 We're recording now I'll give Dorothy a call and see if I can get a hold of her. Okay. So I'm going to call the finance committee meeting of June 10 2021 to order at five minutes after two o'clock. And I want to thank everybody for being here this is a virtual meeting. And it's pursuant to Governor Baker's order of March 12 2020 suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 30 section 18. And I will note for the entire committee's sake that Governor's order is ending as of 12 oh one a.m. on June 15 from by recollection of what his latest announcement was, which means that if the legislature doesn't do anything to amend the meeting law, which is a legislation under consideration. This would be our last virtual meeting and we would need to start scheduling our meetings as in person meetings if the order if the legislature ends the open meeting lot to allow a longer period to segue from virtual meetings to in person meetings, then we will be able to continue for a little bit longer so I just want to have you be able to be prepared. So I think that what I'm going to do is go through the committee list and just do the usual requirement under the open meeting law and ask each of you is a yes for your recognition I do see the Dorothy's here now so we've got the full committee present to acknowledge as I say as I asked that you can hear by when you respond below. So Pat Angelis present. Pam. Present. Bob Hegner. Present. Bernie Kubiak. Present. Jane Schoffler. Jane. I'm not hearing you. I'm going to come back. Can you hear me now. Yes, I can. Great. Okay, I'm here. Okay, so we'll notify that I have a little booster. Yes. And Kathy Shane. I'm here. So I think that I have acknowledged all members of the committee and everybody is present. And the agenda is on the screen for a moment. And Michelle Miller is in the attendees and I am going to ask. She brought into the meeting along with the members of the committee and staff who are present. Because I want her to be part of the meeting for the present for the discussion of the first item that you see listed. Below. At that point, if there is anybody in the pub in the attendee list. We'll see if there's a request for public comment and then proceed. And unless requested by staff or a member of the committee to shuffle the order, I'm going to just go with the order as it has been posted in the agenda. So. With that. Michelle. Michelle been added. I'm here yet. Okay, great. Thank you. So I mean, I think. Ask. Either Sean or. All to start us off on the discussion of the reparations coalition. There are two parts to it. The first part of the meeting. And the second part of the meeting. And the second part of the meeting. Really. As was presented as the committee charge. And further. Discussion of the. Process that we talked about at our last meeting. For how reparations funding could work. So. Which one of you is going to start. All. I'm going to go ahead and hand it off to Sean. And so. You have a memo in your packet that we just got to you this morning. So apologize for the lateness of it, but it's just working on lots of different things right now. And this is to identify. You know, the council said we want you, we want the finance community to give us advice on how we can establish a fund and a revenue stream for reparations. If the council were to go in that direction. And so, you know, our finance team put their thinking hats on and came up with a very creative way of addressing this that does not. Impact our operating budgets, but addresses the concern. And I just, and I give credit to Sean and Sonya for doing the creative way of like, I love having them part of the problem, the problem solving and say, okay, we have a, we have a goal of the council. Let's see how we can make it happen. So I'm going to turn it over to Paul. I think it was, it was their ideas. So credit to them. Thanks, Paul. Athena, can you bring up the memo? It might be best just to kind of walk through that. So, yeah, so this first piece is essentially just. Reflecting what we had discussed at the, at the previous meeting, which was first to establish a reparation stabilization fund, which require our two thirds vote of the council. And there's a motion attached. And the second piece is out one way to do that. And then the second piece was to transfer my 206. I just rounded up to 210,000. From free from whenever we do the free cash transfer and FY 22, the 210,000 would be transferred into this reparation stabilization fund. So those are sort of the immediate next steps related to this, that stabilization fund could be approved at any time in the, in the 210,000. If we want to keep it. So that's part one. Part two. We were thinking this is something if the council desires could be continued in the future. We could talk about, you know, every time we do a free cash transfer, does a certain percentage. Instead of going into our normal stabilization fund reserve. Does a certain percentage go into the reserve for reparations? We've, you know, when we look back, we can look at sort of what our history is with free cash transfers. And we don't make them every year, but at least in the last five years, we make them in most years. Free cash is generated whenever we have an operating budget surplus. Or if that, that will tend to increase free cash. And when we, sometimes the council will appropriate things out of free cash. If there's an emergency expense of some sort. But typically we will look at free cash in the fall. And if we're above 5% of our operating budget, that difference is transferred to a different place. Again, in the past, it's been our, our stabilization reserve fund. So we look, we think this could be a viable option for funding reparations in the future. And then the, the sort of wrinkle. And then the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the future. And then the, the sort of wrinkle that you'll see in this memo is we really were trying to think, how do we, one, we want to, you know, we're thinking, how do we build the fund over time and make continuing contributions, but then two, how do we make sure the fund is sustainable? And it's not, you know, we've made a contribution one year and it's all used, but then there's nothing the next year. So we were thinking about managing, you know, one idea would be to manage the fund like you would do an endowment where we keep making contributions. And there's a certain percentage that is allocated towards expenditures each year. And as you grow the fund through investing it and through additional contributions, that percentage that can be spent grows each year. And you, and it allows it to be a more sustainable, predictable amount that can be spent on reparations each year going forward. And hopefully in perpetuity would be the, would be the goal to set something up that can last on for a long, long time. I think that's pretty much it has sort of our initial thought around this as one way we could set this up and, you know, try to make it as impactful as possible. Well, thank you. So I have a couple of things that I was going to just say. One is that in the finance committee report. It was sent to the last council meeting, which I share with the entire committee. The piece that I added right at the end, I think it was, I think it was, I think it was a late at night deadline day. Was a brief description to it at the very end of the report. About the. Preparations. Fund proposal. And I misstated. The question of how the. I think it was 206,000 at that point. It's now been rounded. The date of the report was. Was derived at, and. I. Realized by the next morning. That I had made the deadline, but I had made a mistake on that one point by stating that it was related to a calculation of prior years transfers. As opposed to based upon. Also knowing what the initial marijuana tax revenue might be and using that as a base for the first transfer, though it was never discussed as the amount. So that Sean came up with what should have been an amended language and I made that as a verbal part of my report to the council when the council met. So that's point one. Point two is that, you know, the amount that we're going to transfer each year is something that I think that the finance committee is going to have to determine whether it's appropriate and then it's ultimately going to be require council vote to make the transfer. So, you know, it will be a year for your decision that's going to be made by whoever's on the finance committee and council at the time. Point three, I think is fairly obvious that from the memo also that the transfers from the fund for actual use for purposes of reparation and trying to move in to achieve the goals that are behind the whole proposal will also require council vote. And but I think that it gets to the last point which is that there's been thought given to a committee to come forward with recommendations on that. And I don't know if either Paul or Michelle wants to say anything about that but the committee would have to be also created as a part of this process. So I think that that's kind of a brief summary of all the points that I would just want to make. So I see the Dorothy, you have your hand up and Pat and Kathy. So Dorothy, just go into the order. All right, so I'm saying on first hearing I like this idea in that this as I've been told is how wealth is built up. When you put aside where the principle isn't really touched most of the time and interest is built. So this is a problem that took a long time making and it could take a little time solving. So that sounds good to me theoretically but I lack sometimes the financial imagination. At the rate, let's pretend that we did this for 10 years, Sean, at about 210,000 a year. So in 10 years time, what kind of income could this fund generate? I know I did these problems in math and school but they didn't mean anything to me then. I don't know how to do them now. So what kind of income could it generate? I like the idea that this is a form of stability and might not be subject to the whim of who's on the council, who's not on the council, what's happening that could be a kind of a steady source but I just don't have any idea of the size of it in 10 years. Yeah, I mean, so a couple of things. I think one decision would have to be made for FY23 again, what percentage of the free cash transfer would go into this fund? Sometimes those free cash transfers are over a million dollars. Sometimes it's maybe only a few hundred thousand dollars just when it seems like more rarely we don't have one but in most cases it's a significant amount that is transferred to free cash. One thought we had is we'd wanna consider what our reserves are at the time. If our reserves are high like they are now that might be where we do a greater percentage to this fund, if our reserves were low, if something happened, economic downturn and our reserves were under 5% or under 10% of the operating budget then maybe that percentage would sort of, there'd be some sort of mechanism for it to scale down a little bit until we got our regular reserves back to where they need to go. And the way I would think about it is so let's say you did 200,000 for five years you'd get up to a million. If the draw rate was 4%, which is 4%, that percentage could adjust a little bit but that's sort of the percentage that when you think like I think the Jones Library uses four to five, maybe it's four and a half now or something like that that they use that would translate to about 40,000 dollars a year sustainably 40,000 dollars a year that could be used for reparation payments or reparation expended purposes. And again, as you grow that million, every million it'd be another 40,000 that could kind of that could go towards that purpose in a sustainable ongoing way. Thank you very much. Thank you, I have a small question. If this were an endowment fund, would the public be able to make direct donations to it and feed the fund in that way in addition to what we put in as a town? Right, that's a great question. We think so, that's one of the things we wanna double check with legal counsel. I believe somebody could donate for that purpose but we wanna confirm that that there's no issues with it but I think so. Great, the other kind of question I have in the proposal for the African Heritage Reference Coalition, there is a committee primarily of black residents who are making the decision about how that's spent. How does that interact with the council because all of a sudden it sounded to me like the council was gonna say what could be given out or how it could be directed. So could you clarify that for me? Yeah, so I think technically the council with a stabilization fund, the council will always have to be that final approval piece because it's town funds but we were thinking that that committee or if there was a different committee set up that had a similar purpose that that committee would be sort of the advisory of how the funds were spent. And I imagine, I don't wanna, I can't say with certainty but I imagine obviously how they, the purposes that they identified as long as they were legally allowable purposes would be strongly considered by the council at the time. I'd just like to jump in here also because I think it's an important point to recognize that these are still town funds. We still are a governmental operation. We have to follow procurement laws. We have to follow, we can only spend things on legally permissible things but and the other thing is that the only way to take funds out of the stabilization fund is by a two thirds vote of the town council. There's no other ways to get out. So the council has to have a role in it. So and just to build on that, one reason why we're proposing the stabilization fund is now is because we haven't gotten all the legal answers on this yet. So we can, you know, we can start working on it and building up a fund. But if for whatever reason something happened where it was deemed that we, you know, it was so legally limited what we could do that it didn't make sense to do it this way. Those stabilization funds I believe can be closed back out to where they came from essentially, which would be free cash or our regular stabilization fund. Thank you. Happy. The answer is some of what I was going to ask. I was looking at this memo and the allocation interactively with the charge and the charge the way, and I know it's not our role to write the charge but the charge has in it as it's come out that the committee that's being set up would develop a plan for a reparation fund and then a process for allocating. And it seems like the plan for setting up the fund is going to come out of finance in the town. And then the recommendations for the possible ways that the fund could be spent would come out of the committee was my understanding, you know, so that we have this stabilization fund to be used for the following once we figure out what the purposes are. So I didn't know whether we need to just double check the wording of the charge, you know, because of everything you just said that we're going to have to check with legal on which things can be done, but also the decision on a initial seeding of money which we were being asked to do or I can make recommendation for FY22. We don't know yet what FY23 might be. So the external committee, I don't think would be the one saying we recommend you do another 200,000 next year. So it's just trying to figure out how this works, the funding of it, not the spending of it and of it just to make sure we've worded those both correctly. And then my last, so that's sort of a comment question. And the last is when we did the percent for art bylaw, we did a little clause in it that said if economic circumstances, if the town budget, if something else meant that we were tight for funds, we wouldn't, you could either not go all the way or not do some of this. So I'm not again talking about FY22, but I'm just wanting to figure out a wording that doesn't say every year we'd always do even X% because there might be some years on excess cash that for the cash flow that there was an emergency need for it. And I know we've built up reserves, but we're about to have all these big buildings start to pull on our reserves. So I just, so that's again, and is that in the charge? Is that in the way we set it up at the first place, but just sort of the future commitment beyond the year having some kind of soft wording like that? Right. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's, I think there's a benefit to having a plan and knowing that that plan can always be sort of year to year tweaked because by whoever's on the council at the time, but I think there's definitely a benefit of having a plan. We were again, thinking that, part of that plan would be some tears of what percentage it is based on kind of the fiscal health of the town at the time to kind of acknowledge what you just mentioned, which there may be sometimes where the town's not in a good position to do it, but I do think it's important to kind of have that planned for the ongoing piece of this if it's going to be successful. And just one other comment on the 4% draw. A 4% draw is of course always possible. You can just decide you do it. If you're not trying to pull down the endowment, that means it's got to earn at least 4%. Right. And, you know, so there needs to be a general, however we talk about this publicly without getting technical is that a 4% draw could actually deplete the fund if it couldn't grow. And that's, we have no control over that other than trying to be wise investors. So. Yeah, no, again, this is very early stages with this sort of idea is more, I think we wanted to get your input to see if this is an idea that you would want us to look into further. Again, this type of fund would be managed differently than other types of funds. This type of fund would be managed like a long-term investment where you generally do get in returns over the 4%. But you're right, on a year-to-year basis, if it's a down year, it could be under 4%. But between the investment returns and potentially ongoing contributions, the hope would be that you don't deplete, however much is in there the year before, it doesn't go below that. I didn't, as I said, I didn't want to get technical, but just it's in how we phrase, frame, describe what we've done. I like this idea. I'm not saying I don't like the idea or I'm not supportive. I just want to avoid over-promising, but at the same time make a commitment. Well, let's see if we can come to a conclusion on this later in the process, but I'm going to continue on recognizing people who fast be recognized. Lynn? Yes, thank you. First of all, I'm, thank you for the memo. I think this moves us in the right direction for very important reasons. I have a couple of questions, but I want to start out by saying to me, this would be like establishing the Jones Library Fund. And it becomes a fund in which either a library or individuals or individual states or whatever can contribute to. And then decisions have to be made by the town as to whether we can use passive or active investment to grow the fund as well. And then, in the library fund, if you look at it, they vary how much they can draw off at every year because they want to maintain a certain level so it will be healthy. And usually in recent years, it's been four or four and a half percent or something like that. The, I do agree with Kathy's statement of soft wording. I actually would prefer that at some point down the road, we think about looking at what the trend is for things like marijuana and stuff like that to just get a sense of, what should some of our markers be? But I also want to be very clear that it's not all of the reserves that are above 5% or the required number that we have. It's some percentage of those reserves. So those are kind of my observations and I'm hoping I'm reading this correctly. I do look at the committee recommendation and I just want to make sure we understand this is a short-term committee. It is a, as I think stated in ad hoc committee, it will go away. However, it may, a follow-on committee may be part of the plan because that follow-on committee might be, not unlike a CPA committee or something like that. Once a year, they recommend an actually CPA, CPA is a good example. They recommend to the town council a certain number of projects they're going to fund and then the town council vote on that. So that it does have a sense of a feel of engagement of a invested group of people. But I just want to confirm this committee charge is not a long-term committee charge. It is a get the guidelines done, come back and propose them and then a next committee might be formed. And by the way, GOL passed this and really the only reason we're looking at committee charge is as it relates to the finances. But that's no, any other, any questions or answers to that question? Yes, not. I don't think so. Well, of course we have several other people with their hands up. Michelle is somebody who's outside of the committee, but here's representing the original advocates for setting up a reparations fund. Do you have anything you want to say now or shall I continue on recognizing other members of the committee? I do have a couple of comments and questions, but I can wait until the end as well, that whatever you feel is the best. Okay, I just didn't want to cut you off if you had something urgent to say now. Bob Hegner, you had your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to echo Kathy's concerns that would be clear about the process for deciding how much funds are made available each year and some soft language that allows that amount to vary depending on the finances of the town. And I also want to echo Pat's recommendation that we make this, set this up so that individuals or non-proverts or whatever could contribute to the fund in addition to any money that the town might put in there. That's all, thanks. Thank you, all right. Thanks, Eddie, yeah. Again, my concern is, is that we are creatures of the state are chartered up with standing. So we have to be cautious of that. I like the idea of using the stabilization fund. The Department of Revenue has been very generous in allowing lots and lots of special purpose stabilization funds. I don't think that there will be difficulties in having individuals, corporations or groups make contributions to the stabilization fund. It might be a little bit of a double step with the council accepting the donation and then a super majority vote to include it into the, into the fund. I would also offer the cautions about, you know, guidelines here in terms of how much is going in how much can come out should be, should be suggestions and not mandates because things will vary. And we may not find, we may not find that we don't have the opportunity to invest the funds the way the Forbes library trustees do or the Jones library trustees do. We might not be able to bring Vanguard in as a funds manager given that Massachusetts is usually pretty restricted in where you can place public funds. So with those cautions, I think this is a really good framework and would like to continue with it. Yeah, thank you. Dorothy, do you have anything to add because then I was due to your hand up too now. I believe the Jones library on this private, not town. So there is a difference. It's not just like the Jones library fund and Bernie, the Jones library fund, I believe is in Vanguard. It is not, quote unquote, actively managed. It's doing very better with Vanguard. So I don't know what difference it makes that it's not, so I mean, but I just wanted to point it would be a town fund. I don't know, have we had any other town funds like this in the past? That would be my question. So not quite like this. We have our OPEB funds. Our OPEB funds are in a trust and they're invested a little bit differently because of the nature of being in a trust and again, a long-term investment vehicle and they're with the state that has a little bit more, they're invested by the state who uses investment professionals. And so our regular funds, as Bernie mentioned, we do have restrictions on sort of what types of investments we can put them into. So yeah, we don't, again, this is an initial idea that we wanted to see if you like, again, the framework, the concept and we would start researching some of these pieces more and trying to come back with more details of how this could be done. This is, again, I take Kathy's comment earlier as a good one of 4%, maybe that's doable for the Jones library, maybe that's not doable for us if we can't invest it the same way. So all those things we'd still have to dig into more going forward. Thank you. Michelle. Yeah, thank you. This is really great. The memo was great. Thank you. Just a couple of comments based on what I'm hearing and maybe a couple of questions. So I think this is a change to the charge because I think that the charge, as I think Kathy pointed out, talks about identifying possible revenue streams. So I'm not sure that that has to go away. The committee could still work to identify other possible revenue streams, but I think, you know, this, yeah, so just that piece. And then I also think just to note what Lynn said that this is a temporary or an ad hoc committee that is being tasked with certain things and will have an end to it. So my question is, how is there a body like the trustees of the Jones Library or something like that? Is there a body that would then be held together to make these recommendations on an annual basis? And then the last question I have is, can the endowment be used, can the fund be used as collateral would say a local bank to make bank loans? Does anyone have any knowledge of that? Yeah, so sort of the last question first, we don't have any guidance yet on what types of, what specific types of expenditures might be allowable. So unless somebody else has heard something else, I don't think we know that yet. In terms of a group or committee, I think that would be up to the council or the manager in terms of creating something like that to provide that sort of advisory role. I'm sorry, I think that, what was the first part, the first question? The first question was just clarifying, if we need to clarify the charge prior to being voted on. Right, okay. Yeah. Well, I think the other one was an additional revenue stream. So I would say that what this does proposes is a revenue stream that it's surplus from. So that's from the free cash that would be appropriated into. So I think that would be seen as a revenue stream, but there could be additional revenue streams as well. First question might come up as to whether we're talking about just town-based revenue or as has been suggested with the donation question, outside revenue revenue streams that don't rely on specific town resources. I think that's a subject that would be open still for some discussion under the way this committee charge is drafted. Another issue that had come up and sort of to get back to it in the end is that somehow there needs to be a process to make recommendations to the council about what are appropriate expenditures from the fund and what expenditures are being proposed. And I guess the question is whether the committee charge is sufficiently clear about trying to help establish such a process. Because somehow we need one. I'm not sure exactly how Evanston does it, saying that the committee that makes recommendations to their council, for example, and how the community is structured. But I think that that is something that would need to be given some consideration. We do have the charge. I'm not sure that we necessarily have to have the finance committee position on the charge. It's not strictly totally financial, but I'm open to it if that's proposed. So turning back again to members of the committee, Kathy? Just on, it was in reaction to some of the things oh, that Michelle was saying, you know, the way if there's an ongoing advisory committee if there is at least an ongoing set of guidelines that are developed on what the fund can be spent on, one possibility to think about is that people propose each year which one of those possible uses, you know, and so that's what could happen over time. And that's the way CPA works. There's a very clear set of what the funds can be used for, but there's not a, the committee itself doesn't make a decision on what this year will be spent on. They wait so you potentially could get people participating. So I'm not saying that's a way to do it, but that might be one way. So when the group that's thinking, the group that's got the charge might be thinking about possible different alternatives over time, because the nice thing about that, you know, CPA has bigger chunks of money to spend but that you can get small groups getting together and saying, you know, I think this would qualify, let's come in with this idea this year. So you would not have it be as passive, potentially. So it's just, it's a thought rather than a do it this way versus another way. Okay, I need to keep us moving because we do have a big agenda today and I don't want to cut this off. Bob? Yeah, I just wanted to suggest that another possible funding stream could be matching contributions from outside of the government. You could set up a process by which a corporation individuals could provide matching funding or partial funding for a particular investment that this fund would do. This is a thought. So let's try and keep it brief but not keep going, Dorothy. It's very brief. Also, I would like to have it as a possibility that you don't think of it as something that you have to spend every year, but if you choose not to take the disbursement that year, it builds the fund because, you know, this idea I keep talking about of a certain type of housing which we have not been able to create if there were, but in the past, the Sunnyside Gardens was created from a fund. Originally a fund came to help start. So, you know, smarter minds than mine will look at the different things, but I don't want to write a little set of rules that says you've got to do this, you've got to do that because some options might be not to spend it right away but to build that fund. And I love the idea of Bob Hegner's of matching funds from corporations. That is really good. Thank you. Yeah, unless somebody objects, I'm ready to make a motion. Can you hang on just a second and I'll come back to you in just a moment. I want to make sure I hear from Michelle and then I have one more thing I was just going to remind everybody about and then I think the motion would be in order and I'll come right back to you. Michelle. Just a super brief comment in response to what you said about Evanston. Yeah, they did set up a subcommittee that essentially determines possible uses and then presents them to the town council and that seems to be working well. So, but we can certainly as the committee gets going we'll be following that. So you would envision the committee some currently on the screen for the draft charge is having this conversation. Absolutely, yeah. I think we'll be able to get our work done pretty quickly because we've done a lot of work already. So, but I envision that this committee would recommend to the town council those possibilities to create a process that could be sustainable for the town. So the one thing I was going to add and then I'm going to turn it back over to Lynn since she seems to have a motion and that is that I think that it also has to be recognized that any proposal that comes forward for expenditure at the time that it comes forward will need to be scrutinized as to whether it is consistent with the anti-aid amendment to the which is a provision in the Massachusetts constitution. And it's a rather complex topic that I'm not sure that I want to try and get into any depth on our parts out but it does have to do with how public funds can limitations on how public funds can be expended for private purposes. And at some point they'll may need to be a mechanism for any proposals to be reviewed through the town attorney to make sure that we're not proposing an expenditure that is contradictory to the anti-aid amendment but I think that that's a future issue and not a present issue unless Paul or Sean have anything to add on that. I'm going to go ahead and go back to Lynn. So I'm going to ask Justina for the moment to put the memo up. Thanks. So I'm going to put this into two different motions because grants for every year will be different. So I recommend that I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council the establishment of a reparations stabilization fund for the purposes of, I'm going to say for the purposes of providing a stream providing a revenue stream for reparations just to make it simple. Second. Angela's. Okay, there's motion been made and seconded. Any further discussion on the motion that has been made? And I assume that Athena or Scott, who or somebody has the motion down for the minutes. I do. Okay, does anybody want Athena to read that back? If not, then... Yeah, could you read it back one more? I mean, I just wanted to hear it one more time. I thought I heard something that might not fully. I think it would be a good idea to have it checked. Thank you. Not that it was wrong, just technically it's. Sorry, I'll just, I'll put it, I'll share it so that we can all see it. To recommend to the town council the establishment of a reparations stabilization fund for the purposes of providing a revenue stream for reparations. Sean, you look like you have some amendments. You want to make your way stated? Yeah, I mean, it's just the fund itself won't provide a revenue stream for reparations. It's more like it's, I mean, it may in the future. I guess, I mean, it could be fine. Yeah, I don't know if you can put restriction. I mean, you might want to just establish the fund. Okay, so you want to just end it with the word fund? That's my initial inclination, just. What was it though? What was in the one we sent? I said something about reparation purposes, right? Yeah, I was actually going to ask the rest of this, a good segue for me to do that. And that is, you've provided, I recommended approval order FY 2215 in order creating a special purpose stabilization fund for reparations. Yeah, then this is what the motion should be. I'm going to withdraw my motion. Pat, do you agree to that? Yes. And my motion is you recommend to the town council approval of financial order of FY 22-15 in order creating a special fund for reparations. In order creating a special purpose stabilization fund for reparations. Second. Angela. Okay, so now we're back to the motion on the floor, but it's a slightly different motion. Sean Paul, do you feel comfortable going forward with this sending this order onto the council at this point? Yes. So looking just see if any hands go up. And if not, I'm going to be starting to call for a vote. And we're following the usual procedure that everybody in the committee will be asked to speak. The members of the council, members of the committee will be voting yes or no. And members who are resident members of the committee, whether they support the motion or not. So with that said, and having seen no hands go up, I'm just going to go in the order from my list as a, as you appear on my participant list. So Lynn Guzmer. Hi. Pat Angelis. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Bob Hegner. I support it. Bernie Kubiak. Support it. Jane Shuffler. Oops, I support it. Kathy Shane. Yes. I vote yes. I think I have heard from everybody now. Missed anybody please speak up. But I think that we have a unanimous vote with all three members indicating their support who are resident members. So. So my next question would be, Sean, are we waiting or Paul, are we waiting until we do stabilization funds to actually transfer the money? The plan was to wait until we, so we typically would do a free cash transfer in the fall after a free cash is certified. And that is when the, at that time when the free cash is certified and it's brought back to the council to transfer whatever's above 5% to our regular reserve, this would be part of that action as well. So it'd be all going to be one piece done together. And then that could be replicated in future years. So there's no second motion at this time on it. Yeah. No, the first piece was just to get the fund established. Andy, I don't believe unless you, unless there's changes we want, that we need to make a motion regarding the committee charge. I will come back to the committee charge in just a second on the order that we just passed, there was one question I was going to ask Sean or Paul and that is it said the two thirds vote would be required to pass this. And I was wondering because it takes a majority vote to put money into a stabilization fund, two thirds to take money from a stabilization fund, does it take two thirds to create? Sean, the question is, does it take two thirds? Oops. The question is, Sean, does it take two thirds to create a stabilization fund or a majority vote? You're muted though. Two thirds is our understanding. Sonya and I worked on this together, so. And we can double check that. I believe the attorney provided the language, but we can double check. Okay. Yeah. I was just curious because it takes the majority vote to put money into a fund and two thirds to take money out of a fund. But I didn't know if there was what the requirement was only. So let's leave it as is and if you need an amendment down the line, we can handle it at that point, but I think we can go on. So getting back to the last point is the committee charge. Is there anybody on the finance committee either? And that's all members, of course, I'm speaking to you, who wants to propose that this committee take a position on that committee charge that was on the screen previously? Because if not, then I think we could go on to other agenda items. I would like us to move forward with the charge. We need to take a position as a finance committee to set a finance issue. That's the question. Oh, okay. GOL has already recommended the charge and made all these changes. I'm not clear. And that therefore it can come to the council, but we were asked in the motion to look at it, but I don't know unless Athena thinks we need to vote on it. I don't know that we do. Can you just go to the next scroll to the next page? It's number one. So this is, I don't want to change this now, but my question was that first clause, develop and recommend to the town council municipal reparations plan that includes a reparation fund. So it was reading to me like they were supposed to tell us how to do the fund was the only question I had on it where we're setting one up. I had no problem with anything else in this. So it was purely a question. This is clear as written and it's clear and actionable, but it looks like they would develop and recommend a reparation fund and a community wide process. So that was my question. And since we weren't asked to edit this, maybe it's just a question I ask at the council, Lynn. And then we can look to see if you want to propose amended amendments to it at the council. Right, so if that clause wasn't there, that includes a community wide process and a strategy for Pat's idea that they could also raise money from other sources or something, but it was just this, if it's reparation fund that might include other. So you have my, that is my question. That's it, no problem. If we make changes technically, it should have to go back to GOL. I just assume we make the changes when it comes to the council. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So that's just the one thing I was flagging when I read. Andy, if I may, the referral from the council was to refer the charge to the finance committee for recommendation on a possible revenue stream. The council didn't ask specifically for a recommendation on the charge. So I don't think we need to vote on it. Okay, thank you. That sort of was my thought on it too, but I wanted to make sure and thank you for sharing and saying that. So I think that we can go on since nobody has proposed differently. And I said that we would check you. There are two people who are attendees at the moment. If either of the people who are attendees would like to offer public comment on any issues before the committee. They certainly are welcome to do so. And I, so I'll look for raised hand for just one moment. And if I don't see a raised hand, then I'm gonna ask Sean and Paul whether they have a recommendation for the next any issues that they would like us to take up next on the agenda. Seeing no hands go up from attendees, Paul. So I think we have two staff here, Holly Bowser who's ready to go over the third quarter budget report and then the optional tax exemption with Liz Duffy. So they're both available and so helping them through the afternoon would be appreciated. Okay. Michelle, thank you very much. Appreciate it. She was waving goodbye to us. I'm gonna turn to the... Quickly, I am gonna have to leave the meeting. I apologize. If I can come back in, I will. I need to lie down. I understand and feel better, you probably need to shut your eyes and not be staring at the screen. You can also, if you would like, you're welcome to just stop your video and listen. That's what I'm gonna try. Okay, then we will consider you present because you're in the meeting, you're just not showing... I will let you know if I leave, leave. It's kind of like I did the other night. Thank you. Feel better. So let's turn to the third quarter report and do you wanna have that up on the screen for questions? Is that the helpful way to go about it? Yeah, so Holly, do you wanna say anything about this or just answer questions? I'll do my short little spiel. So just to remind folks that the report is available on the website under the accounting department's main page. You know, your third quarter report is three quarters of the way through the fiscal year which equates to approximately 75%. And many of the variances that you see are timing issues. We are in pretty good shape through March 31st because of our much reduced FY21 budget figures. The report sort of speaks for itself, but I'm just gonna go over a couple of things. So revenues were at 80% of our budget on March 31st. The first several items that you see listed under the revenue, things like the Cherry Hill golf course, recreation and fees as well as a few other items like the hotel motel and cannabis tax were not budgeted in FY21 at all. So we do have and we have collected revenues in those places. Then things like fines and forfeits and investment income licenses permits, rentals were much reduced because of the uncertainty of the pandemic. And those have done better than what our budget projections were. This report really does a good job of explaining the differences in the percentages to what you would expect the 75% to be. And a lot of them are timing issues. And then on the expense side, we are currently at 72% of our budgeted expenses which is a little bit lower than anticipated at this time of year. And that is the result of some reduced operations, transitions, vacancies in staff. Many of our others, I'm sorry. Some of the other percentages of that are over the 75% are simply due to timing issues. And again, they are explained snow and ice is hopefully over for the year. No, it definitely is. And we do not have a deficit in snow and ice this year which we'll need to raise. So that's good news. The enterprise funds are being really closely monitored by the finance department and DPW. Water and sewer revenues are down but we're hoping that reductions and expenditures will offset any revenue deficits. And I just wanna say that this is a year like no other year has been in terms of budgeting. And I think that the budget management has been better than we anticipated. Things are going well. And I'll just add a couple of things if I could just to reiterate what Holly said which is revenue, general fund revenues are generally doing better than expected but expected was roughly a 30% reduction in some areas. So they're not doing necessarily well compared to prior years. And so one of the reports you'll see at the end it gives you that trend of prior years through three quarters compared to this year through three quarters compared to our budget for this year. That's a nice addition that Sonia put together this year to really give you a sense of where we're at. And then the big thing is, well, the general fund the general fund is generally doing pretty well. Three out of four of our enterprise funds are not and that can impact the general fund. That's something we're gonna have to make some decisions about if there's a deficit in the enterprise funds an annual deficit, not an overall deficit but if we see a, we have to decide whether we're gonna take a big bite out of reserves in the enterprise funds or if we're gonna see if we can shift some expenses around between the general fund and the enterprise funds. So the enterprise funds again are gonna struggle water sewer and transportation quite a bit this year. We're happy to answer any questions. Again, I'm gonna recognize people for questions. They'll save mine for later, Kathy. I'm just unmuting. Thank you for this report. I see this, both of you kept a nice level voice but I see this as pretty good news. Is the way I read the third quarter report and with expenditures running at 72% and revenues running at 80. My question, I have two questions. One is, do you ever offer by third quarter, do your guesstimate, it's gonna be a back of the envelope on what you think the year end is gonna be like. So I know there's some things we front pay and as you said it, so sometimes we're at 100% because we paid them all at the beginning but by third quarter, are you now at more of a two is one question. And then if I go to specific line items that are well below 75%. So elementary school was one and police, they were both at 62, 63%. So Holly, you said some of this is there were vacancies, there was turnover, there was some running lower. So I have two questions on those two and I just picked up big ticket items rather than the small ones. So on police, the budget did line said 50 Paul but you held two positions. Is this running well below in part because we didn't fill two positions so that we were running at 48 minus a couple so that we weren't staffed up. So I never knew whether the budget was still as if all 50 would be hired during the year. So that was the question on police. And then on the elementary school, do you have a sense of what that is attributed to and if they run well under, what does that just turn into free cash that goes into the general funders that are all available for schools? Those are my two questions. Holly, do you want me to do the school one? I think I have a hint at what the major cause is there. All right, I had, I think I do too, but I'll let you. We'll see if we're on the same track. So schools, many of the staff are paid over the summer, July and August, and there's a journal entry that's done in June to put those two months of expenses into the month of June, attribute them to this fiscal year. We always pull them back. It's a cruel that we have to do every year. So at the time that this is looking at actual expenses that accrual wouldn't be there. So I'm not saying that they're not performing better than budgeted, but I don't think they're performing that much better than budgeted, my guess is it's because this doesn't reflect that journal entry that's gonna hit at the end of June. In this case, it's one that there's some rear loading of expenses. Yeah, yeah, for a lot of teachers choose to extend their pay over the summer, a lot of paraprofessional, any school year employees have the option essentially to extend their payout over July and August, so that they don't go two months without pay. So that's over a million dollars, sometimes in terms of that journal entry that gets brought back. Is it still referred to as summer money? I don't call it that, but I'm sure that the sounds like it could be called that. Yeah, and then what was the other category? So I had police and the police is the line item, it was always set at 50, but then we held two positions. And so they never went to 50 during the year. And my sense is it was even lower. So is that a, is that a expect the police budget's gonna be coming in well under what it was budgeted for? It was my question is in part because that was as if it was funded, but you know, and Paul would know more on it. Did you adjust it that they weren't, you weren't gonna have, at most you were gonna have them for half a year because we were holding them until January, so. No, I can weigh in a little bit just talking to Sonya that there's a number of vacant positions in the police department and they weren't filled this year. So that's the primary cause, I believe. I think we said at this point, there was four or five vacant positions that have been vacant for a while. And so my opening question is, if you know revenues are at 80% and under the third quarter, expenses are at 72%. Can you do guesstimates on what we're gonna do year-end or is that too risky? I believe Sonya does try to project out at least on the expenditure side, what we're gonna payrolls through the rest of the year to make sure we're on track. I don't have the specific figures. And again, the thing I worry about this year in particular is how the enterprise funds do and what impact, what residual impact there might be. The general fund is gonna do fine is my understanding. It's really enterprise funds and how the final few months end up parking as well. And just to add to that, so Holly and Sonya right now talking with department heads to get all projected expenditures through the end of the fiscal year and vacant seasons and payroll projections. So they have a handle on what's going to happen. And I'm sure they're doing some back-of-the-envelope stuff, but I don't think there's anything to share at this point. Yeah, and I didn't mean back in the end. I would never, even if you had a number, I wouldn't ask you what it was. Because you've got still three months. So thank you. Sean and Paul and Sean, I'm assuming that we are still looking at the ARPA funds to possibly make up the deficit in the enterprise funds. So it's not quite that simple anymore, unfortunately. Simple anymore, unfortunately. I was hoping they clarified guidance that said we cannot use ARPA money for utilities to really kind of cover those loss revenues and utilities. When I looked at the latest definition of utilities, it included water, but it did not include sewer, but it's something I need to dig into more. So it's possible that maybe for transportation and for sewer, we can use ARPA money to cover that deficit, but at this point, unless there are people who are working on changing that definition, because a lot of other towns and cities across the country did not like that part of the ARPA guidance that you couldn't use it for utilities. Unless that's changed, I don't believe we're gonna be able to use ARPA for water to cover any water deficit. Maybe not sewer as well. I think that's the part I need to find out more about. Anything else, Lynn? Dorothy? I'm wondering is the, for example, the town gets I think $40 for every COVID vaccine that it gives, and I'm just wondering where that appears in here. That's a great question. It doesn't appear in here. So what we have done is set up a special revenue fund to collect those payments. We haven't actually gotten any yet. We've been working with the health department and whether it's UMass medical or the state to figure out when these things are gonna start coming in, but we've given out a lot of vaccines and we're gonna reimburse for those vaccines. So we have set up a special fund to collect that money. We do have expenses already that have been charged to that fund for those who are managing the vaccine clinics. And then there will probably be some difference at the end that we'll have to decide on what happens at that point. Do you have any idea what it might be? I mean, you're right. It's great that you can charge the expenses to that fund. You don't go under on that, but... Yeah, I don't wanna speculate too much until I actually see money coming in. I mean, we were optimistic that it would be a significant, in the several hundreds of thousands of dollars range because of $40 a shot. And it may even be higher than 40. I thought I heard it might be 80, but multiplied by the number of vaccines that we've given. So we're expecting a pretty large number on that. The question is, what can it be used for once our vaccine expenses are gone? Because usually when something's a special revenue fund, it's limited to certain purposes that you can spend it on. So those things, I think this is a unique accounting thing because I don't believe that we've had a vaccine revolving fund before. Holly, have we? Not that I'm aware of. Okay. So we've been in contact with the Department of Revenue and the Division of Local Services to figure out what happens to this money at your end. If there's anything left over, can it carry forward? And they said it can carry forward. I just don't know what happens once we don't have any more vaccine expenses to charge to it. Okay. But good question. So my questions are about the next page on the memo under miscellaneous non-recurring and then title it a little bit further down. But when you, on the miscellaneous non-recurring what it's really getting into is the revenue that we're receiving from colleges and the university in some fashion or another. What was going on with Ann Ars College that we're getting more than budgeted? Is there an additional amount that they're negotiating and was it for a purpose or was it general? I believe that, I got out the double check with Sony. I believe that is related to ambulance billing that there's a fee they pay us related to that and it goes into that section. It's weird because you think it would go into the ambulance fund, but I believe it goes there. But Holly, do you know if that's the case? That is correct, yes. And they always kind of round it up. They're very generous in that way. So it definitely is in relation to the ambulance billing and then it's rounded up each year. Yeah, we have a formula for both UMass and Framers College that is sort of retroactive and looks back a year for billing. You know those payments additional to any insurance we might obtain? I believe so, but that's an answer. I can get the confirmation on. Okay, the other departmental that I saw as I was going through or excuse me, miscellaneous non-recurring is referenced to the hotel motel tax. And for the benefit of the committee as a whole, I can give you a little bit of the background of that that UMass hotel that is part of campus center there was some question for a long period of time about whether or not when we started being able to collect a municipal part of hotel motel tax, whether that was taxable property within the town of Amerson should have been paid. And the university did not want to do that but it was not really the money question as much as it was the other principles. So then the agreement was made that they were going to make payments to us on an annual basis for the amount of the hotel motel tax. It was not attributable to rooms paid for by the university itself that would then but it was collected from outside visitors and that money would be conveyed to the town on an annual basis. When I looked at the other lines for hotel motel meals tax as I think you just a couple of paragraphs below, there was hotel motel tax that was being collected for other properties. It was less than prior years, but it wasn't zero. Is anybody asking that question in UMass as to whether they totally closed the hotel or whether it was still open? Yeah, we reached out to them and at least I could double check but when we reached out to them, we were told it was closed and they didn't think it would be reopening at least for a while when we reached out but that was a couple of months ago so we can double check on what the status of when it's gonna be reopening more to the public. They had dedicated the campus center hotel for their isolation quarantine shelter and that's anybody who had to be isolated or quarantine were housed in the campus center hotel so they weren't renting out rooms. Okay, just wanted to follow up on that. My last comment is that further down in the thing in the report on the same page, you see the pilot section and it talks about the fact we have enterprise funds there. I know from talking to several members of the council who are not members of the finance committee, that they are aware of the question as to whether we are receiving payments in lieu of taxation from nonprofits and particularly from the university and colleges and this has been a conversation that has been had been in various places for a while. So I was just commenting on the fact that I think that when it gets to the council and we convey this along, there's gonna be some degree of confusion and misunderstanding about why we're calling payments in lieu of taxation miscellaneous non-repairing and what they think of as pilot is not pilot. So it was just a comment more than anything else. So then were you asking, raising your hand? Okay, so I think that was it. Is there anything else regarding the quarterly report? Then I don't know that we have the staff present to talk about the tax issues that... Yeah, Liz is here. She's just as under... I'm under Holly's name. Yeah. Oh. Bases keep changing. It's cute. What can I help you with? We are collecting pilot monies from our properties that are under pilot as usual. They do pay a certain amount that's agreed to every year. So it's not recurring. It's recurring every year. As far as the hotels, motels, we do charge them $200 per bed. So they are still paying those fees. Anthony or Andy, do you want me to do a little... Do you want us to transition to the optional tax exemption or? Yeah, I think we can. Thank you for saying that. I think obviously it's more of a suggestion for consideration for future reports. Certainly. The report that is written is written and you greatly appreciate it and know a lot of work goes into it, but just for the future so that we don't get this confusion from other members of the council who hadn't been privy to this conversation. Which part of the report are you looking at? I'm not sure that I contributed to that particular part. I think we're transitioning, right? Yeah, I'll work with... Liz, I'll work with Sonia on that one because that's really how Sonia... Well, really it's how we historically categorize things and if we can somehow just make it more clear what's in there. Yeah, whatever it can do to help. Yeah, because as you just pointed out, it is hopefully recurring, not non-recurring. Anyway, we at this point want to change topics of conversation and move over to the question of the optional tax exemptions. And... I guess it depends on what you're talking about is optional tax exemptions. I mean, one of the things that I was asked to point out is there is a CPA exemption. If someone is income limited, they can apply for an exemption from the CPA. That's the community preservation fee. So Liz, this is a specific one, but Athena, can you pull up the memo for this one on the screen? So this is specifically the personal exemptions. Actually, can you go to the memo? I think it breaks it down a little more clearly. Okay, we have all the personal exemptions for you as well. There we go. So again, this is about, there's a base exemption for the categories that you see in the chart below and the town of Amherst's. This is sort of a housekeeping thing, has historically always opted to increase the amount of that exemption. And so you can see the base amount, the optional amount, and then the total. And those are FY21 figures. So you can get a sense of the magnitude. I am not seeing it on my screen. Am I missing something? You're not seeing it on the Zoom screen? Ah, I see it now, I'm sorry. Thank you. So when they're looking at those particular clauses, the veterans surviving spouse, veterans disability, legal blind, senior clause 41C, those are usually qualifications that involve income related qualifications. And we have a website link that goes to the assessor's office. If you look under the assessor's office, under exemptions and personal exemptions, you'll see a list of all of these for anybody that's interested in them. Of course, if anybody has difficulty, they can always reach out to the assessor's office and we'll be glad to guide them through it. Is there any questions about this? So this is an action that the town council has to vote every year, right, Sean? Yeah, so that's why this is before you today. And they have to vote it before July 1st, is my understanding too to make sure it's in effect for the next year of taxes. I mean, this was done by town meeting every year for anybody who's, for those of you who were on town meetings. And we did it last year as a council. This is not new. It's just simply recognizing that there are these categories that are listed and that there's a base amount under state statute and there's a local option to go to a higher amount. And it has been traditional and amourous to grant the local exemption. And if I'm not mistaining it, anybody who's in any of these categories like veterans, surviving spouses, surviving parents, legally blind. All of those categories, there's also an income eligibility contribution. So it's not every veteran, it's every veteran who qualifies under an income qualification piece. And it's, you know, there's base exemption and we locally have opted each year, but it has to be acted on each year. Dorothy. Could she walk us through an example? The example that was the senior. Certainly. What is number one? For a senior exemption, we take applications in July that we look at assets and we look at income. And that asset and income information changes every year. The applications themselves, you can actually look at them right online. Although right now I'm getting an oops from Massachusetts, from the state. So we'll have to fix that link. Yeah, it's giving me an oops, I'm so sorry. Cause I was gonna say it's a really good setup because we send you right to the state to get your application. But I'll make sure that's working by the time we have to get those applications going or actually I'm gonna get on the phone right after we get done talking. But basically what you wanna do is reach out to the assessor's office. You're gonna have to have your federal income tax. You're gonna have to have any rental income and your social security income. You'll also have to divulge any assets including second homes, et cetera. So you have to actually meet two criteria. One is income and one is assets. What you're seeing in this spreadsheet here is you're looking at how many accounts in each one of these categories and for the seniors we have 29 and we have a base of 29,000 that's coming from the state and the town is kicking in another 12,998 for a total of $41,998 going out to help seniors that are income limited. Now I thought this was a, this isn't money they're gonna get. This is money they don't have to pay I thought a tax exemption, a personal exemption. Yes, it comes off their taxes. So these numbers then are what the town received is what you're telling me. Not the rules that a senior would use to figure out. No, no, no, this has nothing to do with their income levels now. This is just the summary. So this is a summary of how many were issued in FY 21 and the total amounts of those. So in aggregate, this is sort of the sum of all these personal exemptions in FY 21. So when you said the state, the state does not give you money to make up for what you didn't collect, does it? The state does give us back some funds. That's the 29,000 portion. Yeah, there's a partial. The town is putting the 20,000, the 12,998 of that $41,998. Okay, thank you very much. You're so welcome. So, Kevin. Just, I did click Liz on the PDF for seniors. So one of my recommendations and I don't know how much work it would be. Not a lot of people know what the exemption is, you know, on what do I qualify? They have to find you, find a form. And it might be useful if we had just a very simple sheet. So I looked up on seniors that your income if you're a couple has to be up under 44,000 and you can't have any more than 66,000 in assets. You know, so just if there's a simple little crib sheet because some people might be eligible and not know about it. Exactly, exactly. And I have the same thing about, I know CPA, a lot of people are not aware that they could be income eligible. But I'm thinking even when we vote on it, I'm not sure counselors know what the actual exemption is. You know, so this is saying, do we want to go to the max which I'm totally supportive of, but I just think it would be useful. And since that doesn't change very much if we put something simple together once, then it could accompany this annual decision to go to the options. We've actually worked on this together with my staff and there's gonna be something up on that website so that we can show you what the income limits are when that becomes public. So it gets revised every year. It usually has to do with the cost of living increase and the social security increase annually. The state tells us what those increases are and then we publish them accordingly. And then what I'm thinking is, Sean, I'm sorry to cut you off, go ahead. No, just on that same topic and Liz is also working on a flyer that we plan on sending out in the, not the next tax bill, but the one after that. The December tax bill, the actions. Yeah, it's sort of a one pager that lays out the different exemptions that are available to people. It was in response to what we heard at the CPA committee. So it'll have this stuff on there, it'll have the CPA stuff on there, but we are working on sort of another mechanism for communicating these options to people. Is there any chance, and I'm just, I'm partly thinking we do have an audience for when we are voting on this at the council meeting. Is there something simple that all the counselors would have in the packet? Or would that take too much work to get this done by then? Absolutely not. I'd be glad to send it to you all in advance and actually give you a presentation at the meeting. Yeah, because I would use it, for example, in a district meeting, I would use it like once people might not be aware. So we're voting on something that's good for people in town. Even though it's a limit, you can see the numbers. It's not like we're reaching thousands of people with us. I do hope to get to the Bang Center to our senior center so that I can present myself so that folks know that I am approachable and they can ask me questions about these programs. Thank you, that was my only comment. Excellent. So can we put approval order 2211 on the screen? Somebody has it, thank you. So I think that what we would need if we went to recommend that the council do this and remember that if the council doesn't do this by June 30th, then it doesn't happen for next year. But what would be in order is a motion to recommend approval order 2211 to the council if somebody feels ready. I recommend that I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council approval and order FY22-11 in order approving the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for FY22. Second, D'Angelois. I'm glad you're still here with us. Yeah, thank you for it, Amy. So let's just say you're not looking at the rest of us as you're listening. Good. Anyway, we have a motion that's been made and seconded certainly for the discussion on the motion. If not, we'll come to about seeing no request for discussion. Then we'll start, I guess, with Pat and Sloan. Hi. And Kathy. Yes. Dorothy. Yes. Bob Hegner. Support. Bernie Kubiak. Supported. Jane Sheffler. Jane. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Lynn. Yay. And I supported, I vote yes. So it passes unanimously with support from all three resident members of the committee. So thank you very much for the presentation and answering the questions and responding was, so I think we can go back to the next item on the agenda that we would want to take up. Does the staff have recommendations to what to get to next? So I think the two remaining topics are, well, the two that we wanted to definitely get to are the budget actions, reviewing the budget motions for FY22. And then I think following up on, if there is any followup on the capital improvement program, public forum. Okay. As far as the capital improvement public, we've actually voted on the orders already. Right. Yeah. It's really just a discussion. Whether there's any discussion that flows in the think that there's only one person who even offered a comment at the forum, Sean. Well, yeah. And I talked to Paul a little bit about this. The one comment that was made at the capital improvement program public forum was about the town potentially having the ability to fund the school project without going out for debt exclusion. And I think the one thing I'll just say is the plan that we had worked on and presented a finance committee. You know, one of the goals that we had built into that plan was making sure that we had funding for other capital needs in town and that we weren't sort of diverting all funding for capital towards the four building projects that was communicated through many different sessions that it was important that we don't lose track of other capital or other assets in town and that we continue to maintain them. And so again, the plan that we put forward maintains funding for other assets in addition to trying to fund three of the four building projects. Okay. Yeah, I have a question, Sean. I sent it to you separately, but I wanted to ask it publicly. I'd asked it once before. And it's, if you don't have any answer yet, that's fine. When you go out for debt exclusion, if we said the number for schools is 40, could we, if we had 20 internal, I know we don't have 40, if we had 20, which we don't, but if we had 20, could you go out for 20 of it and then fund the rest internally? So Mernie is nodding his head that, yes, you can do it. So I think I want to confirm my understanding is you either exclude the debt or you don't, but I, and that you don't, doesn't mean you necessarily have to use all the debt exclusion, but that's, and maybe I'm wrong on that, since Bernie and Leonard both nodded their head, maybe they've been through this before, but that's something I wanted to confirm before I answered you was, I thought what I was reading was that you either exclude the debt for a project or you don't, and that there wasn't a specific percentage of that debt that you're excluding, but that's something that we can get an answer to pretty quickly. And the, I'm asking in part because the school building committee, we just got approved to move to the next step of feasibility. And if we can stay on a tight timeline, we would be bringing it to a townwide vote in November of 2022. And to the optics of bringing the school to a townwide vote for a potential debt exclusion, I keep wanting to say override, I'll use the full wording of it for 40 million, up to 40 million while funding the same year, we'd be probably appropriating the money through debt for DPW would be up then, the way you've got a schedule. I think it's unfortunate optics. So I just wanted to know, do we have any, can we make a decision again about the building timing? Is this, since we're only talking about FY22 right now, so we're talking about FY23 is when we'd be taking it out for a public referendum. So it's purely a piece of information right now that I wanted to ask and so we could get an answer. I know we can't do 40 internally. That your model, no matter what I did with it, I couldn't get 40 out of it and leave anything left to repair a building or build a road. But that's the question. Okay, no, I will try to get an answer either tomorrow or Monday. And what I'll do is I'll send it to the full committee just so everyone has it on this meeting. I thought I wanted to get an answer so we could have a record of trying to get the answer and at least knowing the answer. Thank you. Thank you. So anything more to be said about the capital? Then I guess that where we're at is to get back to the review of other budget recommendations and whether there's any discussion or proposals that people want to come forward about actions previously taken that we've discussed and obviously that could include the community responder program, Lynn. I'd like permission to share my screen. Sure. I'm sure I know what's being shared. Okay, so I just wanted to state something first of all about the motion that I made last week. It's this motion right here on top. And I've highlighted a couple of areas. One is the area of seeking funds. The second is the issue of eight community responders. And third is the other elements of the program. I want to make sure people understand that when I say seeking funds, I mean seeking multiple year grant funds. I feel like the last resort is our budget and this motion was made as a motion outside the budget motion. When I said eight positions, it was in addition to the four that the town manager has proposed. And I then referred to proposed and I added all of this because it was not made clear to me or maybe, and I think some other counselors that when the town manager presented to us his plan on the 27th of June of May, it actually was now the budget. So this was an unnecessary piece. In addition to that, so now I would like to make a motion for reconsideration and I come back to the chair because I would like to amend the original motion. So having thought about this and being prepared for it, I did consult with my process expert who was also on the charter commission, Mandy Yankee. And Mandy said that if this were to, something like this were to come up at the meeting that we should follow sections 7.5 of the council rules of procedure which provide that at the meeting where the vote is taken or the next regular meeting, which in this case is this meeting that we're at this next regular meeting, that any counselor voting with the prevailing side of any measure may move for reconsideration. So I can consider a motion from Lynn to reconsider based upon the fact that she was on the prevailing side. So I moved to reconsider. I think for Clarity you would move to reconsider that specific motion. I moved to reconsider the motion to recommend the town council if they direct the town manager to seek funds to fill eight community responder positions in the other elements of the program as proposed on May 27th, 2020, and we put back to the town council and residents of Amherst how he plans to accomplish this no later than January 31st, 2022. And there's has been a second because I think I heard Pat seconding. Yes. So the first vote would be on the question of reconsideration benefits on if the committee is willing to reconsider then I would be able to take motion as far as any amendment to the motion that would come forward. Go back, I think to Lynn first says you probably have more to say, but let me first recognize Dorothy because she has her hand up. I have not thought of this discussion and so it's, I'm having difficulty understanding what has been said. So what you said, but what is not written here is you're seeing eight community responder positions in addition to the four, not in addition. You're saying eight total, okay. So that's what it says here. So why is there a confusion? Why do you have to resay that? Doesn't that say that? I mean, I remember voting on eight, okay. I remember the discussion on eight. There's nothing changed about the eight and I don't want to change the eight. The eight is a total of the four original and four additional. So when I spoke about this then my hope is that the 90,000 from Senator Comerford has placed in the Senate budget comes through conference committee and final approval budget and that we can find additional multi-year grant funds for the other two positions. But my question is still is what is the problem with what we voted? There's nothing, I do have some slight modifications to the motion that I'm lying down here and I would just bring those up but we have to agree to reconsider first. Okay, all right. I think you got put in an inserted so people can't see your amended motion. I haven't, we just need to reconsider last whether we need to agree whether or not we will reconsider. Yeah, Kathy. We are voting to reconsider and then we will vote on the wording of this motion, right? Because I have a couple of changes to recommend including when you meant 2022, not 2021. He's not gonna report back to us last year so it has the typo in it. But beyond that, so we'll do that next, correct? That's correct. Yes, that would be the process because... Fine, that's all I wanted because I have another... We're following rule 7.5 and so we would first have to vote on the motion to reconsider. Anything for Lynn that you wanna say? I know Lynn and Kathy both have your hands up if there might have been from before. I'm taking mine down. I just wanna clarify that we will get to discuss the actual memo after we vote. I'm fine with reconsidering. I think this needs to be reworked. So I like it. So we're back on a motion that was made by Lynn, seconded by Pat to reconsider the motion, the specific motion that has passed at the last meeting. And I think it had clarified that the specific motion needed to be read in which it was. Is there anybody who needs the motion repeated or has anything further to say? Otherwise, I think we'll take, go to a vote. Seeing no hands going up. I think that at this point, I'll start with Dorothy. Hi. Bernie. I'm fine with reconsidering. Pat. Hi. Kathy. Yes. Oh, keep Bernie. You have, I've already indicated my agreement. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Bob, then I'm, yeah, I support it. Jane, Jenny. Can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I'm in support. Okay. I'm in support and Lynn. I'm in support. Okay. So the motion passes unanimously with three members. Lynn, I'm going to return to you as to whether you want to make a new motion and then we'll have discussion and I think Kathy was essentially asking to be recognized then. Okay. So the new motion is very similar to the previous motion. It adds, it has some grammatical changes, but it adds a component to components. One is evaluation. And the other one is looking forward to FY23 funding. So the motion is to recommend to the town council that it direct the town manager to seek funds to fill eight community responder positions and report back to the town council and residents of Amherst, no later than January 31st, 2022 about how he plans to implement and evaluate the program and assure that funding can continue in FY23. Okay. So second to that motion. Second, DeAngelis. Okay. Thank you. Nobody else take this on, please. Blow on the trigger, Pat. I put my hand in you. Okay. I'll wait on the next one. Okay. I promised Kathy that she could be the first to speak if you wished. I wondered if I could speak to my motion. You may speak to your motion, of course. The first change, the way to it is grammatical. The second change I explained above is not necessary. The reporting back to the town council and residents of Amherst, no later than January 31st is not a change. I, instead of using the word accomplish, I use the word implement. I added evaluate the program because I think we're all very interested in how the program will be evaluated over time and assure that funding can continue in FY23. And that is something else I took away from meeting last week. That's all I care to say. Okay. Thank you. Anything else? Kathy, did you have something? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a concern I had last time around. This is a big improvement. Does this say that the target is eight no matter what? Or can he come back and say, I've got, I think I found a way for at least two years to fill six. And we think six could with, you know, with the experience and what we, so it's not clear to me. It's not clear to me that we need two people per shift, seven days a week when I'm reading about other programs, which is how we got to the eight. Some programs have figured out a way that there are certain times a day that as long as there is one person or a person on call, you can do it. So it's, what are we committing him, our town manager to, is more questions. So I might want to soften that. And the other seek multi-year funds. I am really worried about even if we got enough to carry us into FY23, if we don't have a way to sustain the program. And as I think, so I would add multi, probably spelling it a little differently, but you're close, but you know, and as I think people will remember last time, we have even with a shift of two police positions, there are three vacancies right now. So he does have the option. I understand we were trying to leave it in the manager's hands to leave those to freeze and leave at least one position more vacant and not fill it. So that going into FY23, we would have one less police inside that would help with the eight and help with the multi-year. I am really worried about committing to something that we can't carry through it. So multi-year helps me there. And then does this say the number has to be eight. So you've done up to eight. I'm much better with up to eight is the other way I would do it. You know, so then he can come back and say, including he could say, I didn't fill, we did not fill one of the vacancies. And so we have money, we can see where the money would come from both in FY22 but also FY23. So I want it understood that that's a potential direction. I was talked out of last time my motion, which would have been similar to what we did last year of not filling one to two of the current vacancies until January of 2022. And that would be much more constraining on the town manager. So that, and so this allows him to make that decision. Doesn't say he has to, but I'm comfortable Lynn with what you've just in multi-year and up to eight addresses my other concern. I will stop speaking. There's a spelling in multi-year. It's got one too many eyes in it. Yeah. So I guess the question I'm going to ask before getting back to discussion is to ask the maker and the seconder of the original motion whether they would accept the amendment. I'm fine with these amendments. And Pat. I'm not fine with both of them. I'm fine with multi-year funding. I'm not, it sounds to me and correct me please if I'm wrong, that we'll even with multi-year we'll fill up to eight community responders. We may find in the second year that we need 10 or 12. I don't know, but it seems to me to support the program when it takes off, we do need two responders per shift 24 seven. We're going to have to come back to discussion on this because I was to what to do. Andy, I think you should treat Kathy's thing as an amendment and see if there's a second for the amendment. Second amendment. Okay. Dorothy has seconded. So it's treated as an amendment and it will need to be voted on. It cannot be by agreement. So. Bernie has his hand up. I was going to come to that too. I was thinking about one other issue and I'll just put it out there is whether when we vote, whether there can be a request to divide to treat it as two separate amendments, but I'm not going to go there yet. Bernie. Again, my question was, I think I raised the last time does this preclude purchasing services? There's eight positions. Is this saying these eight positions have to be 10 employees? Because I think the best, my gut feeling on this is one of the best ways to go is to look to see if we can purchase the service rather than make it. And I would like to leave that option open. I'm not saying it has to be that way, but I'd like to leave that option open. One of the reasons why I like to see this is how he plans to implement. To me, that opens up options for implementation. Good, thank you. So what we have right now is a motion to amend and I think I will treat it as a single motion because that's the way it was offered. And there's been no request to divide so I'm not going to go there. Any further discussion on the motion to amend? So what we're going to do now is come to a vote on the question of amending motion that's on the screen to add the two phrases multi-year and up to that are in yellow presently on the screen. I think we're voting on the whole amend. This is, we're just, we're not. First, Lynn's substitute and then we'll vote on, okay. Now we have to vote, we have to know what we're voting on. We have to do the amendment first. Okay. And what happened was that the seconder of the original motion did not accept it as a friendly amendment. So then it can only be offered as an amendment. So it was an amendment now that has been a motion to amend made by Lynn and seconder. Okay, I understand. Seconded by Dorothy. So we would be proceeding to vote on the motion to amend. Here's seeing no further requests for discussion. And I will start in Kathy. Yes. Lynn. Yes. Pat. No. Dorothy. Yes. Jane. Yes. No, the support. Bob. I support. Bernie. I support it. And I vote yes. So I think, can I get everyone? Bernie. Yes, I did get Bernie. I think we have everybody. And I think that the vote was on the motion to amend four in favor, one opposed, and three indications of support from resident members of the committee. So we're back to the motion as it is amended. So it's as it is now on the screen. And of course, the deletions are just showing differences from the motion that we just voted to reconsider. They are not part of this motion. The motion is what is shown without the strikeout sections. Any further discussion? So seeing no further discussion than Dorothy. We have both multi-year funds and a sure funding to FY23 that could be in this contradictory. So if we're gonna keep the multi-year, wouldn't we just put a period after program? I'm just, you know, I'm not a motion maker. So I'm just raising. I think the issue for the FY23 may include some of the multi-year funding, but it may also include town funds. And so what we're just saying is seek multi-year. Just think of that separately, but then show us early on in January, the council seated at that time, how the funding will continue into FY23. It might be multi-year, it might be, I'm gonna do this instead. Anything else? Then let's proceed to a vote. Lynn? Yes. Bob? I support it. Kathy? Yes. Dorothy? Yes. Pat? Nope. Bernie? Support it. Jane? I support it. Can I vote yes? So I think that it's everybody. So on the motion itself, the amended motion, it's four to one, three resident members indicating their support. That is what we will report back to the council. So were there any other things since going back to what the agenda was is for today's meeting. The wording is review of all budget recommendations. Are there any other budget recommendations that were made at the previous meeting that any member of the committee wants to revisit? Seeing none. Then the last item on the agenda covered all other members is getting back to the topic of the auditor selection process. And I think we have a couple of minutes. One thing that I, yesterday attended a meeting that was noticed to all of the committee in an email it was a webinar conducted by the Division of Local Services of the Department of Revenue and the Office of the Inspector General about municipal audit process. And I attended and I know that Pat attended because I saw her in the chat box. So we didn't, I haven't talked to Pat about it but I know that we were both there. I don't know if anyone else was there but there was a couple of things that were relevant to the auditor selection process because that actually was a significant piece of the discussion is to how auditors get selected and what criteria. And there was one thing that it was discussed and fairly length the presentation was subject that we've discussed in this committee before. And that is how frequently should a community go out and revisit its auditor selection. And I won't try and paraphrase the whole thing because I don't know that I can do it justice the presentation that was made but essentially the recommendation was that it doesn't have to be every year but it should be done on a regular basis. They cited fairly dramatically a very poor example of what had happened when the town kept going to the same auditor year after year to the point that the auditor was essentially wanting to plug in the prior years audit language by cutting based and make extra profit on it but it wasn't really performing the function that the inspector general was thinking was the appropriate function. And then there was the recognition that in larger firms that if you have rapid, if you have regular turnover in staff that you gain something from familiarity and the relationship but that it's good to have fresh eyes on it. It was a lot of the criteria, the topics that we've discussed. And then the other thing that came up that was very relevant was who should make the final decision? And it was pretty clear that the recommendation was that it not be the same individuals who provide the oversight over the finance staff that is being audited and therefore in a city form of government who's recommended that councils make the final decision on the selection of an auditor. And so I think those are the summaries. The other thing that I just followed up on afterwards is I contacted somebody at DLS and asked this straightforward question and that is whether the PowerPoint that contains all the information that I just provided and the recording that was made because it was a recorded webinar were gonna be made available to share. And the answer was yes, it wasn't ready to go but that they would do that and they would make an effort to announce its availability as soon as possible. So that those of you who might have been interested in it but didn't get a chance, it will be an available item and I will urge the auditor selection committee to view it if nobody else does. So I don't know, Pat, you don't have to come on if you don't want, but if you have anything to add, so I know you were there. No, I'm not thinking really, Melonson Heath who have been our auditors rotated auditors and things like that. So I think it's pretty standard practice with strong candidates for auditors. And the recommendation was rotation every five to eight years. Yes, Sean. So one of the reasons for this agenda item was that the charge for the RFP committee has been approved, I believe, fully approved. The one thing that we did not know if we were good to go forward with is the actual request for proposals document itself. You provided feedback. We made some adjustments to the document, but we did wanna get moving on this so that we, in particular, if there is a change in auditor, we want that to be soon enough in the fiscal year that there's time to transition. I went through an auditor transition at the region and there's a lot of legwork. If you do switch auditors in terms of you have to code all your accounts to their new systems, you have to go through every account and classify it, you know, 10 different ways. And so we wanted to do that over the summer. So I just wanted to see if this committee is comfortable. I don't know if it needs a vote or not, but thumbs up on the RFQ document or the RFP document so that we can move forward on soliciting applications. I guess there's another question and then the close match on this, and that is whether the council under the charter needs to approve the actual RFP or if that can be delegated to the committee. And then to the committee is which committee? Yeah, and I think if we can have it by the end of June approved so that we can advertise it in July and get applications by the end of August and do all the evaluating in September, I think that would be fine. So if it does have to go back to the council if there's a way for it to go back at the end of June, again, I don't know the answer. I think we've gone back and forth about who approves, who's actually approving the contract. So without Paul here, I don't wanna talk about, I don't wanna weigh in more on myself on that, but yeah, I don't know the answer if they have to approve the actual RFP document. Again, the charter talks about the council establishing a process. And so I think that can be construed different ways. RFP? I move that we approve the document that was sent to us today, the RFP of the audit process. Someone may wanna reword that motion, but I did look it over, it looked like it responded to our conversations. And I move that we won't go ahead. Second. That's a second. I think that the, I need a clarification. And I'll turn to either Lynn or Athena on this one, but my understanding of the council rules is that we make recommendations to the council, but only the council can vote to approve. The confusing things for me, while Athena's looking at that, maybe she wants to find the charge for the committee is, we approve the charge for the committee. We appoint, I appointed the members to the committee. And I believe now we need to look at whether or not the committee needs to approve the RFP or it has to go all the way back to the council. I, if it does, then let's get it done and over with because on June 21st, the council meeting will essentially be finance, finance, finance. Andy, the RFP committee charge doesn't include approval of the RFP itself. It only includes that it shall receive applications from the qualified auditing firms and evaluate them. The motion from the council was to refer the procedures for selection of the audit firm to the finance committee. So I think it probably makes sense to recommend that the council approve the RFP, like Dorothy moved. It's cleaner. I think we could probably do that. Right, we could maybe add that to consent. I think so. So the motion should be to recommend to the council approval of the RFP. Dorothy is willing. I am willing to have that be the motion. So I think. I am willing. Okay. Anything else in discussion? Yes, I just want to mention that I've also spoken with the town manager and with Andy after the seminar he and Pat attended, which I want to thank you both for doing that. He is perfectly fine if the council who ultimately is the body that the audit is done for approves the selection of the auditor. We will use the same kind of criteria that the town does in doing any kind of procurement. I know Andy, Delaney is in the audience. And so it is really the council that should approve it ultimately. So the way the charge is read, I'm just going to read it real quickly again because I also have it on my right here, but I can't share it with you. The audit RFP review committee will receive applications from qualified auditing firms evaluate applications utilizing the criteria in the RFP document and deliver evaluations to the chief procurement officer, the town manager who will consider the qualitative rankings of each firm along with their price proposals. I think that what we're really getting at and I don't think we need to change the charge is that that's what the committee will be charged to do. That then the town manager will make a recommendation of a firm to choose that it will be up to the council, probably with the advice of the finance committee as to whether to accept his recommendation. And if that is done, then it goes back to the town manager to actually enter into a contract because that is an executive function, not a legislative function. I agree with that. So that is the process we would be moving towards. So what we are doing right now in the motion that is on the floor is just that we are recommending to the council that it authorize the issuance of the request for proposals as has been submitted to this committee. So any other discussion? If not, I'm going to proceed to vote and we can finish up our business for the day. I think pretty much Kathy. Yes. Bob. I support it. Dorothy. Yes. Lynn. Yes. Bernie. I support it. Pat. Aye. Jane. I support it. And I vote yes. So it's unanimous. This vote is unanimous with support of all three resident members of the committee. So the only business that I hadn't anticipated when the set out is not really a matter of requires discussion. But the report that we sent to the committee did not include anything on the general government sections. And to simplify the process, I was going to just take the meeting. I reviewed the meeting. I've been sent the link to the meeting by Athena and I will write a brief report on the general government sections. And Sean. One thing that was raised on Monday by councillor Brewer was she had submitted some questions around the town council section of the budget and school committee stipends. And I had provided some draft responses to those to the finance committee. So I think she had indicated she wanted to see those in the report on general government. So I'll re-forward my responses on those because we didn't discuss them at a meeting. They were just, I sent them electronically. So I'll re-forward those responses to you, Andy. I can write something up for you, Andy. I was, I got very far behind because of chasing children, but I have notes and that was the section that I reviewed. So I'll, I can get something out to you later today. Okay. Well, I would appreciate it, but whatever worked for you, Jane, I understand having three young kids puts you in a category of certainly respect. But thank you. Kathy? Sean, I had a few thoughts as I went through the budget book in terms of formatting. And I didn't know whether, and Andy, I mentioned one or two to you, one, well, two things. One, it's not indexed. I pointed, page number is very useful so I could find things. I've got little sticky notes everywhere, but in two years ago, each department showed the health insurance costs of the department. So you could see both the wage and last year it didn't. So the very first one of these budget books, the inaugural one had it, but then it didn't. But the question, the larger question is, would you want individual thoughts on that just sent to you? Do you want us to somehow collect the thoughts and send it to you as a group piece? And then you're not gonna do this again until 10 months from now or whatever. You know, so, and I've been looking at some other town budget books. And I think the other thing I mentioned is in at least one town that you segue into a capital part of the budget book. So you can see, you don't have to go to two different documents to see what the line for capital is spending on. It doesn't have as robust a capital improvement program, but there were just some thoughts I had on a four, for those of us who actually use this and use it as a reference, not trying to figure out where's the other part of it. Yeah, no, my thoughts are, maybe that's something we could schedule for September and we could do, you know, we could discuss it, but also kind of solicit feedback from the full council. So it all kind of comes at once. And then we can all discuss the changes and just make sure everyone's supportive of them. Yeah, because I've heard just little things from other people as well that we could do better or add. So if you're okay with it, I think September would be a good time to kind of discuss all that so we can prepare for the next year. I thought it's not helpful to get bits and drabs and those are things that just jumped out at me. There may be others as I work my way through it. And then my only other question, when we do that in September, is for you to see whether anyone is going on, engage Amherst, you went to great effort to make it more animated and more sectional. And I think that took a lot of staff, yours and other staff time. If people aren't using it, it would be something we could discuss in September, you know. Yeah, no, we certainly haven't gone a lot of questions on engage Amherst. I haven't actually looked at the analytics behind the scene that show you how many people have gone to it. But no, that's another thing we could bring the sort of report on how many people went through that. So it wasn't, I mean, setting the website up was a little bit of work mostly from Brianna, but there haven't been many questions on it. So that hasn't been a lot of work to maintain it. So yeah, but we can bring more information on that. It was the first year too, maybe if we, the more we sort of normalize that online function for asking questions, it might be used more. Because it is a really nice tool to kind of catalog all the questions that come in. So I do wish it was used a little bit more this year to submit questions on the budget. And I'm just really thinking of staff time and pressures on you all times that, you know, I worked for a foundation that set up an interactive feature at great cost. And when we asked how many people had used it, it turned out almost no one had ever used it. And they were just calling it. Yeah, we're not gonna do any more for, we're not gonna do any more for building project tools. We're done with the four building project tools. No more of those. Okay, thank you. Okay, yeah, as far as the issue that Alyssa Brewer brought up about the one section on time council, that includes stipends for school committee and whether that confuses readers and makes the time council expense look higher than it is because it includes something that's clearly not time council. I think that's a subject for next year's presentation. We might put, Jane and I put an explanation into the report we submitted to the council just so that it's there for the record, but any change is future not past. So, to be noted for that purpose. Anything else that people would like to raise under business not anticipated? Seeing none, I think that we're at the end of the meeting. I don't have another meeting date that's firm. Sean, had you an agenda that you need us to consider for next? No, I don't think we have anything right now. We'll let you know. There is one hand in the attendees list, I don't know. Okay, I will thank you for pointing that out because it has public comment before, but I always willing to go back. So, let me have Tony Cunningham brought along so that he can give whatever comment. Hello, thank you. Your public comment was listed as the item eight on the agenda for today. So my name is Tony Cunningham. I live in North Amherst and I'd like to express my disappointment with the motion regarding the funding of Cress and the other recommendations of the CSWG. It is my belief that it is the council's responsibility to give direction on how to fully fund the program and not something that should be put on the shoulders of the town manager. I believe this direction should include not filling the vacant police officer positions to ensure there is sufficient funding for the Cress program and the other CSWG recommendations both in FY 22 and 23. Directing the town manager to find funds from grants not yet identified jeopardizes a successful launch of the program and reduces its chances of success in the future. A braver and bolder step would be to recognize what was made clear in the CSWG and seven gen report that illustrated the over-policing of communities of color in Amherst. Reducing this type of over-policing would reduce the need for 48 sworn officers allowing for that funding to secure a successful Cress program. Also with the police department tracking at 63% at the end of the third quarter, there may well be funds available there too that could be shifted to Cress for next year. Thank you. Thank you, Tony. I appreciate you raising your hand at the point that you did because you may have come on after we did the first round of public comment. So thank you. I think that we're as we try and make sure that we hear all public comment. We can't always respond to public comment. Sean. The one thing I'll just add is to the commenter's point, we did, so there is a shift of some of that. We talked about the 61% in the third quarter report. So some of that has been shifted down to the community responder program. That's the 100 and I think it's 170, well, 130,000 now of this year's budget that was shifted to the community responder program, which is the two vacant positions that we've discussed in the past. So seeing all the requests from the committee for any unanticipated business, I think it's time to bring us to a close. Thank you very much. And I consider that we're adjourned at 430. Thank you. And we will let you know when there's next meeting. Bye.