 All right, this is Christine Dushler, chair of the Yerlington Finance Committee, and let me confirm that all members are present and can hear me when I call off your name. Could you please say present? Starting with Jordan. Present. Shane. Here. Jennifer. Yes, here. Sophie. Here. Ryan. Carolyn. Here. Rebecca. Here. Josh. Present. Grant. Here. Charlie. Here. John. Present. Daryl. Is Daryl here? Yeah, he is. He just raised his hand. All right, Daryl's here. Annie, you're here. Elle Jones is here. Topher. Here. I thought you were going to miss us. I'm glad to see you. Peggy. Here. El Tosti. Here. Dean. Here. And Dave. Here. And Tara. Here. All right, so let me read the script. Christine and Daryl, can you hear me? Yes, I can now. Have some microphone issues. This open meeting of the Earrington Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, as extended on July 16, 2022, due to the current state of emergency in the Commonwealth through the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the Governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order which you can find posted with agenda and materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable public access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment only and writing by email to tbradley at town.arlington.ma.us.com. For this meeting, the Arlington Finance Committee is convening my conference, video conference via Zoom as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join and comment. Please note that this meeting is being recorded and that attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other people may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials that have been provided members of this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the cheer notes otherwise. Before turning to the first item on the agenda, permit me to cover some ground rules for effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes. I will introduce each speaker after they conclude their remarks. I will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment, questions or motions. Please hold into your name as called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the cheer yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage in colloquial with other members, please do so through the cheer taking care to identify yourself. All right, with that, let's approve the minutes. Tara, can you bring up the minutes? All right, does anyone have any corrections or revisions to the minutes of February 13th? All right, do I have a motion? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. All right, let's any further discussion on the minutes? All right, we'll take a vote to approve the minutes. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Brian. He's not here. Carolyn. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Aye. John. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Annie. Abstain, I wasn't present. Elle Jones. Yes. Topher. Yes. Peggy. Yes. El Tosti. Yes. Dean. Yes. Dave. Yes. All right, the minutes have been approved. 17 in the affirmative, no negatives and one abstention. All right. Before we get into substantive budgets, I just want to go over what the projected schedule, as we know it right now, for the next couple of weeks. And I want, so I want people to know what's coming up. Some people can be prepared for what will be on the agenda. We were, I was expecting the Capital Planning Committee to come in next Monday, the 27th. But they've asked it to be rescheduled to accommodate Timor. So right now, we have no one coming in on the 27th. So we will try to do as much finishing up of budgets on the 27th as we can. Next Wednesday, March 1st, we're going to have Minuteman come in. And next Wednesday, we'll be an in-person meeting. Starting next Wednesday, all meetings will be at the Community Safety Building unless there is a snowstorm. Let's hope that doesn't happen. So on March 1st, next Wednesday, we have Minuteman coming in. On Monday, the 6th, we have the Arts and Culture Commission coming in. We might also have Community Preservation Committee coming in, but we haven't gotten confirmation yet. On March 8th is the Capital Planning Committee presentation. At least tentatively, we're hoping that they'll come in on the 8th. Carolyn, I think you said you wanted to do reclassification on the 8th as well. On March 13, the Water Bodies group will come in. We have, right now, we have no presentations scheduled on March 15th. We're 20th. And to the extent we have any budgets left over, we'll certainly finish them by then. And on March 22nd, we have the schools coming in. We still don't have the warrant, correct? Altosti, so we don't know what other hearings we may have to schedule. No, we still don't have a warrant. It really is ridiculous. All right. I know that Sophie has been trying to communicate with the Disabilities Commission and she'll just keep us posted on that. Anything else, Tara, that I've missed? So we have a couple of things we're going to find out when the Community Preservation Act can come in after their meeting tonight. That's also going on right now. And then we'll also be hearing back from, we're also going to be hearing back from another, the Historical Commission, I believe, and or the Open Space Committee. One of them has a meeting tomorrow, so we'll be hearing back from one of them at the end of this week, because it sounds like they are going to be requesting a budget increase. Are they both requesting a budget increase, both commissions? Possibly. So we'll find out more after their meetings and then I'm kind of talking about it. Andy, you have a hand up? Yes. We should black out the 5th of April as a date. We can't meet. It's the first night of Passover. Thank you. Thanks for pointing that out, Andy. All right. So that is the tentative schedule going forward. I'm going to do everything, Tara and I, and do everything we can to make sure that these groups have their materials to us as far in advance as possible, at least 48 hours ahead. So that is that. One other thing before we get into budgets, Daryl and John were able to get some supplemental information from Chief Larrity. And I believe that was sent to everyone, correct? Does anyone have any follow up questions for Daryl or John on that material? I don't see any hands raised. Thank you for getting that stuff for us, Daryl and John. Charlie also sent a follow up email regarding the controller's budget. I think Sophie and Carolyn had some questions, and Charlie followed up and got some detailed information for us. And I think that too was made available. Any follow up with that? Anyone have any questions for Charlie on that? All right. I don't see any hands up for that. And then last, Tara also sent around the clerk study that was commissioned and paid for. So I hope everyone takes a look at that if you haven't already. All right, well, that's all I have on preliminary matters. Budgets, let's start with the select board. Is the select board budget ready? Yes, it is. Great. All right, take it away, Dave and Sophie. If I can have a chair. OK, Eric, can you bring up the budget for me? Can you make that a little bigger if you can? Before I begin the select ones budget, there was a question asked about the zoning budget. Again, in reference to the position going from a 0.29 to a 0.89. And the reason why it's now a 0.89 and what equals out to be 31 hours is that the zoning is going to pick up that position totally. Prior to that, it was shared with the inspection services. And that has been done away with as far as the person retired, but then they brought him back. And now he's fully retired again. So then they transferred a person into zoning at 31 hours. And that makes it a 0.89 position. So that was a question that was asked. Again, I hope that satisfies the question. Does anyone have any questions on that? All right, take it away, select board. Now it goes, select board. I will announce that the position of administrator, board administrator has been filled. And it was filled internally. And Ashley Maund was given that position. So I wanted to make that position that is filled. Currently, they're looking for, they're going to change a full-time position to a hot-time position. And right now, presently, the young woman that was on maternity leave is back. They've hired a temporary person to cover when she was out. He's still there. And so they're in the process of, it's almost like musical chairs. These people will be moving up accordingly. But that's in process right now. There will be a new job description written for this part-time employer that they're looking for. That used to be a full-time position, but it was vacant. The budget itself really doesn't change much because there will be a new salary for the new board administrator, which will be different. And the board administrator also has, because she has 10 years of service, she also will be entitled to not a flat rate longevity, but a percentage longevity. No positions in the select board are non-union positions. But the new position comes under a percentage longevity rather than a flat rate longevity. Does anybody have any questions at this point? Carolyn? OK, good. I just didn't want to jump in and kick, because I can only see so many people when we've got this So, so Cropelka is being replaced. And we already know who she's being replaced by. Yes. OK, can we can we have them change the vacant to the name of that other person? Well, when this when this budget was drawn up, that wasn't the case. This just happened. This just happened in the last week, Carolyn. OK, all right. So that person's eventually before this goes to town meeting, that name will be changed, which will give insight into the fact that I assume she's already a town employee when you said she already has 10 years in the town. Yes, she worked in the board of selection and as well as the inspectional services. OK, so so that'll impact that that'll demonstrate why her salary is what it is when the time comes. So Mayor is the one who's moving up. OK, sorry, I didn't catch the beginning part. Right. I heard the part about people moving around. It'll be other people. The chairs will be moving, if you will. OK, OK. So yeah, just for Al, Al, you're the one that updates the pages, right? So that this whole page can get updated before town meeting happens then, I guess. OK, I'm done. The report to town meeting doesn't have names. Just has positions. Right. So I just I just want to. When they when you said there, did you say they're adding a position to this? Or they're just they were carrying they were carrying a position, but it was vacant. And what they're going to do is they decided they'd be in the board to not have a full time position, but a part time position. In the meantime, they have had temporary help covering for the maternity leave of one of the workers. OK, got it. Al Jones, do you have your hand up? Yeah, just a question about the board administrator's salary. It will be different than what's in this budget. To answer your question, Alan, yes. So do we have that number? I will give you that number. And I just got this number. So it would be 94,471 M1 step two. That does not include longevity. I don't have I think Sophie might have the longevity thing. OK, I'm just wondering if we can get the right numbers so we can go on. Right. Well, so this is the question is we offered the town manager's office to update this salary detail. And they did not want to is my understanding or said no. You know, when they run these budgets sheets, that's how they are. And things are always moving and they can't always update everything. You have a weekend. Yes. So I was given. So Julie had sent Dave and I an email that said, and I quote that as board administrator, Ashley's fiscal year 24 salary will be M1 step one 96,360 from July to January 2024 and M1 step three 99,972 from January to June 2024. She did not mention the longevity, which Dave did. So I don't know I wasn't aware there was a difference between the her. She's on there currently with a 700. But I guess from Dave saying maybe that 700 changes because it becomes a percentage instead of flat. And I hadn't thought to ask that because I didn't realize that was a change that happens. Then the next question that comes up is so the the FTE on the principal clerk and typist is currently a 0.54. That position has been vacant since basically spring of 2021 even though it was in the budget. So when the administrative assistant went on maternity leave, they had money in their global budget to use to fill that, have a temporary help. So that's how they paid for that temp position. And so the expectation is that all these positions will now get filled and they will be at 100% capacity and working. I would note that the administrative position, I mean, to the extent the officer manager position now is vacant, it doesn't show vacant on here, but it is now vacant. Would we want to lower or should we be lowering? I mean, that was sort of my question to Julie is normally when we have a vacant position, we go down. Is our financial committee sort of what we'd like to see happen? I don't know. So what did you? Madam chair, I'd like to table this until it settles down because I mean, if nothing else, if we go to town meeting and they see basically Marie's salary on somebody new, they're going to be questions. So I'd rather avoid that and get the real numbers table this until we have those. I can understand as well as having the vacant position would be listed at the extreme range of that position, correct? Is that what you just said, Sophie? Right. That's my concern. But I also understand that by the time they post, it's just so fluid and the timing is such that I don't know that they feel that they can update it. Well, they don't need to update it. We need to update it. And the admin, the board admin position is filled. So we have a solid number there. I mean, we don't have it, but there is a solid number. And the vacant position there, the office manager, they'll have to set some cap on that that we should fill as a budget. So that's why I'd like the table. Second. All right, Annie, you have a hand up? Yeah, I just want to mention that probably if, and Carolyn maybe could correct me on this if I'm wrong, what will happen with that office manager position is they'll decide what range they're posting it at. And that would be the range that would be what we want to put in the budget. I think is like they may downgrade the position in terms of grade or step. But I don't know if that would be, would that be a position reclassification, Carolyn, or would they, am I making sense? Yes, you're making sense. Sophie was the one who said it, but yes, as long as they're within the range, there's no change and they shift steps and grades around, even grades around based on the qualifications that they're searching for, that doesn't need to go through reclassification. It doesn't need to do any of that. It's at the discretion of the department head and the HR department. So, and Sophie, I think usually the finance department is the one that suggests the salary, but we strongly urge the department head to drop the salary so that they hear that from us. But that's about as much as we can do. At least that's my understanding. Somebody else can correct me if I'm wrong. Right, I don't think we can tell them that, I don't think we can force the budget below the top of a range that they're planning to advertise it at. If that makes any sense, as much as we want them to hire at a lower salary, they also need to be able to be competitive if they find a person they really want. So, before we table this for the set day. Yes, I just want to let everybody know that Sophie and I have spent this year many, many days trying to figure out these budgets as it pertains to personnel and step raises and who's there and who's not. I'm going to make a suggestion that perhaps Sophie and I have done just about everything we can do on this particular budget and the questions that people have. I'm suggesting that we bring in the budget director and have her explain it to everybody because we've gone around with this among other budgets for almost a month. Sophie, do you agree with me? I do, I think everything you all have said is what we have said in our meetings and we're still here at this point. Al Tosti. I think we should just adjust the, we know the board administrators salary for the first six months and the second six months. If somebody can do the calculation, we can substitute the number and come back, but it's, I agree, we can't put a $96,000 salary or we can't put $117,000 salary when it's going to be around 97 or 98. I mean, we don't need them to change this. We just need a new salary number to be plugged. And now, didn't want to interrupt, I'm sorry, but are you also suggesting or wouldn't you suggest taking the office manager position and lowering it to the minimum range or leaving it as is maximum? Why don't we just get this? You know, we're trying to micromanage the Soakman's budget. We know that the competition out there is tough. If they come in West, that's great. Gives them more room to grow, but we do know the board administrator salary. So we should change that, read you the numbers and go. Caroline, you have a hand up? You're muted, Carol. So when we present a town meeting, the names of select board and the names of previous aren't on the sheet at all. Only the position, not the names. Otherwise, it'll say board administrator. Okay, right. So it goes, so the first column they see is job. And then it goes down is the job column, which has the positions. Yeah. Okay. And so they, town meeting doesn't care whether or not there's a vacant or whether or not people have been moved around. Correct. And at the moment, the first three jobs will stay at full time. And the fourth job, the clerk typist will stay at halftime. Correct. The clerk typist last year was at a one and this is the first budget where it's at a 0.54. Okay. And we know that the steps that are written here are correct and the grades that are written here are correct going forward or we're not sure. These are the steps and grades based on the names that are in this chart. So the office, so hypothetically speaking, if the person currently administrative assistant moves up to office manager, I don't know that her grade and step would be what's posted there. And same for the current principal clerk and typist temp person, if he were to move up to assistant administrative assistant hypothetically speaking and have a full-time job, I don't know that that would be his grade and step either. And Krapelka and Maher haven't been willing to give you a sense of what those greater steps will be in all your meetings. Well, first of all, this is Krapelka. Krapelka has passed away. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, so that's okay. And she's been out in Ma, actually Ma has been in the position working out a grade for so there's just some history here. The plus side is all the vacancies it appears will be filled and one vacancy will be reduced from a full-time position to a halftime position. Right. And bear in mind that the second page where it has all the salaries, whatnot, that is not produced by the board. That is produced by the manager's budget. So that's why I'm going back to, if we have concerns, my suggestion is bring in the person that made up this chart. Right. Because Sophie and I have just, we're going around and around and around. Now we're going around and around again tonight. And I hear what Alan's saying, both Alan's and I don't just agree with them, but is everybody secure with that? It, for me, it's secure. I do have a meeting with HR director on March 7th. Is it okay if I ask her to look at these numbers and determine whether they will be changed? For who are you asking? I didn't, I didn't mean to. The HR director. No, I don't think it's, at that, I asked the budget director. Well, we have, we have a motion to table. We have a suggestion, but not a motion to bring in the budget director. We also have not quite a motion, but someone has suggested that we just do the math, reduce the budget. We'll figure out what we're going to do after we have asked all the questions. I see Charlie's hands up before, before I let you speak, Charlie, before we decide what we do, what we want to do on the salary page, I want to make sure we go through the expense page and eliminate, get rid of any questions we may have on that. But before we get there, Charlie, would you have your hand up? Yes, thank you, Madam Chairman. I would, I have the salary spreadsheet, general salary spreadsheet open on my computer and selected to the select board budget. And in following Al Tosti's suggestion, we could just type in the average numbers of the two ranges that Sophia and David mentioned and come up with that revised number and put it away. That's the way I would, I would be willing to do that if that's what the committee wants. All right, let's go to the expense side of the budget and let's talk about any, if anyone has any questions or Dave or Sophie, if you have anything to tell us about the expense side. I will mention online 5215, telephone expenses. If you notice that it's $1,000, that's for use of a cell phone by the board administrator. And it has been, it's not activated since, since November, but they still have it. They just have not activated it. In other words, they haven't put it back online, but that's what that $1,000 item is. Some people ask about that all the time, but that's for a cell phone that's assigned to the board administrator only. Any questions about the expense side? If I could, Madam chairwoman, just make a couple of notes of things that came up in our meeting for future fiscal years to keep in mind. Yes, please, go ahead. Okay, so on the principal clerk and typist position, as we noted, it was decreased to a 0.54 from a full-time position. The current board administrator would ideally like to see that go up in future years to a three-quarter time position for the work. This person's position is intended to be focused on committee work in particular attack which takes a lot of time and town day work. And noting that in 2025, there will be the 250th anniversary of the town which will require more work. So to, ideally, I think she would like to see that position increase. Also, on line 5217, they are expecting an increase in fiscal year 25 for the MMA dues. And then as a side note, on the offsets, we had noticed that the actuals and the budgets were different and were curious and had an exchange with Sandy. And he said that just to alert, ideally, the town has used the same formulas for many years and Sandy had hoped to update some of the offset formulas this year, but being down a deputy town manager, he could not assign anyone to that task. So he would like to see maybe in fiscal year 25 revisit the issue and maybe update some of our offset formulas. But otherwise doesn't seem major changes. So that would be just an across the board comment that came up because of this budget. So I think that's all the sort of notable exceptions. The phone that Dave mentioned, that's sort of a proportionate share. I think the town has sort of a big pool of phones and they just allocate them and a fee. But in the past, the actual expense on that phone has only been about $300, not a thousand. Anything else Sophie or Dave? No, whatever the chair decides, it's fine with me. Hi, I see Jennifer has her hand up. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a quick question about the otherwise unclassified that had a big jump last year. The small amount, but I'm just curious what it, is it for something particular or we're just open-ended? I didn't get the first part of the question. Oh, sorry, the otherwise unclassified that had a big jump last year to 2,500. I was just wondering if that was, if there was something in particular that determined that amount or if it's just a open-ended kind of thing. It's open-ended. There's a lot of different things that come into that for a running job. Last year, they indicated it was the warrant printing. Although this year it was mentioned as being more of a select board report printing. So it kind of goes between the, it seems to get allocated between the office supplies line 52-23 and the 52-99. It's wherever they can get the money from to cover the printing costs for the reports. Got it, thanks. Ella Jones. Hi, I just, going back to my motion to table, I'd rather let them do the arithmetic and I'll volunteer to get the numbers out of the town manager's office if that makes things easier. Any other questions, comments on the select board's budget? Charlie. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I think, let me raise this question to Al. Is it possible that the reluctance of the budget director or whomever to actually change this and put the right number in there simply a position on their part to keep more money in the budget? In other words, to keep the entire salary structure high or so they have more flexibility and puts us in a position at town meeting of approving a value for that line item that's not reality. That seems more like a comment than a question, right, Charlie? It was my question to Al. What do you think is going on, Alan Jones? Sorry, I guess I wasn't reading that into it. I just figured they have the numbers. They can give us the numbers. I mean, if they're trying to pad the budget, then yeah, we should step on that. But I don't think they are. I think they have a lot of work to do and I think if I ask the question, I'll get the numbers and let them do the arithmetic. Because we can do averages, we can try to guess, we can guess the one, because we know that Mars is gonna bring some longevity with her and et cetera, but it can get complicated and then why not let them do it? And give us some numbers and we can vote on it. That's my position. And like you said, I volunteer to get those numbers. Was that a motion, Alan Jones? Well, I already motioned the table. Yeah, there's already been a motion to table, which was seconded. Shane, you have your hand up? I do, thank you, Madam Chair. Question about expenses. But what are the audit reports? What are the cover? $78,000. That report comes through the Comptroller's office. It's a special report and the report goes to the Board of Select Board rather. Yeah, it's the cost of the annual audit, Shane. Right, yeah. Yeah, if I could just butt in, yeah, that's what we pay powers in Sullivan. And if you go on the SharePoint, you can read the audit from FY22. It's a comprehensive document. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Before we address the motion to table, does anyone have any specific questions about any specific line items that we haven't covered already? Madam Chairperson, can we pass the audit figure separately? I would think we could, yes. Then I'll make a motion, accounting and auditing total of $78,000 as printed in the budget. Seconded. A motion to approve $78,000 for the audit reports has been made and seconded. Any discussion or questions about that? All right, let's take a vote. Jordan? Yes. Shane? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. Sophie? Yes. Caroline? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Josh? Yes. Grant? Yes. Charlie? Yes. John? Yes. Darrell? Yes. Annie? Yes. Oh, Jones? Yes. Tofer? Yes. Peggy? Yes. El Tosti? Yes. Dean? Yes. And Dave? Yes. All right, that budget has been passed unanimously. All right. Now we have a motion to table the select board's budget. It's been seconded. And I think Elle Jones has volunteered to figure, find out the exact salary amount for the board administrator. Now I don't, I think, Elle Tosti, you were suggesting that we just simply do the calculations ourselves tonight. Are you making a motion? No, I, you know, Elle's right, because we gotta get the longevity also. So unless we're willing to high ball a little bit, we'll get the exact numbers calculated and we'll pass this in, you know, a couple of minutes. So let's just table it. All right, does anyone have any alternative motions or any questions or discussion about the motion to table? All right, seeing them. All right, Shane? I'm sorry, so are we table? Thank you, Madam Chair. Are we tabling it so that Elle, how Jones can talk to the manager's office? Is that the purpose of the motion on the table? Yes, so I can get the actual numbers. Okay, thank you. Sophie? Sorry, so just to, so is that going to be the only question? I know we said it's about micromanaging on the other ones, but if all the other ones are gonna move up and they're currently listed at the top steps of eight, should he be asking about if those steps will lower or just let that go? I'm just gonna ask for the numbers. I mean, I'm sure the administrator number will go down and the other ones, whatever the market bears and what they should do is give us the top of the realistic range. If it's 200,000, we can challenge it, but otherwise the top of the range because they know the hiring and that's their budget. I'm sure they'll wanna hire as low as they can, but that's the money they have to spend. I'll get the whole table. Any other questions, comments? All right, we are taking, I want to take a vote to table this, the select board's budget so that L. Jones can get more information on the salaries. All right, Jordan? Yes. Shane? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. Sophie? Yes. Carolyn? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Josh? Yes. Grant? Yes. Charlie? Yes. John? Yes. Darrell? Yes. Annie? Yes. L. Jones? Yes. Topher? Yes. Peggy? Yes. El-Tosti? Yes. Dean? Yes. And Dave? Are you muted, Dave? He seems to have dropped off. This is usual connectivity problem time. I will look out for him when he tries to rejoin. But, yes, he seems to have dropped off. All right, it's past 17 to zero based on people who are here right now. All right, tell my manager budget. Okay, so Dave and I were prepared for him to have internet problems. He disappeared. So I will take this one. So it's on page 25. Tara. And quickly on the salaries and wages, just a reminder from the explainer that we received that there's going to be a one-month overlap between Sandy and the new manager. They are posting for the position, posting for the position has closed and interviews will be soon. And the interviews will be with a panel and we think we understood it's with two staff members. The deputy town manager, so this is a new number that maybe we want to do the same thing and plug this in, the deputy town manager will start in fiscal year 23 at 138,000, which is higher than what is here, I believe in the budget book because that was just hired. Then the budget director position, the last one on the list, has the significant increase there is because there was going to be a reclassification article at town meeting about this position. It was a grade six, step eight, it's now a grade 10, step eight. Pardon me. So it was great, right. So now it's grade 10, step eight. And the reason for the change is that this position is now solely responsible for the budget whereas this used to be a shared responsibility. Then there's a new position listed for communications coordinator. This is an ARPA funded position and there's a corresponding offset. There's a decrease in longevity because of several departures. And the other benefits is decreased because, sorry, if you want to scroll back up, the other line items, other benefits, that's decreased because it was the previous town managers in his contract. So on to expenses. If we want to go back up, TAR is the one that's controlling the screen. Okay, not much to say other than, the other state travel is for conferences. The line 5220 for website support services, it's going to be an ongoing need. It's to help with improving accessibility to the town's websites. The upon questions, there's a concern for the future and increase in budgets regarding increasing salary needs and decreasing in services. If we continue to just level fund, salaries are getting more expensive and it would require decrease in services if we keep things level for the future. Any questions? Does anyone have any questions on the town manager's budget, Daryl? Just on the last comment you made, Sophie, is the cautionary note about level funding, does that apply to the entire town budget or just the manager's budget? I'm going to say it applies across the board. We heard it from all department heads. Okay, I can live with that if it was just applied to the town manager. That wouldn't sit that well. Thank you. You're welcome. Carolyn, you muted again, Carolyn. First Tara, can you scroll up so that we're at the other, we're not at the salary budget, thanks. Sorry, I was just on the line with Dave. Yeah, I saw that, which is why I figured I'd wait. So that last comment about salaries, our last town manager had a really nice package. Are we really going to bring in another town manager at that level? No, it shows a, there's a decrease in the budget book. When you look back on the detail page for the new town manager, there is a decrease, not by much, but there also isn't the other benefits and there isn't the longevity and those other items. Right, okay. I just let everybody know I'm back, I'm using my cell phone. All right, great to have you back, Dave. Carolyn, do you have anything else, Carolyn? No. All right, Grant. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Sophie, last budget, you mentioned something about the offsets increasing and that was only 2% and you'd mentioned something about, I'd like to hear more about what was mentioned again and also these offsets for the town budget are much higher. Now, so full disclosure, the offsets are part of the water sewer budget. So there's kind of a reason why I'm asking, did you inquire about why this one raised 35%? I did and the response across the board on offsets was it's just formula-based. Let me jump into the, I think we also are seeing some ARPA funds as an offset for the communications coordinator. I think that might also result in a higher offset or that part of that 65,000. That could be wrong, but it is an ARPA position. That is an excellent point, Mr. Chair, thank you. Yes, so it's formula-based is correct and powers in Sullivan are the folks that derived that formula. And I don't remember the formula changing. I remember offers that they were gonna look into it, but the formula that powers in Sullivan gave us has not changed. So I can understand the offsets increasing and decreasing slightly, not because of the percentages, but because of the actual amount of the offsets. But I think the large percentage here is gonna be, is best explained by the ARPA offset is included in that. So thank you for that. It's Christine's right. I actually have that in my notes right here where I asked why the large increase in the specific responses, it includes ARPA position on staff. So that was the response. Excellent, thank you again. Charlie. Thank you, Madam Chairman. So Mike, I have a question. Why is the, in the salaries of this, there are two town manager lines in the salary detail. And yes, the town manager salary goes down from 234,000 to roughly 229,500. But there's another line for the town manager of $20,000, which is shown as still there. And I understand that these other benefits go away, but shouldn't that 19,000 also go away? No, that's the one-month overlap between. All right, I got it. Thank you. Annie. Yeah, can you scroll back up to the expenses for a minute? I just wanna check something under, there's a line called other benefits that zeroed out. That other benefits was part of that generous package for the former town manager. So this is where we're seeing that go away, that portion of the package. Yes. Am I correct? Okay, correct. Anything else, Annie? All right, Shane. Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, Sophie. Actually, three questions that I'll battle off. One is what is a communications coordinator and how is it different from a public information officer? Second is we're gonna obviously have a vacancy for deputy town manager finance. So we have a plan, post or fill that position. Seems like an important position. And then last, what are the dues and subscriptions cover for $18,000? Okay, so the deputy town manager finance is the one that has just been hired. And that's the one that's coming in at 138,000, which is higher than what's in this budget book. So query if we wanna change that number and vote in a different number. The dues and subscriptions as for governmental, financial officers associations, MMA and some other associations that staff are members of. And the communications coordinator, do you know exactly what that person is doing? I can't say that I do. I don't know if Dave, he has some of the background. The question is, what's the difference between the communication coordinator that's being paid for with ARPA funds and the public information officer? Is there a distinction between those two positions and their tasks, I guess? I believe the, I know one position will go away. Right, the ARPA. With the ending of the funding. Correct, the communications coordinator. That goes away. Tara has thrown up a job description for the communications coordinator. Is this? It's a self, it's a LinkedIn page. Okay. Trying to find something that's, I'm trying to find the old job posting. Okay. Okay, thanks everyone. Topher. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I was curious, we have a CPA offset for a 0.40 and I'm just wondering what position or what part of what part of what position is the CPA offsetting? I'm sorry if I missed that. I can answer that question when I get to them. Let's see. There is a position. Alan Jones looks like you might know. Well, if I could, Jim Feeney spends a lot of time on the CPA, so I'm guessing it's Jim Feeney. Correct. I think it's the position that goes away with the elimination of the funding. The position will go away with the elimination of the funding, but Topher's question is, what is the CPA offset, not the ARPA offset? And I think the answer is that Jim Feeney does, it is probably partially to offset the time he spends working on CPA issues. Yeah, and he spends a lot of time doing that. On the community preservation act stuff? Yeah, he does all the inspections. I mean, it's sort of part of his old facilities job. Anything else, Topher? No, that's it, thank you. Grant. Yes, thank you. So lots of turnover going on in the, or everywhere actually, including the town manager's office. Sophie, was there, or does anybody know that has me a little bit concerned all this experience kind of walking out the door? Is there the transition plan call for like maybe Sandy Pooler to provide assistance or quote consulting for the, and supporting the new town manager for a period of time? Or are you aware of anything like that? That's the one month overlap is what that is supposed to be planned for, is my understanding. And my, in Julie being reclassified at a much higher grade and step, I think plays into that with her experience and maybe more that she will be taking on and helping on that. So still, that's that's- If I can, if I can help and answer your question in all the budgets that we have, Sophie and I, you will notice that there's been quite a transition of personnel in a good portion of the departments, except the legal department. You'll notice changes in the clerks, in the planning, the managers, the lackmen. And that's why on the salary issues that we have, the different steps and the midpoint steps and it can be very confusing with these changes and one of the things that was brought to our attention both Sophie and I's attention throughout what they seem to be a theme that department heads were mentioning that perhaps maybe this transition is because other communities, if you will, offering better financial package and some of these folks are leaving to go elsewhere. If I know. We were specifically told that there's one concern and that was well stated succinctly was that to retain and recruit non-union managers and financial position employees in the next five to 10 years is going to be an issue that you can see in the planning department in the library, which is not ours. There's a lot of turnover and it's a lot of it is due to recruitment and because we have very good personnel with experience and they're being had hunted or siphoned off by other towns for their experience. And another. No, I understand all of that. In fact, we have the same issue occurs in the water and sewer this year too, but that's different than the issue. I'm kind of bringing up the transitional issue. Julie is great, but it's a one for one. Sandy only a month to give this new, I mean, that's, I guess I, there's no way around it. There's no, nothing we can do about it, but it, or perhaps there is sure it might, and I don't think Sandy would really go for it, but it might be better if he hung around or could provide assistance for a little bit more than 30 days. A lot happens in that and this is a lot going on in this town and the person coming in probably knows very little about it. But all right, thank you. One month is the answer. Thank you. Thanks Grant. Ella Jones. I'm sorry, that was a zombie hand. Okay. All right. Any other questions about the town manager's budget? John. Earlier in the discussion, the, I think someone mentioned that the town manager position will went up a grade because they are now they have soul control over the budget. I'm just wondering who they only shared the budget responsibility with. No, no, no, not the town manager. Right, that's budget director, Julie Wayman. The last line on there, she was formally a grade six, step eight, she's now a grade 10. She used to share responsibility with the deputy town manager of finance. So with Sandy, she helped Sandy prepare the budget and then now she is solely responsible for it. Got it. So I had the wrong position. It's Julie, it's the budget director position that moved. Correct. Thank you. She used to share that. So my follow up question to her was, does that mean the deputy town manager for finance coming in will have less work to do since she's doing the budget? And she said, no, there's more than enough work to go around and he will have a full plate, nonetheless. Got it. Thank you. Charlie. Thank you, Madam Chairman. My question is, why is that grade changing here in this paid detailed page? I mean, it shouldn't it be the same grade that it was last year and any change in grade has to come in the article on reclassification. Carolyn, do you want to speak to that? That was part of my question as well, is why is it here and not a reclassification? Because it is a change in her job requirement. So usually that would go through a reclass. I was curious too. It sounded to me all the way, I meant I didn't quiz her on it. It sounded to me like it had already gone through. Is that possible? It may have gone through last year and half of it was part of last year and half of it was part of this year. I know there is one reclass that that's the case. Did I ask you to look at reclass for anyone in this budget? I don't remember seeing her on that list. I looked, but I don't. David, do you remember, let me look at the list. No, I don't remember seeing her name on the list. Madam Chair. Ellen. I think the town manager has the authority on his own, as long as somebody is there to reclassify positions. It's the people who go for reclass are generally those employees who want to sort of advocate for themselves. But I think this is well within the town manager's statutory authority to do it as long as he has the money. Thank you. Caroline, your hand is still up. Do you ask or add anything? It brings up an interesting topic that we've got Julie Wyman now doing part of the finance job. So in the last three to five years, we've gone from a town manager and a deputy manager who helped with budgeting with the budget director. We added in the operations budget, and now we're taking the budget, half of the finance deputy town manager's job, and giving it to the budget director. So in four or five years, we've added two to two and a half positions, plus we're giving them all raises. And grade levels. It's just a huge increase in the amount of professional staff we have. And maybe that's what all towns need. But when we're looking at overrides, these are big, huge changes. You know, that's it. I know I'm on my soap opera. There are no new positions in this budget this year, correct? Not this year, but in the last three or four years, we've seen these increases in people in the town manager's department. And Sophie, Dave, is it your understanding that Julie Wyman is taking on 50% of the deputy town manager's position? No, my understanding is she's taking full responsibility for the budget. And I think she's taking full responsibility for the budget. And she felt the deputy town manager finance would still have a full plate. I don't know what percentage she used to share that budget with him. So obviously, that wasn't her position. But Annie. Annie? Yeah. So just having been sort of intimately familiar with a lot of the changes that have happened here over the years, I have a question. So one of the things that we recommended many years ago, and then we had a DLS, I think it was Department of Division of Local Services Study on, was how we managed finances and how disjointed they were, and how we needed to pull them together into their own department. And that's essentially what that deputy town manager for finance does. That person is now supervising the comptroller and the treasurer, essentially. And so is responsible for the full scope of our financial operations, as well as coordinating with the schools. The budget is a pretty, the development of the budget every year is a very specific, narrow piece of that responsibility that isn't the overall management of finances, but is the, you know, the overall management of finances, but is the, you know, create the plan every year. So for me, as somebody who's walked many organizations through this, the staffing here makes sense. And if it's staffing that's grown, I would say it's grown, you know, mostly through position title changes, because we had a deputy town manager and system town manager for many years, probably the last 10 or 15 years. And they've simply changed the titles and responsibilities of those positions. So my two cents. And I'll also add that the communications coordinator in this budget is going away next year, because there won't be ARPA funding. So I'm, I would expect that this budget to shrink next year. Altosti. Yeah, I just want to reinforce what Annie said. You know, it's the same number of bodies, except for the communications coordinator, which will go away. We've always had these number of positions. The deputy town manager for operations get paid substantially out of CPA funds for the work he does there. I think it's a good budget. And I recommend it. And just to get the ball going, I'd like to make a motion that we approve the budget as presented. I have a second. Second. All right. Daryl, your hand is up. I'm going to take it down. I just wanted to comment that, you know, based on, you know, what we've seen of some of the budget mechanics, frankly, I think it would be, it would be really good that we are going to have a full-time budget person whose entire focus is on the operating budget and the capital budget. So I think it's something we really need. Sophie. So just a question about the motion. Do we want to, since we know what the new deputy town manager for finance salary is and it's higher than what's here, do we want to make that change or not? I would say no, because we don't have a town manager. And I'd leave it up to the town, the select board to figure out how they're going to, and the town manager to keep their budget within budget next year. All right. So we have a motion that's been seconded to approve the town manager's budget as presented in the town manager's book. Any other comments, discussion on that motion on that budget? All right. Seeing none, we'll take it to a vote. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Carolyn. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. No. John. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Annie. Yes. El Jones. Yes. Topher. Topher. Sorry. Yes. Peggy. Yes. El Tosti. Yes. Dean. Yes. Dave. Yes. 17. Yes. Yes. 17. Yes. Dave. Yes. 17. For one against. But it has been approved. Human resources. Not today. The same day as reclass. Okay. It is that budget ready. No, we're still waiting on. The legal budget is ready. All right, let's do legal yet you have to be with me because I'm on a cell phone rather than for some reason I'm locked out of the I find it meeting but it's a better connection that that again it's a better connection at least on our side okay anyway the legal budget it's it's the budget that has the personnel staying put and if you notice the increase in the salaries is basically increases whether they be cost of living adjustment or step increases in but not the expenses are staying the same for the new members the legal department will hire outside council for special things that happen example labor negotiations or if there's a some type of environmental legal question that the they hire expertise in that field or in the case of the muga property that they hire people to handle that particular type situation that's been going on for a number of years but they're satisfied that they that they can handle next coming budget with the same amount expenses as last year any questions on this budget Sophie if I just may add a few more details that we were given then as far as future things to keep in mind the legal office is in an old building on Pleasant Street and it is quite dilapidated shape so they do want to know that they will be seeking probably CPA funds for exterior work on the building and even interior work for heating issues air quality etc and they're working through the facilities department as well to extent they can come through there so something to keep in on the lookout in the CPA and good news is that the tree warden is doing a good job in getting money back from utility companies for dead trees which is probably something hard to do but he's very good at it the legal department also wanted to alert the finance committee that they are available to provide us as a committee any training on issues and that they do training for other committees in town if we're so interested great all right thank you Sophie and Dave Jordan thank you madam chair I just wanted to make sure for my own understanding the expense line their only expense line is just for outside counsel correct no that no no no no no no no right so they haven't they have bar dues bar associations in particular the M M LA legal databases court fees filing fees which are actually pretty modest their office supplies their travel some unclassified expenses for court reporters for certain hearings when those are required and then outside counsel they they don't tend to break out all their expenses they're busy so it's just all up together okay thank you Charlie thank you madam chairman I just wanted to note that the building that they reside in is not owned by the town so there is a method for the for the CPA group to work on the outside of that because it could be considered a historical building or or some such thing but the building itself is not owned by the town and I don't know how the town can spend money on the interior that to me is a mystery that had come come before the capital planning committee several times I personally I think the solution is that they ought to move into another town building thank you thank you Charlie madam I'm sorry I just know where I can I just want to say the there's a working there's a working agreement or contract with who whomever owns that old building and the town some some years ago many years ago agreed to follow whatever that contract says so I don't know if that includes the interior not it is under contract it's not the contract for as long as I can remember I just just bringing that point up well I will look to our facilities working group to keep an eye on that as well as Darrell and the capital planning committee it's good to hear what may be coming down the line but right now I guess there's not an issue in front of us with regard to the work on on the building any other questions about the legal department budget motion to approve second all right there's a motion to approve the legal department budget as presented any other questions or any discussion all right let's take a vote Jordan yes Shane yeah Jennifer yes Sophie yes Caroline yes Rebecca yes Josh yes Grant yes Charlie yes John yes Darrell yes Annie yes Al Jones yes Tofer yes Peggy yes Altosti yes Dean yes and Dave yes all right the legal department budget has passed unanimously Sophie Dave do you have any other budgets yes we have a few more a few more a town clerk would be next all right let's do that okay I'll start and so if you were jumping when needed because we're kind of doing this together the town clerk's budget actually is three budgets involved with the town clerk that would be the town clerk's budget the election budget and the board of registrars budget so when we're talking about it it it's easy if we talk about the three of them at the same roughly the same time because there's an overlap but we'll vote the budget separately the total separately um if if that's the will of the committee the um again again there's not there's not a lot of changes a couple of course that the change item is in the salary because again there were step increases and there was there was pay raises and whatnot however in the clerk's office itself there's been a change of personnel if you will last September the assistant board of registrar retired so that created a vacancy in the registrar's office and as of uh this past January uh January 2023 the assistant town clerk um is retiring and she's still on the payroll and she'll be on the payroll until sometime I think the first week in March when she officially retired but right now the position is vacant and she's out um I apparently she's she's out taking time over to something like that um meantime if you the personnel in the clerk's office itself minus one person has less than well less than six months experience so there's been a there's been a the office has changed changed personnel that develops the problem that a lot of us had had concerns about as far as um modernizing the clerk's office it's hard to do when when you when you lose employees and then bring in new employees and first of all you have to train them on what the job is all about before you can then train them for other things um one question that was that was sent to us was asked about on the um why do we have a stenographic the um um and is that the only department that has that the clerk's office uses it for town meeting has but has been doing that for quite a while but they are currently looking in to see if they um because we're electronically um everything's electronically now at that town meeting if perhaps maybe in the future they can do away with that all together uh it's currently that they're looking into that and um town council has been looking into it on a the legal the legal part of it pertaining to the town um the the clerk's office in the last three years we've had a brand a new clerk because she's finishing up her first three-year term and in that time she's experienced a recount that the town hasn't had in years years and after that was um resolved then we had COVID-19 we had and as a result we had mail-in voting early voting um that that took a lot of time and a lot of money and then we had after that we had redistricting so the um it's been on the job training for the new town clerk as well but having said that um some of the things another question was on line item five two two seven binding that's just a term that the comtroller uses um but as far as binding binding used to be when town meeting was all over they would take all the um warrant articles and buy laws and whatnot and they would actually bind them in a book but they really don't do that anymore and that's why that that budget that line item is vacant but it's still used um I don't know if other departments might use that periodically I'm not sure so um printed licenses for the most part um printed licenses for most part is dog licenses the state the state provides the marriage licenses but we do the dog licenses and there's a lot of them and then of course we have other um otherwise unclassified which could be um maintenance of equipment it could be office supplies but not and going back to line five two zero one advertising anything that comes out of town meeting especially on the zoning articles they all have to be posted in the local newspaper however what they've been doing is they've been actually trying to um shorten what they're with town council advice shortened some of the the wording and some of the things that that they're printing in the paper because it the cost is is quite heavy um and they're looking into with town council advice and the legislator legislates it to perhaps maybe go strictly electronically posting rather than as we all know that the local newspaper isn't what it used to be I'll say so um another question that that that was was asked is why is there an increase in electronic voting equipment as we know in the last well the last town elections that we we have the what they call pullpads and the clerk's office is correct just 21 of them one for each precinct and that there's an increase but for the equipment and and we we use them for the first time we use them I believe was um in the state primary and then we use them at first time and all the precincts was the last town election so that's why there's an increase there um the um the next elections in in in the new budget they won't do their presidential primary and march a year from this coming march and there'll be a town election so there'll be a decrease in the elections compared to what we hit we just went through with state primary state election and whatnot so um also it's not official yet but they will be my understanding is there'll be early voting for the next coming town election but it won't be the way it has been conducted in the past it will be done on a Friday Saturday maybe Sunday type deal at the clerk's office not not on the town town hall four um there's voter selection still have to approve that and we said that there seems to be an increase mailing voting seems to be the top priority that everybody that most voters want if they if they don't want to come and vote themselves mailing voting is is what they prefer and we said that in the board to a registrar's there was an increase because there was a mailing went out asking people what was their their desire whether they wanted to do uh to have a ballot sentinem for mailing voting whether they wanted to do absentee voting or whether they want to just come into the voting poll and vote on election day so that was an additional cost also additional cost in the board of registrar is what they call the true list the true list list um everybody in the town 17 older with some exceptions if you work in the public safety parts of the town like firefighters or police officers you can um if you choose your name that doesn't have to go into the the true list but they're the only ones that if they choose to uh can have that exemption and if it's number two there's more than one type true list there's the true list and there's also the alphabetical true list that lists people in the town if they've done their senses uh alphabetically and that's printed as well and then um in addition to that the um the census itself mailing out doing the census and whatnot so that's why I say the three budgets go overlap um anybody have any questions hello hello yeah um the assistant town clerk position hello yeah can can you hear me dave yeah if you can hear me yes I can hear you the assistant the assistant town clerk position is expected to be vacant in this next fiscal year but it is vacant it is vacant right now um but she's still on the payroll so I'm looking at I'm looking at the at the salary which looks like at the maximum she is at a maximum what the town clerk told us is that she would obviously be looking to hire below that um right but again um there was they the town decline to update the budget book showing a lower number because she's because she just retired well she gave notice she was retiring right yeah I understand that I just I'm just looking at that knowing that that they're posting this or they're they're asking for the full salary range for a new position for a new hire right correct again at the time this went to print um she had not submitted her um retirement paperwork yet so the budget director was not aware at the time that this was printed since then right and got an update and just um as a minor typo on this page the minimum and maximum for our town clerk you will see is lower than what her new pay is but those that's a typo her minimum maximum should be that 102 92 that doesn't actually change anything but in case you want to update your books okay thank you do you want to add anything else Sophie um some future notes um we it was clear that because things are moving to trying to move the office towards more digital office um it's it's requiring higher salaries for staff who are better trained and and better on uh digital formats and that turnover is high also because of lower salaries and that more and more state level amendments and changes are required from town clerks and that requires a certain level of understanding and processing from staff that didn't use to exist so that's going to continue to be an issue um there's a mention that we currently don't have it's not in this budget but we don't have an animal control officer um that position has been vacant for a while and it affects this office for some unlicensed kennels uh because this is the office that would license kennels and so we've had some issues in town regarding unlicensed kennels um and for future notes uh Tara posted the study that was done at the town clerk's office and although the study doesn't make any particular recommendations um it to the extent that there would be an interest in moving to an appointed position for town clerk instead of elected the the thought is that the hot the salary would most likely increase um for the town clerk position because the salary is for an elected official but a market rate would most likely be higher for a town clerk so something to keep in mind as that study is reviewed um in that there is a potential need for a part-time position in the future because one of the things brought up by the study is public record requests those are not currently down done by the town clerk's office historically in Arlington but most towns do that job in the town clerk's office and that's where the job of public records requests and responding to them comes from so if that job were to go back as a result of the study to the town clerk's office they would most likely need an additional part-time position to handle those types of issues would that would that mean that there be a decrease in the with the town manager's budget because isn't the town manager deputy town manager responsible for that uh i don't know well that would be my question going forward if that happened right if i can if i can jump in there originally the town clerk was the keeper of the records i don't know at what point the keeper of the records was given to the deputy town manager but that's where it is right now but the the standard in most cities and towns with clerks is they are the keeper of the record i don't know what what what went on between previous town clerks and how it ended up in responsibility of a deputy manager right josh you have a hand up yes thank you just a couple small things um in the printing licenses you said the dog those were mostly dog licenses the the actuals are quite a bit higher i mean not quite a bit a few thousand dollars higher than the budgeted amount yes so um so supposedly they're ordering fewer dog tags but the costs of printing have gone up right but the actuals are actually higher than the budget like they the actuals for the last couple years are like four thousand or and they've just budgeted one thousand so are they going to be cheating themselves there no that used to be sorry that's so the thousand is correct the four thousand is before um things were that was also printing ballots and that has now with some reorganization that we discussed last year got transferred to the other election more the elections budget so there were some moving around to funds that occurred last year okay and maybe that's leads to my other question which is that you've got 20 000 dollars in the budget for printing ballots for 23 and 24 and no actuals and that's that's the dog licenses and something else is shifting it has nothing to do with ballots correct so under the elections expenses the 20 000 for printing ballots is what so with the new town clerk that we had the past couple of years she's done a better job of putting things in their proper categories that weren't done before so there were lots of changes in numbers that we have discussed the past year or so as things become more accurate in their line items okay all right great thank you daryl uh yeah just some information the animal control officer position is in the police department and they were doing final interviews at the beginning of February so hopefully they've been able to make an offer to somebody so at least we can resolve that problem great thanks for that update daryl any yeah i just want to make a slight correction to something dave said i i believe julie brazil is the keeper of records what jim team is doing is responding to public records requests and those are sort of two distinct things the keeping of records is the records have to be there and they've got to be properly filed and noticed and sent to all the places they're supposed to go and so on and so forth but the responding to foyer request is trying to figure out where all the things a person is asking for under freedom of information act and getting it to them and pricing that because we actually charge for that when i believe we're allowed to charge the cost of producing the records to the requester right but but also because of the the volume of recently in the past few years of request um for what you just mentioned annie that's primary why the whole thing went went under the deputy town manager yes right because the volume has increased and the complexity of the records has increased exactly and that's and that's also what happened yeah sorry that also that also happened in the in the zoning budget a couple years ago that's why they did they put a 0.29 position which is now a 0.89 position that's part of it not all of it but that's part of it ding correct i do um i just want to make sort of i want to observation um can we go back to the clerk's budget for a second so this is a small thing that has very little nothing to do with the clerk's budget but as it does with another topic we bring up which is you know we've talked about before these documents are um this budget book is an export the general ledger but then goes into an excel document that gets manipulated and causes frustration right so you look at this line item it should be a general ledger account five two two seven binding so if you just do a control left function and research the document you find that five two two seven shows up three different accounts but with the three different departments it shows up in print it shows up in fire and shows up in library but fire and library calling books and materials right and i i would actually guess that at some point the control would change from binding books and materials right so if you went into the general ledger and you said run general ledger account five two two seven you'd get books and materials but it has to then get changed in multiple places on an excel spreadsheet and though this is a small little thing it sort of points out this like you know what i think we could categorize as like death by a thousand in breaks where instead of just getting it straight out of the system because we're manipulating once changes have to get made get made over and over again because small little wrinkles that have to get screwed up that was the first thing the second thing i did just about the um we've had some discussions about vacancies and like how to budget them and the things like that i just want to know one of the challenges with budgeting vacancies in the town is um if a position is clear that um salary i mean the actual salary page right so so most of the people are you know that b u column right everyone's generally s ci you were asked to go on the right um and if somebody were to train for in and out of a position on the already have tenured seniority steps and all that they carry them into the new position so historically if you go back to my clerks department years and like like go back let's take 20 years you'd find this this this movement of people got a job and they got a position at first office maybe they transferred to the select board office maybe transferred somewhere else and as they move they um they keep that seniority and so you know the reverse also becomes true so the court is going to post this position the question is what should you know we would like for the person you know pay at the bottom of the range but if the the candidate who gets the position has an equivalent seniority in longevity then they have to assume essentially that position i mean there's not these are unionized contracts right so a grade three step nine with that longevity gets that month like that we don't get to negotiate that after a fact so i i want to point that out but i think that's kind of um the struggle that the town hasn't been in this budget that they don't know who the person's going to be and if they're just going to have to put that item over for the next year thanks sophie so yes um that is true for the union positions in this particular instance though there is nobody i believe in the town um currently employed by the town that would have would meet this level for the assistant town clerk because she's been there so long and she's at the maximum so nobody would come in even if it was a transfer internally right i'm talking about in general though because in general we keep and i think you've done it too so you keep making this comment about like i hope the higher at the bottom they're great but that's assuming an external person right and that's a leap that nobody here can make because we don't we're not the personnel director like i'm just trying to point out because i think we heard it like three times right although i think in the in the budgets we've been doing most of them um are non-union like in the selectments those they are yeah all right but everybody everybody in the clerk's office is union except the clerk correct okay selectments they're non-union do you have sophie dave do you have a uh motion yes i i like to present a motion for the um the clerk's budget as posted in the budget book is 286 814 second all right any further discussion on the town clerk's budget all right seeing none we'll take it to a vote all right jordan yes shane yes jennifer yes sophie yes carolyn yes rebecca yes josh yes grant yes charlie yes john yes daryl yes annie yes el jones yes tofer yes hagi yes el tosti yes dean yep and dave yes all right time clerk's pass budget has passed unanimously um sophie dave do you have another yes i'd like to move to for the election budget of 195 840 second for the discussion on the election budget all right seeing no hands up let's take it to a vote jordan yes shane yes jennifer yes sophie yes carolyn yes rebecca yes josh yes grant yes charlie yes john yes daryl yes annie yes el jones yes tofer yes hagi yes el tosti yes dean yes and dave yes all right the election budget has passed unanimously and the next budget is the board registries registrar yes registrar and the only change there is a change in personnel um we have the there was retirement assistant registrar of voters and you see the the stipends for the registrar of voters and also a stipend for julie brazil who is a registrar considered the registrar of voters so there's been some changes there but the um all right does anyone have any questions on the registrar's budget shame thanks madam chair can you just remind me the the responsibilities for the board of registrars how they're different from the clerk's office say that again i i i couldn't quite make up the i just said the the responsibilities of the board of registrars like just like the primarily the board of registrars usually you'll see them the board on election day whatever election day they're they're they're checking um voter lists and and whatnot and and then they also make up that they check the the true list it's um it's a for the sake of it it's a part time position and it does pay a small stipend and the part of it you have to be either one has to be a democrat one has to be a republican or you can be unenrolled but you can't you can't have more than one so that's why it's three thank you actually one of each okay okay any other questions on the registrar's budget okay so i'll make a motion to accept the figure 71 535 all right motion to approve the registrar's budget has been made and seconded um any questions discussion all right let's take it to a vote jordan yes shame yes jennifer yes sophie yes carolyn yes rebecca yes josh yes grant yes charlie yes john yes darryl yes annie yes el jones yes tofer yes peggy yes altosti yes dean yes and dave yes the registrar's budget has passed unanimously uh sophie dade yeah we have um the the planning and development budget and the redevelopment budget the small one so um and now i'm going to turn this over sophie what page are you on sophie 69 okay if we can start quickly on the details salary details um the so the new director um had only been on the job i don't remember david if it was 30 days or 45 days before we met with her so um it's it's probably about 55 days now so right so um i think we were able to answer our own questions based on our notes from last year more than anything um but everything has basically stayed level so what was in the explainer from the town manager's office um regarding the director salary is that she came in at a um fixed rate and then is now going to be um receiving a six thousand step and joining the classification system thus the the big change in there on her salary there are a couple vacancies on the office manager she will look to fill it at the lowest pay possible um it was reclassified in the fall from what i understand so it looks like a bigger increase in the book than um what it actually was because the reclassification was after last year's budget it is a union position the senior transportation planner position is hopefully going to be filled in march so soon then we can go back up i think to um expenses so not any changes from last year the stipend 50 160 is based on the union contract 5203 is just based on actually um purchases of new desks and such the auto allowance is just mileage the dues um there hasn't been a net change in employees even though there's been a lot of turnover so the dues are going to stay the same it's based on the number of employees that have um a icp um certified and they have to required continuing education and specialized training uh 52 18 for training that's for sustainability dues and training economic development training and national planning conferences um we are told to expect in the future requests for increases here because this only pays the registration costs for conferences it doesn't cover per diems or stays at the conferences so it seems low to our new director of this office the other interesting piece was 53 54 on technology and economic development we have a software that tracks vacancies that is actually has the contract for that has lapsed but there's a new dashboard in the works so they're keeping the funding for that as is as far as any other general information from this office it's that there are no warrant article appropriations plans for this year we asked for an update based on the blue bike warrant article from last year for 100 000 our understanding from that conversation is that at the moment we own blue bike materials there's no current contract and no funding is needed at this time um that there are negotiations happening because bigger cities such as boston and cambridge get better deals out of blue bike than the surrounding areas and to the extent that those cities are trying to turn to blue bikes as a means of transportation public transportation like buses and subways that some of that benefit of better deals should be passed on to surrounding communities so that is all in the works and discussions at the moment but there's no money being asked for for blue bikes the economic development coordinator position was vacant for several months the new hire is focusing on vacant properties um and is hoping to eventually argue for more teeth and our penalties for how um owners manage the vacant lots for businesses the outdoor dining is going to continue and lots of new tenants and promising prospects are identified for the center in the bit of time the new economic development coordinator has been on the job so things should be improving and i think that's um yeah that's it for this budget i thank you sophie uh jennifer hi thank you madam chair um just a question the gis coordinator that we had for a while personally moved to mexico we were having in part time i thought that was in the planning department um budget is that somewhere else it doesn't sound familiar to me i don't know maybe it's an independent department i think it's an it yeah i think it's probably an it we've got moved we've got sort of reclassified got it okay great thanks anything else jennifer rebecca thank you um i had a question about the offset that was labeled school offset that looks like half of the sustainability manager is that correct um i don't remember from when we asked last year but it's possible that it's the time spent on those buildings okay it matches best the half of the sustainability manager as i can tell i think that's true rebecca i think that's correct so so effectively that person sort of works half with the town type buildings and half with the school type buildings is that would that be the right interpretation yes great thank you tofer yeah um can we go back up to the the previous page so i'm not i'm just i'm just computing for me so we have the salaries and wages was you know 583 thousand in 2022 went up by almost 200 thousand dollars i'm not understanding how we got there um do we hire new positions um oh that i believe um this came about last year with the cdbg planning what we now see in the offsets if i'm remembering correctly um they didn't use to the salaries didn't used to be included there and it wasn't transparent so they started adding them but then there are the offsets for them well i see the offsets cover maybe 75 000 of that 200 000 increase yeah but i'm still curious as to where the other 125 000 goes i mean is it like has there been any position or i mean it couldn't just be raises and steps and things at least to me it doesn't seem like that would be very likely um i don't know if dave i only joined last year so i can only say what we talked about last year um no i i don't i don't know of any other um new positions other than was posted here um so right so the first the increase to 700 in the 2022 budget when i go back to last year's book the 2022 budget shows as 706 000 i don't know what it was before so i don't know if they've just always been oh spending i don't know the history spending way less than his budget possibly in that year they had some position vacancy or something tofer but you're comparing an actual to a budget you'd have to go back and look at budgets to see whether or not there was actually an increase yes and if you look in the finance committee report the the budget went up about 80 000 the appropriation went up by 80 000 so that represents unspent money there was the actual was 2022 actual was considerably less than the budgeted amount right yeah that's the main vacancies well i see josh put in something about transportation coordinator that that was there from since 2021 that's one thing people if you want to see what the appropriation was you can go back to the finance committee reports right which we don't have actuals we have what the appropriation was okay so what i think is happening then is we had um less money spent in 2022 than was budgeted and there's an offset added into 2023 and on to um and the offsets come from cdbg there's a lot of offsets oh that's right there's a whole list of them that's right right okay there is the salaries are not broken okay i have a better picture of this now thank you any other questions on the planning department budget um do i have a motion sophie or day don't move back on all right so the planning department um community planning development department budget with a taxation total of six three five zero three two has been moved and seconded seconded is there any further discussion all right we'll take it to a vote jordan yes yes shane yes jennifer yes sophie yes caroline caroline yes rebecca yes josh yes grant yes charlie yes john yes daryl yes annie yes el jones yes tofer yes peggy yes el toasty yes jing yes dave yes all right planning department has been has passed unanimously sophie dave do you have anything else we have one more we go ahead sophie it's page 73 redevelopment board for page 74 there are no changes here i don't know if anybody has any questions the advertising has to do i think with the warrant articles for meetings um one question potentially could be that if there's a special town meeting now should that advertising budget increase to cover a second meeting but i think it all the zoning articles that would have been in the first one are now going to the special so maybe not but they didn't seem to ask for an increase since this has been published so i think we recommend passage of the 10 800 do a second second all right shane have a hand up thank you can you just remind me to redevelop a board's role what do they do they pass the they review permits and zoning um for special is or am i confusing the zoning board so do you want to all right yeah yeah it the redevelopment border um they have a redevelopment hearings um there's easements there's there's all kinds of rules on the redevelopment and um so they have to have hearings and hearings have to be you know posted and whatnot but it's um it's basically on redevelopment of buildings and property i mean yeah i think consider like changes to the zoning laws as opposed to adjudicating um the zoning board is the one where someone says i have my property i want to do something out of compliance and can you give me a special permit i think the redevelopment board takes like a broader view of the zoning in general in town right so the studies that have been paid for in recent town meetings um are appropriated go what to do with buildings and how they should look like and and then that gets the master the master plan right right thank you question shane thank you yeah um thank you manager um i can just add some more stuff uh so the zba deals with anything to do with residential properties um with the exception of these weird cases where properties are located sort of near a bike path or near something else in which case it has to go to the arb um the zba also deals with the i'm just distinguishing i know i didn't ask the zba deals with um 40 b and then so the arb does everything else so they do everything they're having to do with commercial properties anything large construction that's not a residential senior two family home but you know large building or a multi-use building um and they have hearings on that they suggest changes they etc etc they also propose and review any bylaw changes that affect those commercial buildings or large residential buildings or multi-use buildings thank you did you have a anything else jennifer a question no just because i i hang around these meetings a lot i thought i could add something thanks thank you uh anything else anyone has some redevelopment for budget uh i think so if you made a motion was it seconded by dave yes all right let's take a vote on the redevelopment board budget jordan yes shane yes jennifer yes sophie yes caroline yes rebecca yes josh yes grant yes charlie yes john yes daryl yes annie yes al jones yes tofer yes pegy yes altos team yes dean yes dave yes all right redevelopment what budget has passed unanimously um are you done um sophie and dave with your budgets we are um we are concluded with the exception of the select board's budget that will be um we'll take that out we'll take that out at the next hopefully at the next meeting yes thank you all right and that's that concludes our budgets all right um who has um we have about 22 minutes left who has a budget or two i think we can get through inspections and very hard to all right take it away daryl and john okay um no i'm sorry tara go back to the first page um so on the salary side the uh the small increase in the 5100 line is due to having the director on for the full year um having zoning assistant for the full year and then a record keeper increased from 14 hours a week to 31 hours a week we'll look at that in just a second on these on the expensive side there's no changes um so tara if you can go to the gallery detail um so the the two positions i called out the zoning assistant is the second one from the bottom uh that that person was on for the full year and then the record keeper inspections increased her hours for 14 to 31 so that counts on the salary side and then um unprecedented for me at least in doing their budget they had no vacancies which is great um over this coming summer they plan on going up with online permitting doing through being done through the town it department and that should really uh provide a much more efficient process for both people submitting permits and then department personnel managing the permits and then they are planning on moving back to the new growth street buildings um in a couple of months they're going to be moving into the new building not the the one that they used to be in um that's being renovated and their new space should be larger will be larger than what they had in their old building with a much more efficient storage storage area so that should be all good for them and then Tara if you could pull up that permits fine um so this is actually more detail on permits than than we've gotten um previously uh you can see the permit revenues increased by 27.5 percent over this four-year period even though the actual number of permits only increased by eight percent um the total value of the projects that they cover increased by 26 percent um a lot of the activity um over the last two or three years has been uh affected by COVID um originally in in fiscal 20 they actually when COVID first the pandemic really first started there were real concerns that construction work would grind to a complete halt but uh that didn't happen in large part because of uh large increases in home renovations um the COVID effects do on at least on permits uh do appear to be leveling leveling off but remains to be seen um you know what um sort of steady state permit revenues will be um once the COVID effects have fully um worked their way out of the system whether it'll go back to being uh more around the levels of um it wasn't fiscal 20 we're on 95 million or whether some number um over 100 million uh is going to be the new normal um so that's it on inspections any questions? Oh Jones. Thank you um that maybe should have asked this illegal but you know if the it was any discussion about any possible legal expo financial exposure of the town from the alleged misdeeds of the previous inspector um that did not come up okay well thank you I will say we didn't we didn't ask him and Mike Trump I didn't volunteer anything um that Alan that that's still the findings that they have 90 days to respond to that so I still think they're in that 90 day period. Yeah I was just wondering if that will you know will cost the town something does the town have any legal involvement in that or is it all strictly between the individual and the ethics board? Um at at this point the town doesn't know okay at this point. Okay thank you. So Daryl you said on the permit the permit revenue here is 2 million or 2.2 million estimate and you're saying he's not seeing a slowing down permitting this year or he's seeing a leveling off I'm sorry could repeat that again. He's seeing he's seeing some leveling off but there's still a lot of activity um he just doesn't know um if that's going to be kind of the new level or whether things will drop back down what will be you mean I mean the two two will be the new level the 2.2 million or the one eighth um so yeah whether whether we're going to be sort of consistently over 2 million or whether got it it'll it'll go back down okay thanks anybody have anything else Daryl do you have a motion so I move that we adopt the the budget as printed for inspections of five hundred and twenty seven thousand and eighty two dollars. Second. All right it's been moved in second any further discussion on inspections. All right seeing and we'll take it to a vote. Jordan? Yes. Shane? Yes. Jennifer? Yes. Sophie? Yes. Caroline? Yes. Rebecca? Yes. Josh? Yes. Grant? Yes. Charlie? Yes. John? Yes. Daryl? Yes. Annie? Yes. Al-Jones? Yes. Topher? Yes. Peggy? Yes. Al-Tosti? Yes. Dean? Yes. Dave? Yes. Inspections? Inspections. Department budget has passed unanimously. Um who else has budgets ready? Retirement's ready I don't know if we have enough time to do it but we could try. Now let's go to go if we don't finish we'll continue on on Monday but let's see if we can do that. Okay now it's on page 151 in the book so um basically um I have some presentation material for these two different budgets. One retirement cost is for the Arlington Contributory Retirement System and then this line that's zero is actually related to what we refer to the as the OPEV budgets. If you can give me my can I have uh share screen control let me um. You should be able to share yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry I just lost I had this minute two a few minutes ago. Do you want me to share it Charlie? I think I have it handy. Yeah let me just get every one second here. Okay so this is a an annotated presentation mostly from the retirement. We're not seeing it yet Charlie you got to open it up. Oh. Where you're not sharing it's possible you're not sharing the your whole desk time. Could be. And you need to share that particular document. No we can see it. Okay so um we had our meeting on 15th Altasie Tofer and myself with Rich Greco who's the administrator for the Executive Director of the Retirement Board. And just a comment on the non-contributory page of non-contributory line which is shown as zero on page 151. We have a tradition or practice in town where 20 years ago we were paying $500,000 a year to people in the non-contributory payroll pension system. And they were all people who worked for the town before 1939. And they have since they and their survivors have since been deceased. But we decided at the time Altasie actually decided at the time to put the difference between whatever their payroll was and the $500,000 that was currently in the budget into the OPEB trust fund. That's the other post-employment benefits trust fund which basically covers retirees healthcare costs. And then we also had an agreement with the town where we would put 150, 155,000 in the as part of a agreement negotiated with the employees regarding moving to GIC. And so that combined is 150,000. We were getting some of this money from the healthcare trust fund in the past. This year, Sandy Poole has noted that there was a substantial amount of money about $1,470,000 in the trust fund which didn't have any demand. In other words, the requirements on that money which we used when we were self-insured before the GIC adoption was just sitting there. So he's made the recommendation to transfer all but $50,000 of that to the OPEB fund. So that comes to $2,067,454. Now we might want to vote this when a warrant article comes up. There's some annotation on the background that is in the document that was sent out to you. And this is a letter from Sandy basically the background on his recommendation to transfer $1,412,454 to the OPEB fund. Then this is just, we now have $20 million in the OPEB fund. And this is now being managed by a company called Makita. Note that there's been a loss which is common to most market funds over the last year or so. This is as by the way as of December 31st, 2022. These funds are going to be transferred to the Pritt fund which is part of the general state retirement board management of pension funds in an arrangement which will get us into a bigger pool and get higher returns. That's going to take place through a warrant article this year. Makita is the current manager of this and the details of their performance is shown here. Let me just say that we're not fully funding the OPEB liability. So our liability is stated at a higher level than it would be if we were funding it on a more aggressive position. If you were fully funding it or at a rate that had a fully funded target, the discount rate would be around 7% which is sort of the rate of the general market returns. But since we're not fully funding it has to be discounted more at the closer to the cost of funds of Arlington which is in the 2% to 3% range and consequently our express liability on this is substantially higher. We're up in this $200 to $240 million range. Okay this is a letter from PARAC directing us for our appropriation this year and this is under the budget on page 151. And 15 million of this goes into the Arlington contributory retirement fund and 603,000 gets transferred from the Arlington Housing Authority which is not part of our purview. So we have a lot of data here with respect to how this gets fully funded but we had an agreement with the retirement board to since the last override to fund at an annual increase rate of 6% a year. And if we had followed that you know in so many years we would be quote-unquote fully funded in other words we would have enough money in the fund so that its revenues would cover the expenses of all current and future retirees. This recently the town manager came to a revised agreement with the retirement board to have this annual increase pegged at 5.5% which helps the town budgets and under that funding schedule the unfunded liability gets fully funded in 2034. Now recently the PARAC got an act passed that would give retirees a one-time COLA adjustment of 5%. And this doesn't have to be approved by town meeting and it could be approved by the select board and the select board approved it. So they will see a one-time improvement of increasing their COLA of 5% on the first $15,000 of their retirement fund. So the following page is here just all background on this legislative rule that was passed by the legislature and the governor and adopted by the select man so we don't need to really spend a lot of time on that. But on page 12 there is a revised retirement schedule based upon what this looks like after the 5% adjustment and it's down slightly from the prior forecast but basically it's still around around 2034. And then there's a whole series of pieces of information here which you can feel free to peruse at your leisure with respect to the retirement status based on the actuarial reports provided by the stone actuarial firm as of January 1st 2022. They're always a full year behind and it's always on account of the year just by the way the system works. If you have any questions on any of these data please feel free to ask but the only one that I would draw your attention to is that there are some, this looks anomalous that there's people age 30 to 34 maybe under 50 that are getting retirement benefits and these are exceptional and they are generally the result of let's say that a retiree dies and the person's spouse is much younger that person would get some of the benefits but that would be at a younger age or a retiree could for example get divorced and after the separation the other member would receive part of those benefits. We can't really get into too much more detail on this because this is all confidential protected HIPAA information but as you can see most of the retiree benefits are grouped in a cohort of ages that one would expect you know 50 and above and of course disabled members they would you know disabilities can occur at almost any age. So every every year this stone consulting group goes through a complete evaluation of the retirement fund what its earnings are and when we can expect to be fully funded. I have to say unfortunately every number of years there's a setback like the you know the last several years in COVID and and the that fully funded date always seems to be elusive moving out a little bit further but the one other item to draw your attention to here is that there's a section of the law referred to as 38c which covers employees that work have worked in different municipal jurisdictions. So for example a prior town manager Brian Sullivan was I think before he came to Arlington was the town manager at in Winchester and then he was in another municipal jurisdictions before that. So his retirement fund payments have to be distributed over various towns and and by the retirement board by following up on all the employees who are getting benefits to make sure that all of the prior towns pay the appropriate amount towards those benefits winds up with this is before the protest and this is after the protest. So the town gets each year has gotten a certain amount of savings as a result of following through on this multiple jurisdiction retirement issue and there was one specific situation where many years ago the Minuteman Vocational School District's retirement board was entirely managed by Arlington and and they eventually had got redressed through a court action and the and we received additional funds from Minuteman so that brought the gains up to this two million dollar figure. The only other comment that I would make is that just like the other funds the the Prim state managed funds closed down this year by roughly 10 percent and there's you know various details here on where the funds are invested. This is all done at the state level and there's billions of dollars invested in these various categories. This is the returns that the Prim has gotten for the town over the years so you can see the one year return is 10.8 minus 10.8 percent but over a 10-year period it's been around eight maybe nine percent since the beginning of the funding process so on the average there including downturns sort of beating beating the market market averages. Him and T Bank is the fiduciary that or trust institution however we want to call it that that handles the cash. This equity amount is the the Pritt funds that the town has under control of Pritt and this cash equivalent this is the money that moves in and out of the of the bank on a sort of a monthly basis which includes money taken out of the Pritt fund and which includes payments by the current payments by the employees into the fund and the net result of which is used to pay the current expenses of the retirees. These private equity amounts are you know they the retirement board before they transferred the money to Pritt had a whole series of different investors and some of them were long-term contracts. These are being wound down and eventually there won't be there won't be this category it'll all be either in you know the cash moving in and out or it'll be in the Pritt fund. So just a comment the Arlington Contributor Retirement Board is not financed through town meeting. All the finances come out of the the fund itself and this is as a result of change in the state law I don't know 10 or 15 years ago maybe 20 years ago but in an agreement with the retirement board the finance committee reviews their budget just to be sure that there's nothing unusual going on there. In exchange we agreed to generally approve their COLA increases provided that the town has also approved raises that year for the for the town employees and there was during the 2009 recession period a situation where the town did not give raises and the retired employees did not get a COLA increase so that's basically the arrangement with the retirement board. So this shows the this is what the board there are five board members what they receive. The custodian of funds is a stipend for the custodian. The retirement administrator is Rich Greco he's got an assistant and then the overtime the reason this overtime is up this year is because it's likely that his assistant administrator is going to be retiring and they have to have some overlap for training purposes. The rest of the funds are pretty normal to meet their expenses and the budget this is I would say it's a reasonable amount of money considering the total amounts that they have under operations. So I think that brings us to the end and we're making a recommendation of the budget that is right here to to appropriate the 15,676,279 less the I'm going to stop sharing if you can bring up the that a budget page 151 Tara I appreciate that that less the less the the offsets which are principally water and sewer one second page 152 yes I because it's a late hour I'm not going to bring this to a vote tonight and it's also great amount of information that people have in front of them. Charlie Tara we have not seen Charlie's presentation correct in paper has it been distributed yet like it's seven o'clock tonight okay all right so we'll take a vote whenever you want well do people feel like they they're ready for a vote tonight I don't think I don't think we are I think because it is a it's a big chunk of money I think people should have the opportunity to look over what was distributed earlier tonight and then I think this will be our first order of business when we convene on Monday but before we break I just want to be clear about what the proposed vote would be that would be the 14,133,875 right and at the same time we'll there'll be a warrant article appropriation of 656,555 no two million two million yeah it's it's the it's the it's the number the bottom number in red on the second page but that's that's a separate vote that's not right and I don't know I mean it's ma'am Cher it's up to you whether you want to vote it now or when we actually have the warrant article well I'm inclined to wait until the warrant article but I just want to let people give sort of people the heads up that it is part of the same issue here. Caroline your hand is up I don't want to I don't want to open up any questions other than just get an understanding of what we're going to be what we're doing which is we're just going to adjourn reconvene and take a vote on this and also entertaining questions on this on Monday. Okay the one the one thing I was going to say is that the the retirement has to be funded by 2035 so which is why you see that 5.5 versus 5.0 per year. All right thank you. All right it's been a long night we've done a lot of budgets hopefully everyone or most people will have budgets ready by next week or at least people try do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. All right all in favor? All right we will reconvene on Monday. Good night everyone thank you.