress within the plan that exists now. It'll just take longer. And maybe we just have to have a little bit more patience. So, you know, Charlie went through all the numbers. Those are my thoughts. I've supported every override to debt exclusion, you know, since 2090, God. And I led the failed, I led the override for the first successful of the debt exclusion for the first time for rebuild of the elementary schools, the one which I would buy into Barbara Griffin. I cannot support this override. I don't think there's a need for it. And I really fearful it could undercut the need for the major override that we're going to need in two or three years that we really need. So, that's my two cents. Thank you. Yeah. So I want to start by reminding everybody of a couple of things. The first thing is that this override is going on the ballot. Our vote doesn't stop it or start it. Our vote is vote that in past campaigns has been deemed as necessary to indicate whether or not the think commas with it to with the override in order to see whether or not the override was likely to be successful. So, this is a political vote. It's not a fiscal responsibility or a fiscal irresponsible result. It's a symbolic vote on our part to say where we stand on the responsibility of the override thing. The second thing I want to remind everybody of is the conversation that we had with Sandy Cooler, where Sandy Cooler went through a spreadsheet and showed how the future deficits shrunk over time because of our conservative approach to budgeting, because we don't budget for what all of our experience of whether you predicts the revenue is going to be, but we budget based on some conservative rules that we have set that we are safe so that we never have a year where we have less income than you expect and that we often have income we didn't expect from new growth, et cetera, et cetera, come in and make a difference. And then there are turn backs and spending if, you know, DPWs on their staff and can't plant 300 trees instead of 150. They don't spend that money if it's turned back or becomes part of our reserves and once it's certified it's later spent. So those future predictions can't be seen as 100% accurate. They're likely to be smaller before you start thinking I'm an optimist and certainly as a Salesforce consultant I'm not an optimist and I don't think that we're going to cut that deficit to zero and we can't count on cutting it as much as we have seen in the past but we're likely to cut it some. So I'm less worried about those deficits than how it is. I also want to say something about past overrides. We passed an override in 2005 and at the point when we passed that over, our first five plan override, we had already made huge cuts in the schools. We had cut all the elementary librarians, all the elementary art teachers, we cut language programs, science board leaders, reading interest, and crossing the line. And some of those things got added back because of private fundraising for a year and some of those things got added back slowly over time and some of those things have never come back and are now in this strategic plan. So the schools underwent major cuts and those have not been restored and we don't provide services in our schools that are provided in schools and other communities. So principally I love them where Ms. Holman comes from, Dr. Holman comes from. We don't need to protect the taxpayers from the town. The taxpayers are the town. These are services for those taxpayers and the question is do they want to support the addition of these services? Do they want to support this override? If they really don't want to support an override add services we're going to know and we're going to take another bite at the apple with less money in your phone. And that's kind of how it's going to go. In terms of the increase in our expenses, okay, if you look at our contractual obligations, our obligation to educate children with special education needs, our obligations to healthcare, and our obligations to pensions, if we limit ourselves to increasing the budget, the overall budget by two and a half percent every year we will be cutting services every year and indeed between 2005 and 2011 that was our experience. Despite the fact that we were able to put some things back in the school because of the override, we then almost every year were cutting the school budget because we didn't differentiate between special education costs in general education and the school had to pay the special education costs which were increasing wildly and therefore we were cutting services in the schools every year. I'm acutely aware of this because I had kids in the schools at the time. Now I have a daughter who has a PFA in art and she went through the Arlington schools but she did not get her art education in the Arlington schools. She got her art education because her parents were able to afford to supplement her education. Somewhere during the course of her education there was another kid in this town who had just as much talent whose parents didn't have that money and they also didn't get the kind of art education they might have from the Arlington schools and you can just go and add that up by every single department, every area. The reason that my oldest daughter got reading intervention in the elementary school was because we privately fundraised for it through the Arlington educational foundation. We can have whatever we want as a town if we're willing to pay for it. The question that has to be put before the voters is what do you want and are you willing to pay for it? So we're not protecting the taxpayers from anything other than possibly slightly increasing their expenses so they can have some services that otherwise will cost them a lot more money. When we ask them for an override and they have the right to turn this down. So I support this override. I'm going to vote yes on this override. I don't guarantee you that the town is going to support yes on this override that if we honestly make an honest campaign in an honest argument about these services and what's needed then I expect that we will get an honest vote and that's all I'm asking for tonight is that we make our vote with the proposition in mind that the final decision makers are the voters and not us. And that there's nothing fiscally irresponsible about saying to somebody if you want something this is what it costs and you need to provide the tax dollars to cover that. We don't deficit spend. We're not allowed to deficit spend by law. We can order voters and say want to continue to receive these services then this is what they are going to cost. And that's where I'm standing up. So sorry for the emotion. Well it's to me. John and Alan. Thank you madam chair. I actually like this override because I think it's you know relatively modest certainly compared to you know the second one that was proposed and certainly also smaller than the one that the taxpayers approved back in 2019 where they actually approved three different overrides. So I think this would be you know as it says the average taxpayer will get hit with a $464 increase which seems reasonable. Of course no one really likes an override but why why is this one okay and it's exactly what Charlie said you know $47 million deficit that's that's pretty scary. So to ignore that $47 million deficit I think would be irresponsible. But one thing just as much as I think this override is okay I think the additional spending is terrible and I almost want to say is loud as we possibly could that no you know override okay you know that means we start getting to $7 million a year immediately so that means seven you know 14 21 28 so they go 47 million deficit minus the 28 million of additional spending all of a sudden the deficit's only 20 that's of course my back example of calculation. Leave it to the professionals. The professionals say the conservative approach shows the deficit goes down to 11.3 million that's conservative or you know maybe a little bit more optimistic the deficit actually disappears. That's just with that additional $7 million all of a sudden problem solved as long as we say no way Jose no more spending zip out. So I would like to say yes on the $7 million no capital A and capital O no on the additional spending. I know Charlie said it a little bit differently. He said no on the override unless they commit to reducing spending. That's kind of the neighborhood I'm in you know however whatever message we can say whatever message we can send is clearly to keep the spending down is what I would be in favor of. And also I one final point is I think there's a it seems like there's not a lot of clarity on what this additional $7 million spending comes from what the legal authority for it is I know that the town meeting didn't appropriate the funds. I'm not sure the select men can appropriate the funds so it seems like it's more symbolic. So how do you even reject something that's symbolic. I'm not sure but I would want to take those steps to reject that symbolic additional spending. So that's where I stand you know yes start getting the additional $7 million and immediately as he said it's already on the ballot that just put our waiting support behind it and then we can feel a lot better about the deficits but send the message out you know no more spending not this six or seven million that was attached not this six or seven million that the school community came and presented on I'm sure those are great programs but it just you know we can't have everything. So again just in summary yes on the override no on the additional spending. Mostly commentary on what's been said before first of all I think the Fincom vote is more than just symbolic because it would be and for example the finance committee voted to not support the override. It would be hypocritical if we get the override passed and we voted to support all the ads and things that you know that was committed to by by the select board you say that the only town meeting can appropriate the money we make the recommendation of town meeting. So we could I think I'm not sure exactly how to communicate what you're saying what could be done for that whether it's better to say we can't support the override because we can't support these ads or say okay we support the override and take us out of the hole we're not going to support these ads. In our recommendation of the town meeting only it's town meeting but substitute modes or whatever. The other thing that another thing that's sort of bothered me in all these projections is that the we show these accumulated deficits growing every year but that's really not the way it works because we can't as Andy said we can't deficit spend so for example on a charity scenario there's an 8.6 million dollar deficit that way 26. Well no there's not we cut the budget by 8.6 we don't have that line we cut the budget by 8.6 million which means that 8.6 million doesn't carry to the next year it doesn't get added to and then the next year we have another 8 million that gets cut so these you know we're showing the deficits if deficit spending is allowed and we're growing this debt but that's not the way it works so it becomes incremental cuts rather than you know falling off a cliff at the end and that leads to me to support Charlie's notion of an annual override now I I had some relationships in Nantucket and Nantucket tends to have annual overrides and they have menu overrides they'll have an override for $20,000 to rebuild the town hall steeper I mean if you look at their overrides they'll have like six items on it and they do it annually it's a regular part and it's sort of a referendum should we put in a curb cut here should we buy a new fire truck whatever they're they're very granular I'm not sure we should do that but the the political impact of what we've been doing where we have a big override that fills a bucket and then it slowly leaks out is that we have an override every four five six years or maybe three years and when that override happens if it doesn't pass it's huge it's a major you know it's a crisis with annual overrides you have you split that crisis in five or whatever so you can make smaller adjustments if if the economy's bad and people don't approve an override it's less of a hit I think what we're doing is what I call you know pushing the cliff down the road because we're not eliminating a cliff we're just delaying a cliff if we had annual overrides we could decide incrementally again based on the state of the economy and things that are going on that's a pretty annual overwrite um and then going back to Elsa's point about we're not the the override is proposed you know it's like the weather everybody complains about the structural deficit but no one wants to do anything about it it would be really difficult to support an override that doesn't have a commitment from the select board to do something to reduce the structural deficit shows something that's bending the curve so we're just not approaching bigger and bigger cliffs every every so often so you know in short a sport john's notion of being able you know potentially supporting an override by opposing the select board's commitments which again are a political statement I support Charlie's notion of supporting an annual override and again that vote isn't on the table but uh there's a reason to to make a comment on it so anyway thank you tofer and then grant and count wasn't there someone else after Al yeah me yeah okay right so I guess I'll start with this yearly override notion since that's I I do not understand how that would work I believe the contracts with our unions are typically three years so you know I think that's a major factor in our budgets to make the factor if you want to call it a deficit and so I'm not really sure how that would work I also don't know what it would be the political climate to have the pretty much constant state of fighting about overlaps that's my thought on that I'm going back to transparency to the voters I think you also have to be transparent about what goes away or what happens if it doesn't get quoted through you know inflation as we is sort of alluded to is higher now and when we were looking at even the various ads that had you know other towns have gotten through a strike you know I think it's still less than the rate of inflation and I don't think that it's going to be reasonable to ask our employees to you know not at least get a cost of living in their contracts and that's they suck but that's how it is I mean if and we don't know where inflation will go but it's been higher you know we've had a long time I mean two and a half worked at all it was never repealed by the voters because we've had low inflation for a very long time I think I was in high school the last kind of was a real problem so you know I don't see you know and so if we don't do some of this stuff you know I think we will have way more unrest we will destroy a lot of trust that the school committee has worked hard to build and I have pretty good knowledge of when there was not good trust with the AA MS school committee a thousand or so years ago um actually a little longer than that you know they mentioned closing the achievement gap if we're patient about that while those kids don't get any shot at that one thing that we only glanced on was COVID spending and taking away I would say that we took it away if it wasn't there it wouldn't have been spent in the first place so I don't think we've contributed to a deficit but the schools are still recovering from that and we were all sick of it I understand but they're still recovering from it and I think you know you know they're going to have very they're still trying to get back to that and I think the schools do have a plan for how they want to spend the money even if you don't agree with it or agree with all of it but I mean a big part of that plan I think is investing in our teachers and staff and that to me is uh you know Cal and brought up you know the powers of the low-paid employees and you know that's that's a that's like 20 percent of them that was a big idea I didn't realize that it was that many so um you know I think we have to remember there's people on the other side of this besides just the tax pay and so those are my thoughts I'd like to think our vote is significant and not merely symbolic and part of the ways I would think that is that if there's any voters that are undecided they say well what did the finance committee do and this is you know we checked it over right don't think that if we support it that's a factor too so I think it isn't just symbolic I also don't know how much the message would fall on uh not necessarily deaf years but years that aren't um required to listen I do have a question how would we we could recommend I suppose a yearly override but what mechanism um would enable that to happen would it be count warrants uh article this okay and you do it in here in advance so that you never fall behind and what would enact that to the selection recommendation by the finance committee I'm not I'm sorry I know it's sort of an open-ended question but maybe some can answer if I can't hear any of the responses but anyway that's why that's why only this let board can put an override question on ballot and it's entirely their decision no one can force them to do that people can urge them to do that if they do the finance committee or a school committee or voters but but it is their decision and there's a lot to put on the ballot well thank you for that so I do think that if it's not a yearly basis it becomes a little bit I'm going to say transparent easier to digest because people get to see it's sort of like the cash basis instead of the pool basis or something I mean it does seem a little bit more elementary than you know the seven years of famine and save up for that sort of stuff but I do think that would be a good avenue to pursue not sure how I'm going to vote on the override though thank you Caroline and then Jennifer and then mine so so when I look back at the school department of school committee's presentation their first priority is ensuring equity and excellence and their second priority is valuing all staff and one of the things that's happening in town and has been over the last decade and will continue is that many of the jobs in town are now filled now the profession is filled by graduate level staff librarians or graduate level staff much of the town administrators or graduate level staff our payments to the staff are often when I look at the budgets equivalent to private industry or if not equivalent rather close to private industry when you add in the benefits they're getting when we look at these teachers numbers particularly the TAs the numbers are 60 below Len said that himself he said these numbers are 60 percent below and in the case of the TAs they will remain 60 percent below even with this when I look at the programs that have which are priority three and four those programs have numbers that are exorbitantly higher than the numbers for the salaries and I suspect it's because they're hiring graduate level people to do that work my concern and it has been my concern for a decade that we're doing a very good job of paying our town employees who have graduate degrees equal salaries at the expense of those who are not at an undergraduate or even reverse or between high school and undergraduate and even those at the undergraduate level it is a way it is one of the reasons we are ending up in deficits and some would say that well but we need librarians who are graduate degrees but if we're going to have graduate librarians at every school that that is why Charlie you see that huge increase in the salaries of librarians I would like to see the town do something different we can't compete with Cambridge we can't compete with Lexington we can't even compete with Waltham because they all have huge industry and corporate structure and tax bases we will always be a town that has people who move to places like Lexington and Cambridge and Waltham we will be the town that brings people in gets them to a certain level and moves them on one of the comments that was made when the teachers were here was that our retention of teachers is high I was like wait a second I thought we were concerned that our retention was going to be so low that it would decrease the quality of education that was not the comment that was made so because of these factors I'm against this override and I realize that but that negatively impacts teachers and my reason for being against the override is because of the way we focus our attention on budgets for those with graduate level degrees and budgets for those without and that we focus it on programs for our residents and not on salaries for those of undergraduate or lower education levels Jennifer um yes actually I was on the negotiating committee the first one when paraprofessionals um prep professionals um said they want to unionize or university support among the school committee for that um of course difficult negotiation they've got to get a certain amount of money you know um they only have so much power yep yep negotiations finished at 1 30 on a Friday night after 12 sessions um but I think there's been a film for a long time that the paraprofessionals uh were not being paid properly they're actually having some pretty big significant increases but I understand there's also been significant increases in other talents and so relativity you know um so we probably know that I'm going to argue in favor um let me tell you my reasoning um so so one is that I think that this has been a very thoughtful careful process um in the long-range planning as I said before I was on long-range planning for four years um I've seen the quality of the discussions in that that committee and I believe sort of the conversation I've heard that that there was a lot of give and take and you know that things got adjusted and timelines got moved and that the proposal now is a consensus proposal um what I understand is that the platform is is unanimously and enthusiastically in support of this um there don't seem to be any doubts when I talk to separate members or listen to many meetings um and and and they are the ones you know that are putting this forth in whose sort of political you know world is sort of like that on state grade um some other things I just wanted to sort of talk about um one thing I think that maybe under-appreciation in town is um the extent to which uh the state used to fund things in our region I mean in in FY 2002 21 percent of our budget was covered by state aid and now it's around 13 percent so to the extent that we and many many other committees that don't have special partial tax base have to rely on override upper never rides it's largely because of dynamics and shift right the state after proposition um two and a half the state said oh we'll we'll cover it and then that sort of just fell off the planet you know 20 years later um as Annie mentioned what that meant for Arlington is that there were really really significant cuts in these services and especially at the schools um that happened you know as I mentioned there there've been restructuring and and some things have come new things have come on you know more social workers that are but some things haven't returned um so other uh sort of details to talk about um so just to remind again I said an email a long time ago um that the in 2019 when we did the override plan um we projected an FY 24 that there'd be 17.6 million dollars in deficits we now know from the current plan and and this is not update I think but the current numbers but close is that there's a 16.1 million dollars surplus so 33.7 million dollar difference between those two numbers um 10 percent 10 10 million dollars of that is part of my but the other 23.7 is not a good amount of the reason that that has happened is that we've seen increases in revenues and a large driver that increase revenues has been massive increases in chapter seven by the chapter 72 so the student opportunity act was passed I can't remember exactly when it was passed but um but it was a seven-year plan to first it was it was taking an honest assessment of what it cost to educate students in the county wealth and then a plan to fund that over seven years and Arlington and lots of other districts has gotten a lot more in chapter 70 money so actually what you see is yes you've seen some significant increases in spending around him but you've seen that in lots and lots of other counts because the state basically said we want to fund education at a higher rate than we had before so so you know in fact what's the interesting things is that last year even though the school budget went up by five points of thing percent um if the math at the town contributed that was in chapter 70 money was only 2.3 percent and that's because of this massive increase in chapter seven so I think we have to take friends count the student opportunity act is not fully funded we just passed a million errors tax half of which is going to education I suspect that we're going to see similarly generous members in chapter 70 fighting in the coming years now we don't know that for sure which is why I love the idea that we continue to be conservative but we're being realistic about where we're going to be we're not going to be at those numbers that we that seem very scary um you think there's anything else I wanted I think that's it um yeah so I hate to put it this way but I think this committee needs to take a macro view of what's going on I don't want to say the schools can't have this the schools should have this or school I leave that to the school committee what our job is to say this is a pool of money that's going to be available to them and this is reasonable or it's not reasonable but the macro view of what's going on the five-year plan is it's the future you don't know what's going to happen I think we do inherently everything we do is conservative we fund positions that aren't filled we do it every year we could make that much tighter but then you have no free cash at the end of the year if you did that and you went through one or two cycles there'll be no free cash and it'll be tight based on that because you will take that money and spend it somewhere else um the whole concept of this is we are conservative by and I'm again I'm not looking to say I want to punish the schools I don't think the town's doing this I think they need to spend more money on roads we just take a quick look at it and say okay this seems reasonable based upon the history we look at other towns look at everything else but we do have to take a look at the whole picture not individually and say the schools aren't going to have this and hence we need to we need to spend this money following Charlie's logic um I think is that's a death wish for this town because we will not we will have deficits of 25 million dollars it'd be in 2028 2029 or 2030 they will be there and they will have to be filled either by annual overrides overrides every three years it doesn't matter the spending is the spending regardless when you ask for it but I don't think it's responsible to start spending money when we're when we're really looking at these deficits way out and we're asking on an annual basis or a tri-annual basis for money to fund it it's just it's one thing to maintain the services that we've had it's another thing to add to the services I think you're just really going to see a cliff at some point because the taxpayers will say no I don't have it and then there really will be mayhem in this town other Josh like one else after John go ahead Jeff the last word huh well no I didn't say that I just want to start by saying I understand everybody's concerns that they've raised here I'm I'm also interested in the transparency and I think that Charlie and Alice point that it's not really six million dollars increases it's really 27 million that's important to say I don't think it's really 27 million because I think some of those expenses were salaries and those will definitely carry forward but some of those expenses were curriculum that might have been another one million or something like that some were chrome books some were furniture things that are not been part of the operating budget and they're not going to carry on from year to year and I also appreciate that it's it it's our fiduciary role to provide sound financial advice and so I think it's entirely appropriate that we have this conversation and and think about things but what I don't get is that and we know we have a structural deficit we know that it's just because of the 2.5 percent that was set by a law maybe 40 years ago I don't know when it was created like you know there's gambling going on in the casino we know that that's the case we've already agreed to contracts that typically have you know the 3.5 that's why our spending goes up that much each year so I think it's a little disingenuous to say you know we're we're running over a cliff or this is shocking to us we have to change our behavior and you know it really is kind of for the course we know we're going to have overrides at some intervals either every year or every three years or whatever as Jennifer and Annie said generally our overrides have really we're pretty conservative on the revenue projections and generally the overrides have lasted one two three years longer than they're projecting um I also think it's it's some of the comments have been like well how can we you know we really only have an obligation to vote on this year's budget or the next year's budget we can't commit anything about it future year's budgets the whole breakthrough in the five-year plan and the long-range plan was well that that was a reaction to say well stupid or not stupid it's not prudent to budget year to year we have to think about the future we have to be you know planning that way so again I think that I wouldn't diminish that I would think that the school committee has made their best guess as to how what money they need to provide the kind of services they feel that the town I mean they keep saying that our citizens kind of expect the schools and the quality of the schools is certainly a huge benefit of the town because as people think about what you know why they might want to move here schools are pretty important if we want to cut our expenses do we want to increase the class size cut teacher salaries and if we don't have good retention that has trickled down expenses later on um do we want to cut trash pick up to every other week do we want to cut services what you know what is it you know and again I totally appreciate the fact that it's important for to exert pressure to cut because if you don't do that then it really gets out of hand in a different way so every finance organization I've you know they always say you know our revenues are going everything is great everything is great but we just want to cut the admin expenses by x percent or whatever so I get that but I think that when we look at what we're talking about Charlie we're really focusing on our expenses and that they're you know it's irresponsible for them to keep going up as I said I think where the other half of that is the revenues we're not we don't I don't know what percentage we put in there for the revenue growth but it seems like it's conservative but then the third part of it is as I said the services that we're providing and that that is a really important political part of the message because although that we are both none of these votes are binding on how that money is getting spent in the long range plan it is again we have to kind of I think embrace the idea of long-range planning and embrace that we're kind of trying to raise this money not just to kind of close that gap but also because we weren't a fund the kind of town we want it to be and if if the whole campaign goes out and says okay we're going to be promising these things in school can we do that and then we say you know never mind we're just going to kind of make sure we don't deficit spend then it's going to be that much harder to to get the next override passed because we've really done a pretty good historical job in meeting all of those political and financial commitments for all of the overrides that I've been involved with so for those reasons and the final reason that Annie raises you know we're we're letting the vote we know we're putting out to the vote the voters we don't get the crap that messages the campaign hopefully the campaign is honest and transparent and forthright but I think given that the select man had voted to put this on the thing and I guess they don't have the they don't have the leverage to make a more more nuanced vote unless we kind of split it off into a menu thing but they've told everybody has told us how they want to spend it and I think that it wouldn't be right if we said okay well we're going to vote for it but we really don't hope you meet your you know expectations value want to spend it and just save the money hoard it not hoard it but you know whatever so I will be voting for it over well that was very conveniently Josh just made most of the points that I was saying to me so I second most of those but just I guess I just wanted to emphasize I feel for me that when I look especially at the school budget because you know overwhelmingly so bright it's going to the schools of course there are things that I personally if I had a lion item V2 there are things that I would take out but nobody elected me to do that they elected the school committee and the school committee hires the superintendent and I think they're being honest with the voters if they say you know you elected these people these are their priorities this is the plan and the plan is going to cost this much I see my role I say does this budget make sense given what they said their priorities are um and assuming they're going to be honest about where the money is going especially to the collective bargaining agreements I'm in favor of the override because I feel like the voter should have the opportunity to say you know yes we've elected this lifeboard yes we've elected this school committee this is what they're going to do this is how much it's going to cost thanks thank you um down so I hope that by waiting this long of a clear case about which way to go there isn't I think both viewpoints that may vary from talent and cogent points I walked in here really expecting to vote for this I found Al's explanation of how this impacts or potentially impacts the future budget situation very very convincing um on the other hand I think the school department made a very clear case for how they use this money and even though I don't have kids myself I firmly believe that a strong vibrant educational system in a town is critical for a town to be um to really live in towns that don't have that eventually die they don't go away they just sort of almost become zombies so I think that's really important um on the capital planning committee one of the expense items that people really firmly believe in is you know a walkable town and that takes money so I think the town has made a case there um I frankly am terrified of going to trying to go to a yearly override system I would guess that if you did a study of towns in the state that have done this one that's few and far between and two I think eventually you I think it puts us on a real slippery slope to eventually get to the point where um you know these overrides are you know repaired on the town hall I think eventually you get there um and so I really wouldn't want to go in that direction um one thing I don't really understand the the override without the school and and town funding that just seems to be I don't know how you defend seven billion dollars that's just a pot of money and explaining to people how we got there at least um we have sort of a clear budget from what the schools gave us one of the towns given us to rationalize the seven million um and sort of picking up on what Josh said you know the structural deficit is unfortunately a a bug or a feature of this town depending on how you look at it and there's really nothing we can do about that so I think it's just something we have to live with um uh the the the woman who abuts us in the back um in our backyard so two three years ago that if that override pass she's on a fixed or she's on a fixed income and she'd have to move she's still here people keep coming to the town um so you know clearly we're doing something right if the select board was so enthusiastically in support of this override um I think it's a pretty clear indication that people want the level of services that is currently being provided and that there's a cost for that so um I think I'm sort of back around to how I was when I walked in here but I will be supporting them all right is there anyone I um I want anyone who hasn't spoken yet um so um I'll just uh I'll just try to be brief here you know I was really on the fence about this you know uh professionally I work in municipalities I've worked in four municipalities now and I've never been in a municipality during the time when we've had to um vote for an override so I think this one it's really a tough one and I think everybody's made really good points right whether you're for or whether you're against I think certainly the level of services especially for the schools um are what I think and what I've come to learn that people in this town expect they want a high level of service they want to be you know the town manager 12 um you know those are some of the premier communities in Massachusetts that I think that we want to be like um but given you know the numbers and when you look at our property values and you look at the constraints that we are in for our budgets you know we end up coming to the conclusion like we have that revenues don't end up keeping up with our expenses so we end up having to do these overrides uh periodically um more concentrated within the last few years um I hope we never end up looking like Nantucket I did a quick look at Nantucket they've done probably three or four dozen overrides mostly in the 90s and I think that that looks like a complete disaster so please let's not go the way of Nantucket um you can look up the history too if you go to the Division of Local Services for prop two and a half overrides I'd recommend everybody does and just poke around but um I think getting back to the original point of whether you support it whether you don't I think you know you really could make and again not to be neutral on this I think I came in here thinking more voting against for I think many of the reasons Al Toskey that you made is you know good financial management you want to want to put yourself um you wouldn't want to be intentionally putting yourselves in a deficit but I also again from you know learning about the community and understanding what the needs of our residents are and especially the needs of the residents in the precinct that I live in precinct one where I think many of the services that um that are being proposed especially for the school uh would benefit from um I see that there's a very compelling reason for voting uh for the additional funding is for a lot of these initiatives so um you know I it's tough for me to say yes but I think I'm going to be voting in favor for it. All right thank you. I knew you. I just knew it. Thanks everyone um this has been really informative and educational and I appreciate all your all your viewpoints and really what means why I like uh like finance committee. I guess so I'm going to vote yes uh you know just I was just looking at the the presentation from the superintendent of the school committee and you know so much of what the time provides is to its people right and I think a lot of this budget is going to be focused on people right we're talking we're not talking about only paying the teachers but we're talking about professional development pathways to licensure you know for somebody the staff and the schools we expect them to have a bachelor's degree, master's degree and be licensed and if we're going to recruit and retain good people we need to sort of our budget needs to reflect that and to sort of keep and I know we're not going to compete with everybody but um I feel like the superintendent of the school committee have spent a lot of time and I hear I'll pass the and Charlie and others like fully respect and understand that this is the budget numbers or something we'll have to confront but I think a budget is also a value statement. The town provides services services that so many of the taxpayers consume and value and that's why I'm going to vote yes. Anyone else we haven't heard from? All right I know a couple of other people have their hand up for a second time but before I do I want to put this out there and it's following up on what Josh and Daryl said. The select board, the elected officials of our town have put on and put an override on the ballot and they have said this is what the money is going to go for. There's going to be a campaign asking the voters to pony up seven million dollars for these things and I don't I can't imagine an override in Arlington that does not make promises or anywhere. If you were to ask me if I were on finance man nothing you would ask me will you vote for a seven million dollar vote? I would say well what for? Where is it going to go? And if it's just to shore up against future deficit I'd say well why seven million why not one million? Why now? Why not three million? So I think just practically speaking there has to be a reason to put before the voters to vote for it. Now once that happens once the select board says this is what's going to go for and the voters approve it do we as the finance committee say we're going to ignore that we're we're we're not next year's town meeting we're going to say we really don't care what this select board said we don't care what the campaign was we're going to tell town meeting not to give the three million or one point three million dollars next year. Aren't we immediately putting ourselves in an adversarial position with the school committee that for which we will pay the price as a town I think going down the road in the future and I could be wrong I'm just putting that out there because I would like people to think about that and say well no we don't have that won't be the situation we don't we can deal with that and what do we do on the floor of town meeting when we say no we're not we don't recommend the schools get that money I know exactly what's going to happen the school committee will have their amended motion to amend the budget and say the town meeting the voters voted for and then we'll be the battle on town meeting four do we want to put ourselves in that position when we say okay we'll vote we tonight we will vote for seven million dollars override but we are not going to be found by these people but I I don't I don't know what the response to that is it is my just my concern about how we would handle this if we would if if we were to take a vote other than yes we support or no we don't yes we support the override as the select board has put on the ballot with their committees I'm just putting that out and I know that John and Charlie had their hands up so I'll go to John and Charlie yeah so as far as like what if explained to the voters what where's this one are you going to go I would just say it's going to you know the school operating budget is going to increase by 17 million dollars over the next five years that money has to come from somewhere that's where and that's where the override is going to go that's where the override is going to go to fund that 17 million dollar increase the town committee town meeting already approved it's in all it's the this is the official long-range plan that increase has been it is presented there that's where the money's going to go so I mean to me like how can you have an override without additional spending that to me that makes like that I have a hard time accepting that question because it seems like you know let's just say you know maybe this simplifies it but let's just say you run up a credit card debt throughout the year you say all right well I'm going to get a big bonus at the end of my year so it doesn't matter that I run up a credit card debt and then when you get the bonus you say all right great now I'm going to Europe or I'm going to spend that bonus on something else it's like okay now what about the credit card debt that you ran up the override is going to go to this additional spending that we currently can't afford so to say that we're going to have an override and then take on new spending I don't I don't understand that and then one final thing as far as we take too much time if it's a straight up yes or no without any message to to kind of at least disagree with the spending that I would probably not hope to override because because I hate the idea of that 105 million jumping to 112 million and then everybody's saying select me to prove it you approved it it's 112 million I can't support that so so that's wait wait I don't think you can well I have a point of order question it point of order might be the wrong question I need to understand how this is happening so this is a good opportunity to point out that the question I asked is going to come up soon it's going to come up this fall because the FY 24 budget will have to be amended this fall to add that 1 million into the budget so we're going to have an we're going to have an override election when November 7 November 7 okay so there's an override before town meeting discusses this yes I'm not sure of the timing whether there's going to be a town meeting that that that meets in both contingent on an override passing or to the other way yes but in any event this this fall we will be we will be presented with an amended budget we're going to have to deal with that so uh so right off the bat is that is that concern that that we might be in this another so all right so Charlie he has another point of order will be presented with an amended budget which way saying this is the budget or if you'll run fails this is the right so if I'm not I don't know what the time is going to be whether there's going to be town meeting that will vote a contingent budget or there's going to be an override and then tell me but let's just say let's say there's the override and then town meeting when the town manager is going to present to the finance committee proposed budget that's going to have this this if it's the other way around we're going to have town meeting presented with two two budgets one one if the override passes and the existing one if it doesn't which we did in 2012 presented two budgets all right well the budget's already passed always you have to deal with this the new money it depends on the the timing whether town meetings before all right so Charlie hand up and then Annie and then um thank you Madam Chair uh just two points first is that um you know with respect to Josh's comments there's nothing disingenuous about my suggesting that we have override votes every year I'm basically trying to get the decision making put into the hand of the voters I'm basically on a real content basis secondly I think the the dichotomy that you just presented of um the possibility that if we vote in favor of the override that we can't vote against specific expenses in the future means that voting in favor of this override advocates our ability to do it and make informed decisions about future spending and I think that that's that's a real problem and let me ask you this how is this how would this be different than the past override where this left board made it's made similar commitments and all including keeping to town operating budget in a quarter in school at three and a half and sped at seven and we as a finance committee made sure that was our job to make we made sure that that the the budgets that we presented tell me fell within that how is this different than the 2019 it's not other than the fact that we're facing larger deficits and we're going down this we're going down a path that's worse than what we were in the past and and and there's nothing wrong with saying that despite what we've done in the past that's not the correct path to go in the future that's that's my position I just want to clarify that I said it's this isn't that we're going to be doing something if we were to do this it's not new it's a question of now we have these much larger deficits yes that will continue to grow that is why the decision now may be different and more my point is that our expense levels are too high much too much and and you know I have been on the other side I co-chaired an override I co-chaired a debt excluding so I'm not afraid of spending money but I think we have to have we have to be rational about where we're headed yeah well my first question is are you ready for a motion you're not ready for a motion and I got one more thing to say well you can have to have your say and then I can Jennifer has something to say or a question or something and I'm gonna open up to anybody else so you know the the commitments that the select board is making are assuming somewhat of a certain state in the world and we have in the past modified those commitments because things happened you know in 2005 we voted in override and we said that we need to be back in five years and we weren't and we made deep cuts in services because the economy had crashed and we had people losing their houses in town and we didn't think we could morally afford to raise property taxes you know I am a the caricature of a tax and spend liberal and I wouldn't have voted for an override that year so and it wasn't because I couldn't afford it it's because I was seeing an economy crashing all around my shoulders so we are not hampered by this like board's commitments or any other political statement from doing what is fiscally responsible in a crisis so that's how that looks we can recommend the budget that doesn't follow this plan if this plan is no longer connected to reality but this five-year plan is not approved by somebody this five no it's not approved by anybody that five-year plan is a projection that's made by the time manager that's used to guide the finance community the select board school committee and the town's administrators in their future thinking okay it's a way of saying to them definitely you want to do this year it has this implication five years down the road all town meeting folks every year is that year's budget so they haven't committed to any of this they commit to a budget every year believes that plan as Josh said to control our forward-looking future and see here's what we think the future is going to look like and we have for almost 20 years done it that way and in many of those years we've used it to say this is what it's going to take to present services that we have okay this year we're saying this is what it's going to take to preserve services that we have and provide the services the community is now committed and what is it going to say yeah we're ready for that or no so that's that's how that works um i don't know i'm ready to vote but i don't have a code it's a very small but so one is i do understand that the um timing will be made October and that's because of the timing of the NVTA communities and the fossil field for demonstration pilot timing needs um so that it will be a contingent vote i don't understand um so i just want to say i do understand the the worry about these numbers um you know the two of rights i worked on 2011 to 2019 we made a decision we didn't just fund their minimum right um those additions weren't as big as this so i i you know i get this i i think that these are important things to make um i i believe the school committee that they are seeing a change in in retention rates and i think the point about retention was about younger teachers who aren't retiring um but you know at some point you know teachers are willing to accept lower if they feel they have a good support of school districts which we do but there's if it gets too low you know it's irresponsible to your family so we don't want our our school system to have numbers that people feel are irresponsible to their family to keep that job and that's that's so that's um that's great but that's it i want to say hello jones just a couple responses about you know frequent more frequent smaller overrides again other times do do it it becomes almost habitual and and sort of works and i know people in me and talk about they sort of love them um but uh uh you know again i think the more important point is that if you have override votes which if they fail that means something that a group of people want doesn't happen as opposed to if it fails the town's economy collapses it allows people to you know be more you know reasonable about whether they vote yes or no because they know that a no vote isn't going to cause a collapse or layoffs make massive layoffs it's only going to do a small thing which is yeah more frequent smaller ones gives you know more of a democratic position there and also the town's point about teacher salaries there are two parts of that equations we all know and i think i think a lot of us have had questions about the headcat growth in the schools to get more people pay the less or fewer people pay the more and that's a choice that the school committee has to make every year but the thing that really bothers me is it's sort of the seventh generation thing if you look at any of the terms and graphs over a period of time you have income growing at a rate rent town revenues growing at a rate with overrides and you have town expenses growing a faster rate so you have a continuing deficit or structural deficit that's the difference and it continues to grow without any without any effort not any seeming effort to change those curves and i don't think we can make the assumption that the town has an infinite capacity to you know vote increases which are growing faster than incomes faster than the general economy i don't know why that's happening but just from that you know broad sense just look at the graphs how long can that be sustained and without the the the crude statement that i've told charlie from a blossom line the the longer it takes to recognize and correct a bad trend the worse it gets and and i think it's irresponsible for me to vote towards something that's going in a really bad direction without any attempt to change that curve a little bit uh it i just can't do that in the process um i've sent my piece um but i i just urged the committee there's been a lot of discussion it's been a good discussion there's a lot of things the early overrides what i'd urge the committee to keep it simple the select committee of vote and we should either support it or not support it and not do a whole bunch of amendments and we need to keep our decision making process clean and so and we'll worry about the fall town meeting and two years from now two years from now just to add to that the override is as you said it's a it's a set number nowhere and the override is saying what it's for you we have the ability the town has the ability to do that if they want but this is just a general override so as far as that is concerned you know the spending i don't think we're in a position to say we're not going to spend it on the schools we're not going to do this i mean i think our position is going to be quite clear i don't think at this point we need to even address that all right a couple more questions now and kana uh our comments are all and then i'll extend motion hey thank you madam chair i just have a quick question thank you this has been incredibly helpful and insightful to hear your inputs um what was the select board decision unanimous yes there was one select board member who wasn't present but i know that he would have voted for it thank you that's carolin so i know it sounds like i'm i'm talking in micro terms when i address the ta's but i'm really talking more macro about the fact that part of the reason our expenses keep going up is because we're switching from um undergrad to graduate level staff across the board and we're paying them at very relevant amounts and in the process we also want to increase programs which we're spending and in the process we're cutting out the lowest group of people it is a more macro way of looking at it it just happens to be one group of staff um and it's one way to deal with the deficit issue it won't take care of the entire deficit but um it's a it's another way of looking at how we spend our money and why we spend it where you do it's okay yeah just a point on the yearly override not to be at the depth but another way to it's called more frequent okay but another way to avoid the go off the cliff side of it to some degree is you like you're doing this year as you're passing it before absolutely you know you have to have you know two budgets that that fiscal year you know and then it fails you don't have to react so just just just follow it real quick point i know lord was working a couple times uh on monday night the town council was very clear that they didn't have three votes he stood up and said this is what you need to do a again have a override yes you know b are you going to approve this spending which you know that's a separate issue and then three the date so it's clear we don't have any opinion on the date that's out of our realm but it was definitely two specific questions and they had separate votes on each of them so i would think it'd be appropriate for us to have two separate votes right that's my final comment thank you very much anyone else that's anything to say annie so i knew that we support the selections vote as reported by the selection including all of their commitments and the dollar amount of seven million dollars any discussion one amendment that we split the question between the override and the additional spending that motion's been made in second date any other procession comments all right so we will take charlie's motion first so charlie's motion is first first to vote to support a seven million override and the second is to vote in the sense so the what we're voting on is the decision is to decide to split correct i knew that we split the vote i didn't move that vote in other words any made a motion for a single vote right i'm making a motion that we have two votes all right so we will take that first does everyone understand what we're doing i'm sorry could you be kind of in layman's turn what we are voting now is whether we will take two votes at the if we if we decide if we vote to take two votes and the first vote will be to support an override and the second vote to support the spends associated with the override if charlie's motion fails then we will just take one vote and his motion to upper down attic curiosity would that be in the wrong word because if people are i'm not the single double but if there's two votes should we vote the additional spending first because otherwise you're voting for the seven million right i'm just trying to just i'm voting whether to split we can just we can okay okay the question is do we have do we vote it split it okay that's what all right so any other questions all right all those who want to split the vote it's a two raise your hand one one two three four five six seven eight nine can you keep your hands up just a second one two three four eight nine i changed my vote okay so how many are there eight more splitting yeah no i have i only have seven so i need someone okay raise it again if you want to split josh of josh okay eight okay eight for splitting those who do not want to split the vote raise your hand one two three four seven eight nine keep them high i can only type so fast thank you all right so we will have one vote up or down and his vote so any motion so the motion before the arlington finance committee is do we support the select boards vote to put a seven million dollar override onto the ballot in november with the commitments that they have made does everyone understand what we are voting on any questions all right all those in favor of the override raise your hand one keep them up everyone make up your mind i wanted to make a point i think we really need to be looking at okay let's see what she does when the no-vote yeah i have ten i attend ten all right those who oppose the override raise your hand seven but hold on wait i missed someone on charlie dave al jones brine oh brine okay brine john and al okay hey madam charlie you almost came close to heaven to vote all right so the finance committee supports the override um decision by the select board by voted ten to seven i want to thank everyone for the caliber of discretion i think i think this is a service to the voters whether the if they listen to our um discussion tonight i think they will be well educated however they make side i think they will be helped by um our very thoughtful um respectful conversation so i greatly appreciate that last order of business is housekeeping election of officers okay so we have um four positions one for chair and three for vice chairs our current officers are uh christine deschler's chair and our vice chairs are daryl harmer allen jones and annie woodcourt um so nominations have been solicited in advance by email um nominees can also be accepted um right now during the meeting um so you can either share your nominations to me directly um or you can share them in front of everyone during this meeting um and then um after the nominations closed uh we're going to have the nominees have the chance to remove themselves if they wish to um not stand for election or re-election voting will be by private paper ballots um and um so now i would like to ask oh so first i'll just kind of list um the candidates that we have received so far um is uh the same kind of slay the folks who are already in the positions of christine deschler for chair and then um daryl harmer for vice chair allen jones for vice chair and annie woodcourt for vice chair do we have any other nominations yes i emailed you uh so but when did you do that earlier today to my personal email town email hold on but i might as well just say them since yes the different the two different nominees that you hadn't mentioned um are uh al toasty and charlie poskin for uh vice chair i uh thank you coin i'm sure you would have done that i know charlie fine okay so i emailed i don't i don't see the email or right yeah i don't i don't see it um no no worries yeah um okay yes right um since we have if there's no other nominations and can we just can we just nominate dean i decline on this because just move uh by acclimation here are you down with acclimation does someone want to make a motion chair cast want to vote okay brian just did i second it okay um so all those in favor of the slate of candidates which would be christine dashler for chair darryl harmer for vice chair alan jones for vice chair and annie lecourt for vice chair please raise your hands okay and it's you know it's perfect easy and to think that i made these that's why i'll save it for next year okay thank you thank you everyone that's right all right so the next event is let's say the 21st at charlie's house we'll have a big party can't wait and then we have back to the porch that then we have at one last meeting which i think is going to be very brief and we'll be by a zoom for uh transfers and that's the 26th monday the 26th and then we will be done until october does anyone have anything to maybe want to talk about raise in terms of the override in our political role could you just review that okay the finance committee officially supports the override individuals making it clear that they are representing themselves and a finance committee can can campaign or not or whatever side or no side at all they can yes yes because it's an issue it's not a person so it's not like events helping me come to hold into somebody you don't like to do those platforms but it should be made clear to everyone that your views are your own yeah yeah i mean i feel like even in support of the override i would represent my views of my own because of the very discussion we had and go out there and say this is how the whole finance committee feels even the people's