 We will receive our guests. Thank you for coming. Is there anything specific on the agenda that folks are here to hear about or address or speak to? No, just the whole agenda. All right, very well. Are there any revisions to the agenda? Nate, before you add to the floor, comments. Public comments and correspondence. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of April 9th and April 12th? Second. Second. Okay. Thanks. Any discussion? I just wanted to note for April 12th, I don't know if it's appropriate to note somewhere in the minutes that the meeting was conducted by teleconference. Done. And then the other piece is that the vote on the motion under 3.1 was done by roll call. And I believe it's traditional to record the vote in such a case, right? Yes. Yes. So yes, we'll have to do that. It was unanimously. Yep, everyone. Yeah, yeah. List everybody's name and say. Yeah. Can you just make a note of that? Yes. At least I'm going to get on top of that. Do you put that public? I mean, what for teleconferences? Are they able to call in? There was a physical location. So there was a couple of board members at the epic central office conference room. I know and everybody else by teleconference. And because we had this one vote, we did it by roll call. So we can specifically hear each individual. On board members present on the meeting. Matthew's name should be under board members present. Oh, yeah. You're right. I was there. Any other discussion or amendments? None. All those in favor of approving the minutes is discussed. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstentions? So we'll go to 3.1. Actually, I'm afraid I do not know what petitions were received myself. Oh, sorry. Yeah, no, that's okay. No, I think it was in the paper. It was in the paper, Dave. I didn't cover it well. I don't have all the names off the top of my head, but there's a person for every position at each town. The two folks, I'm missing the two folks from Worcester, directly off the top of my head. I can say their names. Okay. That's, so it's Jonas, Eno, Benfleet, and Jayal, Volskan. Yeah. That's the second. Now can you spell them? You'd like. Yeah, I would actually. Jonas, J-O-A-S, Eno, E-N-O, hyphen, Benfleet, capital V-A-N, capital F-L-E-E-T. Jayal is J-A-I-E-L, and Volskan is P-U-L-S-K-A-M-P. Dave, thank you. Maybe everyone else. Both good Dutch names I want to add. Yeah. Yeah, we said this. Second spell, though. We represent it from every town, so maybe each town can. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. Sure. So Middlesex, it's May, Christmas Day, and Marilyn, the Shrackhand. For Callis, there is me, Scott Thompson, and then the other, the one-year seat is contested between Dorothy Naylor and Chris Conorette. And for Berlin, it's myself, Vera Frazier and George Gross. For his Montpelier, it's Lindy Johnson and myself. Great. So I guess there's a question of whether this board would want to offer a public forum? You could. One of the things that we cleared up with the Secretary of State is you don't need to have an informational meeting if it's for candidates only. So I think you should do something. I wouldn't recommend that to you, but there's no requirement. I wonder, just in sort of casting the usual seats, pardon me, there appears to be an interest in the League of Women Voters to set up something. Kate. Right here. Thank you. Would be sort of spearheading it, I guess. And Susan Clark is a part of that organization and has the local knowledge. And the idea would be, as I understand it, to maybe organize something at U32 at some convenient point for everybody. But... And I was included in the conversation and we wanted names and email addresses, so I gave them all the names according to David Doe Corsalist. And I found the email addresses because I knew them. And I also sent the calendar, the meeting schedule, so that, you know, I said, obviously we don't know about sporting events and music events and all those things, but somebody is going to be missing on any of these dates, probably. So they have that, so they can get started and we can join in. I don't know how we want to do it. But I think that's it. I think it's a good idea from several points of view, mostly because I think a lot of the public has no idea that they're going to be voting on members from each town. Mm-hmm. Yes, just for strikes. And the ballots aren't here yet. Yeah. So I guess the question would be maybe do we want to just hand this off to the League of Women Voters? Yeah, I don't know. That's appropriate. I mean, I guess I certainly don't... It's great that they are interested in wanting to organize it. On the other hand, I want to be sure that it happens, I guess. You know, and to be sure that, you know, we feel some sense of responsibility to make sure that it happens, that we, I don't know, take a decision and maybe we talk to the League of Women Voters about if they want to take the lion's share of organizing it, that's fine, but I don't know if that's a decision by this body, I guess, or something, or I don't know how to say it better than that, but there's probably a way. Yeah. And maybe Lucy, like I had asked about it too, and she had mentioned that the signpost that our town traditionally, and I know that... I don't know if it's Middle Six that does the same thing, does a little, as each candidate, to do a little blur, whether it's 150 words or something, that would be helpful for them for the League of Women Voters to have her candidate. There's not enough time to send it out, but it could be sent via email or if it's put in a newsletter. It just says a little bit about each candidate. I could send you what traditionally has gone into the the signpost, but both Rosie and Edie had asked to just... and it just helps because, you know, people will have... the people that can't attend the forum to have a little description. It's pretty much what is your interest on it. So one way to proceed is to, you know, have a motion to... I have a form at a date to be determined and I'm going to talk to the people in this board to eject the League of Women Voters and kind of make sure that a date gets decided, and I suppose there's something like that? I'm calling something like Meet the Candidate. It's got to happen pretty quickly, right? I would suggest that you do it either the 8th or the 15th which you're having a meeting already of this group. You can... We have a 6 o'clock meeting a 5.30 meeting, sorry, so you could do a 7 o'clock Meet the Candidates type of thing. Is there a meeting that is designed to be a public meeting? So we kind of need it with that? So that's what I'm saying, Chris? Is it just the vote? It's just the vote. Right now, there's not much that... I mean, without looking at the school what's going on at each school, there's going to be something going on every night the way spring's gone with the weather right now, so we're going to have something going on the 15th is a Wednesday which is the Wednesday before the election. It's the two weeks before... Right. The 8th of the 9th? I'm sorry, the 9th, thank you, Dorff. I'd sort of be inclined for the 15th because it's approximate to the election but it also provides longer time for the candidates to maybe be available in prepare. That would be great, except I'm gone that week. I'm out of town. I think you're going to have some of that. I'm not saying anything to you, Scott. It's the way the schedules are right now. The other thought is that at least our town clerk has received a lot of requests for mail-in ballots to vote early. So it might be better to have it the 9th so that people can get that information before they start to vote. We can do it on the 8th, I believe, it was the other day. I've slipped, I meant to say the 9th. The 8th is a Doty school board meeting but it doesn't mean you have to have it on transition either. I was just suggesting that. The 9th is a Thursday, right? It's the Thursday meeting of this body. That's good. May 9th, 7 p.m. We do a cafeteria type of style so we have a... I guess we can do it without objection so we want to have like a... Just saying without objection we're going to plan to do a public forum for candidates for the WCUSD board on May 9th at 7 p.m. Yeah. People are out of work Are there people who are here who want to volunteer to outreach to some of the folks that are expressed interest in... I would be happy to... I don't, yeah. Is that acceptable? It's acceptable to me. We're sort of already connected to that and I can go home tonight and email them and say we've decided we'd like your help or your... Dorothy, just if you can give me 24 hours because I don't have the U32 schedule So I want to make sure the facilities are ready. I think we can move it around between auditorium, cafeteria, even 128, 131 but I'd rather not I think we're... I just don't know how many people will have so I need to run the calendar for the building just to see but I can get that to you by noon tomorrow. Yeah, that will work. I might just say we want your services and... Yeah, yeah. We're working on the place. I assume that you'll be in touch with the candidates obviously as well, right? Well, they have the email address so I think they were planning on doing that. Okay. I'll find out and so we don't even have to do that. I mean, we need this committee. It would be nice to get maybe so that we can have it at the Washington Center website. Oh, yeah, yeah, we will go. Get a little blur of each candidate so for the people that can attend the meeting, they know who they are and just... Well, I'll... We'll ask them what they think they're planning and we can say, well, what about this? The only reason I'm telling you is because the clerks, so like Rosie and those have said that they've had people have had a handful of people that wanted balance and questions about meeting the candidates or just having information about the candidates. So we have something on the website. That will good. That will work. I think it's fine if they run with it. I would just ask you to ask them in the loop because I really appreciate that they want to do this. But again, I feel like it's somewhat our responsibility to make sure... I think they will. We're not going to completely... We'll send you some emails once in a while. We'll see what's happening. Make sure your box doesn't get empty. Sounds good. I heard floors talk about things wanting to go on the website for what people are. Is that something that wants to be done? I just want to make sure we coordinate so we get it up. Scott or Dorothy, are you going to coordinate that and make sure we get that? Is that something I've got to email everybody and ask them to send? We could do that. Would you be able to just put out the invitation for folks to send in some and give it their line? I like your thinking, Chris, that if we had it in by Tuesday we could see it next week. We could easily just literally copy-paste... Send it to where? Send it to Krista Metivier. Scott. But you can say that to everybody and just pass your email and say get it to us by end of business Tuesday. I'm just going to call it. You guys can change the date. It'll take us 24 to 48 hours to get it up on the website. Okay. Anything else on 3.1? Do you want any sort of information going out to folks about voting and understanding? Because this is a different voting mechanism they're used to that, not just voting for their town, they're voting for all five town representatives. And they have ten votes each. And they have two votes in each town. One vote per position, actually. Right. The ballot's being designed as Scott, he's running for the three-year term in Cal's. His name will be on the ballot plus a write-in for that one position. That's why there were two separate articles. There were five separate articles on the warning. Right. So everybody votes ten times? Right. Chris was getting there but I just, it's more of the clarity. They don't have ten votes too. It's not ten votes, I can give ten votes. Well, what bothers me too is people in Chicago. People who may not be even interested in voting, they're like, oh, my town has no competition so why shall I bother? So I think part of our job is to actually get people to vote whether there's a contest or not. I feel like maybe I'll just suggest this, people can make other suggestions, but maybe the most efficient thing to do would be for me to try to draft something that could go out on purport form the date of the vote, the polling times, the, you know, the number of positions, the fact that you're going to be voting in all 10 positions, you know. Especially if you can put it on all five. Yeah, you can do that through us. We can distribute more. You can do that. We can do it right through us. I can work with Dorothy and Scott on, you know, just checking the language and stuff. And then, yeah, I'll send it out to the chairs of the five boards. We can do it that way, yeah. In the same one, you can say about going to be a little bit on the Washington Central website about each candidate. I don't know if you can see, but this is sort of how we have done it in the past. So Darcy was running, Stephen was running, Carrie was running. And it's just a little blur of, you know, just the constable or Kim. And you say 150 words or something like that. So it can fit. Well, whatever I said, I can direct people to something like that, but I'm... Yeah, that's what I said. I think each person has to write their own. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, anything else on 3.1? Okay, so we'll go to Articles of Agreement. You know, I guess I'll just say I'm hoping that we don't get into a deep discussion of Articles of Agreement tonight, because we actually have some important stuff relating to the transition notifications and budget to talk about tonight. But I guess I thought maybe floor, as the former chair of the Articles Committee, that you can kind of share again with the group kind of where we're at and kind of what remains to be done. And maybe we could think about on what schedule we could try to accomplish that, this board. So we've finished, in theory, we've finished all the articles, and we gave two recommendations for the debt, which was the most controversial one. I don't have the articles right in front of me, but there was consensus in everything else. And we were going to pass that to ourselves and then decide what we were going to do on the debt. But we had enough to put out to vote if we want to put out to vote, not the recommendations, but the four other articles that were pretty simple. So I don't think we would need a really long meeting to do that. And if we did that, we would vote on the same day as the election. Is the budget here passed? Yeah, that would be the idea. So would the idea be that we would choose between one of the two options that was identified for debt? And then I don't know where the school, the sort of Article 4B or whatever it was. We can't really change Article 4, right? So what we were doing was for, in school closure, for example, was for later. So there was agreement, and I think it's important for all of the members there that that went out, right? I'm talking to kind of the same people. We're always the same people. So we're saying, oh no, we were not at the last meeting, but there was agreement that, for example, for school closure, it was either a veto. I'm sorry, I don't have my notes. There were like four different offers or something. But we decided on two. We narrowed it down to two. We wanted both representation to members in future years was one we were going to pass off to this board to make a final decision. Yeah, so we have, in my memory, we have four articles that we agreed on. We want a bigger board. We want to either extend the, you can't close schools to those two options, the veto, or extend the years that you can't close. Those are two of them. The other one that we wanted, a policy, but that's that recommendation. A policy for tuitioning. Kids for, it's not tuitioning. Access to kids going to different schools. School choice. School choice, yeah. That was not full choice, but a school policy. The policy would be set. That's one of the recommendations. I can take my notes, so I don't make that spin right now. Is it on the website? I think it is. Yeah, I'm just, I'm going to just pull out my last minutes because I was not up here. It's one of them, but this is not. Yeah, so the school, the school councils, the input, it was pretty, those articles were all the ones that went through Chris. We uphold already, and we were happy with them. So those were the ones that we wanted to put out to vote. The only two that we didn't have final consensus was the debt. We had the two, the two options and school closure. We needed to finalize if it was five years or, you know, we were going to do it for more than five years. So I guess in broad strokes, you know, the board that gets elected on May 21st is the board that will warn the vote on the budget for the WCUSD. So I guess my assumption is that it will be either appropriate or certainly more convenient if that board also is warning at the same time of amendments to this agreement. If there are, and it sounds like unless there is a groundswell surge campaign that there will be some, you know, parallel among current board members and people who will be serving on that new board. So with that in mind, it seems like we, the transition board, I think ceases to exist at the moment that the new board gets sworn in, which will happen very shortly after the, on the 22nd, the 22nd, I would say. Business needs to be done within two to three days to get that budget. So we basically have to decide, this would be best to decide by May 20th, let's say, what we want to recommend to that new board to do, to warn of amendments and what amendments. So can I give you a technical piece? Sure. And I don't mean to throw it, this is a monkey wrench. Just want you to be knowledgeable of information. This board has the authority to warn that election on the 25th. You can, you will be seated within the 30 to 40 days, and you have the authority by the draft articles of agreement to propose to the voters draft articles. I understand. I'm not saying to do that, I'm just saying. No, no, I appreciate the point and I get it. I just wonder if, yeah, we could warn the budget board, I guess. You can't do that. How is that? That it says in the draft articles that you give a recommended budget to the board. It also says, I guess article nine is the one that says that we basically have all the authority. Yes, I understand. You know, it's a bit confusing there, but I'm just saying, like, it seems to me like, if you have two different boards, warning two different things for the same day, and you end up with different ballots or like, I don't even know what the... It could be crazy. I'm just trying to say, like, let's try to keep it as simple as possible for voters because it's already complicated enough. I think what I would suggest is that we have just one meeting, which is what we had set after that last meeting. We were just going to get all of the... We didn't even think that we needed to get them through Chris again because all of those had come through Chris, but we just get a final draft. I guess it has to go to Chris's level. We get a final draft from him of what we have so far that we know it's clean and we review it. Because in essence, at that last meeting, we were, even though there was not everybody there, we were in agreement with most of it so that at that meeting we can just talk about those other two, and then we gave those recommendations to the transitional board, to the new board to warn the... Or we decided this meeting... I think there was agreement from all of us that we want to put articles to the vote. Yeah, I think it's true. I think the new board should be the one doing it because rather than... It's going to be their responsibility. Yeah. And it's going to be a question of just finding and making the time to have those conversations, which... Well, the most important thing is really the forum. I'm not too worried about our conversations because there was agreement, and I'm happy to put them all together. I'm just not prepared to... I mean, honestly, the part that sort of I... Where I like run into a brick wall mentally every time this comes up is that there were things we didn't decide on, specifically the debt and the school closure issue that we never did reach a decision about. We just have a set of options, but we can't put a set of options out to the voters. That's when the new board would have to... If they were going to put that out there, other than that a fall would have to decide on one of the options. The new board won't have any time to do that. Like, they will be elected on the 21st. They will meet on the 22nd. They have a day or two. They've got to warn the meeting. Okay, so if we want the new board to recommend the articles, then we would have to, as a transition board, make a recommendation of a set of articles, make choices amongst the recommendations, and forward that. That's right. Yeah, that's my impression. And for the legal work, because you want the warning, it's going to be very particular for articles. Chris has told me that. He's said, I need a couple weeks lead time to make sure that morning music's buttoned up really tight. So you don't leave anything open that can be undone? We're basically looking at wrapping it up then by the 15th. I would suggest the 8th. Well, Frank, because if you have any couple weeks of legal preview... If you have a 24th, I want two weeks to get through his office to get it really tight. Have a warning, because you're going to have different articles on each amendment. Why don't we have a major... So we have two meetings then. We have a meeting on the 2nd. And a meeting on the 8th. It's on the 9th. Sorry, I put that at your head. So we'll have to budget something. A presentation or something next week, right? You know, sort of budget issues and... We're going through a lot of it tonight. Then we'll get into more... There's going to be a lot of motions next meeting. Laura and I, depending on where we get tonight, we are bringing a lot of actions for this committee. Well, I guess I would suggest that we can come back to articles of agreement. But maybe let's move into these other transition issues and budget issues. And then maybe we can reserve 10 minutes at the end to kind of look at the work that's in front of us and try to figure out how we schedule our time to address exactly. Can I ask one question about the articles? What level of consensus does this group have to have to recommend one set of articles? Is it just a majority? Yes, yes. The consensus of the majority. That's right indeed. Okay, so let's move on to 3.3. So I'm going to have you turn to page 5 in your packet. For about the past month and a half, Laurie in particular has been the one receiving queries from our outside partners and many of them benefit partners that help us assure staff benefits. And saying that we need to know what your organizational structure is going to be and set up and ensure that benefits are rolling on July 1 for your employees. A good example I'm just going to take is healthcare. You all know that we have a healthcare reimbursement account and that takes a card that we all have for our names. As we change either the plan, which we're doing by the contract that you agreed to with the teachers, requires new cards. But when you change entities, you have to reset up all those accounts. And you have to reset up the accounts too when you change your plans. So Blue Cross Blue Shield is saying to Laurie right now and to us, hey, we needed to know yesterday, as in like this past month, what structure you're going to be in July 1 to assure that all your employees have their cards and their hands ready to go on July 1. And so there were getting queries and Laurie did a nice job and she can give more detail about each of these of how we're getting queried and the time physically to change the organization. So I'm not talking about, it's about the time their side, their work internally to change everything for employees to be able to have, not see any break in their benefits or access. Am I getting that all clear, Lord? So maybe you can give another example from another. Well, Datapap currently has prescription debit cards that employees have. Those go through like a Visa Mastercard company. So they need this information like yesterday so that they can start issuing these new debit cards for our staff so that they would have them in their hands to pick up their prescriptions on July 1. The same with our dental plan. That's another one that they really need to know as soon as possible because again, everyone would get a new dental card and it's all going to be consolidated into one bill and one entity. When it comes down to other items on the list, we've just got to notify the Office of Child Support and Social Security obviously. Vee-mers, we'll probably be bringing you some action items for next week's meeting to have the board authorize the new plan and we actually have to figure out who we would be offering that to. So we can talk more about that at the next meeting. Any questions on benefits? So most of them would just require a letter where we tell them here are the seven old account numbers. They all get, all those employees get moved into one. Others have like HIPAA documents that traditionally Bill would have signed without any board permission because last year you gave him permission to authorize contracts and issue documents on our behalf. So this new board would need to reauthorize Bill to sign these documents again so that we have that in the minutes so that when we go to have signed documents that his signature is valid. When it comes down to other items on the list, the state of Vermont's already looking for information with regard to where would they send money? We want money in August. And so in order to set up a new vendor we have to set up new bank accounts and have those up and running. It takes a time to do that. We have a treasurer now, Mary Ormsby. So in talking to her, she's come up with some parameters as the treasurer on what she would expect and we've reviewed that with our auditors on what accounts would we need to meet them. So we'd be going from probably 30 bank accounts down to six or seven. So just in terms of the legislation that may provide the option of stalling the merger for a year, provided it fits the Senate version or votes to, you know, assess that option. What would, I mean, does that mean that these accounts would, I mean, you can have dueling accounts or is it going to be, was it just doesn't matter what just those entities in existence even if it goes into effect operationally any year? Is this, is there any problem, like if giving you authorization now and saying, oh, we're going to give all these authorizations and notifications, does that then tie it, tie the board into saying, oh, we cannot exercise the option of putting it off for a year if that option is available. That's true. Yes, you're right. The legislature's too little too late. This is why we're bringing you this issue. Okay. And, you know, one of the things, and I sent a memo that some of you all would have gotten in your U32 memo, email that I sent to the staff. I mean, all of the boards across Washington Central have been, hey, we need to protect the staff. And we're bringing these issues because these are staffing issues. And I'm trying to give you as much flexibility. Laura and I have said, we want to try to give you as much flexibility as we can. But they're saying, hey, if you want us to continue without breakage of... Health. It's May 1st. No later than. I've been getting letters from VHI. And they just sent one again this week saying, you know what, we still haven't heard from you guys. You know, obviously they've been reading the paper, but they're saying, we have to have no later than May 1st information on whether we're issuing new insurance cards or not. So once they issue them, there's no turning back. We are going forward. What if they didn't get the OK by May 1st? What does that mean? Then that means that, I guess, you're not going to have a new entity. So it's almost gone the other way. You can't get... If you have to go to one entity, we can't guarantee that employees will have the benefits. Are we talking about whether there will potentially be a break in access like if the new entity's... Yes. Because the new board decision, they decided that one would, you know, provide this legislation. And so, but if we ended up going ahead with all these notifications, the option would be erased, I'm assuming. True. We have to go forward. And employees need to get their prescriptions. And it's not just the legislation. There's also the lawsuit that's still out there. That even though part of it has been, you know, dismissed so that it can go to the... We totally understand that. What we're saying is we need you to make a decision. Yeah. Because the employees, you know, I felt the employees needed to know before tonight's meeting. So they weren't hearing about this through the newspaper. So they've all been informed today of this important topic. This is actually more important than the budget we're talking about next. I believe it. So, if then we combine and move ahead with the single accounts, and then if, you know, the courts come back and say, stop. Don't consolidate until whatever it's taken care of. Does that then leave us high and dry in the other direction? Have we then got an operative consolidated account when all the other, you know, single entities continue? I would just have to deal with that at the time. Oh, Lori, you're... No, honestly, I just can't say anything about that other than that. So can I ask, with the new accounts, single accounts, they wouldn't become operative until July 1st, right? True. I need to set them up. There will be no money deposited until July 1st. And the other ones would continue in operation until the new ones were opened and transferred. Until, right, until all the checks cleared. Right, and June 30th. June 30th is kind of... June 30th, July 1st is the cut-off, right? Yeah, June 30 would be the last day to issue checks on the old bank accounts. And then whatever we end up doing with the funds, which is going to be another conversation, would happen July 1. So if the articles in the talents also don't pass, or something with the budget doesn't pass, the articles don't. The articles won't change this. We're going to talk about budget and cash flow in a bit. I sent you that in this memo. But right now, the articles do not have any impact on this part. Yeah. So just to, you know, sort of confirm what you were saying before, the legislature's antics have been overtaken by the clock, basically, by the calendar. By an operational clock of getting ready for July 1 for that option. That's an excellent way to sign. The other thing is that whatever the legislature is doing, they have been very clear that they don't intend to change. They're just extending the time. So this will be things that we would need to do either way next year, right? Yes. So that's what we would be doing unless when the lawsuit comes out with something, I think that was the whole idea that we create space for the judicial branch to kind of weigh in. Yeah. And without there being just this horrendous mess in the event that something different happens that you have to come in. But what I'm saying is that we would, this sort of gives us time. We continue to follow those steps. If the lawsuit does not stop, you know, we will deal at the time. Right now we can just continue to, sort of the spirit of the legislature, we will continue to do the steps. Yeah, you can maintain the rules. True. We're at the point where the track isn't dual anymore. Yeah. We would just be moving forward. So does New Yorker care too? Can I ask a question? I mean, does that question, does that, what is the ramification song, even the court case itself, does this lock us into, is it one more step toward not being able to return? If it was, I would say don't do it. We would, we'll deal with the mess. It's part of the mess that they've created. I can actually speak to that. I have been working on the software conversion to consolidate the books, and every account is separate. It's currently set up by building. And so to break it back apart would be just like putting it together. Because there's a separate building code and everything. How is it perceived? And, yeah, mechanically you can do that. I get that. The question is, how is that perceived within the legal world of consolidation as an issue? Is this, is this in itself carry, I mean, it's important potentially. I mean, is this an, is this an admission that we are consolidating? Or is this, and then we can't return from that court case that's successful? I'm not a lawyer. It's a phrase I get to say. Are you really? So often. But I feel like there have been court cases where, you know, laws have been in implementation for several years by the time a court gets around to saying, actually, this law is invalid for whatever reason. And, you know, whatever was done, it has to be reversed. And then this is a, To the extent possible. You tell me. To the extent possible. I try to screw your crit. Yeah, I think mechanically, yes. But I also think that in terms of a judicial decision, but in terms of a legislative decision, if that option becomes available, it sounds like if we voted to go forward with the authorizations that we would not have that option even if the newly formed board wanted to exercise it, because it sounds like you wouldn't be able to undo that for that delay, for that one year stoppage. Is that how you folks are pursuing it? I don't know the answer. I don't know that. What I know is that we, and I talked about reading the notices that Lori's had, is that people are saying you need to declare what you are. You're going to be at July 1st if you want us to be able to keep services running. Okay, so what if this happened? We ended up giving notification. The legislature ended up passing the option of putting off the consolidation operatively for a year. And the new board voted to exercise that option. Would we then be able to undo, again, by sending out notifications to the entity and reestablishing the old accounts? Or would that be just such a nightmare that everyone would say, oh, we can't do that because too much confusion for whatever reason to do that, because you'd be going through the same process you are now only in reverse. Establishing more accounts rather than consolidating them. So is that possible to do? I doubt it. I mean, I'm not going to recommend you do that. I understand that. I'm asking if it's possible. It's no different really than undoing what would be hip and merge based on a judicial decision, but only tighter. But to kick the can down a road for one year, to me, right now we have settled negotiations. We have a system where things are up and running, and I would think that we'd want to do this in a timely manner and not. I would not recommend you defer a year. I can make this happen. No, I understand that. Well, I just want to make sure I go on record as saying that, because some business managers are saying they cannot. So I can. Cannot what? That they would for the year delay. Business managers. We're ready to go. And for our employees, we're ready to go. I think the main question is like, what is ultimately our responsibility? You know, like we right now is, you know, it sounds like the employees are also getting nervous because they, we won't be. So that is our ultimately is to hold our system together too. So if I personally don't see a problem just having talked to several of the legislators, all of them that we talked and you were there, none of them had an intention of undoing Act 6. The only intention was to delay and give more time. So this just helps us keep going to what we need to do, protect our employees and keep our schools thriving. And if we need to put a stop in a year, because the loss of it comes to fruition. And, you know, suddenly Act 6 is not existence. We deal with that dead, but right now we, you know, we hold the backs of our employees, you know, of our schools. That's, I feel strongly. We have the backs of your communities that you have to protect here too, which is significant. But I'm assuming that our communities want to protect our students and our employees too. And our teachers, our members of our community. I agree with them. So it's all together. So I'm not saying that there's no valid, that the loss of it is not valid, or that it has no merit, whatever. You know, I can have very many opinions. What you're given here was a very bad choice. It's a lose-lose, you know, situation for both sides. But we don't want to lose our employees. I think, you know, there's some truth to what you say. I mean, it's, you know, I empathize with the sense of loss and discomfort and outright distaste that, you know, some people here have with having to make a decision like this. And what it means. I really do get it. But at the same time, you know, here we are. You know, we are the people in the room. We've been put in this position by the legislature. It hasn't been forestalled as yet. And so now we are the ones in the room who are having our face with a decision of, you know, can we provide some comfort and continuity and stability for our staff, which is our absolutely our most important resource in the school system for being able to serve kids effectively. And it's a hard decision, you know, for all the reasons that have been stated. But I'm not sure how I at least could, you know, say to our staff that we're just not willing to make sure that you get your health care on July 1st. I don't know how I would say that. Can I ask a question? Laurie, as I think this is what you said, and I don't want to put words in your mouth. As far as the court case goes, supposedly, I'm not going to say any supposedly, if that comes down to show that we should not consolidate or there's a problem with the debt or any of those items, did I understand you to say that if we were to, that you could undo it all. It would be a lot of work, but it can be undone. Yes. That's when I hear you, when I hear you say. Yes. I just, for clarification purposes, in relation to your point, Rick, at the organizational meeting, there was a resolution right up front that basically said something along the lines that no action taken by this body is to be construed as acceptance of the forced merger. I assume that that vote remains valid. That was the meeting that constituted this body. Correct? Yes. That organized this body. So I think that that remains part of our founding charter in a fundamental way. So my own feeling is, well, it's not my feeling. My thought is that we should try to get it so at least the schools can operate. But understanding that that in no way ratifies or accepts or countenances the validity of the forced merger. Assuming it can be undone. I mean, I'd be good with that. Yeah. And I think you wrote this question to Lori that it can be undone. Yeah, that's a good one. Have everything backed up? Yeah. Okay, so it was not done. Teachers would still have their health care, right? No, we're not guaranteeing that if you have to go to one entity. Right. But the one entity would be in the future. On July 1st, if we didn't vote for this consolidation now in terms of joint accounts, teachers would still have access to their health care, right? We don't have a budget. So at this point, right, but you just have to understand that... We're just talking about mechanics here. We're talking about more or less a bureaucracy of how to administer the benefits and the salaries and things like that, right? Well, we're also talking about payment. So... About what? We would need to have a way to pay for the health insurance. I understand that. I don't think that this really isn't a budget discussion because... Not yet. It will be. It will be because it's all connected. We've got to go to that next step after this. Okay, so you're saying that the passing of budget is tied to this... Yeah, everything's tied. Well, so let's go back to answer your first question, Chris, just before you get to your why. If the way you were asking the question just then, I interpreted that as if there was a delay this July 1st, 2019. If there isn't a delay July 1st, 2019, and we don't notify people now, we can't guarantee that we'll be able to have... There won't be a break in service for benefits. Am I... Is that really clear? Okay, so... I just want to... Because I understand... I think over the years, I finally understood how you want to hear all the nuances of the different possibilities. So if there is a delay, we would not have to make that decision today, but we don't know that today. Was I clear on that? No. Okay, so if there... Right now as of today, there's no legislation that's passed out of the conference committee and has been signed by the governor. So we're working on the existing legislation that stands, which says we are consolidating July 1st, 2019. If there is legislation that allows either for the House version, which would allow us a year's delay with nothing done by a merge board or the Senate's version that says the merge forward has to see and then take that action. What you heard from Bori from Dorothy's question was it can be undone. It's a lot of work, but it can be undone. Does that answer that part about a year delay? Okay, I think the response to Dorothy was in relation to a traditional decision, but the same answer would apply to a legislative decision and a forward decision to implement a delay, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. From a financial point of view. But to be fair, you would be coming here and saying, this is a nightmare. You shouldn't undo it for... Right, you would be... Our recommendation would be that. You're exactly right. Mm-hmm. Or it doesn't have to follow our record, right? I understand that. The hydraulic pressures of clients are amazing. I understand that. Yeah. I understand that. But I've also seen our boards not follow that, too. I have, Chris. I understand. So I want to hold the payment question until you understand all of this about these notification issues because we have a bigger issue around money and budget that's coming down the pike right now with a June 25th budget vote. So I want to make sure we're through all of this because then we are going to talk about, and I wrote you in the memo that I had covered, memo that I wrote about the budget, is we have a cash-on-hand issue that's coming down the pike. So I want to kind of put that aside right now. So actually, if it's... But is that important in this overall discussion? We should have that now before we vote on this other issue. Oh, I don't need you to vote on it. I just want to make sure we can answer all the questions. Okay. Do we need to vote on this notification issue? We do tonight, but not right. You don't need to do it right now. Okay. Are there other questions? Sorry. I just wanted to add that, you know, two of the articles that we agreed on are to, you know, have our backs. If they conclude the articles would be illegal, that nothing that we have done will, you know, we would have made ourselves all rights. So if that gives any comfort to it, you know, like by also voting in our articles, whatever we do right now, if we're already stating the articles, you know, we are not... Just like the resolution that you were saying. And that's much concerned about a court decision, because I think that that would trump everything. More concerned about losing the option from a legislative decision. Does that give you an explanation? Yeah. Because if we vote and have these authorizations sound, I'm hearing that it really can't be undone and you would be essentially merged. And this year, as opposed to next year, fair to say in terms of the operation of the new district? No. Not fair to say. Fair to say that it's hard to do. I'm not going to go where you're going to go, Chris, if I'm going to state it. But it's going to be difficult to dine in. It's going to take many personnel hours. To undo it? Yes. Okay. So that's my concern. So what is the option that you're worried of losing? The extension from... Yeah, the financial legislative option. It's not in existence right now, but what I'm hearing is that if we vote to say, yes, go do this, that even if it comes into existence, it will not be an option. But understanding that that extension doesn't mean... I'm just concerned that we're not on time here, and we're going to make sure that we give someone just enough time to the budget issue as well. Yeah. The next issue that we have right now is Laura's been working with our financial institution that we've used for the past several years to loan us money and rule of taxes. And one of the things that they notified us during April break, I think it was, right, Laura? This past week. This past week was that they asked about, you know, what are you looking at for timelines for budget vote, and we told them, you know, June 25th looks like about when we'd have a merged budget vote if we were one entity, and they said, that's great, but we won't lend you money until your 30 days pass that vote to make sure there isn't a re-vote action. And we've never been this close to a change in fiscal years with a budget vote. So that puts us... And we don't have the figure tonight, Laura. I thought it was a pretty easy one, Laura. After about a half hour got into my head about how hard it is to calculate the amount of cash we need on hand to cover 30 to 45 days without money and rule of taxes. So we would have to start looking at what we actually have for cash on hand, which isn't necessarily what the general fund balance is because there's invoices going in and out. So it's like four months' worth of tracking what's going in and out with money. So Lori's been... I asked her to clear her desk today, tomorrow, and Monday, so next week we can report to you what that figure is. But it's not a small figure. And I don't have an idea of, like, am I talking $10,000? $10 million. I don't think I'm talking $10,000. I don't think I'm talking $10 million. But it's somewhere in there. And because there's... It's not... You can't just... Well, it's just divided by 12 months. She goes, yeah, you can't do that. And, you know, just some sort of interpolation from the old calculus teacher. She's like, yeah, you can't do that, but it doesn't work. Can we look at the ledger from last? That's exactly what she's going to do, but it's going through a lot of detail and when revenue comes in and when expenditures go out. So it's a lot of timing. And we have to look at contracts to pay them and where, there's late fees attached to them. How far can they be? Because we want to be able to give you what the minimum bottom line is to tell you what that is. The place where the money is for these districts is in capital funds and in fund balance. But when you see a found balance projection, that doesn't mean that's the cash in the checking account. Because there's receiving and expenditures going out of those. So we need more information next time, but yeah, so you hit it all on the head. I guess, do you want more information on that or do you understand the situation? Do you understand the situation at least? Because I mean, traditionally, taxpayers pay them. And we need a voter approved budget. June and July, whatever. And so we need the voter approved budget or in the legislation right now is if there isn't a voter approved budget on June 1st, both in the House version of July 29th, there's ways of getting to a budget on July 1. We can follow money to... No, not to borrow. Just to have a budget. If we don't... I think the language though, if there is no voter approved budget by July 1st. So we would sort of put ourselves in a position by having the voter approved one on June 25th that clause of that law would no longer be in effect for us. So it's like a stop yet measure if we can't get it together to have the voters approve one. You're asking, do you think voter approved means also I think exhausting enemy votes? I suspect. The way the law is written, the way the bill is written I should say, it's laid down in law what the budget would be. It's basically rolling up all the budgets of the forming districts here and adding some X percent number. That's your budget for next year. It doesn't require voter action at that point because the legislature would have declared it by fiat, essentially. Yeah. So you've said in your memo that the lender who last year did a revenue anticipation loan has said that's a very specific kind of loan. I understand that it's probably very favorable rates and all that, but is there other sort of bridge financing? No, it's because we don't have this is our first year doing business so we don't have any historical prior year. So normally they would look at that and an approved budget in order to run these numbers for the way that municipalities and schools borrow money. So we can cover that in more detail at the next meeting if you have questions about the current legislation. Well, the thing is the current legislation says if you had a prior year you could use 87 percent if you had a prior year budget. There is no legislation right now for the situation that about 13 or 14 school districts are going to be in. I understand that part of that. So that's what the bank is going by. I'm just talking about to borrow money. One thing you can borrow money against is anticipation of revenues. Other thing you borrow money against is physical assets. So I'm just wondering we have physical assets. I don't think we've had that question. I would suspect that they wouldn't value this very much because they're not able to take it and sell it to cover the money. No, but capital funds and fund balance. We'll consider that. We agree to a higher rate for 30 days. That's what we're going to look into. But I think it all kind of current legislation has to be changed number one. Or we have to get a voter-approved budget. So if we can get the voters to approve our budget on June 25th without a reconsideration vote that just means that we might not make as much of an interest income spread that we have been making. But again, it's coming down to the voter-approved budget on June 25th. If we can get that through, I'll be sleeping at night. The town clerks though will probably end up having to do two tax bills no matter what. And the payment dates will have to be adjusted no matter what. From their prior years. So when you talked about the cash flow I do need to change the cash flow because the town clerks actually collect the taxes and remit them to the school paying us 20 days after the collection date. So I'm expecting that if the voter-approved budget goes through June 25th we would probably get our first deposit on October 1st instead of August 15th that we've had in the past to 30th. So this is an issue we have to talk about next time notifying us. We don't have the information that we need to actually get into a decision. We don't need any action for you. We are trying not to give you stuff right then that you've got to make a decision. I know we've done that with the transition but we're trying to give you a chance to think about it. It probably is going to happen whether you want to do it or not. Right, we're trying. So I get it when you guys say it. Give us some time to think. So can I do like two minutes on each budget and then we can go more into it next time? The budgets are in the packet. I'm starting on page 8 and going into page 9. I'm going to start on page 9. I'm going to go to the old building and then the Supervisor and the total. This is a this time meeting budget. I'm not giving you this as a format to go forward. It doesn't mean you can't and I said in my memo and I truly mean I would like feedback. How do you want this presented? Where do you want to go? But this was to show you taking the budgets we have now because there's lines in here we will not have in future budgets i.e. assessments. There won't be assessments going from the system from buildings to the SU it's all one big budget. But we want you to be able to see here's each school district as they sit today. The Supervisory Union and then the total. There are some numbers that will change in between lines because if you remember at the Supervisory Union we collect revenue and build a net i.e. transportation, special education and build a net to the school districts and assessments. So that revenue numbers will increase so will some of the expenditures within the line but the bottom line budget of $33,854,769 that is the bottom line of the overall budget. But we wanted to Laura and I talked about and we said let's have steps through with the transition board because anyone has to get how we came from where we were to where we're going it's this group. We'd like the voters to get that too but we really want to make sure that it's an education plan to kind of understand how did the budget come from where we were to where we're going. Does that make sense for everybody? So we really wanted to show each one lined up here the way we did this to get to those totals. So the question of the offsetting revenues $4.4 million that that comes back in basically the overall education spending for the combination for everybody is totals up the same. So even though the expenditures overall expenditures appear to be $4.4 million more the actual education spending is the same. Exactly. That doesn't change. But that's what's going to be difficult for me, it's difficult for board members sometimes it's going to be very difficult for our towns and so we wanted to work with all of you and that's why I generally mean when I said in my memo, we'd like feedback. What's going to help folks to try to understand that the ed spending isn't changing but the overall budget expenditure looks like you just went from $29 million to $33 million what in the world happened here but that's the revenues that are offsetting those in here expenditures. Or we didn't have to show that before in the old configuration. So Laura's been doing tremendous work putting together so I handed you out tonight because we just couldn't get in the packet in time what it would look like for last year and this year we do not have actuals the actuals are just too different to go back to budget year 2017 because I pushed Laura likes it when I walked in her office hey let's talk about this and she's like no no no and she's right, she's right 100% so I'm the one who's wrong and say hey I'd like some actuals no Bill we can't it's just going to be it's hard enough just to add up 2019 this fiscal year budget and saying what does that look like different for next fiscal year and she could go into all the details I just trust her when she says your idea is not going to work so this is kind of getting closer to what a budget would look like going out to the voters there I want to point you on the second page you'll see something the second box that says SU assessment we deliberately left it there for you tonight and you may say hey for the voters it might be good to deliberately leave it there that the SU assessments are zero I would not no no you tell us it's up to you and it's always the assessment has always been there just to make a different budget so we'll take that on that's my we're fine with however we're trying to step you through this evolution because then we'll create this and get closer to what would be presented this is probably what 90% Lori towards the presentation where we think the presentation is but that's you're talking to the two people that have been looking at this the team had all this on Tuesday as well and they saw that piece of the SU assessments and could see that coming out we're going to come back to this in a big way next week we'll be spending a lot of time on this so again in respect to the fact that the Cal's board is warned in 10 minutes I just want to come back to this issue of the item or action agenda that's the approved transition notifications on page 5 of the agenda and I'll provide the superintendent to sign all documents and contracts on behalf of the Washington Central University School District is there anyone who is interested in making that motion you can do it in two separate motions you can do that so it's a friendly environment so how do you want to develop them so there are two different pieces so state part 1 deal with that and then part 2 please I first want to be floor 2 approve the transition notifications listed on page 5 of the agenda packet is there a second for that motion anyone anyone want to second that motion well, okay is there a discussion of that motion I just want to say is that a verbal response well maybe you're lying you're really quiet are we ready to I'm in favor of I'm in favor of oh god I feel like a rat climbing onto a sinking ship in order to try to keep going under completely but what's important to me is to make sure that our schools can run and it seems to me that the case has been made pretty convincingly that this has to happen in order for for us to preserve some modicum of stability for the people who work for us at the same time I just want to underscore that agreeing to this does not mean that I'm agreeing to the forced merger in any way and I don't know if we need to put that in a motion or I'm content to just let it stand from the previous from the organizational meeting I just want to make sure that that's understood I understand it whatever thanks I just said so I'll be another rat on that sinking ship but I also from a business standpoint I totally understand the process and the time frame to get this stuff done I am I will vote for it I think it is one of those you know slow but sure erosion of independence of the board would take it with stealing a decision from the future board if there is a legislative option here we're just doing that and if there is a legislative option and I am on this new board I will vote to have it undone at that point but again I think the for the sake of our staff members our students well being to put this in effect and then undo it later if possible I think is unfortunately the way to go all we can do is use the information that we have right now the fact that we don't know what the conference committee is going to say and we have no really finality on the legislative side isn't something that we're doing to the future board that's something that the legislature has done all we can do to decide based on the best information that we have right now I've said my piece I agree with you I agree with Scott and Chris but I also have this thought what's driving this also is our present form of technology 40 years ago not that I want to go there but 40 years ago a lot of had to make set up these accounts two months ahead of time I see the way our society is driven by those timeframes has interfered with this as well but I want to take care of the staff because they're important to us to our children and to the district to do this with a bad taste in my mouth are you ready for that question the motion is to improve the transition notifications listed on page five all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye opposed, the motion carries is there a motion to authorize the superintendent to sign all documents and contracts on behalf of the Washington Central Unified Union School District so we'll second that discussion what contracts would it be for services from these entities well so for an example would be we currently have a retirement plan with TD a mayor trade they would be sending us a new plan document that would say Washington Central Unified Union School District and bill would need to sign it there would be HIPAA documents for the new name for the new plan bill would need to sign that he's historically signed those without board approval but we just felt like tonight we needed to put it out there because there will be documents associated with these notifications that have to be signed and deciding contracts that may come into being here contracts that would basically cement in for the next year a merger not that I know of it's mainly just to set up all these plans you know so we have to give like Blue Cross permission to talk to Vi about this new plan that all the employees we move to but you have to sign all these so for contracts what would be a contract I think like the VMware next week I alluded to it earlier Chris we're going to there's a contract we're signing we're coming to you for like I know for retirement we're going to be coming to you asking for authorization to set up some of that and it's not just there's an actual contract there that gets into some money exchange unions Mike I'm considering the e-rate application a contract our e-rate application we get revenues for our WAN line I consider that a contract that now it's going to be instead of watching the central supervisory union instead of having the school names the contract we see you USD so that's the kind of contract that I would expect it's just to set us up not to change anything but to just say who's going to get the money and where's it going to go are you ready for this question yes can you tell me the verbiage on that motion the motion is to authorize the superintendent to sign all documents and contracts on behalf of Washington Central Unified Unified School District and who seconded it sorry Chris seconded it all those in favor of the motion please say hi hi opposed abstentions the motion carries thanks not to rush if you have future agenda items please email them to me I think otherwise without objection we're going to adjourn at 5.58 thanks everyone nice I guess this is something that should carry forward in terms of having meetings at the different schools I hope yes we did it except very much thank you thank you