 So I want to call the Finance Committee meeting of May 26, 2023 to order. It's about three minutes after one o'clock. This is posted for one o'clock meeting. And I'm going to ask the members who are present to confirm that they can hear me heard. In a moment, I just want to remind everybody that this meeting is being held by zoom members of the public have access to the meeting. And it's also on Amherst media. Please be advised that this meeting is being recorded both visually and for voice so that everyone who's involved in the meeting, including attendees are aware of that. So going through members. Anna present. Lynn present. Think Bob. It's not here. Moment. That's not here Bernie present. It's not here. I'm here and we're waiting to see if Felicia will join us too. So Bob is here. Sorry, I'm late. So why don't we start seeing if attendees wish to offer public comment. I know that there's one attendee who's on the phone so if you're on zoom, please raise your hand if you're on the phone. You raise your hand by going star nine. And if you'd like to make public comment, then we will bring you to the meeting so that you can do that. Hello, could you please identify yourself and go since and then any matter that's committee. It's me, Andy, it's Matt, I tried texting Lynn, I'm sorry, I'm out of, I'm out of range. I'll get. But I'm here and I'm present. Okay. So we now can confirm your presence and that you can be heard so Matt is here we have one more member of the committee present. And the, if the other person who's on wishes public comment. The person can raise their hand and bring them to the room and otherwise. We should go on to the meeting as we planned. So seeing the request. So we're just going to go on with the meeting. Real quickly, Andy, Matt, we're just going to leave you able to mute and unmute yourself, and you do star six to raise your hand and unraise it. Okay. Any, any other instructions. Did you need Matt. Yes. Matt, are you all set. Yeah, I'm all says my hand raise. I'm sorry. No, it's not. And you can. You're good. Okay. So what we wanted to do today, and I will, if another member of the committee joins us, I will repeat this request, but what we first need to do is identify the section so we separately want to talk about. And we could talk about them because there's a motion that is anticipated that needs to be made during the meeting for consideration. Because in the end, we would presumably make a motion to recommend the budget as proposed except for any areas in which we have stated exceptions or added additional comments. As you consider, whether you want to add any sections for discussion, they don't necessarily have you don't necessarily have to follow it with emotion to take any particular position. But if you think that there are special comments that you would like the committee to be making about a budget section, even if it isn't going to be a motion to reduce or change the amount of the budget itself. It's worth having that information. So, why don't we start there and I'm going to, as I said before, begin by saying the one that I will add to the list automatically is the elementary school budget. And I want to specifically acknowledge that the school committee has made a request that we consider adding amount of $84,000 to the recommended budget and that that needs discussion at this meeting. So, are there other sections. Not from, not from my point of view, but I didn't hear. As you know I missed a couple of the meetings. Okay. Just say, I, if other members of the, we have, I guess Alicia is still not with us. So she joins, so I will re ask the question. Lynn has her hands up. And it looks like Matt is trying to contact us. I would like to have make some comments but not make changes with regard to DPW. Okay, so DPW and and it actually ekes over into capital. Okay, I'll put both of them down. Before you can tie them together, whichever you want. My suggestion is, is anyone trying to contact Alicia? I have. I have not heard back from her. Okay, well, let's go ahead and let's talk about the school budget first. And we have a pretty good sense of what the. Request was, and Allison was very clear about how they came to the $84,000. And it was not tied to one of the specific positions. But there was a, at least an implication that it would allow them to add back, possibly one position of the ones that were supposed to be eliminated for classroom teachers. And just a reminder that the $84,000 was calculated and I actually went through the exercise of pulling out the numbers and doing this myself. And, you know, it is absolutely correct. That if you, if you were to take the amount that's between two and a half to 3% increase. The section, the amounts that were added for the element are for the town departments operating budgets and the library operating budget. And you proportionately divide that between the regional schools and the elementary schools, the part that's attributed to the elementary school would then be $84,000. And that was what she said, and that is correct number for my calculation. So I just want to point that out. So Kathy, you hand us up. Yeah, as you know, I missed that discussion and I didn't go back and I apologize. I didn't go back and watch the zoom. So just to repeat what you said, it's designated for staffing. It was not designated for salaries at all. So it was not at all on a increase the para professional pay. It was around a staffing potential staffing position. That's the way they are the school committee articulated 84,000. That's a question. I'm sure that it was exactly said that way. That was an implication, but I'll say I'll give a response and see if Sean agrees. Or had a different interpretation. What came up was is the superintendent said that the additional amount. Of the, the was recommended by the town manager. The additional half percent between two and a half and 3%, just roughly 118,000 I believe that he wanted to not designate that for expenditure immediately, but to put it into a salary reserve pending negotiations. And then the other piece that was added by the school committee was not necessarily tied to that. And the, I don't recall that there was a specific statement about how the $84,000 would be used. How it was calculated and a very strong statement about. The breadth of the cuts that were being proposed to. By cutting two classroom teachers, I believe it was four paralegals and including three library. I mean paraprofessionals and three library paraprofessionals. And so that's where they were, where I tied it together. Matt, your hands up. I think I just a quick comment, Andy, which is. It's always helpful to have the background, the context on the school budget. But I think we all know that, you know, we kind of, we approve a bottom line amount and then it's up to the, you know, the superintendent ultimately at their discretion. So I feel confident if you, if you ran that comparison that Allison made, and you feel confident that this is sort of our fair share against the regional school districts allotment. And to me, I'm supportive of that without getting to the details of where I was getting paid, you know, out of which account. I don't think that's our really our purview. And now it is, and I agree that ultimately anything that we as a town provide to the schools that's up to the schools to make that decision through their own processes. Sean. Yeah, and. You know, ultimately the school committee did not decide to ask for the additional funds at the regional level. They only decided to ask for it at the elementary level, which I, you know, thought was interesting that they weren't going to ask the other member towns to contribute more. But they would go to the elementary school for it. So just interesting that they didn't ask for it at the region, which, you know, has similar financial. Issues this year is the elementary school. Yeah. I was wondering about this stuff. When they built the budget, the funding for the budget, where they're looking at the original house one. Chapter 78 versus what is now being debated and discussed in conference committee. At the elementary level, they don't, they don't worry about revenues so much. They just worry about whatever guidance we give them. Yeah. At the regional level, they certainly look at chapter 70 and regional transportation aid, but at the elementary level. They get an allocation from us. So we look, we are concerned about that and our original 2.5%. You know, was based on the was based on the house actually was based before we got the governor's budget. So, so the question is, is it with, with the changes that have happened in the budget process right now? Or is the elementary schools likely to get. $84,000 or some portion thereof. In state aid. No, the state aid comes to the town that doesn't come. Yeah, this is, yeah, for the elementary level comes to us. It comes to us. Right. But it's, it's earmarked. No, it is not earmarked. Well, it kind of is, but we give so far above and beyond what we get from the state that we never have to worry about it. Yeah, there's a certain amount we'd have to spend on schools related to the chapter 70 formula. But again, we're many time, you know, much, much more than that. So, so again, the change with the present allocation. From the Commonwealth. Assuming nothing changes conference committee is there, is there more than. What was originally projected for chapter 70? I haven't, I haven't looked recently. So I don't know. So when we, when we went to the 3%, we factored in some of the positive changes that have come out of the budget proposal so far. Going from 30, you know, depending where the final budget and between $30 per pupil or $60 per pupil, that might be a little bit more money, but to the tune of about $30,000. But again, the, you know, our long practice that serve the town. Well, in terms of budgeting is that that goes to the town. We review all of our revenue sources and then we, we allocate what we feel is sort of enough. A sustainable operating budget increase to each department, the the region, the elementary schools, library and town. Okay. Thanks. I'm going to frame this as a question rather than as a general suggestion of what to do. So could we word this that to the extent that the chapter of 70 funds come in higher than what we have in the budget, in the budget guidelines, we recommend that the town manager consider what can be done to address the school committee request without saying all of it. So I left it that they wouldn't, the town manager wouldn't have to come back to us that we would be recommending the council this kind of wording. So can we do wording with that? And Sean, I understand that typically the town manager has full discretion. So it might say if, you know, 20,000 30,000 more comes in, it could be spread everywhere. So I'm just asking that. Could we word it in this way? And would that be too restricted? Or can we word it that we're, it's a recommendation rather than a directive. I think it's okay if I respond to that, Andy. Yeah, I mean either one of us could go ahead. You know, if more money comes in, the town manager can't just spread it out. It has to go through the appropriation process. Just like any other, you know, once the budget set. But I think that what the town manager's done in the past, and I imagine he would be open to as well as when we get to the fall, if revenues are, you know, materially better than what we were expecting them to be, consider a supplemental appropriation or some action like that, like we did last year. And again, if chapter 70 comes in $20 or $30,000 more. When you think about the grand scheme of a $90 million budget, there's a lot of pluses and minuses that could happen throughout the year. But last year, the governors, the final state budget was materially better because they doubled the amount of unrestricted general government aid. So again, if something like that happens, I think the town manager would take that into consideration in the fall again. And what we're, what was being described is kind of, I would say long standing town policy because when I was on the finance committee, which Bernie was before you were on the finance committee, we certainly had these discussions at that time, and no sort of relying the lines of recognizing that the minimum required attribution from municipality to municipality that we were so far above and beyond that. And we were obviously using tremendous amounts of other revenue, including property taxes that the chapter 70 amounts were just treated as a revenue source and not separately accounted for in the calculation. And so we have been, I think, historically giving for each portion of the operating budget and equal percentage increase and that, you know, we're not bound to that, but it is what we'd say is long standing practice. And that's what we're trying to do. And that's what we're trying to do. And that's what we're trying to do. Matt. Thanks. Yeah, I'll speak to that. I mean, I just briefly, I agree that. Chapter 70 is one more revenue source for, for our community. I would say it's not. Minimum net spending just is not going to be really super relevant for us. Thankfully, I would say, but Sean, can you clarify? Maybe I would got confused by what Andy was. Can you clarify? So the. So the explanation for why we went up. But not to the regional could you, could you just reiterate that? So Allison. McDonald made the case to us that we, we should be making an 84,000 or proportionate increase. But proportionate to what then? Yes. So the, the $84,000 increase. Was only to the elementary school request or to the, to the guidance that was given to the schools, not to the region. So the region there, what they voted came in right on the guidance that was given to them. And then they took the value of a half percent increase, which is what we kind of came out with as a secondary guidance, was an additional half percent. They took that value. And then they pro rated it sort of based on the elementary share of total education spending versus the regional share of total educational spending. I think originally the plan was to, you know, request more funding at both levels, which would make sense why they did it that way. But ultimately they didn't decide to do that at the regional level. So the guidance that, that half percent guidance came out of town manager's office. Is that correct? Yeah. So the, we sent an email out. And I apologize. I may not have included you, Bob and burning. I should have. But I forget exactly what month it is, but we issued our original guidance. And then when we saw the governor's budget, we came out with an extra half percent because we felt the, the revenues, we, we updated our revenue projection with the, the numbers there. Okay. So I mean, I, I find that compelling, but I also, you know, would like to hear the rationale behind that. The one other thing I was to say, just a general cautionary tale, you know, typically in the past, the governor's budget has been sort of the low point and, and Senate House billed upon that. It doesn't, you know, now that we have a democratic governor, we don't know if that will be the case. And there were some things that were lower in the house's budget than in the House's budget. And I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, I think that we're lower in the house's budget than in the governor's budget, which is an interesting twist because that hasn't always the, the past history for recent history hasn't been that way. So it's just one of those sort of assumptions that we take for granted that we have to consider, will it always be the low point going forward? Yeah. So I also got the impression that they felt. That by the time this was communicated. The regional budget was very close to be being set, discussed in the four towns and already met and agreed to the guardrails and everything else. And so I, that was my sense of why they didn't come in for the regional, along with all the other pieces that Sean and Andy have mentioned. I mean, the way we dealt with this in the past is we've said that when we have, when we certify our, and obligate our free cash and just keep wanting to not use the word free cash because of the conversations we've had. That we consider giving more to the schools that that's what we did last year. When we did that, as you may recall, we actually did give more to the regional schools, but we had to give it as a gift. Because. If we gave it as part of our appropriation, then the other partners in the regional school would have had to do the same. So that's how we handled it last year. I think the, the thing that still is unsettling for me in this whole discussion is the fact that we don't have a contract. We don't have a contract. We don't have a contract. We don't have a reason to contract yet with the AP EA. And so. We're not really clear what salary levels are there. Are going to be there. And. This. So that's part of the reason why. If we're going to do anything, I would prefer we do it. When we have free cash. We're not going to be fooled by the last couple of years where we've had really high certified free cash. I just don't know that we're going to be looking at those levels of numbers. Like we saw in the past. I think. You know, just. The implication of what. The school committee position was on it is. That their. Needs are so great. That they should have gotten the entire increase. That was being given out between. Two and a half and three percent in the. The second part of that implication is then that the library and the town departments. Should have been just held to the two and a half percent increase so that they could be. Getting a little bit higher than the three. I think it takes them up to like 3.1. Something percent of our college. It wasn't a huge difference, but. That was, you know, the implication was that. Their need was greater and. You know. I don't know the. We really felt comfortable. I guess I should put it in my terms only. That I felt comfortable going there because I think that. It undersells some of the stress that is. On other town. In library departments, I can't speak for the library, but. Looking for it, the municipal departments, I was comfortable with that conclusion. But. I understand that there was that argument and. I think that that is part of. The reason the. Town manager proposes that. As soon as we get past the budget that we. Convene. That he can be in a group. That is a combination of. School and. Municipal. To talk about. What is the. Plan for funding and education and. Recognizing the high stress and education and how we're. Dealing with that. Sean might have a better sense of that. His hands up anyway, so. Yeah, no, I was just going to say exactly what you're referencing, which I think the town manager's approach is. It seems like this request. It wasn't initially in the superintendent's budget. It seemed like it was sort of a. That night of the meeting type thing. And so I think the town manager's approach is that he acknowledges there. There are struggles there, especially at the regional level. They've been there for. For several years. Which is why we're proposing this group. And we're going to probably get started. As soon as school gets out. We'll start meeting with school folks and town folks to start having a broader plan, which again, I, you know, we chose our words carefully and what was being proposed. It may include more revenue in the future. You know, there may be a time in the for the upcoming cycle where. The school increases larger than the town increase for a certain period of time. But I think the thought process is. That's a good idea. If it gets us to a place where the schools get to a sustainable level. And so there's going to have, there's another side of that where we have to look at efficiencies. And so if we can do that, we'll be able to get those efficiencies, possibly some more revenue for a few years and get them to a balanced place. Where we're not having this sort of annual discussion. I mean, there's always going to be years where there's. Reductions to be made. But I think this year. Because of the grant impacts. You know, both districts are looking at larger than typical. Or larger than we'd like to see. Reduction. So. That's the, the plan is to come up with a balanced approach to get those efficiencies. To address this sort of systematically as opposed to this. It kind of feels like kind of a one year bandaid. So I guess. Where we are at is that. We can leave it. That. Without no motion, but just to report that we had the discussion. Or somebody can make a motion and go either way. I'm not. Feeling strongly on the. On that question, but I. I do want to. Include in the report, at least a brief statement that we've had this discussion with. Where were we. The kinds of issues we raised during the discussion. But if we end up with a motion to adopt the budget as recommended by the town manager, it sort of is a recommendation. So we'll be encompassed in the final motion. So anything more to be said on schools, otherwise I want to turn it to. When to ask, go, which he wants to discuss with TPW and capital, which was the two that she had raised. When go ahead. I don't want this to sound harsh, but it's going to. Okay. I want a five year aggressive plan to get ahead of our road problem. Whenever we brought this up. We hear. Well, it's state money and we can only get so many contractors. Somebody needs to be thinking outside the box. I've heard this from Matt. I've heard it from other people. I'm not even getting a response to reporting on plot holes right now. So it's, it's beyond. What our community can continue to tolerate. And so. My request is not a budget request. In this year's budget, it is, you are going to hear this from me again when we get to. You know, I don't know if this is a free cash certification, but it is to think more broadly and in a more long-term vision. Of how we get ahead of this problem. Thank you. Yeah. Just very quickly. A question or suggestion, which is to me. This requires maybe, I don't know. Does our town. Town council, that's an honest question for the council. I mean, you know, this, to me, this is the sort of thing that will require obviously a lot of work on, you know, on town staff, but, but I think, you know, really engaging with the community and, and sort of building community will around this, because it will be expensive. I mean, you know, even if we can come up with the most creative thing that has regional cost sharing, everything else, it's going to be expensive. And I just think there's a, there's a, you know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of political component to it that I, that, that I think we would really need because, you know, it is such a. Expensive proposition and complicated too. I'm, I'm very comfortable with making us, that is a strong recommendation. I also think that we've asked repeatedly. And I understand the reasons why it changes, but a schedule so that people can understand. What's coming next. So it's instead, we're pleasantly surprised when certain potholes are fixed. And see here, click work. Sometimes it works, particularly for some voices. So, so just more of a plan. And I'm just going to give you the most recent example. There's, there's work being done on North Pleasant street. It's just below the intersection where there's a movement of the bus station. There's some stuff marked for sidewalks. And it came as a complete surprise to everyone whose house is there. And so they have been writing to the town manager that they're seeing the markings and there's a plan for, and I think it came before the council, Lynn at some point, but we never completely agreed to what, and it's, it's not fixing a chronic problem. It's in making an improvement. So I'm just thinking just the plant, the plan should be more transparent on what's going to happen next, rather than a few residents saying, Oh, it looks like you're planning on doing some work. What is the work you're planning on doing? So, and it wasn't cheap work. So I just want to say it was intensive work. So I think it would be a really useful piece. Because there's some inexpensive things people are asking for, even a, whether it's a speed hump or slowing of, or slowing of traffic policy that we don't really ever know when anything is going to be addressed, let alone a five year plan. So I'm comfortable with making a statement like that. Well, well, we do have the town. And I, I spent a couple of years sitting on the transportation advisory committee. So some of these improvements are a surprise. They're stuff that's been discussed by the TAC, with DBW and there they are intended to make life easier in terms of traffic movement and safety and, and there's a variety of other things. So you have the situation, you have improvements versus maintenance versus repairs. We have a pavement management plan would be helpful to have that pavement management plan on pieces of it get posted, but have it, have it out there so that people understand what's going on and understand which parts of the pavement management plan are intended to continue to repair the roads, maintain the roads and which pieces of our improvements that people would like to see would make life easier, make life safer, but might get overwhelmed by, you know, the need to basically repair big sections of the road. I don't have, you know, I can certainly support putting together a plan like this. And I think it might be actually helpful. If there were a clear set of priorities for DBW, this is what you, you know, this is what you work on. They operate in sort of a crazy quilt situation where you've got MassDOT coming up with all sorts of wonderful grant programs that don't necessarily meet the maintenance and repair needs that the town has. And they're tempted to go for those because they help, they help the town. So sitting down and setting some priorities would be a good thing. Taking a look at what we have in place right now to do pavement management would be a good thing. And so I can certainly, I can certainly support that, but folks also have to recognize that in terms of the ability to do this work, we have a limited number of options companies with the machines and the crews and supply of materials. So once we get a plan and once we get a plan in place, five-year plan in place, there are going to be some difficulties in implementing it based on how competitive the world is at that point in time. And I'm also thinking right now that, you know, we've got the infrastructure funding that's coming down from the feds. That's going to, that's going to be competing with us in our ability to actually hire companies that can do this. They do these kinds of repairs. So, you know, let's, by all means, let's sit down and set some priorities and let's take a look at what we do have, what we do have for a plan right now. Yeah. Bernie, I just want to, I just want to make sure that you mentioned a tech tech has directly reported that their advice and their policy papers aren't always being followed either. Yeah. So I'm just saying that it's, you know, so when I say the, the residents were surprised, tack is sometimes surprised that there was. I certainly agree with that. And the TAC folks work very hard. I mean, you know, we, we spent a lot of, when I was there, we spent a lot of time walking around and looking at things. And people are very careful and planful. And there's some real expertise in that committee. And no, the committee's not always listened to. And that was a constant complaint that I could certainly voice it. That, you know, attack would, would come up with recommendations and try to push stuff up the ladder and it wouldn't go anywhere. Yeah. So I was just saying that that my point was a more transparency, both on roads and on other work that we know what's coming. So instead of people being surprised. So I'll just, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to call on Lynn. I had a time out on transparency thing, but I wanted to go ahead and if Lynn go first. Let me just add, I believe that this year. I believe that the, the. The D.P.W. went further by sharing the road assessments that we have. That's part of the plan. And understanding what's out there. But I firmly believe that if. We have a five year plan and we go out and shop that five year plan, whether it's by ourselves or with others in the region. And then you create an incentive for the existing companies to gear up. And, but if we don't do something, we're gonna be driving on dirt roads in much of our town. I mean, there's just no question about it. So. Yeah, my one time I was gonna be in discuss back to what I've heard from Guilford Bar and Jason Skeels, both is that they will make changes in a plan if they have reason to and the example that they give is that if they see a road that is beginning to deteriorate, but they can intervene now and do it with less costly repair than if they wait a year and then it becomes so bad that they just have to do the total reconstruction of the road, which is a lot more expensive that they may take the opportunity to do the lesser work before more deterioration sets in. And I think that they've come and they say that because they're a little bit hesitant to advertise to the public that we're gonna do your street in 2026 because if 2026 rolls along and they had to make those changes for that reason, then they get tons of comments from the people who are affected, but you promised my road. And that that's part of why they've been resistant to a real specific plan, Anna. Yeah, Andrea, you brought up a point I was thinking about too of the promising of dates, right? We know that things fluctuate so fast that we will either run out of time or money or both often. And so I think that it was, I think something that's sticking with me, Lynn, is in hearing this, is thinking about the presentation that we got from Jason Skills at TSO last year and we're asking them to come back to TSO in the near future. And so it might be appropriate actually to call that as a joint meeting of the council if enough counselors are interested to really get into this topic. I think that that's a good starting place for it. And I also found it really helpful to see the formula that they were using to classify road conditions too because it helped me when talking to residents about the problem and how things were prior to being prioritized and the fact that there is a metric, that it's not just squeakiest wheel, it's most broken axels. So that's my terrible joke on road conditions and I will stop there. But I do think that it would be helpful to bring this to that particular meeting with Jason and to call it as a joint meeting of the council. Lynn? Calling it as a joint meeting of the councils up to the chair of the committee, which is fine with me. I think that would be a good place to start. I also wanna make sure people understand that our plans are plans and then they get adjusted just like strategic plans get re-looked at every year. Right now, it's not clear to me, we have a plan and it's not aggressive enough to do what we need to do. That's my bottom line. So where Bob has written the draft of DPW section, so I appreciate that I've received several drafts already. And maybe what I should do is take a look at it and maybe bring Lynn into taking a look at it too. And so that we see if we can incorporate some of this concept that we're talking about today, but along the lines of adding the recommendation that came from the discussion about developing a long-term and aggressive plan on dealing with our road problems and the possibility of taking this back to TSO with the next TSO discussion making that a open to all counselors, so that all counselors can participate in this very important discussion. And of course, other members of the finance committee should be invited into that too. And see how that flows because the idea was is to take today's discussion if it didn't involve a specific motion like changing amounts that we would try and incorporate it into the report, we can get it so that we'd be discussing a draft report on the 30th. If that's the plan, we should just keep going with it. So let me go back to people who've raised hands and Sean, why don't you go first? Oh, I was just gonna say everything sounds, all this sounds good. I would say a lot of it sounds like things that should probably be in the town manager's goals for the fall. But I think this year's budget proposal which the recommendation primarily relates to is the largest ever investment in roads. So, and I think the comments are probably more to the capital improvement program and what you see coming down the road as not being sufficient. So I think everything sounded good and just don't lose sight that there wasn't a lot in the last round of goals for town manager around roads and sounds like that should be a emphasis for the next round. Bob, you've muted Bob, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I did put a section on roads in my write up. I basically put down that we've got a $40 million deficit if basically it needs to be filled. There were sort of three ideas kind of floated. One was to borrow the money and, you know, pave the roads. The second was to have a in-house crew that basically would pave roads as needed. And the third, I think was Matt's suggestion that we kind of create or work with other towns, create a regional demand for roads that would overcome this evidently, evident problem that we have, which is a lack of asphalt production, a lack of train crews in the private sector that everyone's competing for. And so that's just gonna drive prices up and you're not gonna be able to get, even if we had $40 million to spend, there's no way we could get $40 million worth of asphalt in a certain amount of time. So we have a real serious problem here. That's what I put, and I sort of put that, maybe we should discuss this regional option more because it seems to be the only path forward. In other words, if you create a demand for more asphalt, maybe the private sector will build another plant or build more plants. But I agree, it's a real problem. I drive on old farm road. Well, I don't even drive on old farm road anymore. It's just one section there is just all potholes. There's no road left. It'd be better off to just throw a bunch of dirt down on top of the potholes, at least it would be better surface for a few days. So, it's a real problem. And I don't see where we're gonna get $40 million to solve this problem unless we cut it somewhere else or raise taxes. I mean, we don't have, that's what our choices. So, it's a real problem. I do think it requires a lot of attention. And I'd be happy to upgrade the way I wrote or have other people edit it and make more emphasis on this. Thanks. I recognize Bernie and then I have a question I'm gonna ask Sean after that. You just, as an aside, while I was managing Deerfield, we permitted and had built an asphalt plant, which is where I got an unwanted but necessary introduction to making asphalt. And what's happened is over time, the big companies like Allstate have just rolled up a lot of the small providers and smaller companies. And so it's become more agalopolistic. At any rate, I'm also wondering how much MassDOT could help with this. One of the big problems for any contractor is lining the job up, getting all the crews and everything in place, mobilizing for the job. And you frequently, you drive through where the roundabout's gonna be built now by Marlene, you see equipment sitting there. And that's a mobilization issue. And so if we're gonna do, if we could work with MassDOT, if we could work with some contiguous communities to give companies a break in terms of the time it takes to mobilize and the cost it takes to mobilize, that would be one way that we could move this along, I think it's probably easier said than done, but we haven't tried as far as I know. And I think it's a good idea to do that. The idea that the town would have its own paving crew, you're looking at a serious capital investment, serious, serious capital investment in the equipment that it takes to do that work. And you're also looking at a hiring crew people who are specialized in doing that. So I don't see that as a, it's a thought, but I don't see it as a way forward. I do agree that our present situation is really unsettling. And I need to say if something moves along and I won't bore anybody with my David's quote about picking up the trash and filling the puddles. You actually triggered an interesting additional piece so that's what I was going to ask Sean and then like it, so let me get through that. That is whether it'd be worth talking with an MMA about whether the MMA would want to consider asking for greater mass DOT participation in the process for all municipalities so that there's a crew that's actually a publicly created crew that we then have a greater control on this municipalities and the greater claim on. I don't know if that would work or not. The question I was going to ask you Sean is that we also have the reality that people who have substantial damage to vehicles because they've driven over roads that are in poor repair and we've had prior knowledge of that problem and it then causes damage to a vehicle. People can make insurance claims. Is there any information available either through the treasurer's office or through from the insurance company about the total amount of those claims that are paid in any given period of time? Yeah, I'm sure we get a report annually on all our claims, whether it be from that type of submission or some others. So yeah, we have that information. I wonder if it would be worth giving that information and adding it to the record of this discussion. I'll see if I can find it while the guys are talking. Matt? Oh, I don't want to go too far down this path but I realize since the ideas are getting floated and the attribution, but I will just say that I have some experience in the public sector and totally unrelated kind of field, but sometimes going private, contracting the work out obviously is this huge expense but you're not saddled with long-term, the expenses of long-term operation. But I was just gonna say that my initial suggestion was actually that if we were able to create a crew that we could set aside some percentage of that crew's working time to be a revenue stream or with other communities. And I realized that you wouldn't be able to totally offset the cost of that. And I realized you'd get complaints about people saying, well, why is Amherst crew working? But it can become a revenue source as well as an in-house asset. That being said, I'm not actually advocating for the idea, I just wanted to kind of articulate this brainstorm idea. And I do think since Bob is gonna include some of these ideas in his draft, I just wanted to kind of lay that out a little bit more clearly because I think I was not exactly what I had said. But yeah, I think that this requires some political will and frankly, just a larger political consensus on how to move forward, thanks. So if there's nothing else, Sean comes up with something, come back to it. Is there anything else that anybody wants to say? And let's just show you, give it a, just give it a try to what Bob has written and just see if it covers it sufficiently or what changes we would buy one to make and I'll work with Bob and whoever else to try and get that done. Pat, just do your hands still up, Lynn. I want to thank people for the conversation and the fact that we're already down the road of including it in the report. And I want to give Bernie the award for the most unusual word I've heard in a meeting. Okay, so let me bring up one other topic unrelated to all of this because Alicia, or Kathy, I see your hand up before I had enough. That's okay, this is just since I'm playing catch-up. My section, I just want to cross-check with Bernie. I think my section is conservation planning, inspection and Bernie's taking general government, is that correct? Even though I sent in all those questions, good. So, well, all those questions, yeah, all those questions are helpful. But Andy got my drafts yesterday and I did the general government piece, so. So the comment I want to make because I did that extra section and this is I wanted Andy somewhere at the beginning of the report to talk about, and I'll talk about it in my section, but there we're working staff double time in the town, in town. Many people are performing more than one job and we've been working short staff in the planning department just because we were down too. So I want to do that the town staff is amazing, but also just put in a plug that we had this longer run problem with market wages and turnover and it's cutting across departments. We just, the town, I don't have any idea whether it was a salary issue, Sean, but our public health director just resigned and she's been here maybe a year, but there's been several of them and we've had turnover in other positions. So I just wanted, it's an overarching point because we've heard a lot from the schools, but we haven't heard a lot from DPW and engineers and town staff, both on the way people are working. So the question of not new positions, but just making sure we're using the people and our resources well is cutting across my three areas, but I think it cuts across all of these to make it a general piece rather than any particular department. So that was just, I don't know how to work that in, but it's a cross-cutting piece that particularly when I heard where we have the department of one on sustainability that we make it work because more people are working on sustainability. It's not just one person, but the fact that we do teams effectively is a good model. I have no criticism of it, but I just wanted to make that remark. So. Really? Yeah, real quick. I mentioned in my report concerns about staff turnover competition from other sectors. And I really agree with what Kathy said. I think it's a challenge. I think we have people who are working very hard and we need to take a good look at how we're organized and so I'm just very supportive of what she said. Yeah, I just want to echo this. I also put in a piece in the DPW on this and it's an issue, I agree. I think we should elevate it as a major issue the town has to face and it cuts across all departments. And I think I put it kind of plainly speaking or simply speaking, people can get better jobs in the private sector or bigger towns, period. And as long as we have that situation, we're not going to get a stable workforce. It's just not going to happen. So I agree, it's a problem that we should elevate. I do get the sense that we're not alone in Amherst that other municipalities are facing the same thing and that's MMA is well aware of it. No, I agree, but I think it's important for the whole council to see this coming from finance and with the council to do it. So, I was told that in the town manager's discussion with whoever it was, they came in with seven positions to add and said, what if we can only do one? Which would you pick? And they said, seven. So just to make this that what we're doing is pretty amazing with the staff we have but to be aware of the challenges and I would use those words across the board. Okay, thank you. I think that is good enough, thank you. So the other section that I was hoping that Alicia would be joining us because I think that this was what I would have thought might be her issue and Anna's going to be writing this the DP, the public safety section. And there was discussion that we had during the presentation of those departments about where we're going with crest staffing and the importance of not least from the police departments report the consequences of any reduction in police department and trying to just recognize both. I was hoping that she would be here which I didn't want to raise the question again with. But I don't know, I'll leave it to you as to whether you feel comfortable enough now to write your section or whether there's anything that you would like input from the committee on. I think, I don't know if Kathy wants to, I'll respond quickly. Andy, my plan was to take a stab at it, finishing it. I'm working on it today and sending it to you and getting any feedback from you. But I think that I don't have any questions for the committee at this point. And I, yeah, we're gonna see how it goes. Okay, thank you. Kathy. And this was again one I missed but I will read your draft on it because one of the things I think is, I believe in understanding the potential use and staffing for peak loads. So I don't think we know enough yet with crest and those were some of the questions I really set in on where we're developing a program. And I'm one of my concerns, it's not a big concern but at one presentation that we don't wanna take over the work that volunteers have been doing for years. Particularly around senior center, meals on wheels, delivering meals on home visits where it makes chess. And when I was looking at some of the volunteer work for meals on wheels and since they're all in the bank center, there's a great tendency to say we can help, we can jump in but that says crest. But it also means that people are sitting there right now, there's not a demand on their time. And so we just need to be careful because the senior center for years has run with a very robust volunteer program on home visits, wellness visits, meals on wheels that they don't do it with their own staff. So that would be when I read it, I think it would be premature to know exactly how we will need to be staffed until we get enough of a flow kinds of tasks they're doing and the demands on their time. So that's my going in before I heard a conversation, comment on it. And I watched it, and I should just say out of my healthcare background from years ago when nurse practitioners and physician assistants were still first coming in and people were figuring out what they could do, it took practices a while to figure out how that interacted with physicians and to what the right teams were in terms of tasks and things. And so it took not just a while, not like a few months, but a while. So, and this is a whole different world that we're working on. I'll stop. Bernie. Yeah, we have to say what does the data tell us? And right now we don't have any data. If you look at the original report that promoted the staffing was basically hospital shifts. I used to have to do draft staffing reports for community residences. And there was no concept of dynamics staffing and having staffing to meet need. There was just a model that where there were some arithmetic errors, I think Sean will record, remember my email to him saying, this doesn't add up. Because it doesn't, it didn't. So I think we really need to be careful with this. We have to avoid mission creep. We have to look at the data. I think Lynn said this a couple of meetings ago, we really need to have an evaluation. So let's not go anywhere until we've had it. We've got a competent director. We apparently have competent staff. Let's let it settle in, let's get some data and then make some decisions on where to go and not try to find extra things for Crest to do. The other thing is, is that we're assuming that the response times and the availability of our police officers at the present level of staffing is acceptable. And it may not be. And if Crest can relieve, say as Kahootz does and the other side of the country, 10 to 15% of the calls, we should be relying on that to make our police department more effective and more efficient and more responsive. You look at it as a package as opposed to one versus the other. Thanks. Thanks, Bernie. I use shorthand of peak load staffing, but that's exactly what I meant that you just don't staff up. You actually know what the demand is and the data patterns, time of day, types of services. And we are really so early in all of this. Very early. Yeah, there's a dozen different ways to do that. There's software available now to do that instead of having to sit down with a schedule and do things by hand. And that's what we really need to understand because we're going to be investing a lot in people. And so we want to make sure that we have the right people at the right place at the right times and not just sitting around on the dog watch wondering if anything can happen. So, yeah. Hey, I don't know much else to say on the subject. I mean, the other thing that I've concerned about is that we understand that there are needs for police officers and there are needs for press responders. And we're trying to balance the amount and we're trying to make sure that there is sufficient staffing on both levels to meet the essential needs as best as we can. In doing that, I'm concerned that we'd be very careful not to put press responders into positions that ought to be responded to initially by or with police officers. And if we don't have adequate police officers to meet that threshold, that we're not just raising questions about the community and whether we're giving the community the response we need, but we're actually potentially endangering unarmed press responders by putting them in situations that seem inappropriate. And that's what I've been trying to say in my conversations where I've brought this up with the presence of Earl. Anna. This is a really interesting conversation and I'm also, as a first-time report writer, Andy, what you're talking about and a little bit of what other folks are talking about feels out of scope for a part of the reporting on the budget, no? Or is that, am I really supposed to get into more philosophically what we're believing about the future of CRAS in a budget report? Which I'm happy to do, but I think that I know I might have differing opinions from y'all on this too. And so I wanna make sure I'm not getting into something that is dictating the future of a program in a broader sense when I'm writing the finance committee report on this. You know what I mean? I wanna tread very carefully here. Generally, it's been a summary of sort of what you heard during the presentations. Is there were any themes of discussion that came up, any major concerns that came up during those discussions? And that's a fair theme to talk about how we're assessing use and things like that and the importance of that. That is absolutely fair and I can include that, but I'm not gonna make any, my plan is not to make any recommendations. That feels inappropriate. Okay, just wanted validation on that. Thank you. And I was making a recommendation and I was more raising a concern that it is something that we factor in as we learn. I understand Andy, but I think that the way that that concern is framed for you is not necessarily shared by the council broadly. And I think that it's valid to, I wanna play with it to make sure that I'm capturing your concern without it feeling like any sort of recommendation. But I'll figure out how to do that. Yeah, no, I think that would be right. And I wouldn't wanna make it a recommendation that actually has any teeth to it because it's only that it'd be considered not, because I don't know enough to go beyond that. What do you think? Yeah, on this issue, I just wanna go back to data and evaluation. And we're not gonna have data and evaluation until as we move into next year and maybe not even fully next year. And so one of the reasons why I withhold judgment at this point on whether I think it's working or not is we don't have either of those. And that if anything, I think we just want the report to reiterate the need for data and evaluation. We don't even know evaluation by whom exactly. I think that ultimately it's up to the time manager in large part. So I think that we can do one of two things to draw this to close for today's conversation because I'm not sure we can go farther. One is to go ahead and make a motion today. The other is to hold the motion. If you're gonna make the motion today, it would be something along the lines of moving the finance committee recommend that town council approve the budget as recommended by the town manager. If you, the other thing we can do is add to that sentence recommended by the time manager with consideration given to the additional recommendations made by the finance committee. I think we might wanna wait if that's gonna be the approach until the 30th and make the motion then after we see if we have agreement on the recommendations as they get framed in the report. Kathy? Well, for one, I don't have to disappear at 230 because my husband went to pick up my friend at the train station. We have an alternative transportation system here in our household. I would be comfortable doing a motion today and then if we need to expand it because we have something concrete to say about the budget next week, I'd be fine but everything I've heard today is to the extent we've talked about if there is free cash we weren't gonna tie people's hands, we didn't last time around so I'm not sure we would be making anything specific for the FY24 budget. Since the point was made if more money becomes available we'll have to appropriate it. We'll have to make adjustments. So I may be a minority of one but I feel like we've had a lot of meetings on this and you all have been in all of them and I've only been in some of them but it would be nice to keep it moving. And that's said, you're gonna need drafts of our report. So we could focus on the 30th of seeing how far we all got with giving you the sections. I'm assuming we probably need to get them to you by yesterday, but anyway. So I'll stop. Yeah, I have a process comment toward you just said but I'm going to hear from Anna first. I think you said tomorrow was the deadline because I always need to know the deadline. Due date for me is usually a DO date. So I appreciate the very clear deadlines. And if I got that wrong, then I'm sorry. My question though is additional considerations. At this point, it seems like the committee there has not been a motion made regarding the additional funding for the schools. That would be one of those additional considerations that you're talking about or no. No, I think that at this point if we make a motion that we're recommending the budget as recommended by the town manager, that that takes care of it because that means we're not recommending any additional funding. And it becomes incorporated in the motion. Think of what Kathy was suggesting about free cash. Ultimately, there's always the opportunity to do that but the way that it has to flow is that if additional funds are going to be appropriated from free cash or from any other source, that the sequences that the town manager recommends a supplemental budget as provided in the charter. And we go through the process of treating the additional funds as supplemental budget, which is in reality what happened last year with the additional free cash. Sorry. Go ahead. Could we as a finance committee request the town manager request something that it feels like a stretch on that part. But if we were hopeful that that request would come through from free cash to support the additional requests from the schools, is that something that the finance committee would make any sort of motion on or it's truly the discretion of the town manager and we would need to just kind of sit back? That was the original question on including of chapter. Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Do we want to take the school request in under consideration or something? But I didn't hear anyone say they wanted to do that. So, but I am so deep on this learning curve that I apologize for not saying it. I think that would, I would be interested in doing that, Kathy, for what that's worth. And you would specifically suggest picking out the school as opposed to anything else. Yes. For whatever reasons, I'm not stating. Yeah, I mean, yes, I think that this was something that I had said when the budget coordinating group came together in public comment was that I was hopeful that they would have increased the allocation to the schools. But again, I think that this, for me, this has been more of a process issue in terms of how, in terms of timelines of when decisions get made regarding budget allocations and not aligning with the schools knowing kind of where their needs were at the time exactly. So I'm just trying to, sorry, sorry. That's okay. There's a motorcycle, my dog has a vendetta against them. I apologize. Yeah, I'm sorry. I feel like I'm trying to learn and legislate at the same time, which has been tough around this one. So I appreciate everyone dealing with me. Yeah, I see Sean's hand was up. It's an incorporated question into calling on Sean and that is whether this kind of recommendation might come out of the process that Paul was talking about in his memorandum. And if so, whether that process works in proper timing sequence. So one quick thing before that, just when we do vote on the budget, we do have to vote on the individual recommendation, the individual financial orders, especially this year because we do have a borrowing authorization. No, it wouldn't work in the timeline because the timeline for that process is really to gear up for next year's budget, not this year's budget. Again, I think Paul and I've made it clear that our priority is operating budgets and we did an extra half percent last year. We got it up to 3% this year. I think you can include it sort of context in your report that you think we should consider that in the fall again. We will, I can say that we will regardless. The one thing I will say though is just the struggle I have with sort of if the committee was to make a really strong recommendation around is you don't really even know what it's going to be used for. At this point, it would go into a reserve for the outcome of negotiations. You've got some thoughts around maybe what it would be used for, but I don't know how you would make that recommendation not really knowing because it wasn't in the superintendent's proposal. It was, so those are my two cents, but I can tell you we will consider in the fall. Again, probably a more broad approach, not the targeted approach like what's being discussed here, but you certainly can obviously provide that in your report if you want to. Thank you. Luckily, this isn't my section of the report, but I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, there's one other element to this, Sean, and then I should let me see your hand up. So I'm not ignoring it. When it was brought up at the meeting at the earlier in May by Allison, there was a I think that the implication would have been at that point that if they had had the $84,000 and they were committed to use it to retain a position, they couldn't retain more than one. They were talking about really six positions, but they certainly could have done one or one in a fraction and that they would have needed to know now they can't, by the time you get around to the fall, it'll be too late. So there is a timing problem from that side, too. Right, and the only thing is, and I would have to go back and watch the video. I don't recall what the superintendent or what the superintendent said they would do if the funding was approved. I thought what we heard was that it potentially would be set aside until we know the outcome of negotiations, but I could be filling the blanks there in a way that's not helpful. So I'd have to go back and watch, but I know that there's that uncertainty there. I don't think that the superintendent said anything on the topic, as I recall, because I did listen to that section again afterwards. It was the only section where I went back and we did a whole meeting and that was, so I don't recall it was discussed by the superintendent, nor was it discussed by Allison in particular because her statements were more along in the principle of the extent of the need as opposed to how they would meet the need. And it was only because it's built around the motion from the school committee that was not unanimously adopted by the school committee was a three to two vote in which they identified a number of positions that they felt were being cut that they would like to preserve if possible. Yeah, just Andy, one of the questions, just to round out the discussion, one of the questions was something around the school committee motion implies that says the intention, this was one of the responses I thought we got from the schools that the intention of the school committee's motion was to restore three paraeducator positions, lowering the FTE cut from 10 to seven and to encourage the superintendent and finance director to make those three restorations be the library para's. I think that was the response in, related to the question of the additional funding. Which is why I said it created an implication that they would add it, that they would bring a position back, not that they would put it into a reserve for the salary. Yeah, again, I don't know if I don't recall the superintendent responding to how they would specifically do it, I guess. But that was I think the school, but the response was to the school committees, which I think they said at the meeting their intent. But ultimately the superintendent decides how the funds are allocated. Lynn? So I checked last year's motions and where we had a similar situation, I think it was, I can't remember what it was the basis for last year. We did not include it in our motions for adopting the budget. And yet as Sean mentioned in the fall when we are looking at free cash, assuming we have some, that this is always an area where recommendations are often made. And we will have free cash, it's just whether we have more than 5% in free cash, it's really the, if we have no free cash, then I'm in big trouble, so. Just trying to make sure people aren't thinking we're gonna have 800,000. Right, right, right. So Andy, just on you asked whether we wanted to take motions, Sean said we have more than one motion. So it may be that we need to wait for Tuesday. So we do it systematically. And I have the orders I can either bring up today or send them out so you have them all, whatever it says, yes. Okay. So why don't we hold it since Athena had written the agenda to allow us to come back and make motions at the next meeting also. So is there anything else that anyone wants to raise today about the budget discussion because otherwise I think we've had a pretty robust and discussion about it. So I have a, not about the budget, but about the report, Andy. And the questions with answers that Sean has been collecting and then some of them he's filled in with the answers. Are you going to feature that the answers and questions as an appendix? Or are you going to just cross list it to the various meetings? I'm just looking in terms of how the broader public knows there's been this. And I leave that up to you. I mean, there's been a lot of work on back and forth. And sometimes Sean, you took an easy way which has answered during meeting. So it wasn't a four sentence answer on the thing. So I just, I like that process that we've developed. And I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying when you think about the report, figure out how you reference them. And if they're all posted in each meeting, you can just hotline to the answers. So, because we've got a lot of information just by having those conversations, I think. Yeah, no, I think that what I'm going to have to do is put everybody's report together and then for each section, go back and as I read each section, see if the answer is within the section. And if it's not explicitly there considering taking an amended part of, I don't want Sean to have to do any more work nor pretty in a reasonable way. Anyway, just take this questions that have more than just that brief answer. They actually have a substantive response and incorporate that as an appendix would be an alternative. But if to see if it duplicates what's already in what's being written then wouldn't be necessary. So I'll take a look at that as I draft, invite you to the same link. Yeah, I just ask that you let me know because I did not provide written responses to the questions that were asked. I answered them during the meeting. Yeah, that's why I didn't write them because I wasn't gonna try to. With regard to my report in the library, I did go back to the questions I asked and where I felt it wasn't covered in the budget book and it wasn't covered in my report. I went back and added more into the report to cover it. And if I do anything, it's only going to be to provide the, as I said, the questions that have a substantive answer to it that's more than just a reference to what happened at the meeting. Just edit the document and make it an attachment if that seems like an appropriate thing to do. But I don't wanna lose the effort that we went through and Sean went through to get those in the questions answered that he did answer. So with that said, we wanna just take care of the minutes and see if anybody has any anticipated business. If not, is we have no public comment or any auxiliary in the public at this point. There were three sets of minutes that were provided and you've now seen them in revised fashion. The revisions were not large. There weren't any big things. They were mostly about wording and name designations and one attendance thing. I don't know if anybody else has had a chance to look at them, but if anybody is comfortable, it has additional changes. Please let me know right now. And if not, we'll see if we're ready to make a motion. I'm ready to make a motion that we approve all three sets of minutes as amended. Okay. Second. So when I write it as a motion to approve the minutes, I'll just list dates from December 6th, 2022, January 10th and January 24th, 2023 and approve mass amended. And I second. Happy making the motion and Lynn seconding. Yes. So going to vote then Anna. Aye. Lynn. Aye. Bob. Support. Matt. Nice. Matt. We can go back to one more time in a second. Bernie. Support. Kathy. Yes. MES and leashes absent. Matt. I'll just, that may have stepped away. So I'll put into the minutes not indicating support or not support and I'll write it that way. So any other unanticipated business, if not, I think that we're done for the day. Thank you. This has been a good meeting and a good discussion. Thanks everyone. We can make this all come together. Good weekend everyone. Have a nice, great weekend. See you everybody on Tuesday. Thank you. Take care.