 This is Charlie Foskin, Chair of the Finance Committee. I will shortly take the role to confirm that all the members expected the meeting are here. But first let me just discuss some points about the remote meeting rules. The open meeting of the Arkin Finance Committee has been conducted by remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12th, 2020 due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. We have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirements to the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting, allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. That access has been provided. Insurance, ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to tbradleyattown.arlington.ma.us.com. This meeting of the Arkin Finance Committee is convening by the Zoom app as posted on a town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Supporting materials have been provided members of this body and are also available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. Public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the chair notes otherwise. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda and after they include their remarks the chair will seek the comments by each of the members by name if the sub-designated. Please hold any of your comments until your name is called. Let me mention that due to the scope or ability to see 21 people at one time on the screen if you fear you're not being recognized by the chair please speak up. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you aren't speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. If members wish to engage in colloquially with other members please do so through the chair taking care to identify yourself. Finally, each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by roll call. At this point I will take the roll call of attendance by precinct. Grant Givian. Here. Here. Shane Blundell. Here. John Ellis. Here. Kaya Healy. Here. Ryan Beck. Arif Badaria. Here. Sophie Migliazo. Here. Jonathan Wallach. Here. Shailene Groffit-Procrest. Shailene. Darrell Harmer. Here. Annie LeCourt. Here. Allen Jones. Here. George Koser. Here. Bill Keller. Here. Al Tosti. Here. Wanda Nassemento. Here. Christine Deschler. Here. Here. Dean Karman is not here. David McKenna. Here. Thank you. So for the record precinct. Somebody may have their microphone not muted or speaker too loud. Shailene is absent. There's no one here for precinct seven. We don't have a member. And Dean Karman is attending a seventh grade concert tonight, which I consider very important. And Brian Beck is away. So, tonight at 815, we will be fortunate to have in attendance town manager, Chapter Lane, deputy town manager, Sandy Poehler, and financial analyst, Julie Wayman, to discuss the town manager's budget and to launch our review process. Let me mention that you should have received today or perhaps yesterday from Tara two documents. One is a sort of a description of different questions about the budgets and changes in comments made by the manager's department. And the second is the actual expenditures by different departments taken from the Munis program for the past three, I believe it's three years. I think this is going to be very helpful as we move forward to analyze the budgets. And some of it may inform our discussions on the budgets that we started on Monday evening. So I think that is quite, that those two documents are going to be quite beneficial. Tara, we have the minutes from June 23rd, 2021. I believe that you distributed minutes from Monday night. There are a number of comments. So I think we'll take the Monday nights minutes up next Monday night after you've had a chance to incorporate those suggested changes. I have incorporated the changes from Al Tosi but I have not received comments from others. Did others have comments on that? Probably haven't had a chance to look at it. Yeah, I think, let's leave those until Monday night. And if you could possibly get the draft minutes out and then the revised minutes for Monday night, perhaps by Friday or Saturday, remember the chance to look at them before Monday night. Okay. So has everyone received the minutes from June 23rd? Are there any comments, questions, changes, edits? Motion is in order to accept the minutes as presented. Did someone make a motion? Someone seconded? Yes. I second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion on the minutes of June 23rd, 2021? Let me take the roll, Grant. Here. No, I'm not, sorry, not the roll, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Aye. Shane? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Yes. Micaiah? Yes. Arif? Yes. Sophie? No, I'm not voting because I wasn't voting. Jonathan? Yes. Shane Lee's not here. Daryl? Yes. Annie? Yes. Al Jones? Yes. George? Yes. Bill? Keller? Yes. And Altosie? Yes. Wanda? No, I abstain. But Christine? Yes. Dean is not here and Dave, Dave and Kenna? Yes. Thank you. The minutes are approved with two abstentions. So before we proceed further, let me ask, I noticed that Ms. Hartman is on, Sean Keen is on, are there any other guests? Those are the only two guests so far. Okay, so you have those names recorded. Thank you. Okay, so what I'm gonna propose here is that we pick up the discussion on the budget reviews that we had been undertaking last week when we adjourned the meeting at 10 o'clock and we will put those on the table when the town manager is ready to meet with us at 815, the town manager and his team. And then if we haven't finished by 815, we'll pick those up again and we will also, I would like to review the budget discussion schedule that Tara sent out to you the other day, which I apparently tried to send out and somehow or another when I was confidently thinking that I had sent it out, nobody had received it. And for some reason, it wasn't in my outbox, it wasn't in my inbox, it wasn't in my draft box, it seemed to disappear into the ether. So I apologize for that. So I think we were on the human services budget, is that correct? Yes. Health and human services. Health and human services, yes. Do you want me to push it up? Yes, would you please? And while we're doing this, I'd like to make a general request. I thought this, the budget explainer was very useful, I thought, and what I'd like to request everybody, usually when there are significant changes in the budget from year to year, I like to put a footnote into the report to town meeting to sort of highlight changes. So I'd like to get input from everybody when they're doing their budgets. If you see something that deserves a footnote, please let me know. I don't want to do that single-handedly. For example, the town manager's compensation, there's a pretty significant thing there that I think should be footnoted. So I'm just asking everybody to help me with that. We will do our best. Thank you, Adam. So let me just refresh your memory as to what we're trying to do going through this budget. The idea is to ask the people responsible for doing the departments with the budget to raise any questions you would like to have them follow up with as they proceed on their tasks. It's not the intention to try to get the answer to these questions this evening. This is just to sort of help create the atmosphere where we have treated any of the, or at least discussed any of the issues that are in people's minds without necessarily having all the answers this evening. So, Annie, this is your question, right? Yeah, so this is Health and Human Services. I already know what my questions are, but I would entertain questions from everybody else. So do we have questions for Annie on Health and Human Services? Al, and then John. Okay, obviously one question pops up is why did the offsets double? And the salaries and wages are up substantially. I think because they've added a new person. Anything else? And why did we add a new person? Okay, John. This department always seems to get lots of grants or be working on grants. And I'd be interested to hear about what grants they've won and what grants they are hoping to win to offset some of their costs. Okay. Anybody else? Helen? Jones. There was a note in the explainer about using ARPA funds for, I believe, two positions and it was a $222,000 offset from ARPA. So I guess the question is, what happens when the ARPA funds run out? Got it. So one question here. So it looks, Annie, do you read this as when we talk about the salaries here? I think sort of when you're addressing Tassie's question, I think you should be looking at the bottom line on page 137 because that comes after the offsets that Al Jones just mentioned. That may have some bearing. Yeah, there's some complications here with increases and then offsets and ARPA funds. I mean, everybody's hitting all the things we're already on my mind, but let's see if there's anything else. Al, are you raising your hand for a second time? Oh, sorry. And Alan, same question. Okay. So who won the next budget? Al? Mm-hmm. Okay, this is veteran services. Anything here? I mean, it looks like they're totally flat, which for him is already a question. Well, there's a question that I, I'm not sure when it shows up, Annie, but if you could do the state reimbursement that we get for these veteran services. Yeah, it should show up on the cherry sheet, but I will double-check it and be ready to talk to it. Okay, thank you. Anything else on veteran services? It's Jane. And I think I've already mentioned this once, just curious sort of what their outreach is to veterans in Arlington, just sort of where that's baked into the number at all. Plus a finance question, but just want to make sure they're identifying veterans and eligible veterans for help. I can frame that as a financial question. I'll find out. Thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else? Other questions on veteran services? Okay, next budget. Council on aging, questions. Well, one question I have, it looks to me like this has gone up significantly in that department. We ought to find out why. Yeah, if you scroll to the next page, I think similarly here, we have some kind of an offset. So I think it's again, a question of offsets, grants, new positions. Well, there's still, it goes, even with the offsets, it looks like it's going from 328 to 378. So there is a jump there if I'm reading that correctly. Any other questions? Okay, next budget. Diversity, equity, inclusion. So here's an 81% increase in calories. How do we look? Well, wait a minute, 81%? Scroll back, Alan, let me see the top line. Okay, there's something not right there. Well, it's going from 103 to 187, right? So that's 80. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, okay, okay. Huh, all right. And again, it may be in ARPA issue, so it goes back to Al Jones question about what we're doing with the ARPA money. Okay, next budget. So I think the next thing we're into, oh, all right, you want to do the budgets, you don't want to jump to the... No, we'll just take it in sequence here. Okay. So this is a pension's retirement, Altosie. Any questions? I've got one, Al. I mean, just as always, I want to understand how close we're getting to covering, whether we're ahead or behind the schedule that was planned on, you know, sort of a actual position versus planned position at this point in terms of fully funding. So, Al, I think if you remember, I don't know if you were at the long range planning committee meeting two meetings ago, the town manager did have a meeting with the retirement board, or maybe it was Julie Wyman, I'm not sure, but somebody had a meeting with the retirement board and they agreed to cut the growth rate back, I believe it was previously at 6%, it went back to five or five and a half. Yep. And there is also available the actuarial report that came out, I think it came out in December. So... Oh, so this was an actuary year? And we have an act, they have a report every year. Yeah, but don't we only talk to a consultant every couple of years? Do we really do? It's like a reassessment every few years, I think. Yeah, I don't know the answer. Get ahold of the most recent. You'll notice the non-contrib one person still hanging on. Yes. Again, I think we should watch our language around that, Mr. Tasti. We still have one person. I think we long ago, Annie, we long ago agreed that that would say somewhat, somewhat MacArthur subject. But nonetheless, we had to treat it every year. So there is one person who was in by the town prior to 1939 that's still in that non-contributory pension plan. And that person, no doubt, is hanging on and probably in the success of 100 years old. So... Or their spouse. Or their spouse. So in any event, it's an interesting demographic. Next budget, please. Insurance, this is also a, Al or Bokeller? Questions on the insurance budget? I'll raise my hand. Who's his hand? It's a shame. It's a shame. Okay, go ahead, Shane. Actually, I might pose this to the manager later, but, you know, 6.15 is a big increase, a big number. I don't know how much we can do as a town to address that number, but just curious what we're doing. Well, keep in mind, you know, these are only projections at this time. Bill, if I remember correctly, they don't get the final numbers until sometime in early March. And then they work with them and we don't meet with them until like mid-March. Is that correct, Bill? That is correct. Typically they get the new insurance rates by the middle of March and we schedule a law of the meeting by the middle or the third week in March. Thank you. And actually it looks like a whole different page when they state the new budget, the new insurance rates. So, but any questions you have, I'll make copious notes. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. It's a big number. I'm just curious. The numbers are function of both the number of employees that they're planning. Whether they're single individual plans or whether they're family plans. And it also is affected by the rates set by GIC. So there's three or four complicated. As Bill says, we will find out later. That's just what I'm curious about. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question. I have a question, Charlie. Can you hear me? Yes. I guess I wanted to know why workers top is zero increase. Because I would. Usually rates for that go up as well sometimes. And then in things like the group life insurance is it, I mean the group insurance. Six percent. I mean, I do. I think it's a little bit different. But I think it's a little bit different. I mean, I think it's a little bit different now and. It was around 15 for some places and. But during the pandemic, actually the rates went down because people were not going to the hospital for a year. I didn't know if we. As a town. Does the town get to. Go out to bid for these things or is this like a. Soul source. You can never change your provider. Well, we used to be, we used to be. We used to be. We used to be. We used to be. About 10 years ago. The town went on to what's known as the GIC. It's a group health insurance. Platform. And there are multiple plans in that platform that. And we have a handful at the town takes advantage of. And. The employees can choose. The plans. So. The. The plan that you said, I mentioned a second ago, can be, I don't know, you know, whether the rates have gone up. Of from GIC. Or whether we have more employees perhaps. In. You know, maybe in the school department or something to that. Or. People have chosen more expensive plans. We have to wait until we get to final data for that. Do we get data about. the plans and this like. Everything that goes into it. Yeah. You can stay awake at night. Every last. We'll have you. We'll have more games and more in peace, believe me. But actually it's about 18 to 20 pages of very good data that they provide. That will give up back up and meaning to some of these line items. I shall see. Okay. I'd be interested in that because, you know, that's I do that and. We've been shrinking the network, meaning like. Eliminating very expensive hospitals and focusing on more affordable ones. And that brought our rate down to zero actually. I know it. People don't like that because they have to change. Provider sometimes, but. Well, one thing that I've heard over and over just to throw in a little. Thought here is that. Over the years. The big consideration is that the town of Arlington provides very well for its employees. And one of the ways they provide well for the employees is with the health insurance. And as you'll see, they provide a large proportion of the premium. And as such, employees tend to go to the better plans. Because it become more affordable, but you can get more into that. And that budget comes up. Also these in general. And Annie, maybe you have. Recall the better insight to this. But, you know, in the private sector, it's possible perhaps to shrink the network. But we have. Most of our employees are in various unions. So these benefits become a subject of labor negotiations. Something that can be easily. Not saying that it should be easily changed there, but I'm just saying that. That is a complication. Yeah, I mean, I can, I, I both have a question and I can speak to a couple of things that might give some context here. So the first thing is that. Health insurance was an item that we had to negotiate. For most of the history of the town, we negotiated not just. How much of the premium would be paid by the town and how much by the union members, but also plan design. So we negotiated every detail of who was paying what in those plans from co-pays. So on and so forth. And so that negotiation process was very fraught. The state changed the law to allow us to, if it was going to be efficacious for both us and the unions. To enter into the GIC. They changed that law. Maybe 2012. And so we are now members of the GIC, which means the unions can no longer negotiate plan design. Plan design is dictated by the state. And the state has a very large number of people, both state employees and municipal employees in their group. And so they can force good rates from the insurance companies. Historically, a 6.12% increase in our health insurance is somewhere in the middle. We have been as high as 11 or 12% increases in the years before. We went into the GIC and we've been as low as three or 4%. While we've been in the GIC. So this is somewhere in the middle of that. But within the GIC, we can't do any of the things that I think Wanda was talking about. One of the factors that affects all of this, I believe, and it may show up in Bill's data is what's known as medical inflation. And that is the rate at which medical costs are going up. It's like a separate inflation rate. And it affects what the insurance companies are willing to. And that's what we can do in any one given plan. So. Okay. Well, we can discuss that when we get to that budget. I think. That's very, very helpful. Any other questions with respect to the insurance budget. Okay. Next budget. Reserve fund. Any questions on the reserve fund. Does anybody. Yeah, Sophie and Wanda, do you have an idea what this is? The only question I had was why the reserve. We lost your voice. We lost your. All right. The only question I had was why the, why. The school, the reserve fund for school. Went to zero, but I'm not sure I know yet. Well, it's, it's pretty straightforward. The student, the student, it was a reserve for growth in students. There was no, no growth in students. Any other questions? Okay. Moving on. Enterprise funds. All right. Water and sewer. Anybody have. Grant give me on the water and sewer enterprise fund. My only question is how grant can stand to do this every year. Questions. Okay. Okay. Any questions I'd like to ask. For the motion to approve the budget. No, we're not. Doesn't mean there won't be questions grant. Recreation. All right. This one's mine again. Okay. Any questions on that? Any questions you'd like any to pursue on the. Recreation enterprise fund. Any and Wanda. The totals. One thing I think. Any that we want to know on all these funds. As we want to know the balances at the end of the last fiscal year. The fund balance. Okay. Any other questions? Ed Burns arena. Questions. No questions. Moving on. Council on aging and transportation. Okay. Does this fall under Chris. I believe so, but I will double check with her. That's one of this, one of those things. I haven't had a chance to talk to Mary Margaret. I don't know if she talks to the sub leaders of the sections of the budget or she just talks to Christine. So I'll find out. Next budget. How can youth. A Y CC. So in all of these. In all of these. In all of these. Enterprise fund budgets. I think an interesting number. Annie. And one to that we should always check on. Is this a transfer from other funds. That's basically. The town subsidy. For the enterprise fund. And if it's. If that is zero. Now it's the one above that. At 40. 72. Yeah. If that's this, if that's zero. So that's a, you know, we should be. The growth in that or, or, or shrinkage or whatever. And try to understand what's what the implications are. Yep. Okay. Any questions for. Youth counseling center. Enterprise fund. Okay. Moving on. Capital budget. We have a member of the capital planning committee on the. Committee here. Any, any questions for Jonathan. I suppose one, one question I would have is, what did we have to cut out in order to afford the DPW. Project. Good question. Okay. Any other questions. This is only a, what is it? $10 budget. No questions. Okay. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but. I'll email if I have questions that I think are gonna. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's kind of question. I had a question on the Gibbs school. Well, drainage repairs. Why wouldn't that be under some kind of contract or warranty? You know, we sign these contracts for, for contractor at risk. But it doesn't look like they were at risk. If the town is paying for drainage repairs on a school. That's three years old. Okay. Any other questions. All right. Yeah. Okay. So. This is a. This was a trial of trying to. Go through this early review as suggested by John Ellis. Early last year or early this year. Any comments on whether it's been helpful or useful or. Should we do it again or not? Well, it's been helpful for me. Because now I know what questions to ask. I mean, in addition to the ones I already had on my plate. Yeah. I don't think we really know when we get through the budget process. I think. That's true. Water and sewer. How many, in other words, how many cycles, how many cycles that we have to go through to get back to a department manager and department. But I think it should be helpful. Is my gut feeling. So. I think it has been. I think it's going to be useful. Also in our discussion with the town manager. So. Yes, I think it would be very useful when the people had comments on the budgets that would be very useful, but they seem to skip over water and sewer budget. But it could be very helpful process. I'm hoping next time that people had more questions about it. I'm sure there will be questions upon presentation. Okay. So we, a few minutes before the manager will be here and his team will be here. So let me jump to this draft schedule. I'm going to, I'm going to share my screen here. Let's see. What do I do with that? I don't have a screen share button. You don't see the green one in the middle at the bottom. I got it. I got it. It was being hidden Microsoft is hiding it. Oh, and this is. I'm used to something. Unshare. This is, I want to put it up, Charlie. Yeah, you want to put that up? That would be good. I, for some reason it's not showing on my, I have it open. But you, why don't you put it up? I'll share. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So we have yet to put the warrant articles in here. But my thought was that. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to try to get some. Some great predictability. And when we were going to have budgets. So I went through and tried to make some informed judgments about when we might have a budget information. And. So I guess what I'm looking for is feedback on the committee. On whether or not these target dates are reasonable. And whether we can try to follow that schedule. We, you have to also remember that we will. Overlay with this. Warrant articles once we get the, we get the warrant. And I'm hoping that we get the warrant next week. So. Okay. Let me open it up for discussion. Any thoughts or comments here? Charlie, if I could. Yes, David. Notice that we're Sophie and I are a first up on the, on the budgets. We cannot make. Meet that February 7th. Date for our budgets. However. We're going to have a meeting with Bob and heads on February 8th, February 9th and February 10th. The only budget that we could possibly do next Monday night would be the finance committee budgets. It takes a little time to line up the, the seven different people that we have to line up. For the budgets, but we will have it all done by the end of next week. Okay. So. So you. So the end of next week is, is you're talking about the 10th of the 11th. Right. Our last meetings with, with department heads. It will be on February 10th. We have two on, on February 8th. Two on February 9th and two on February 10th. Which includes all that we're responsible for, which is. The budget. For the six budgets. Selecting clerks. Can we do which can we do the. The budgets on. February 9th that you have, which would be. For the six budgets. On February night, we would have. Available would be the clerks budget. Including the, the board of registrar. The election budget. And the select boards budget would be ready for the nine. And the finance committee. And the finance. Okay. All right. Moving to the next. Makaya, do you think you might be ready on the. On the ninth or would it take longer. I will put in a call tomorrow morning to. Our lovely friend Karen Malloy. And see if she is. Yeah. I mean, it's a. It's a two party dance. So. I will, I'll see if I can make that happen for, for us for Wednesday, February 9th. And I'll have a confirmation to you. One way or the other, Charlie. I'll send an email and then on. Monday, I guess I can. Okay, let's. So then let's, I'm going to leave it on the ninth. Okay. And if it has to get changed, we get changed. Yes. Okay. Okay. I just want to let you know that, um, that, um, three town manager office folks are here. Okay. So look there. At the reclass. Budget line and we'll pop back into this discussion. After we hear from, um, town manager, chapter, chapter lane and the team. So where are they? I see, I see Sandy pooler. I'm going to turn the meeting over to you. And you and Sandy and Julie can. Have the floor. Thank you very much for agreeing to come tonight. And I also especially want to thank Julie for sending out those two very helpful documents. Uh, yesterday. I think they'll be a big assistance to the finance committee. Great. Thank you. Thank you, chair Foskett. And good to see everybody. Thank you. I feel like I say this in a lot of places that I wish we were all sitting in a room together, but, uh, better safe at this point. And hopefully we'll all be back and on together soon. Adam, can I just, before you launch, uh, I'd like to just introduce you to, you know, Sophie Migliazzo from town meeting. And, uh, one, the Nascimento is also a new member on our committee. So there are two new members in, um, Peter Howard, John Deist, and, um, Mary Margaret, Frank, I want to have retired. So, um, we have two new outstanding members. And we are in the process of trying to recruit a third. So. Great. Great. Good to see you. Sophie. Nice to meet you. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. So I'm getting a little feedback. Are you hearing feedback? Let me, uh, Is that any better? I don't know. I don't know what I did to fix it, but, um, so we, we'd like to do, I think really three main things tonight. One is provide you with a fairly detailed overview of the town's long range financial plan. Um, given that we're at the start of this budget year, there are some new members here. And we're in the last year of the current long range plan. So I'll talk a little bit about it. And then let Sandy get into the details about that. Moving from there. Um, I want to give a fairly brief overview of the town's long range financial plan. Um, given that we're at the start of this budget year, we have a fairly brief overview of the FY 23 budget proposal, which you'll all be considering department by department. And then I'm going to have Julie talk about those documents that Charlie just mentioned, uh, from a technical point of view, um, sharing with you what, what's contained in there and how we're hoping that they'll be helpful for you as you review your budgets. So I would start by saying, um, um, um, for, for the better part of almost 20 years now, the town has utilized a long range planning model. And though I wasn't here when it started, um, my understanding is it was formed based around a common understanding. Of the town's structural deficit. In that it's revenues. Do not grow fast enough, uh, to meet up with its expenditures. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point. Um, I think that's a good point in the fact that the town is five and a half square miles. That is nearly completely built out with limited new tax revenue growth. Obviously more complicated than just that, but that really is the top line description. Of the structural deficit. So what the town has done again, for those, you know, nearly a 20 year period. Is manage its finances through a series of long range plans. Um, in the last 20 years. In each iteration. And ask the voters for operating overrides to support. Those long range plans. It's really all started back in 2004, 2005. Leading to successful operating override in 2005. Another one in 2011. And then actually an eight year period leading to another one in 2019. Which put together a long range plan. And it's a long range plan. Um, uh, 2021, 22 and 23. So if I 23, the budget year that we're. Working towards for July 1st would be the last year of that long range plan. And overall the long range plan is you'll see when Sandy starts to describe it. Is. It's, it's, it's detailed in its, um, you know, in its many lines. But. Overarchingly, it is a model that. The long range plan controls discretionary expenditures. And then I would say responsibly projects. Non-discretionary expenditures. Like. Pension obligations, health insurance costs. Uh, and to some degree capital costs, although capital costs are capped as a percentage of overall revenue of the town. And through that model, we have a high degree of predictability. And often have outperformed our projections. And then we have a high degree of predictability and revenue. And we have a high degree of predictability and revenue. And having a pretty solid grasp on where our expenditures are going to be. Are going to be because of the controls that we put in place. So with that, I, I'll let Sandy. Um, if he has permissions and it's okay. Share his screen to go over. The long range plan. I think if it's okay with you, Mr. Chairman, maybe we'll take questions. After the long range plan. Then talk about the budget. Uh, Julie's documentation if that's okay. I agree with that. Okay. Great. All right. So with that, I will ask Sandy to talk in detail about the plan. There we go. Good evening, everybody. It's nice to see you all. I'm going to be going through. Uh, the long range plan as Adam mentioned. Uh, it is in your, um, Budget books on. Page 11. Um, I think the first thing I'm going to say about it is that since we published it in that document. It has changed. But, um, that's not unusual for long range plans. They are living documents. They change over time. And, um, And they're meant to. Um, What we try to look at is our revenue. Um, Certain, uh, fundamental core. Costs such as school budget and the town budget. Um, capital costs. And then a bunch of things that are other. The long range plan goes out over a number of years. We always start with the current year budget. FY 22. And as I talk about this, I'm going to make it bigger because I know it's a little bit hard to see these things on the screen. We always start with FY 22. This is our current fiscal year. FY 23 is the fiscal year we're going into. So we show the fiscal year. We show the dollar and percentage changes. And we go out through several years like that. The other thing that is, uh, Important. At the bottom of this are two sets of, Um, that are really key. One is the balance. We like nice. Brown black zeros. Those are good numbers for us because it means that we have a budget that's in balance. Like a lot of financial plans, a lot of forecast. You'll see across the state. In the future. You start to see big, ugly, red, red, numbers that are in parentheses. Those are negative numbers. That means we have deficits. So that is a key thing to keep in mind. Uh, as you're looking at this document. The other thing I just want to point out from the very beginning. Is this number down here that says annual projected, uh, actual projected annual school growth. Um, over the last few years, we have had, uh, A strange history of enrollment. Uh, growth in our, uh, school system. For the last 10 years, Arlington has been the fastest growing school district. Uh, of any medium or large size, uh, school district in the state. Uh, I think we are number two actually only behind them. Tuck it. Um, During COVID, of course, as many of you know, we had a decline in school enrollment. And so, um, We did not make an adjustment in this plan for that decline in enrollment. In FY 22. But we did make a decline in FY 23 of 189 students. That is the difference between where our enrollment is and where our enrollment is. And so, um, We did not make an adjustment in this plan for that decline between where our enrollment is today and where it had been at its peak a couple of years ago. So they are down 189 students, uh, from a couple of years ago. And then they are projecting to continue to go up 46 more students next year, 33 year after and so forth. Um, I just wanted to point these things out at the very beginning because all the detail I. I'm going to go over in a minute. Um, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to spend a few minutes really talking about. What the long range plan looks like. I know for some of you, you've seen this and this will be repetition. Uh, for those of you who are new to the committee. I think it's important to understand these numbers. Um, and I hope it's be a little bit of a refresher for everybody else. Um, I would say in general. For all cities and towns across the state. There are four main areas of revenue. There's local taxes. Local receipts. State aid. And, uh, It's somewhat hard to define our various a lot from town to town. Other. This plan captures those things and adds a few little more details. I'm not going to go through that just now, but kind of keep in mind, basically there are four big buckets that we have. Um, And we start up top with state aid. And, um, State aid is made up of two very important elements. One is the amount we get from the state for our schools called chapter 78. And then the amount we get for sort of everything else, which is called unrestricted general government aid, or sometimes referred to as UGA. Um, it used to be referred to as lottery aid. Um, but they changed the name a few years ago and just called it UGA. In hope of finding the worst possible name for any kind of state aid, you could possibly find. Um, In this plan. We have estimated that state aid is going to go up about 1% a year. It's a conservative estimate. Um, we have fortunately in the past done better than that, but in this plan. We tend to be conservative with our estimates. Particularly the estimates we don't control. And we do not control state aid. The state controls that. Um, the second element down here is sort of new and unique. To this forecast. And that is called ARPA. Uh, That is stands for the American recovery plan act. American rescue plan act. Um, it's federal money. It's a source of one time cash that the feds have given us. And given the town of Arlington, the total of $35 million in this heart. Um, we can use as much as. 10 million dollars of that aid to make up for the revenue that we've lost over time because of COVID. And you can see in this plan, we put $5 million in the plan and F by 23. And $5 million in the plan and F by 24. After that it goes away again. But these are sort of fillers and they're kind of about a one time unique. Uh, and very different kind of eight. Local receipts. Are all the things that, uh, you write a check to the town for, other than your taxes or your water bill or anything like that. So, uh, it's your motor vehicle excise tax is by far in the way, the largest in this category. Um, if you take out a permit to, uh, renovate your house or if you get a parking ticket, or if you eat in a restaurant or you stay in a hotel, all of which I would encourage you to do, um, increase revenue if you want to really be a good citizen here. Um, I think the important thing to understand about local receipts is we monitor them very carefully. Uh, we, I look at them on a monthly basis. We do a quarterly report that goes to the select board and to the finance committee. Uh, uh, as I say every quarter. Uh, and then, um, of course we have it all reviewed at the end of the year to see what our totals were and to look at trends. Um, Local receipts are going up a little bit more than they have in the past because we had to lower them a lot. Uh, during the pandemic, pandemic starting FY 21. So we are slowly increasing what we think we're going to get from, um, motor vehicle excise taxes, which are, it's our bigger, bigger source. Um, we go up and I think last year we assumed that we were going to get 85% of our previous high in those taxes. And this year up worth at 90. Next year up at 95. And then we'll kind of be back on track. To our previous motor vehicle excise taxes. Most of the other local receipts. Uh, Are much smaller in comparison. There are some that are highly variable with the economy such as meals tax and hotel taxes and interest rates. Uh, all those things are things that we had to lower and have been brought back. Uh, over time, uh, to reflect their recovery. Um, and so you see that in the total here. The next thing is free cash, which fits into the category that I would call other. Um, free cash is basically the town's operating surplus at the end of the year. How much money we have in the bank. Uh, kind of an operating basis where we have. Taken in more revenue than we've estimated because we always try to estimate a little bit low because we know that we. Use free cash in the budget. You need to create a certain amount every year. So we need to be a little bit conservative. So there's. The excess revenue over above our estimates. Then there's the difference between how much we've actually spent in a year versus how much we budgeted to spend in a year. And there's always some kind of gap there. There are gaps because there are vacancies. Or, um, so there's gaps in salaries. There's gaps in, um, Our health insurance again, because when there are vacancies, you don't have to pay for health insurance for everybody during the year. Uh, and then sometimes departments, um, Just don't spend all their budget, uh, for whatever reason. Um, and, uh, We get a certain number of turn backs from them. Um, every year. We take half of that operating surplus. And we put it into the operating budget as a revenue source. And then we basically hold on to the other half. For emergencies. The biggest emergency of which would be if we had a really bad snow and ice here. And we completely exceeded our other reserves for cleaning up snow. We might have to go into free cash. Um, but, um, Free cash is, as I say, one of those other sources. If you look on this sheet each year, The amount of free cash is half of the number at the bottom of the sheet where we show what our actual free cash numbers are. And then going into the future. We do a 10 year average of what our free cash has been. And we use half of that. Um, This next one is overlay reserve surplus. It's a fairly minor amount. It's what the assessors give us back after we give them money in what's called the overlay. That's a fund that they have to keep in case people filed for abatements on their taxes and, um, The assessors have to have a pot of money to give people refunds on their taxes. If we've, um, Assessed them too highly and at the end of the year, they usually have a certain amount of money left over and they give that back to us as, uh, and we use it in that budget. I'm going to skip. Um, Well, the next one I will say is property tax. That is far and away. Our biggest source. 78% of our operating revenue comes from our property taxes. We're very highly dependent on property taxes here in Arlington. Um, This number includes. The base levy, which is the amount that is in there. It also includes the amount that is in there for overrides. Um, those are overrides. Um, For things like the high school. Uh, there's also an override to pay for the minute man. Regional technical vocational school. And there are still some overrides for repairs. To various elementary. Um, And middle schools over the years. Um, Those are getting paid off. So that they come out of the tax base eventually. Um, But, uh, you can see sometimes this number goes up. More, um, More sporadically depending on. If we voted and override for a capital project. Um, That override capital project. Then comes out later in the plan. So we then have a net amount of. Property taxes because of Arlington is one of the first communities to have an override stabilization fund. And a lot of other. Communities across the state referred to the creation and use of an override stabilization fund. As the Arlington plan. It's what Adam talked about before. This realization that we have a structural deficit where our. Expenses exceed our revenue on a year to year basis. And we need on a period on a periodic basis to go back to. The taxpayers and ask them. To increase their taxes over. The limits that are set by prop two and a half. Um, So that we, um, Can keep up with our, our long-term expenses. When we have an override. We put money into the override stabilization fund. They build it up like it's sort of a big piggy bank. And then for a few years, we sort of draw it down. Until we get to the point that it runs out. And then we need another override. So you can see that in this plan. Last year, we needed six point. Um, $2 million. We would have needed probably $9.2 million this year. Except we put $5 million of ARPA money in. So that helps bail us out some. Similarly, next year, we're going to use $7.5 million from our override stabilization fund. It would have been more like 12.5 million, but we had the ARPA money in there. The next year in 25, we use the last of the override stabilization fund. The piggy bank at that point will be empty. And we have to go back to voters and ask them to refill it so that we can continue on. Um, I'll talk a little bit more about what we're rising the sizes of those when we wrap up here. Those are the major revenue sources. In fact, those are all the revenue sources for the general fund, which is the major budget in the town. There are other funds like water and sewer, recreation, rank, um, AYCC and senior, uh, transportation. Those are not reflected in the long range plan. This really focuses on, um, the general fund. At this point, um, I will ask if there's anything I've said that was sort of confusing or people didn't understand. In which case I'd be glad to answer a question. If it's more kind of big picture in terms of the long range plan, I think I would ask people to save those questions till later. Al, I see your hand up. Are you, is your hand up to ask a question? Yes. Um, I noticed the property checks. And I'm sorry if I missed this is only going up 1.47% for next year. Is that because of the water sewer. Allocation going back on the fees. Yes. Um, you can see that I was going to get to that in a minute. But yeah, the short answer is yes. I'll give you a little better explanation in a minute. Okay. Thank you. Generally the property taxes go up between about two and a half. And 3% a year, sometimes a little higher depending on how much, um, New growth we've had in town. In other words. New growth is that term that is used for something that is taxed this year. That we did not have. The previous year. Um, Mostly that's because it didn't exist in the previous year. So if you have a house and you build a garage and you never had a garage before, we're now going to tax you on that garage. Uh, and your taxes are going to go up. Um, So we're going to tax you on that. Or if, um, If somebody builds a new house on an empty lot or something like that. And there's a certain amount of that in Arlington. Hello. As Adam mentioned, we're very built out community. So we don't get a lot of new growth every year. So we take in the money and then we spend it. Uh, the biggest part of the budget is the school budget. And, um, There are some fundamentals. Um, So the general education is the biggest part of the school budget. We say that that grows by three and a half percent every year. Special education is the second largest part. And we allow that to grow by 7% a year. Uh, and then some years. When there are new students and there's enrollment growth, there's going to be a number here. Like there is an FY 24. That represents an increase we give to the school department for their growing enrollment. And every year we take that number, let's say that 335 and FY 24, That will then go into the base for general education costs and FY 25. Those two together will then multiply by three and a half percent. And so you'll see these numbers are going to go up more than, um, The three and a half percent percentage because you always have new growth. You always have new growth except this year. And this year. Um, we saw a decline of 189 students. So we cut the increase to the school budget. By an amount to reflect that decrease in of the 189 students. Um, Over the years have been different formulas for figuring out how much to calculate this growth factor by. Currently what we do is we take a look at a number that the state puts out. What it costs to educate a student in Arlington. And we give the school department 50% of that growth. The, or that cost as to reflect the growth and enrollment. Um, We have to have some things, some costs go off in the schools with more enrollment. You have to hire a certain number of new teachers or buy a certain number of new, um, computers or books or whatever. But, uh, as a general matter, you don't have to have all your costs go up. The cost of heating buildings doesn't really change that much with enrollment. You don't hire another superintendent because of enrollment growth. Um, These three numbers are then the basic numbers that go into the school budget every year. This five year plan shows a couple of exceptions. One is that when we had the last override, we promised. The voters that we would increase the school budget over four years by $2.8 million. Uh, because the school department said it needed that over two years of that growth and they're represented here. This plan that you see in front of you also has an increase of $970,000. Um, to make up. Uh, for the increased costs, the school department has an FY 23 to deal with COVID. Um, we know that there are a number of things. There's, um, More training. There's, um, The, some kids just have, uh, You know, they need remedial help with their studies and so forth. Um, and some kids just have certain emotional issues that the counseling and so forth. So we recognize that they have sort of a short term issue here. We put that in the school budget. I've talked a lot about the school budget. I think the important thing for the finance committee to know and to look at is what the longterm trends are in the growth of the school budget. How much it goes up per year. Um, in FY 23 under this plan, it's going to go up 5.42%. If you compare that to our revenue going up 2.96%, you can see right off the bat. Uh, we, that's part of a big part of our structural deficit. In other words, our school costs consistently go up more. Um, then our, um, Then our revenue in future years, I would encourage you to take a look at these growth rates and just see how they, uh, how they grow over time. These next few things going to go through a little more quickly. Um, we're part of the minute man, a regional technical vocational school. Um, they, um, charge us a fee every year for the students we send to them. Plus they charge us, uh, a fee for the capital that we must contribute to that school. Uh, the biggest part of which recently has been that they built a new school. We did an override to, um, to help pay for that that goes on an increase in everybody's tax bills. It's reflected up here in the property tax number. And it's reflected down here. We increase generally. The minute man budget by the same three and a half percent. That the, uh, school budget goes up. And then, uh, the capital amount goes up. According to how much debt they have sold to pay off. That new high school. We're now getting pretty close to the end of that increase. They've really sold most of the debt that they're ever going to sell for that. So we may see a little bit of an increase next year and after that, this line should smooth out. The town budget. Um, Just made up of personnel costs. Town expenses. We then subtract an amount that we charge. The enterprise funds. For the amount of work that people like me do to help the enterprise funds. Uh, I think the best example of that is the treasurer's office does the enterprise funds. They send out all the bill for the water and sewer department, for example. And, um, The water and sewer department could hire a private company to do that. And have to pay that fee and have it include that the water sewer rates. By using the treasurer's department, which is paid for by your tax dollars. Um, we then charge them for the amount of time that the treasurer's office puts toward that. And so at the end of the day. The town budget is a mix of. Um, Personal expenses. We subtract the enterprise fund offsets and a few other offsets. We get the net town budget. The net town budget can go up. Uh, under this plan, three and a quarter percent per year. As you can see in the future, that's what it's projected out to go. Um, this year it's going up only 3% because the town manager has to pay for it. Um, We have to pay for our spending by, uh, Not going up to the full three and a quarter percent. We did the same thing. And that's like 22 when we went up only, uh, 2.6%. Um, Because we've really tried to limit the number of new positions and new programs that we put into the budget because we know we are facing an override and that things are getting a little tighter. Um, But I think that the amount that we're saving by not going up the full three and a quarter percent. Isn't going to make the difference between whether we need an override or not. We are, um, Just a portion of the overall budget, but that is what we've done. And that's why you see 3% this year. I'll toss the asked about the MWRA debt shift. That's a program that the town had where we used to subsidize the water and sewer rates. And then we had the tax bills. The select board voted to get rid of that over a three year period. FY 22 the current fiscal year is the last year we did that. We're taking $1.8 million out of the town budget. Out of our property tax base. That's one reason that property taxes aren't going as much up as much as usual. And that after that, it just won't be there anymore. We're not going to go through all of the details of the capital plan, except to say, um, We have two kinds of debt. Exempt that, which is the override that you see on your property bill. Non exempt debt, which is the, um, kind of fundamentally. The 5% of the budget that, uh, Is set by the capital plan. The amount of cash replay for pay for capital. We have some offsets and over, uh, I think we have a lot of change. And the other thing is that there are some, you know, There are some very covered covers of. Various other monies from other funds, like the antenna fund and ambulance fund and so forth that. That then decrease this. So we get to a bottom line capital budget, which is again, about 5% of the overall budget. We have to pay for pensions for our employees. We have an agreement with our retirement board. Those will go up. year-to-year depending on how many people we have in the pension plan but they they try to get it pretty close to that and in the future can see it's at five and a half percent. Insurance this is mostly health insurance that goes up by five and a quarter percent per year except it goes up a little bit more than that when we have enrollment growth and the reason we have enrollment growth insurance is mostly because of enrollment growth in the schools as they hire more teachers you see them showing up here. The state gives us a lot of money that the state also takes away money this represents what they're taking away they charges for things like the MBTA. I mentioned the overlay reserve before. Reserve fund is available to the finance committee it's one percent of the budget every year for things like unforeseen expenses that you can allocate to different departments at the end of fiscal year. We have a small reserve in case we have some judgments that we need to pay off at the end of the year and then for those of you who have been to town meeting you can see that we have there are warrant articles the biggest of which is the amount that we put into OPEB every year which is the amount of trust fund for the health insurance for our retirees. If we have a fat year with a lot of extra income we put money into the override stabilization fund but this is one of those years the next three years we have to take money out. Looking at this plan I would just note we show how much free cash we have we so much how much we have in one of our reserves which is called the stabilization fund that goes up about a hundred thousand dollars a year. This is the big fund the override stabilization fund and then there's one other small trust fund that doesn't change much. Overall on this plan we always try to keep our reserves at at least five percent of revenue. It's important for us to maintain our AAA bond rating by maintaining that number. The radio agencies certainly pay attention to it we you can see how it plays out here. So that is the five-year plan as published in this document. Let me just stop for a minute and ask if there are any questions. I have one quick question sorry it's the same. Okay. For the just going back to the growth factor when DESI calculates per people costs do they look at pensions and insurance expenses or do they not or yes they they have a sheet that no matter how towns budget for that stuff they could put it in the school budget or not in the school budget blah blah but DESI then says okay we don't care how you do it on an individual city or town basis we're going to look at costs that are common to all school systems and they include those costs there. I just very quickly want to show you one other thing if there are other questions I'm glad to take them but I told you that that last plan changed. It changed because the governor's budget came out and in the governor's budget instead of a one percent increase in state aid we got a 5.9 percent increase in state aid so that came out about two weeks after this oak was published. So it's not in what you have in your hands but it will be part of the long-range plan you're considering when you come out with the budget for town meeting. Certain other things change but so fundamentally we're now much closer to a six million dollar deficit in FY 25 and then it goes up to almost 20 million and almost 25 million. So where we stand today we're about in this area again it will change again a little bit as we go forward there are numbers in this forecast that we need to tweak particularly when we get our health insurance rates in in March various parts of this plan will change when the Capital Planning Committee finalizes its capital plan this number will change a little bit but I think you know what the town manager and I look at a lot is how big the deficits are in the future how much of an override you would have to have to have to increase our property taxes to get rid of those ugly red numbers and make some guess about in consultation with the finance committee a slight board school committee and others how much do we think the voters in town would be willing to vote for in an override so that's a long-range plan again happy to take any questions at this point from anybody well any questions did a really good job or I really loved you all into submission I think they're all everybody's asleep no I'm just exactly no thank you very much that's a very good very good presentation I have a question that was raised to me we were discussing this the other day with our new members and one of the members who's has to be a one of these people who add things up in our head all the time notice that the enterprise fund and other offset in the expense section from the net town budget is shown as a positive as opposed to a negative on the five-year plan is there a reason for that or is that somehow it is cultural historical it's just a kind of quirk of the culture of how I got this plan when I came to work for the town six years ago it was a positive number then I asked that same question people said oh that's just how it is so I kept doing that thank you doesn't mean anything other than you have to know maybe we can make it negative you know just so it's uh it puts our accounting types at rest I would be very happy to do that thank you thank you so can I ask quickly um sandy thank you for a wonderful presentation the Minuteman expenses go up by 19.75 percent next year and then they kind of go back to their usual level is there a quick reason why they jump for just this next year um they jump so much in FY 23 because Arlington's enrollment in Minuteman as a proportion of the total school population has gone up pretty significantly both because Minuteman is just attracting a lot of students it's very popular second because there are a number of other towns that dropped out of Minuteman so their students aren't there anymore then George going forward we just have the 3.5 percent assumption in increased cost but that is really subject to changes in enrollment so it could go up more it could go up less Minuteman does use a four-year rolling average to look at our enrollment but as a forecast we just plug in the 3.5 and then adjust it year to year just a quick follow-up so you are not assuming that we might be capped in the number of students we go to Minuteman we'll take this up with Minuteman later I'm just curious what went into the plan Minuteman is always talking about its enrollment and different ways to deal with these things uh so I won't venture to guess what they might do but there's nothing that reflects any idea like that in this plan so I would I would jump in George if I may just to say add a few things to that I think we are in an interesting time where we have a high school that's under construction they have a brand new shiny high school but I think that has driven Arlington's enrollment to some degree and and we I think many predicted that even you know five years ago that that always happens when there's a brand new shiny tech school more kids go and or when there's a construction project more kids leave I think they're working through now really becoming an only in district district uh some of you may remember there was controversy at town meeting last year where they were still accepting out of district students and rejecting some Arlington students and I think they heard that message loud and clear and they're they're shifting to become an all-in-district district but I think what that is going to also do is create a competitive situation where not every child or student from every one of the standing communities from the member communities is going to be guaranteed that those kids get it so how that actually shakes out for Arlington students remains to be seen I'll also add they just hired a new superintendent and I sat on the screening committee and that gave me an opportunity to get some deeper insight into some of the things they were thinking about and they're looking at already looking at expanding the new facility to be able to see more students based on the demand so that could put upward pressure on how many students from Arlington attend as well so I think there's lots of swirling variables that frankly make it hard to make any type of truly educated projection about what our enrollment and their buyer costs will look like in the forthcoming years. Thank you Adam. Sandy first of all thank you for a great presentation on the plan and thank you for all the work you've done on that and done for many years but I would like to observe that the plan is right now supported to the degree by one time and without getting into the details tonight I would just like to note that I'm hoping that the finance committee is going to discuss in a future night the implications of using the one-time income for operating expenses and I know that you and I have had discussions about this before there are I think a number of potentially good uses in the town inside the municipal budget for those one-time funds and well I just won't get into the details tonight but I think I just want to let you know that we will be discussing that in the future. Charlie if I could just I don't want to get into a long discussion either but I think one of the things that's important about the ARPA money you are right it is one-time money but it is also there to replace some one-time revenue losses so over the this year and the last couple of years because of COVID our regular revenue numbers went down the ARPA money basically tries to replace that loss revenue and I think it does a good job of replacing it for a period of time until that revenue can get back to where it was before so well I think in general I would agree very strongly that using one-time money for ongoing expenses is not a good idea I think that whole structure of ARPA and it's designed to replace short-term revenue losses somewhat mitigates the the danger of using one-time money for ongoing expenses. Okay well I understand that but you know we'll dig into it a little bit further this time. Thank you. So I guess the next subject you had was the discussion of the FY 23 budget proposal. Charlie I know there's a hands up by the way. Who had to end up? Andy. You may not know them. Andy go right ahead. Okay I just had a follow-up to George's question on the student calling over to Minuteman. Do we count presumably when we are calculating the growth factor for the Arlington public schools we're not counting students that have transferred to Minuteman as part of the drop in student body students going to Minuteman instead of Arlington High School do you think? I would say I mean I would you I'm going to say that they're either in the Arlington school districts enrollment totals or in the Minuteman enrollment totals. One place or the other not though. Yeah. Got it. Okay just wanted to check on that. Yeah I I'm growing more concerned as we approach 2024 about the override which can be any place from 8 to 12 15 percent impact on the taxpayer after they're already absorbing a huge impact from Arlington High School and I know there's been some programs on in the in the town budgets and I assume in the schools on COVID and also on on other areas so I just wanted to know how you're that you're keeping track of all these so we don't make temporary positions into permanent positions and temporary programs into permanent programs so we're not asking the taxpayer to come up with more money than we really really really need. Al your question is a perfect segue if I may to have Julie speak a little bit about the memo that she put out so at some point Charlie either now or after Adam talks about the budget I think Julie's memo would address some of Al's questions. That's I'm looking forward to it so maybe first Adam you want to take the budget or yeah and I will be very brief to talk about the FY 23 budget because I know your your hearings over the coming months will dive into much greater detail about the proposed FY 23 budget but I think there was five key points I wanted to hit on. I think the overarching point is that even though as Sandy described in the long-range plan that the town budget is as proposed increasing by 3% it is almost entirely a level services budget with very minor exceptions. Level services meaning that we are proposing to fund service levels in FY 23 at the same levels as which they were funded in FY 22 except it might cost a little bit more to do it based on costs of collective bargaining and some other costs of doing business. So I think over archingly that was a point I wanted to make about FY 23. Additionally Sandy has spoken about ARPA. Al Tosti just asked a question about ARPA and I think Julie will talk about ARPA in her memo but that is a theme of this budget. It's a theme with the proposed revenue use and it is a theme with several not very many but several mostly public health related positions that are proposed to be funded utilizing ARPA for the period of which ARPA is eligible to be utilized. And then I would want to touch on the three areas where you will see and they're highlighted in the budget message but three areas where you see proposed increases in spending. The largest one is our recycling and trash contract. For a number of years I think here at the finance committee you've heard talk about concern about recycling markets where we were in a 10-year contract with JRM. We're currently in a 10-year contract with JRM that expires on June 30th of this calendar year. In this current contract we have been paying zero dollars per ton of recycling. We signed that 10 years ago that was a fair deal for all. About midway through the contract recycling markets went haywire with China no longer accepting many recyclables and collapsing the market. Some communities signed deals paying up to $100 or maybe even I think at one point Boston signed a contract paying $120 a ton for their recyclables. In Arlington we collect on average a year about 6,500 tons of recyclables. So if we had concern that if the market didn't stabilize when we were faced with renewal that we could have a very large cost increase for recyclables disposal. Fortunately though we had several opportunities over the past couple years to either extend with JRM or potentially think about going with a different vendor based on proposals that would have provided some cost stability after a large jump. We remained patient and patient and patient and JRM quite recently within the past several months came to us sharing with us that the recyclables market had dramatically stabilized and asking us if we would consider extending for a three-year period in the first year having it a cost increase of 7 percent above what we had been increasing by which was a 2 percent a year inflator. So you'll see in this year a proposed I think in the budget book it's actually 8.97 percent increase for solid waste collection which is the totality of JRM's both collection and recyclables disposal cost. After that the next two years of that contract would increase at two and a half percent a year. So in any year we don't want a line item that's approximately two million dollars to increase by nine percent it's a far far better scenario than what we feared and what municipalities across the whole country were facing for a number of years. So you'll see that built in it is I think the largest you know single increase that you'll see in the budget but again overall good news for what we thought we might face at this time. Additionally much smaller in scale I wanted to mention that last year we had created to assist and work with our diversity equity and inclusion director a administrative staff position to help the director with her day to day. We have expanded the hours of that position and upgraded the position to make it an ADA coordinator position an American it's with Disabilities Act coordinator position so it's really the enhancement and expansion of an existing position to provide more professional and technical support to the DEI director. Those administrative tasks that had been performed by the administrative staff working with the DEI director will be now that burden will go to existing administrative staff within the health and human services department so that those needs will still be met for the DEI director. And then finally you will see the proposal for the creation of one new staff position which will be a ZBA full-time ZBA administrator and I guess in some ways it's actually expansion of hours of a very part-time ZBA administrative position that's existed for some time but with growing demands on the ZBA as well as growing applications going before the Harlington Historic Commission funding a position that could support the ZBA working both with the Inspectional Services and Planning Department was really the most needs-based request for funding that we received from all departments so we are proposing to fund that. What I'll share is that I think many have seen the workload the ZBA has taken on over past years dealing with the Thornhike Place 40B application there's another series of 40B applications in different periods of town that are expected to come forth over the course of the next several years so that workload appears to be continuing and we want to make sure that they do have the staff resources they need to meet those demands. Those are the points I wanted to touch on for FY23. Why don't I take a pause and then answer any questions there might be and then we can have Julie walk through her documentation. So are there any any questions let's try to keep them at a general level and not you know sort of debate the budget at this point Jonathan. Yeah Adam so we've been paying zero you said we're paying zero per ton for recycling with our current tenure contract is that correct? Correct. So is it possible to estimate if we're getting more than a we're getting a big jump next year in the overall rate um have you worked out effectively what we're now going to be paying for recycling per ton? So the way the contract is proposed it still does not have a tonage rate for recycling it's just an overall cost to the town um there's they they also came to us with an opportunity to have sort of a you know a win-lose proposition where if cost of recycling went down we would have lower costs but if they went up we'd have to bear them and ultimately we decided that stability was more preferable to us than risk from a budgetary point of view but the way again the way it's currently structured there there is still no tonnage cost for recyclables it's a it's a contractual cost that inflates in the first year and then just inflates at the two and a half and two and a half for the second year and third year. I guess my question is but for recycling would it be reasonable to assume that next year would go up at two and a half percent as it will in the following years and so the the difference between two and a half percent and whatever seven or eight percent that it's going up next year is attributable to effectively adding a tonnage charge for recycling? I think they would you know I think Jerem would say that some of it is addressing recycling costs that they have faced over the past several years and likely also reinvestment in the equipment they need to serve the community and probably also staff related costs that have changed beyond what they expected when they've been on a contract 10 years ago I think it's a collective total but they won't be weighing our recycling and then charging us based on how much they actually collect. Okay thank you. Of course. It needs to do here. Well it's another trash question and I don't know if it fits your general category Charlie but you know I'm wondering as I am want to wonder Adam whether or not you have considered or or done any thought work on switching our trash collection to a pay-as-you-throw model and what the financial implications of that would be and how that would coordinate with the coming override. We have given that a lot of thought there may be we still haven't made any final decisions yet we may come forward with a pretty minor proposal to have bulky items come at a cost instead of the one bulky item free every week for everybody that we currently have now. We're probably one of the last holdouts in the Commonwealth that you know does you know has you know the one free bulky item policy so that's not pay-as-you-throw but it is sort of a shift in the current cost model. We have also talked about limiting the amount of barrels so right now we have the the three barrels we've talked about going down to either a two or a one barrel scenario but we also haven't made any decisions about what we want to bring forward for the board's consideration in the future. I do think I'll just say I like the barrel limit model which reduces you know likely we would hope reduce cost versus the versus the buy a bag model because of our override scenarios here it just as always felt to me like risking an override for selling bags never never the value proposition was never there for me but but we have been talking about the various changes to the program itself to try to get at to get at the actual costs related to okay thank you. You're welcome. So Adam back to you and Julie. So I think George just raised his hand Charlie. Just a quick question on the ZBA position. Conceptually is it possible to think about changing the permit fees for these 40B and other applications so that we're not implicitly subsidizing impoverished developers who want to do 40B stuff in our in our community? Yes I think conceptually that is possible. I don't know off hand how we compare to other communities in what their filing fees and application fees might be but I think that that is something we can look at. Thank you. Of course. Anybody else am I missing hands here? I don't see anybody. Thank you Adam. Charge your head. All right so now I will turn it over to Julie who is the management analyst in the town manager's office to walk through the documentation that has been referenced several times already tonight. Great thank you. Okay so I'm gonna dive right in. So as Charlie had mentioned we provided two reports for all of you. So one was a budget explainer. This was suggested by a member of the finance committee so we put together a document that we wanted to highlight some of the changes that you'll notice in the budget. So I'm going to walk through just a couple that I wanted to call out for all of you. So the first is the cost of elections. So this was something that again had been brought up as sometimes causing confusion. So I wanted to show a little bit of the history behind the cost of elections in prior fiscal years. So this is just to explain how you might see fluctuation from year to year in the budget for elections. So you can just see that if there's going to be one election in that following fiscal year there is a lower budgeted amount. You can see with three elections we've got a higher budget. So this just explains for all of you why you're going to see a dramatic difference from year to year in that budget. I also wanted to mention that the election budget is now under the clerk and no longer under the select work. Also wanted to highlight that in the in the budget you might notice a couple of positions that are not new but they are fully funded outside of the general fund. So but we wanted to show them and show that that funding offset. So you'll see this is true in the planning community development department with the CWG administrator and it is also true for the council on aging transportation coordinator as well. We also wanted to mention that this year we have transferred money from the repair and maintenance line in the library police and fire budgets into the facilities department. So this is continued effort to move that maintenance of our buildings under the facilities department. I also wanted to highlight that you might notice fewer lines in the police budget this year. This is because they have consolidated a number of their budget lines. So we have rolled up prior year expenditures and the 23 budget but it will take up a little bit a little less room on the page than in prior years and this is why. And then the final thing that I wanted to touch upon here that a couple of the people had mentioned was ARPA funds. So in the budget you will notice that there are a number of positions and Adam actually called us out in his budget message on page five also but ARPA is covering a number of positions in HHS also in our diversity equity and inclusion division and also some of our clinicians in AYCC. So that's all I really wanted to highlight on that page. But then I also just wanted to quickly talk about the Munis report which we provided as supplemental to the budget. So the budget itself shows the 21 and 20 actual so the expenditures from each of the divisions or each of each of our departments for these two prior fiscal years. What you can see is the expenditures in that fiscal year from that year's appropriation. So in 21 natural resources was appropriated $335,000 for maintenance and in that in 21 they spent 200,000 of that of those dollars. Were you though to look at your supplemental report you'll see that natural resources in 21 had total expenditures of $271,000. So that's $70,000 difference is the difference of purchase orders prior year incumbrances from fiscal 20 primarily from fiscal 20. So the scenario might be that you have work in fiscal 20 that carries over into 21 and then some of those final expenditures or invoices are paid using that 20 incumbrance in fiscal 21. So that's what makes up that $70,000 difference. So that was just a quick example for all of you. So when you are looking if you are looking at this Munis report that's what you will see and you'll see it more so in our larger budget. So that's why I chose that DPW example because you know they're one of our larger budgets. So you might see some carried over expenditures when you're looking at this Munis report more often than you would see in some of our smaller departments. And that is all that I'll be highlighting tonight. Thank you, Julie. Anybody have any questions about either of these two reports for Julie? John Ellis. You're muted, John. Sorry. Maybe I missed it but we already have someone in the town with the title GIS director and systems analyst that's now being added to DPW. So is that a new job or transfer? A little bit of both. So Adam Kurowski is actually no longer an employee of the town. Okay. He left a couple months ago now he'd been doing part-time work for the town and I think he's going to shift for a limited period of time to just doing some contract contract work for the town to do some maintenance to the GIS system. So a few a few things actually happening. One the position that had existed in IT is going to become more of a direct project manager position for various IT initiatives that are being undertaken and the same classification of systems analyst director of GIS is going to live in DPW. To be focused primarily on helping DPW modernize its many systems but also serve as the manager of the town's GIS system for all departments. So in the end we'll have two tech people instead of one. Correct. That's terrific. Other questions for Julie or the manager or Sandy? I don't see any hands. Can I just say one thing? I'll be very brief but I know you all know what a great job Julie does on the budget and on the Capital Planning Committee. I don't know that you are aware that in this past year I said to Julie okay Julie the budget's yours this year. I threw in the water to see if she could swim and she swam wonderfully. So I really want to credit Julie with putting together this document with working with the departments with putting together information for me and Adam to review these documents but whereas in the past I would say this was my budget I think I have to say and congratulate Julie for this being her budget and so I want you all to know that. Thank you Sandy. Welcome to budget freedom. I'm glad to know who did the explainer because as soon as I saw it I thought this is a great document and as I mentioned to people earlier I think it's going to generate a lot of footnotes because I think a lot of these are important points that should be communicated to town meeting as they're reviewing the budget and I guess I'm assuming that something like this will be integrated into the budget document next year. I think it's an essential piece of it so congratulations. The budget document looks great and I think it's a great addition to it so thank you. Thank you. That's great because that former guy was impossible to deal with. Julie so just so I understand this in the natural resources that 200,000 for fiscal 21 that is only 2021 expenditures from the 2021 budget. It doesn't include carry over from 2000. That's correct. Thank you. Questions? This year you know this is the land that's really questioning these people for another three or four weeks we'll probably be fortunate enough to get them in before the end of the budget process here but this is a this is a good time to ask the tough questions. Right well Adam, Sandy, Julie thank you very much for your time. I know it's late and it's always very informative and we appreciate the the great work you do and I just would like to add a comment. I think I said this independently to Sandy and team a couple of weeks ago but I think the finance department output and quality of work is is as good as it's ever been in Arlington. I mean it's really at the top top level we it's been improving every year. We have strong people across the board Julie and Sandy and Eda and Treasurer. I mean it's I think we have a good the good team and it's it's a pleasure. Now now we just have to get the the expenses down but we'll worry about that in the next couple of weeks. Thank you very much for all your time tonight. Thank you too. Thank you all very much. Good night. Take care. Okay so we were talking about the budget schedule. Alan Jones could you pop that back up please? Could you expand it a little bit more please? Other way Alan let's make it bigger not smaller. Okay great. So I think we I think that David said that he and Sophie were going to have four budgets on the 9th and Makaya was going to try to have um to see if you could have the the request and and you can have the request on the 9th but we'll let us know. And I would assume David that the other two budgets we could do on the 14th. Yes yes hopefully answer your questions yes. Okay so then that brings us to Annie and Wanda on those budgets and the enterprise funds. What what do you think about that on the 14th Annie? So I'm going to shoot for the 14th. Wanda I have an email out to you to ask your availability to make to have calls with the department heads. Once I know that Charlie I will I'm sorry say it again Wanda. Oh no I didn't say anything I didn't get an email though when did you send that? Late today so if you don't have it by tomorrow morning let me know and I will resend it or you know we'll we'll find each other. Once Wanda and I are lined up I will get the department heads to tell me their availability and with luck I will be able to talk to all of the next week and we'll be ready for the 14th. Okay well let's leave it there for the time being. Darrell and John what do you think about the community safety on the 16th? So I have emails out to Chief Flaherty, Chief Callaway and Mike Champa from Inspections. Hopefully we'll hear back tomorrow or Friday. Asked for their availability next week. If we can meet with them next week then we should be able to make the 16th but it really depends on their availability. Okay so let's leave it there for the time being and go to the finance category. Al Tosti what do you think about the 28th? Keep it in mind that the chair has reduced my staff by 25 percent and that we can not do the insurance until mid to eight March and Brian Beck is wandering the desert of Arizona as we speak. We're meeting next week so I think we could probably get a good chunk of our budgets done by the 28th. Okay well we can't do the insurance right that's what anybody remember what that budget number is? Well let's 20 probably 24 25. Yeah yes so let's move the insurance out to the 14th of March. This is Bill Keller here. I think that might be a little bit too soon. I think that probably by that date that Karen Maloy will have the new rates so she needs time to put together the new budget. We have to meet with her and then present to the committee so I'd add at least another week to that. All right 21st. Aim for the 21st. Yeah so Arif on the minute man you've got to organize that with the superintendent and so let's leave it on the second but it's going to be dependent upon his availability. So let me ask a clarifying question there Charlie. So when you put that there on the second does that mean is that the presentation by Ed on the second or does the presentation have to happen prior to the second? Well I don't if we can get a budget I mean generally speaking I think in the past we've had Ed Boquone talk to the committee along with the CFO so that's I mean I think you should try to organize that get the information etc but if we're going to try to avoid cycling back and forth maybe just for the further big budget like that get get them to speak to us directly okay. No again let me clear I'm asking a different question perhaps but what what I'm saying is on the second when you put that there does that mean that second is when I should ask him to present or yes should be prior to okay got it that's all right all right yeah I mean but it's again if you know he might have a full committee meeting that night or something so yeah I don't know I'll transport it yeah I'll shoot for the second but and then me and from there based on all right thank you all right and then similarly Christine and George on what does it look like to get the DPW group of budgets by the second we can we will certainly try I know that Mike Rademacher traditionally is out of the office during the school vacation week so we'll have to try to do what we can before these or we'll have to finish up when he gets back but we can certainly try to aim for that okay okay and and thank you Christine and then Jonathan you were set to seven for the capital planning committee yep okay capital planning committee is on notice but that's the hearing date okay and and Dean is not here tonight so I'll separately check with him the March may March 9th may be too aggressive for the school department in the past it's been more in the later half of of March but let's I'll check with Dean to see what what he thinks so somebody had a comment oh you'll need to fit in the community preservation ah thank you you're right well yeah there's a whole series of articles and things we're going to have to put in there as well but I'm trying to address the budgets I'm getting those back slowly Charlie some of those warrant article responses okay I'll fill you in as I get people who are all right some more money so um so the big biggest change here is insurance budget to 21st and we were just in the first set of budgets so um the other thing that's happening on the 9th is as I mentioned last week um Dr. Holman and Mike Mason are going to come and give us a sort of a general overview of the state of the education of the our only two public schools uh department so um and I think that's going to be very helpful but you know I'm looking forward to hearing hearing what they have to say it's not going to be a budget review review meeting it's more going to be uh to give give us all an insight as to what's happening to the school department uh in the context of the covid problems what's happened um with the remote learning process that the kids have had to go through the last couple of years and how they're dealing with the pressures as it's ongoing um so I don't think we have any budgets or anything uh Charlie yes um thank you um I know you have great confidence in the I forgot to check on you I'm sorry didn't even have to check with me however however um I'm fine with that date yet as you probably were aware the insurance changes also change water and sewer so we would oh yes okay um well then I think we should put water and sewer then on the same night as we do insurance which would be the 21st is that good yes all right okay uh thank thank you Grant I uh I appreciate your confidence well you asked for the vote earlier tonight you want everybody to vote vote vote tonight so I figured it would be easy um so I'm gonna I'm gonna cancel uh the meeting on Monday night because we really don't have any business to address is that all right with everybody oh yes darn all right good so I think we're getting close to the witching hour here right I don't know what time goes uh Charlie yes can you just uh say which Monday night meeting is being canceled oh yeah the second Monday the second okay thanks I'm sorry you said the 7th 7th no I'm sorry uh oh March 2nd oh no no time out I'm sorry the 7th the Monday night of the 7th next Monday next Monday okay the of February okay thank you I'm sorry I said this I mean I meant 7th uh Charlie can I publish I'll publish an updated list Charlie could I could I make a um an informational point sure David um for the folks that are unaware the select board and the town manager have negotiated and extended the town managers he has a new contract and a new contract goes into effect on uh 2 11 22 so it's a brand new it's a three-year contract and there has been some changes in his present contract but I just wanted to bring that to everybody's attention as of uh he'll be in a new working contract as of February 11 do you know if they're going to ask for a reserve fund transfer I do not know that but I will ask that of when we meet with the uh on the manager's budget I'll ask that okay um yes I'm sorry so Mark very thank you for catching me on that um Tara yes the meeting that we're canceling is on the 7th of February Monday night awesome thanks the 9th is we'll be our next meeting okay um we what time are we at here 9 40 9 I don't think we have any other business tonight um is anyone is there any other business anybody wants to bring up then I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved a little all in favor I think we'll discuss with the vocal thank you very much have a great evening and we'll see you on Wednesday February 9