 Okay. Good evening. It's November 7th, 2022. We're holding this meeting based on the open meeting law that was confirmed by the legislature earlier this year. The meeting is accessible by real time, by Zoom, by phone, and Amherst Media. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling this special town council meeting to order at 5.03. I'm going to call upon each councilor, and they have to confirm that they can hear me and I can hear them, and then I'm going to explain how the next two hours are going to go. When you call your name, please unmute your mic and then mute it again. Shalini Balmilne. Yes, present. Patty Engelis. Present. Anna Devon-Goth here. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Andy Johanneke. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Todd. Present. I have not seen Alicia yet, but we'll look out for her. Okay. Actually, this meeting is a most unusual meeting for anybody to observe, because basically we sit here and read. This meeting will be followed at seven o'clock by the budget coordinating committee, which is actually, in this case, represented by the whole council, the finance committee, the school committee, and Jones Library trustees. It will begin at seven. And then at eight or thereabouts, we will go into our regular town council meeting. There is no public comment during this five o'clock special meeting. Each of you have received a packet. In that packet are three specific items. One is a set of 13 individual councilor evaluations. The second is a composite of all of that information from the evaluations. So you can either read them by the individual evaluation or you can read them by the question. And the third is the beginning, and I do wanna stress the word beginning, draft of a memo for the town manager that eventually we as a council will have to come to consensus on and pass. Your goal tonight is to read the evaluations and we'll begin a discussion about the memo, but I will also be inviting people to send me individual, please do not reply all comments regarding where they think there should be additions or changes to the memo. That memo will not come back to the council and the earliest will come back is on November 21st. And we may still be working on it on December 5th when we do the state of the town address. So we're gonna also try to take a break at about 10 minutes of seven because at seven o'clock, as I mentioned before, we'll be going into the next meeting. So with that, please go ahead. Your cameras do not need to be on. There is a camera on the whole town room. And please let me know if you need anything. Thank you, bye. Make sure you mute. I need to have the record show that Alicia Walker has joined the meeting. Thank you. Let that attendee know what's going on right now. I'll address them. We see that there is someone in the audience and we welcome you. We are now in a reading period that will go on till seven o'clock tonight. And then we will be beginning our next phase of our meeting, which is the financial indicators. And that will go for approximately an hour. And then we will move on to our regular town council meeting. You're welcome to stay, but the next from now till seven o'clock might be just a little boring. Thank you. We are going to take a break in about five minutes, fully recognizing that we're not done, except for reading your ratings wrong. The good news is it didn't change. We are now at seven, I'm sorry, at six, 50. And so I'm going to adjourn the first meeting. We're going to make, take a 10 minute break. And then we, I'm sorry, we're going to take a 10 minute break. Then we will come back for the second meeting, which is the financial indicators meeting. And we welcome our visitors and we'll make sure that we talk about that. Bye. This meeting is adjourned. And we're coming back at exactly seven o'clock. Meantime, some members of the school committee are joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Is it your laptop that's being shown? Is it your laptop that's being shown? Is this, is this you or who's? No, it's over here. Thank you. Chris Randall, senior, it says, and a public comment period, there's randomly an urge. I'm sorry. Are they from the press? It doesn't matter. There's press in the room. As town counselors return, as well as school committee members and Jones Library people, join us. Please turn your picture on so I know that you are back in the room. Athena, I don't know if you can hear me, but Jen LaFountaine and I think it's just Jen LaFountaine needs to be brought into the, as a panelist. Got it, thank you. Thank you. Athena, also, Sonya Aldrich, if you could bring her over. And I think I see Jennifer Schau as in the, as a attendee as well. I'm going to ask the town clerk to the town council to take the center, the notice down. Thank you. And we can begin to just look. We're going to be ready to start fairly soon. And the last one, I promise. Athena, if you could bring Holly Drake into the room. She's in the attendees list. Thank you, Sean. Good evening. It is November 7th, 2022. This is a meeting of the budget coordinating group, otherwise populated by the town council, the finance committee, the school committee and the Jones library trustees. On November 7th, 2022, an act was signed into law, which extends the suspension of certain provisions of the open meeting law. This allows us to meet remotely without a quorum of councils in the room. However, tonight we have a quorum in the room and to provide adequate alternatives. Those include Zoom, phone and Amherst media, as well as welcoming all of you into the room. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the November 7th joint special joint meeting of the town council finance committee, school committee and library trustees to get to order at 701. After I get done making sure all of them can hear me and we can hear them, I'm going to be calling on the chairs of the other bodies to call their groups together. So, Shalanie Balmille. Present. Thank you. Pat DeAngelis. Present. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Anika Lokes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Maroney. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Present. Alicia Walker. Present. And I'm now going to call on Allison McDonald, the chair of the school committee to convene your meeting. Seeing a presence of a quorum, I'm calling to order this meeting of the Amherst School Committee and we'll take a roll call. We have, I think three or four, three members remote. Jennifer, Allison present. Irv. Irv present. Peter. Peter present. Ben, that's it. We're in order. Okay. Austin Thrut, please call the Jones Library trustees to order. Thanks, Lynn. So we're calling this meeting of the Jones Library Board of Trustees to order. I think there is a quorum present. I see folks on the Zoom. So I'm going to call and just ask you to acknowledge your presence. Bob Pam. Present. Thank you, Bob Alex. Tammy. Present. Lee Edwards. Present. Austin, Sarah, it is present. So we have a quorum, Lynn. Thank you. And Andy Steinberg, the finance committee. I've already done the counselors, but please acknowledge the presence of other members of the finance committee. Yes. Just so that everyone knows, the charter provides for resident members of the finance committee to join with the council members. There are three resident members, and I think they were participating remotely. Bob Hegner. Present. Bernie Kubiak. Present. Matt Halloway. Present. Thank you. Thank you. I want to note that we do have someone in the group that is recording as well as the press. Is there anyone else who plans to record this meeting? Please raise your hand at this time. I might mention that the meeting will be recorded by Amherst Media and be available after the meeting via video. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let me know. Or the clerk of the town council who is Athena O'Keefe over here. Please, if you want to ask a question, and there is no public comment in this particular meeting, but for those of us who are convened either by the school committee, the Jones Library of Trustees or finance committee or the town council, if you're going to ask a question, please reuse the raise hand button. And if technical issues arise regarding the entire remote participation, we'll decide what to do at that time. After this meeting, there will be a regular meeting of the town council. It will begin at eight o'clock or thereafter, immediately following this meeting unless we can get to take a break and we'll include various other items we're already talking about as well as a public comment period. So with that, I'm going to call on Paul Bachman and Sean Mangano to introduce the rest of the fiscal staff who are here and proceed with the presentation on the fiscal indicators. Thank you, Lynn. Paul, before we get started, Athena, can you just enable share screen for me? Do we need to bring the Doug Slaughter team from the audience? So I'll get started. So thank you, Lynn, and thank you to all the members of the school committee and the trustees who are here today. This is a presentation that we do annually. Tonight, it's a team effort, our brilliant team led by finance director Sean Mangano and of course by Sonja Aldridge, our comptroller who announced that she is retiring next year. Sonja has provided strong guidance over the town's finances for decades and we thank her and she's not leaving yet and she's got a budget to get through and so we look forward to working with you, continue to working with you, Sonja. We're also joined by Holly Drake, our assistant comptroller, Jennifer LaFountain, our treasure collector and Kimberly Moog, you, our principal assessor. This is a strong team and we all got together inside that Sonja should actually make the entire presentation but I don't think she's gonna do that. But seriously, this is a process as unusual in most communities but it's a tradition in Amherst. It's about communication early on in the budget process, ensuring that we all start off on the same foot. This is the first step of our budget process before goals are set or anything. So it's a very important meeting. It's our staff's opportunity to share key financial information with you, the elected decision-makers for the town. Tonight's agenda takes glances back at FY22, does a quick assessment of where we are in FY23, our current fiscal year and looks ahead to FY24 and beyond. Good, next slide. There are several key takeaways from the presentation tonight. First, we have major challenges ahead of us. Rising costs are impacting all of our operations, increased interest rates and rising costs are impacting our capital projects. We are recognizing the pressure the economy is placing on taxpayers and the need to make investments with the ability to maintain our fiscal stability. And what's important for us is that without strong financials in our town, none of this will be possible. We also wanna identify some important accomplishments like these, we will show you that we have been able to maintain a solid financial position for the town. This matters when it comes to maintaining current town services or when we enter the bond market to borrow funds. This is what they look at. In FY23, the town council approved a balanced budget with no override and we have maintained the discipline to build our reserves with the eye to address our many needs and capital. And we worked from a solid financial base. I mentioned this several times, outside bond rating agencies reaffirmed our strong fiscal management and the steps we have taken to prepare for the future. We have strong systems in place that protect us and that is due primarily to the attention of our accounting department and finance officers. What's important is that we work together. We take a team approach to problem solving and addressing major issues as they arise. This includes our partners at the school at school superintendent Morris and library director Sherry. And we have managed to maintain steady growth at pace that we can afford. And I'm gonna turn it over to Sean who's gonna make some additional presentations I think. Yeah. Yep, thank you. So the goal for tonight is to update the council and the public on the town's performance in several key areas. We've noted on a number of the slides where we believe the trends are either favorable for the town, unfavorable or if they're marginal they're not changing much. And we've also noted which areas we feel have the greatest uncertainty as we move forward. As Paul noted, we're fortunate to have this process where we have used this system for at least the last, I don't know, 10, 15 years. So that we have a consistent system to measure the town's fiscal condition. So I'm lucky that we have this. So this first comparison looks at the sources of revenue for the operating budget. It compares FY23 to FY14. So it's a 10 year comparison. As you can see like almost every other city in town in Massachusetts, property taxes are the largest source of revenue. And as you can see, there's been a shift the last 10 years to a greater reliance on property taxes. Some of this growth is COVID related. State aid was flat and FY21 because the state's revenues were uncertain and our local receipts declined significantly and they're still recovering from the pandemic. Over the next few years, we will look to create more balance between our funding sources that you see here. We can do that by advocating to the state for increased aid which was successful in FY23. We saw the largest increase in state aid that we've seen in at least 10 years and by generating more revenue through our local receipts. This comparison is similar to the last one but this looks at our major categories of expenses. So what you can see here is that the operating, the operating budgets of the town have declined over the last 10 years. If you see the town slice, the elementary school slice and the regional slice have all dropped. What has gone up is capital miscellaneous and other or unappropriated uses. So capital has risen intentionally. We've been systematically trying to grow the amount of the tax levy that we set aside for capital to do a better job of funding capital in town but also to prepare for the forward building project. So the capital one is something that was a strategic decision over time. Miscellaneous has increased because of our pension assessment. We continue to have steep increases in our Hampshire County assessment each year. As we try to fund past years where retiree assessments were not enough, we are now making up that difference every year and at least for the next 10 years, we will continue to have large increases to make up for that difference. And then the last area, unappropriated uses, that has gone up quite a bit and that's because of charter tuition has grown significantly over this period of time, over $800,000 over this 10-year span and then our regional transit system costs have gone up significantly as well. The one thing I'll note here is the elementary school drop is a little bit, there's a piece of that that's a little bit misleading and that's because of an accounting adjustment. Back in FY 14, we used to include charter tuition in the elementary school budget. At a subsequent year, we decided no longer to take charter tuition or put charter tuition in the elementary school budget. We took it out and made it a town-wide expense. So that makes about a percentage point difference if you didn't have the charter tuition back in FY 14. So still a drop, still the trend is still there, less for operating budgets as these other uses have grown. And I'm gonna pass it off to Jen LaFountaine who's gonna talk about property taxes. Good evening everyone. So this slide is about property tax revenue and it is the primary source of both operating and capital spending. This includes new growth that has been averaging about 720,000 annually over the last 10 years. Annual increases are limited to by proposition two and a half unless the town passes an operating override. And this was last done in fiscal year 11 with the blue line being actual dollars and the red line being constant dollars on here for coloring purposes. And this is adjusted for inflation. So we're gonna go to the next slide. Uncollected property taxes. This slide gives you a 10 year history of uncollected taxes as a percentage of the net levy. FY 20 you can see is slightly higher and that's due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a reminder, the town had adopted an extended due date for the fourth quarter taxes pushing the due date from May 1st to June 30th without any penalty. And this also pushed the demand bills into July into the next fiscal year. So some of that revenue was collected in the next fiscal year. The percent of uncollected taxes at the end of July was back under 2%, which is more in line with what we expect to see. Overall, this slide shows our collection rates to be very favorable to the bond rating agencies as we have remained well below the 5% or above morning indicator. We also wanted to share that in addition to this low percentage of uncollected property taxes, we were also able to collect somewhere around $400,000 in tax title money in fiscal year 22. And a tax title is a lien that's placed on property to enforce the collection of property taxes. And then once paid in full, that lien is then removed. And we're gonna go on to the next one. So this is the state aid in both actual and constant dollars. The state aid dollar amounts have steadily risen. The dollar amounts have risen over the last several years other than in FY 21, where there was a drop due to the pandemic. But you can see when it's adjusted for inflation, it's not rising nearly as fast, which is again, the red line. And as a matter of fact, it's been pretty flat. FY 21 is currently when adjusted for inflation, just a smidge higher than we were in 2013. We should see a rise in state aid, as Sean just said, for FY 23, it's one of the largest increases we've seen in years. However, with the change in governor, it creates some uncertainty in the future years. So we can go to the next slide. So this is state aid as a percentage of the operating revenues. So state aid currently accounts for about 20% of our operating revenues. State aid peaked for us in 2008, where we received approximately $16.9 million. Back then that was a percentage of approximately 28% of our operating revenues back then. So this percentage has been declining with a few small increases here and there, but we're still well below that peak from 14 years ago. And as this slide shows with our 10 year, we are still one full percentage point plus below where we were 10 years ago in terms of a percent of operating revenues. While the dollar amounts are increasing most years, it's not keeping up with the annual budget increases or inflation. And as stated earlier, this puts more and more of our reliance on the increases in property taxes, which are capped by proposition two and a half. So it really does limit our total budget from year to year. The next slide. So this is the state aid history, just shown in a slightly different way. You will see the cherry sheet receipts are shown in red. Our cherry sheet charges are shown in green. And then the net state aid is the purple line. This line shows us the amount that we're actually able to appropriate for spending. And it has been gradually increasing in the last few years after a couple of years. Most of the time when we see an increase in our state aid, we're also seeing an increase in the assessment as well. So it doesn't really seem to amount to a lot more that we're actually able to spend. It is slowly creeping up over the last few years and we're definitely hoping it will again next year. So the next one is Kim, I believe. Thank you. So our revenues related to our economic growth are including meals tax, hotel and motel tax, motor vehicle, building fees and permits, and as you know, real estate tax. Everything has been significantly recovering this year and our new growth as well, excuse me. So some properties that I wanted to just mention that have contributed to our new growth this year are 462 Main Street. This property is located just before the railroad tracks on Main Street if you're coming into town just after the railroad tracks. One University Drive South at the intersection of University Drive and the corner of North Hampton Road sort of across the street from Big Y. There's also 408 North Hampton Road. This property is across North Hampton Road from the Auto Zone store. And then there's also 133 Southeast Street which is behind the bank on the corner of College Street. Those will also contribute to future growth as well as 26 Spring Street which is behind the town hall parking lot and 11 through 13 East Pleasant Street which is where the carriage shops and the pub used to be located. And one thing I'll add real quick. So there's about six or seven developments that are either finished or in process. That will add about $2 million to the tax levy through the new growth process. And the reason we call those out is because that's been really critical in funding some of the new initiatives that the town council and the town manager have put forward. And we know that when we do development there's also costs associated with it. So it's not all revenue but new growth has been really critical. And we've seen a lot of it in the last few years. And that's one of our messages for tonight is that if we wanna continue to fund new initiatives new growth will be critical in funding those initiatives. And back to Holly. So this slide here is the revenue per capita. Again, we do it in both actual dollars and constant dollars because when you adjust things for inflation they're not rising nearly as fast as you expect them to. So this chart compares our three major general fund revenue sources by showing each adjusted for inflation which are the dashed lines as well as the actual dollars. The red line at the top of our property taxes are biggest revenue source. It does increase annually but only by the allowable limits of proposition two and a half and our new growth which we were just talking about. So this graph shows that the property taxes have increased but they're not keeping up with inflation. In the middle is the state aid, the green lines are second biggest revenue source. Again, although this is slowly increasing and it seems to be keeping a better pace with inflation we're still below our peak levels in 2008 as I mentioned earlier. The last revenue shown here are our local receipts, the purple lines. Local receipts have remained relatively flat. And again, they're keeping better pace with inflation but the local receipts drop dramatically in FY21 obviously due to the pandemic. FY21 was approximately 60% of FY20's local receipt numbers and we expect increases in both FY23 and FY24 in this category and we helped to be getting back to close to normal levels with our local receipts. The next slide. So these are operating expenditures again broken down into a per capita number. Although our actual expenditures per capita are going up when they're adjusted for inflation they still are remaining relatively flat. Our per capita expenditures in 2021 are higher than they were back in 2013 by just 1.4%. So our expenses have really not gone up very much when you adjust that for inflation over a 10 year but it's a nine year period because we don't have the, oh shoot, I can't think of the word. We don't have the inflation numbers on the DOR's website for 2022 so we can only go to 2021 on this slide. This is a major challenge as well for us because our population numbers include some on campus residents who do not pay property taxes but they still consume many town services such as using our roads and sidewalks, our parks and commons, our public safety services as well as our school systems. And the next slide will show our expenditures per capita are pretty low and we've been able to manage that through effective financial policies, conservative budgeting and good management here in the town. And Holly, is it okay if I just echo that point you just made? So that previous slide of having low expenditures per capita it feels like a good thing, it feels like efficiency but it does, it is one of the major struggles that AMR specifically has because we're a tax base of somewhere between 20 and 25,000 tax paying residents trying to support a town of 40,000 residents. So it's an ongoing challenge, it's been noted in previous presentations. Again, we market as favorable because it's good to have low expenses per capita but it does create real struggles in terms of funding in terms of providing all the funding for everything that the council and town manager and school committee and everybody wants to do. We don't have the tax base to support it the same way you might think when you look at a town of 40,000 residents. So I just wanted to really emphasize that point that that's a unique challenge AMRs has. Thank you. So here by calculating the data per capita and comparing ourselves to other communities it makes it much easier to interpret some of this data. The colors here of the different communities are their bond ratings. The purple is AAA, the blue is AA and the tan is red on the lower portion. Green is us, that's AMRs and we are a AA plus rated community and then the red is the statewide average. This shows that AMRs is below all of our peer communities and well below the statewide average according to the DOR. Our spending per capita is roughly half of the statewide average. And so this chart and several later on just shows comparables to our peer communities. We began, I believe doing this back in about 2007 like Sean said about 15 years ago and we were comparing ourselves to a lot of communities that were out East, out in the Boston area. And several years back we added these more local communities to our comparisons. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Dartmouth and AMRs are the lowest two of the communities we're looking at because both communities do have a student, you know, have a UMass campus and a large student population AMRs to a much greater extent but I don't think it's a coincidence or the two lowest on that top chart. So this is our municipal staffing levels. This is the staffing levels for the town's general fund only. This does not include enterprise funds or the schools. Schools staffing levels can be found on their website and the enterprise fund staffing levels have remained pretty constant over the last several years. This chart only shows the past 10 years and shows we've added approximately 10 FTEs or full-time equivalents since 2013. Many of these positions were in the planning, conservation and inspections department with the addition of some inspectors and in our general government with the, just the clerk of the town council, communications manager, just to name a few of those. Our FTEs have remained pretty flat for the last six years. There's been not very many positions added. We've been very careful of when and where we have new positions and this again is the budgeted positions in FY 22. We had a small budget change with the loss of two police officers but then there were two additional Crest staff members that were added in the FY 22 budget so you don't see a change there. The FY 23 will show a change with many new positions including the addition of the DEI and the Crest department for additional firefighters and EMTs and other grant funded positions that will be added in the FY 23 budget. Sean, anything to add there? Good. So the, this is our salaries and benefits as a percentage of the operating budget. The red bar shows our total budgeted salaries and benefits slowly rising and it's consistent with the charge on the prior slides as expected when your staffing levels increase so do our benefits. These benefits here include our cost of living adjustments, steps, retirement costs, insurance, including both health insurance, life insurance, unemployment insurance, workers comp and for the benefits. The blue line at the top shows salaries and benefits as a percentage of the total budget and that has fluctuated a bit over the years but still remains relatively flat for a long period of time at averages between 52 to 55% of our budget is spent on salaries and benefits. The green line shows that benefits as a percent of salaries and wages is slowly increasing. The change from self-insured health insurance to a fully insurance group plan when we moved Maya a few years back has helped but we expect to see healthcare costs rise considerably in FY 24. The addition of the two new departments and those employees will increase our benefits cost in the next in the upcoming years. And Sonia, correct me if I'm wrong but if you look at this chart you'll see in 2018, 2019 that green line start to tick up and kind of go to a new sort of a new normal. That's when we hit a little bit of an issue with our health insurance trust fund we had some large claims and we ultimately shifted our insurance to Maya which came with an adjustment in our premium rates where we had to increase them. And so it held pretty steady since that point but that was the major cause for that uptick. Yes. Thank you. So back to Jen. Okay, so this slide is showing our debt service. This is our annual debt expense as a percent of our operating net revenue. These are annual principal and interest payments on existing debt. Because our debt expense is low currently at 1.1% we have a greater flexibility to issue new debt. And the debt that we have does continue to drop and a reason for this is a road paving borrowing of 400,000 was paid off in fiscal year 21. You'll see in future years that new debt will be starting to be on the books for authorizations approved through the capital improvement plan and debt service is part of the capital budget. Yeah, and again, just to echo what Jen said this looks really good right now this chart and the next couple that you'll see around outstanding debt both these charts don't show are authorized but unissued debt. So debt that the council has approved but we haven't begun making payments because the project hasn't started or it hasn't finished. In the capital improvement program we do put a projection of that so you can see where that's going but there's a number of projects that have been approved that aren't reflected here yet. The Jones library project is authorized there's no payments here yet for that. The pumper truck for the fire department was approved there's no costs yet for that because it takes so long to construct. So there are a number of authorizations that just haven't hit yet or you will start to see these numbers go back up in the coming years. So this slide shows us compared to other communities throughout Massachusetts below below and above is the neighboring communities for debt service as a percentage of the operating budget. This will look different as Sean said in the next couple of years as more debt is taken on and our credit rating is strong due to a low percentage of debt relative to general fund revenue and also to good fiscal management. So Amherst long-term debt load has remained relatively low and has actually decreased in recent years as shown in this slide. This percentage includes both long-term and short-term outstanding debt. And as Sean said in a past slide this does not show authorized authorized but unissued debt like the Jones library. I'm sorry I jumped ahead, Jen. No, that's okay. That's fine. This is a comparison to other communities in Massachusetts below and above a comparison to our neighboring communities showing what our outstanding debt is as a percentage of assessed value for FY20. These charts are long-term outstanding debt only. Currently Amherst is the lowest. This will change as we take on more debt in the next few years as we've mentioned a few times. And again we maintain a strong double A plus credit rating as a result of the slow percentage of debt relative to our general fund revenue. And the only thing I'll add here just for the town councilors and for others. One of our goals has always been to get to a triple A rating. There's really only one thing that's well there's really two things that are holding us back. One we have control over but the things that are holding us back are our sort of long-term obligations our pension obligation our OPEB obligation and our debt obligation. But our debt's not the major problem there. But just when you look at these other communities if you want to know why we're not a triple A it's because our pension assessment and our OPEB liability as a percentage of our operating budget is above the threshold that the rating agencies would like to see. And I think Sonya you're up next. Good evening everybody. This is our unfunded liabilities for the town. The blue is our pension liability and the red is our OPEB liability. Our pension is at 62.4% funded at this point in time and we are estimated to be fully funded in 2033. Our OPEB is only at 10% at this point. However, once we fully fund our pension liability we will start directing more funds towards the OPEB. I also want to point out that these liabilities and fluctuate each time we update our actuary studies and those are being done now for fiscal year 22 which is why you only see it up to 2020 on the screen right now. We have been working on some different scenarios for OPEB funding plan. The most significant change will be when we start to redirect the funding from the pension liability. And also in fiscal year 24, I think, I believe Sean, correct me if I'm wrong, we are hoping to start increasing our contribution to OPEB slightly each year. Yep. There's my slide. This is our reserves. Free cash is blue and the general stabilization fund. We have three stabilization funds now so I have to remember that is red. The green is our new capital stabilization fund and purple is for reparations. Our current percentage in reserves is 26.7% at this point. Works our current financial policies on our reserves are between five and 15% in reserves. We've been intentionally increasing this in preparation for the four major capital projects that we have been working on for the last few years. Having good reserves provides the town with greater flexibility such as buying us time to react to any loss of revenue such as state aid cuts and unenforcing emergencies like a pandemic maybe, if needed. And I just wanna mention that free cash is part of the overall reserves but that's something that needs to be recertified every new fiscal year. So our certification for this free cash ends June 30th and then we have to get it recertified again. Just wanted to mention it. Did I miss anything, Sean? No, only I just wanted to add that we don't usually show 2023 but we did add it here because we wanted to show the council sort of the results of some of the decisions that we made recently to create a capital stabilization fund and the contributions to the reparations stabilization fund. We've adapted this chart so that you can start to see those different pieces. One thing you'll see here is that free cash we typically keep at 5%. It's a little bit above 5% right now and that's because of the million dollar appropriation request that's in front of the council for the regional track and field project. So this was done, that appropriation hasn't been approved so that money is still in free cash but if that appropriation is approved then that would come out of that blue and bring it right down to the 5%. And this is the comparison to the neighboring towns for where we're at with reserves and for the eastern towns with the same demographics that we have. As you can see, we're doing very well. North Hampton is a little higher than us because they tend to do operational overrides which falls through their free cash for them to appropriate in subsequent years. So the town is currently on solid financial footing as we've tried to articulate. We have a double A plus bond rating and the town has been able to build reserves to meet its policy goals of 5% to 15% of the operating budget while also setting aside additional funds for the purpose of reparations and for capital projects. So as we, actually, I think I want to pass a slide. So for FY23, we do have a lot to be proud of. We've done a lot the last couple of years. For highlights, we continue to have really strong collaboration among elected officials and staff across all of the departments. A good example of that is the town council and the school committee and the library trustees working together to advocate with the state for more funding for our library and school projects. And that's just one example recently but it happens all the time. For FY23, we originally started with a 2.5% budget increase but the council approved an additional half percentage point. We really appreciate that. I think it acknowledges the impacts of inflation on our staff and on our operating budgets. And it also helps our departments begin to phase in some of the new initiatives that have been approved. The town has continued to invest in capital getting the percentage of the levy up to 10% which has been a long time goal. And we're one of a few communities that I'm aware of that set aside regular capital funding for sustainability. We use that funding to invest in the strategies outlined in the climate action adaptation and resiliency plan. I may have mixed up the A's there but we created two new departments, DEI and CROSS and we've used ARPA funds to support key COVID recovery strategies and council initiatives like the four new firefighter and EMTs while also trying to spur future growth that will benefit operating budgets into the future. So we've done a lot in the last couple of years that I think we all should be proud of. On the challenge side, we still have a lot of obstacles to get past. So we're continuing to support the public health department as they manage the sort of ongoing and after effects of COVID-19. We're working with public safety to start a brand new department where there's not a lot of models out there to imitate. We're dealing with the impacts of inflation while also trying to grow our tax base as I mentioned before, grow our tax base to support the demand for new services. We're working to integrate our new fire and EMT positions into our general fund budget and actively working to get strategic partnership agreements in place with our local educational institutions. These institutions are critical to the future health of the town and we're looking to find ways where we can partner to support the high quality municipal services that support all of the residents in the community. So these agreements are really critical. As we look to FY24, these are some of the assumptions that will be used to build the initial projection that you'll see in a few moments. So property taxes, we're projecting the allowable 2.5% increase and new growth of $650,000. State aid at this current time, we're leaving flat because of the moderate likelihood of an economic downturn next fiscal year and also just the uncertainty that comes with a new governor and that transition. We're projecting significant growth in local receipts which are still a little bit down due to COVID and we're projecting enterprise fund reimbursements getting back to normal for water and sewer. These are payments that the enterprise funds make to the general fund for the services that the town hall and staff provide to them. But we're still not projecting an indirect cost payments for transportation or solid waste. They've struggled, the transportation fund in particular struggle to get back to where it was pre-pandemic and the solid waste fund always had trouble making those payments. The silver lining with those two funds is that they both have new revenue sources that we're gonna monitor and that maybe will allow those payments to happen in the future. The solid waste fund has the solar array that's up and running that will make a rent payment to the solid waste fund because it's located on the landfill and the transportation system, the council approved new permit fees that will increase each year for the next couple of years and that will bring along new revenue. An override is a vote to increase property taxes more than the allowable 2.5% in a particular year and we are not proposing an override at this time. For the operating budgets, we're proposing or projecting at this time a 2.5% increase. Another example of collaboration, I think between school and town officials was at the BCG meeting a couple months ago. We talked about the charter and choice tuition adjustment that's been made going back several years to the elementary school budget. Some, you know, many years that reduce the allocation to the elementary schools. There was requests from the school committee to remove this adjustment. Many of you may remember it's always very confusing when all the departments go up 2.5% but the elementary schools will go up 2.3 or 2.4 something random, whatever it turns out to be. So we've all agreed to remove this adjustment and just everyone's gonna get the same 2.5% each year. Within operating budgets, there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a number of unsettled collective bargaining agreements both at the schools and at the town. And health insurance costs as noted earlier are projected to rise greater than they have in the past. So right now we're projecting an 8% increase for all budgets and that's based on claims data that we're seeing coming in higher. A lot of people did not access services during the pandemic and now many people are getting back to using those services, which has created a higher cost. On the retirement assessment side as noted earlier when we submitted the proposal for the creation of the Crest Department, we noted that we would be able to fund the salaries immediately within the operating budget but that the retirement assessment impacts would lag behind because of the way that the retirement system factors in salaries. So FY24 is the year where the retirement assessment impact will hit. So instead of what a typical increase which is around 7%, we're projecting about 11% increase for FY24 which is a significant factor for this year's budget. Capital investment, we're projecting going up to 10.5% of the levy. We got to 10% and some of the models for capital projects push this percentage of the levy up to 10.5%. And then lastly, OPEB were proposing an increase of $50,000 to bring the general fund contribution towards OPEB up to 550,000. Right now the town is still well below the annual contribution that we would have to make in order to keep our liability from growing. And so in the past, we had a plan to keep increasing these contributions each year a little bit until we got up to that amount. And so this gets us back on track but it gets us back with some momentum to increasing this contribution. And back to Paul. Thank you. So I don't know if we actually explained what OPEB means. Most people may not know that term. It's other post-employment benefits that basically is health insurance that we promise to our employees when they retire that we will continue to pay health insurance for them. So that's why that's an unfunded liability that we have to start to fund so that the promises that we've made to our employees who have retired, we can keep those promises. So we looked at the major challenges and I'm cognizant of our time. So I'm just going to let people read these instead of me reading each one of them. I think we talked a lot on the town side about what the challenges are that we're focusing on. The one thing I want to point out is that we're seeing lower consumption on water and sewer. And that's a good thing for our environment but it's a hard thing for our enterprise funds because our costs for water and sewer producing them and processing waste are not going down, they're going up but our revenues are starting to stagnate. Schools, I want to stay on this, go back to that. So schools have a staffing cost because of unsettled contracts, definitely has facility needs, uncertainty about state aid and then the major changes in moving the sixth grade to the middle school. And for the library, a lot of focus on their endowment, what their endowment is being committed to and how much they've had to rely on the endowment. Okay. So going forward, these are the things that we're paying attention to which is the economic uncertainty which is impacting everyone. We're seeing a bit of a, not slow down, I wouldn't say but we're not seeing as many building projects come through as we had previously. We have made a significant commitment to reducing the town's carbon footprint. That doesn't come free, we have to invest to make that happen. We've committed to funding four new positions in the fire department. Those have to be integrated into our budget. It's really important from our point of view that we maintain our fiscal discipline so that we can do all the things that we've promised people that we would do. Right now with the four building projects that are sitting out there, our needs outweigh our resources. And the basic thing that we always come down to is what is the impact on the property owner? Basically the homeowner who's paying taxes so we can do these things. So how are we going to handle these things? Going forward, we are gonna continue to manage our resources frugally. We have strategies for prudent use over the reserves that we have built up over time. We'll fight to get more funds. I think in the last two weeks we've announced over a million dollars in grants that the town staff have been able to acquire for road and sidewalk improvements. Encourage sustainable development. The council will tonight talk about a debt exclusion as part of the strategy. And then as we make investments in our facilities and renewable energy investments we believe there'll be payback down the road as we reduce our reliance on carbon fuels. All right, so almost to the end. So we're gonna finish up by looking at the projection, the actual numbers that we're projecting for next year at this point and then look at the calendar really quickly. So this chart represents our initial projection for next year. It'll be discussed in more detail at the finance committee meeting tomorrow and it will get amended throughout the budget process with new information. We break down our revenue projections into four categories, property taxes, local receipts, state aid and other financing sources. So in property taxes as mentioned earlier we're projecting a two and a half percent increase plus $650,000 of new growth to represent an overall increase of about 3.7%. In local receipts we're projecting a number of increases to different categories consistent with our recent experience, a total increase of 8.2%. State aid, we're keeping flat for now but we will get the governor's budget proposal a little bit later than usual but we will get it before a budget is submitted so we will be able to reconcile any differences between the proposal and what we project but it won't be in January like it typically is because of the transition in the governor. And then lastly, other financing sources are going down. The ambulance fund is a little bit good, a little bit not bad but just an adjustment. So we increased ambulance fees before the pandemic. We never were really able to realize the increased revenues from those ambulance fee adjustments because the pandemic affected utilization significantly. We're starting to see that higher revenue in the ambulance fund. So we're actually able to increase the amount of support from the ambulance fund to the budget. However, the decrease you see here is because in FY23 there was a planned ambulance purchase. So that 2.7 million from the ambulance fund at the bottom included an ambulance purchase and we haven't made a decision for FY24. If there will be an ambulance purchase or not that'll be part of the capital planning process. So there's a little bit of an adjustment there just because there's not an ambulance proposed yet for FY24. In the miscellaneous section you'll see a decrease of 100,000 that's because in FY23 we had a inflation reserve that was funded from old capital projects that were closed out. Again, that may happen again in FY24 as part of the capital planning process but we haven't put it here yet. And then lastly, FY23 included $500,000 from stabilization to begin to help fund the Jones Library Project. For FY24 we haven't included any reserves to support the building projects. We're working with the finance committee to update the different models for the four building projects especially based on sort of our newer fiscal realities. And when we get closer to a plan we will update this projection with whatever the numbers are from that plan. So the overall impact here is a 2.2% increase in total revenues at this time. On the expense side operating budgets again going up 2.5% of the top. The next section is capital projecting it going up to 10.5% for FY24. And the one thing to note with capital is that the first thing that comes out of our capital allocation is any general fund debt and then are the regional school district assessment. So while it seems like a lot the 10.5% when you take those two things off the top you end up with a lower number that's available for new capital projects each year. In miscellaneous you'll see the increase to the retirement assessment and the extra $50,000 for the OPEB contribution. And then the last section here, unappropriated uses these are typically things we are required to set aside or their state assessments. We've used a placeholder for state assessments of a 3% increase. This is to cover possible increases for charter tuition and for our regional transit services which are the two biggest pieces. And again, we will have exact numbers or not exact numbers but we'll have a projection of the numbers from the governor before this has to be finalized so we can update that. So at this point, the difference between our revenues and our expenses for next year is a $200,000 deficit which is a significant amount but it's a manageable amount at this early stage in the budget process. And then we will finish with the calendar. So this calendar lists some of the key dates coming up. The bolded purple are key points for public engagement and the bolded black wording are key decision points. And so the next key date that is coming up is on November 21st. There is a public forum which says FY23, it should say FY24, so I apologize for that. I thought I caught all the FY23s from last year but there will be an FY24 budget public forum on November 21st which is really the first and sort of best opportunity to give direct feedback on what you'd like to see in the FY24 budget. And the last thing I'll just note quickly is that the resident capital request application is posted on the website. If you go to, I think it's called your government and then under your government is capital planning on the left hand side, you'll see the resident capital request application and there will be a news blast tomorrow from our communications director with the information. We've reformatted the process to make the application a little bit easier and to really outline the process and make it more streamlined. And so that's an opportunity for any resident in town to submit a capital request to be considered by the town manager and by the joint capital planning committee. So that application is live and it will, it says here to the 18th but we've actually extended the deadline for applications that will stay open until the end of December. And with that, thank you very much and I'll turn it back to Lynn. Thank you. And real quick, all this information is posted on the town website under budget and then upcoming budget. There is this presentation plus the charts with the numbers below the charts. So we're going to ask if there are questions from the town council of the school committee or the finance committee members or Jones Library. Peter Demling. Thanks. I mean, first of all, big props to the finance department, Sonya and everyone else. I think we take it for granted. What a great state we are in in terms of our frugal discipline over years. And we don't, in general at our public meetings celebrate our town employees enough and what an amazing job they do in all of our departments. So a big thank you there. So my question is for the town manager. And Paul, my question is, in your final recommendation to the town council for this FY24 budget, how likely are you to increase the recommended elementary school budget by a million dollars or more above and beyond this initial guidance? Recommend that this level be sustained for FY25 and also recommend that a million dollars or more be added retroactively to the current year's FY23 budget. The reason I ask is that, as you know the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee that represents the Amherst School Committee in contract negotiations is currently in negotiations with our staff unions. And as you probably know, the latest statement from the Regional School Committee notes that the last request from one of our unions prior to mediation would require $14.4 million more than is available in the district budgets approved and given to us by member towns. And as you also know, and everyone at this meeting knows but not all of the general public understands. And this is the key point here, the Amherst School Committee and the Regional School Committee that represents us in negotiations has no power or authority to set our budget amount. We have clear authority over how to spend our budget. But at the Amherst level, we can only spend what's approved by the Amherst town council based on your recommendation. School committee can ask and advocate for more and we have in the past unsuccessfully for much smaller amounts than a million but we can't increase our budget without the town council voting to do it. So you're stating how likely you are to increase your school budget recommendation by a million dollars or more for FY23, FY24 and FY25. And if not, why not? Would be very helpful for the school committee to hear and for the public to understand. Another million dollars would still be far short of what's needed to cover this request from our union. But hearing you address this would at least provide a general sense of what's even possible from the town's perspective. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. So I don't know if that's exactly a question, honestly. Sound like a statement, but I respect what you're saying and the idea of tonight is to present the financial position, financial picture of the town. So everyone can see the numbers that we're all looking at. Everybody can see them. Anybody with a calculator, anybody with a spreadsheet can go in and look at the same numbers we are looking at and be able to sort of make the calculations that we are. The idea of the public hearing on the 21st, I think it is, is to listen to people who have thought about it and ask the council to prioritize things as a way they see fit. Based on those budget guidelines that the council will adopt will begin to build the budget and accord with those goals. I think when you're talking about on big numbers it's really hard to figure that out. We're talking about integrating positions into an existing budget. That's the challenge that we're facing. Andy Steinberg. Yes, thank you. Appreciate the presentation. We'll talk about it more at the finance committee meeting. There's one question I wanted to ask, Sean, if you had thought about as far as whether it can be estimated in value or if there's any way to approach it, but you pointed out very clearly that the amount that we are spending per capita is skewed because of the university, but there are other things that are skewed because of the university's presence in our community and specifically thinking about revenue because such a large portion of our land is not taxable and we are not getting any significant payment in lieu of taxation from the state or assistance from the university. So that we have a large burden on the community and expenditures without any revenue that comes back to us to pay those expenses. And it skews us in that other way, but it doesn't show up in our comparisons to other communities as we look at that. And I don't know that I can think of a way to do it, but I did want to at least raise the point and see if you'd given any thought to that. Sean? Can you rephrase the question? No, I think I understand where it is. So I think you're right. I think it makes it really complicated to figure out what our true costs are, but I think what we showed is our true costs per capita. Again, we are providing services to 40,000 residents based on the budget that we have and the property tax base that we have. The services we provide to all of them may be a little bit different than other communities. It may be more of one thing than another community where it's more maybe even the way it's spread out, but we are providing services to all 40,000. And yeah, we're happy to look into it. I know we have been looking into studies of how many people are on campus? What are the value of those facilities on campus to start to get a sense of what is the value? We know the land value, but we don't have necessarily the greatest snapshot of the facility value of all the tax-exempt land. So it's something we've worked on and we'll continue working on, but there's a lot of tax-exempt property in town. We're actually, when I looked at it earlier before this presentation, we're one of the highest, if not the highest community in terms of percentage of tax-exempt land. We're over 30%. I believe the number I've seen is 38%. Mandy Jo. Thank you. Something that always strikes me when I look at this is how much of our operating budget is personnel costs and the presentation you just said, said was 52% of our operating budget. So that in my head leaves us with like 37 million of our operating budget as personnel costs. What I have problems trying to understand and I don't know whether you can answer this question tonight is when we increase a budget, say 2.5%, what does that equate to in percentage increase in salaries per year for all of the employees that are already included in those budgets? And what would, if we needed another percent or 2% increase, because we all know inflation is high. What does that, what's that raw number? Like if, what's that one percentage each way? Cause I don't know whether benefits increases much. You know, when, if you're increasing a salary by one and 1% say, I don't know what the benefit increases, whether that's also 1%. So can someone speak too, if we were, what that 1% or 2% increase in salaries means in a raw dollar amount in the budget for every increase to help me understand what numbers we'd be talking about. Yeah, so I don't think we'll be able to answer that tonight. It will really depend on the makeup of the salaries that you're looking at. For example, when I was at the schools, there was a time when we had a lot of teachers at the, at the top. And so, so when we think about increases, we think about steps and colas. There's sort of two components to salary increases. And so the makeup of your, your staff will dictate that. But, but you're sorry to your initial question about a 1% call that we could calculate that. I just don't have that information handy at this time. Thank you. Irv wrote. Sean, to you and your team who put this all together, I really want to congratulate you. And it's really an outstanding job. It really makes all the numbers jump out at you and become live and rather than something dead and still, it's a remarkable job and a remarkable effort. So I want to congratulate you and your staff and team on. Couple of things that sort of stood out to me was that the new growth projection for 24 was $650,000. And I don't expect you to answer that, but that's a low number. And for whatever reason that is, it is a sort of like a red flag for us going forward. And I think we need to really pay attention to that. The second thing that is that you indicated there's 20 to 25,000 residents who carry the majority of the burden of paying taxes, et cetera. And that number sort of was larger than the number that I had thought was in relationship to full-time residents. And if you have any clarification on that ever like that. And finally, the rate, the thing that stunned me and maybe I'm missing something here is that we're not projecting a override for 24. And I thought that the new school building would be, we'd be going for an override in 24. So that jumped out at me. Thank you. Yeah, so we're not projecting a tax override for 24. There may be a debt exclusion vote in this coming year, which is a little bit different than an override. An override is just for regular taxes for operating budget, a debt exclusion specifically for the debt related to a capital project. And so that vote may happen this year, but even if it does happen this year, the actual debt associated with it won't be till a future year when the building project gets underway. So you're right on that. There is the anticipation of a debt exclusion vote on the population. So it was just a ballpark number, but I think the thing that when I think about it is how many residents are not, I'm not thinking about residents that may be in apartments that are tax paying apartments. I'm thinking about residents that are on taxes up to land, but it was a ballpark number. So it may be a little bit lower or higher than that number. And then your comment on the new growth. So 650 is sort of our standard new growth that we use in the budget at this point in the year. Jen LaFountaine and I looked at it earlier in the last 10 years, I think of average maybe about 700,000. So it's a little bit higher than that. New growth in many of these other revenues are what we call elastic revenues, which when the economy is good, these revenues grow significantly, but these are also the revenues that can snap back really quickly when the economy contracts and there's less going on. So we're always a little bit more conservative with what we call our elastic revenues, especially early in the process like we are here today. Thank you. Kathy, Shane, thank you as always for starting off this discussion. I just have a couple more, one question to follow up on what Andy was saying about taxable units. And I think one thing we haven't done is really be able to explain to the larger public what it means to have such a large part of our land not be taxed in terms of the burden on the rest of us. And when I was looking at even a simple calculation of if we do a debt exclusion, how many units does it get divided by an Amherst versus Northampton? So take two towns the same size and they divide it by a lot more people than we do because they have tax paying units. So that's where this comes from this extremely tight budget that we've got. So I think one of the things we could do and we were just talking about strategies around this is start talking about what other large public universities pay to their towns and be putting some pressure on it. And we could do private side too. So I'm just saying start with what does University of Vermont pay? What does Lowell UMass? What does go through a few of those? So I just think it's for people to understand what a box we're in. The other more general comment is Sean, you showed going backwards in time the share of state aid as our budget. I think if you go back 20 or 30 years particularly for the school budget you'll see an even more declining picture because aid as a share of our budget used to be bigger. So our tax dollar doesn't go as far as it used to because we're not getting an infusion. So I'll just put a plug for some votes tomorrow. There is a vote on the ballot that would redirect some money toward education and roads. So just to think of outside I think it's outside of our box. There's some things we can do within our box but there's some things where we have to think about side. So my question on that data is local receipts and this week I'm on finance so we'll get to see it tomorrow. But local receipts you have not returning to where it was a couple years ago or three years ago so I just wanna ask more about that tomorrow as your projections last year ended up giving us a pretty big surplus this year that we were able to give more money back. So I just wanna look at the projections for revenues the projections for expenditures and that was one as those tiny little numbers flew by that I noticed are we being, I like underestimating revenues because I would hate to overestimate them but I don't wanna do it to the detriment budgeting. So I just think it's a tough thing to look at these numbers because we all wish there were more. And I think I'll just wait for finance tomorrow for the more of the specifics. Yeah, I'll just quickly say there's again there's some conservatism built into the local receipts section in particular because again, that's the area of our budget that is most prone to swings in the economy and that we saw during the pandemic fluctuated the most. And then the other thing I'll say is if you go back in time there are some one-time revenues that we've received in the past that are not recurring revenues but that's to your point we'll talk get into the weeds tomorrow at finance committee. Dorothy. I have a question about the past. A few years ago or maybe it was last year I have no sense of time North Hampton did a tax override for just regular expenses and I thought that was kind of shocking and I felt, well, we don't do that in Amherst but my question is have we in fact in Amherst in the last 20 years or so done a, I keep getting confused between the debt exclusive okay, tax override for just regular expenses? Yeah, Jen, you may remember the exact year I think it was 2011 was the last time we did it and I don't know what the specific if there was a specific cause behind the override if it was just general but was it 2011, Jen? It was 2011, yes. So we have done it in the past. North Hampton has a unique sort of financial system that works well for them where they do these overrides regularly as Sonya mentioned earlier and they build up a fiscal stability fund and they use that to balance their budget and again, that process has worked well for them over several years. Do you recommend it for Amherst? I don't know enough about it to know, I think our system has also worked well for us so we haven't really dove into it too much. Okay, thank you. It means your taxes would be raising point up just to be clear every time you vote a tax override your taxes go up on your house. Jennifer, show. Thank you. So this is my first time participating. So you have to forgive me if I have some basic questions. Paul said at the beginning that this meeting is just the first step in the budget process for fiscal 24 before goals are set. But then we saw a page that basically said the elementary schools and the regional schools will be getting 2.5%. I assume that's 2.5% above our current fiscal year. So and it said that was a working assumption and so I assume it's not decided yet but it kind of feels like it's already decided. I realized it hasn't been voted on yet. So from my perspective as a new school committee member it kind of feels like the town or the town council tells the schools, here's what you'll get for this fiscal year and then the schools does as best we can with it. But I guess my question is when or how is the opportunity for the school committee and the district to tell the town this is what we need. This is what we need to have the programming and the curriculum and the staffing and the salaries that we think best serves our students. Is that this meeting? Is that like a future public hearing? Like what is the opportunity for us to communicate to you? This is what we need as opposed to you telling us this is what you get. Mr. Rockland, do you want to start again? Excuse me, we do not do loud demonstrations. Your signs are great, but thank you. So we are saying what we can afford. We show that we start, those last two sheets are really important. Those are the sheets that the finance committee will start looking at tomorrow. The first sheet is our revenue. We show you where the money's coming from and what we're estimating for next year. And then we show where the money could go. I mean, it's a projection on where we go. We look at what we have to pay out in our debt payments. We have what we're likely to pay out for a PVTA and our other responsibilities on those fronts. And then we sort of take out what's left and divide it up by three between the school, four the regional school district, the school district. And at this point that dividing that up equals 2.5% for each entity. If we can find out new revenue to come in or if the council recommends that we divide that up differently, that's all an option available to us. So what this is the first meeting of us sharing the data that we have at this point in time, admittedly we're nine months or eight months ahead of before we're projecting a budget a year and a half that's gonna be operating next year. So it's the best estimate on what it's and so driven by revenue right now. And that's what we're looking at. Could you repeat what those four things were again the regional school, the elementary school and the library in the town, those are the four entities, yeah. Sean, is there anything you want to add to that? No, only that I think one of the core things that's been in existence almost every year since I've been here is that all the departments get the same increase that it promotes sort of all the departments working together. It doesn't pit departments against each other. And that's been again a pretty core element to our projections outside of the creation of a new department. Sean, could you just for the purposes of other people who have watched this budget and in this case myself, last year you started out in November saying what percent and by the time we finished you were at what percent? Yeah, so I don't remember the exact percentages but I think to your point is we started out with a lower amount that we thought we could fund. As state aid and other numbers came in better we increased the amount for operating budgets again across the board. So I think what we ended up with, well I think FY23 is a good example, we started with a two and a half percent increase as state aid came in better. We ended with a three percent increase for all departments. As state aid came in, if we found some other new revenue sources this year like to propose another half percent because I think operating budgets as we made the case to the council and FY21 operating budgets took a zero percent increase and we've never made up that difference in operating budgets and we sort of did this year by doing an extra half percentage point but from my vantage point, we're still behind a year in our operating budgets. Thank you, Andy. Yeah, there were several things that have been mentioned that I wanted to add a little bit to Dorothy had asked about override history and the point was made it was 2011 that was a very careful plan that felt it was necessary coming out of the 2009 recession that followed 2008 when, as you remember, there was a huge financial problem on the global level and that was why the finance committee at that time, which I was a member of, it was the old town meeting days proposed that it was funded and it was actually, excuse me, an overriding authorization. The decision was actually made to implement it over a series of several years and not do it all in one year even though it was authorized in a single and one single vote and it was careful planning to bring us out of that recession and so that's the history of that override and as Lynn pointed out, there's been always a hesitance to ask because I think one of the things that we recognize is that we don't show in our projections what the amount of dollars per median residence is as a comparative number, but it is quite high in Amherst and therefore to ask homeowners many of them are unlimited income for an override is a difficult decision that this council has to make from time to time because that's part of why we're elected to make hard decisions, but it isn't an easy one to make. And as far as the questions that were coming up about process just real quickly, as Sean pointed out, there's been a feeling of over a long period of time that it is by and large a fair result of the library to the police department, all of the public safety health departments and everything else that we try and not make skewed decisions, but there are reasons to consider it and there is a process to do so. In the budget forum that was talked about on the 21st is really for the public to come in and give their thoughts about the budget and their desires for the budget. The council will adopt budget guidelines and if the council decides that it would like in the council guidelines to suggest a different policy that is the time to do it because the goal of it is to make that decision or at least give guidance to the town manager from the council before the budgets are adopted for the various departments and functional areas of our government. And just to be clear about the process and then I'll conclude is that the finance committee develops a proposed set of proposed guideline and the proposed guideline will, the finance committee will start working on tomorrow. It will provide a first draft to the council for consideration on December 5th. It does not have to be adopted on December 5th. That's always done in two parts deliberately because after the December 5th meeting in which the initial discussion can take place, if the council has strong feelings about changes it would like to see in the guideline document, it sends it back to the finance committee. Finance committee will meet on December 6th the day after to consider it. And then it comes back to the council on December 19th and that's the actual date in which there's anticipation of action. So thank you, London. Sure. I just, I think that for the sake of myself and others out there in the audience who may want to know the answer to this question is the difference between the debt exclusion and an override. And what the impact of either of those are in relationship to taxes. I could take that one. I recently did a presentation on it. So an override is a permanent increase to your taxes. So that's going above the 2.5% allowable increase in the levy limit each year. It's a permanent amount above that. And it's typically for operations. Whereas a debt exclusion, you go over it on a temporary basis only for the life of the debt. There's different thresholds in terms of voting each one. A debt exclusion requires a 2.3 majority vote by the town council. An override would require a majority vote. They both require passage by the elected vote or the registered voters of the town in order to go into effect. But the easiest way to think about it is a tax override is a permanent increase in the taxing ability of the town. And it's typically for operations. A debt exclusion is a temporary increase in the taxing ability of the town. And it's usually specifically tied to the debt of a capital project, like a school project or another building project. I would say debt exclusions are most common with MSBA school projects in the state. I wanna make sure that Sean, do you go one step further and you mentioned in one requires 2.3 vote for the council. The other requires a majority of the council. What does the population vote have to be in both cases? They both are majority in both cases. Thank you. Mandy Jo. Yeah, I just wanted to address Jennifer's question a little further, which is the other place that the groups, the school committee library trustees and council can discuss that allocation of those projected revenues is in the budget coordinating group. It's why that's technically part of this agenda is the meeting of the BCG. But I believe any of the bodies can request from the manager to for the manager to call an extra meeting or a separate meeting of the budget coordinating group to have those discussions if any of the committees believe it's necessary. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments from the bodies gathered? Sean and all of you that have worked with Sean, thank you so much for an excellent presentation. I'm going to now turn to Allison McDonald to adjourn her group. The Emmer School Committee is adjourned. Thank you. Austin Sret. Jones Library Board of Trustees is adjourned. Andy Steinberg, the Finance Committee. I mean, it's a committee meeting, which is a separate meeting within this meeting of the hall is adjourned. And before I adjourn the town council meeting, we will take a five minute break and then we will immediately go into our next meeting and we will begin very soon after that with the tax classification hearing for this year. We will also have public comment early in that meeting and certainly invite all of you that would like to make public comment to stay as well as being on Zoom with us. So we're going to take a five minute break and be right back. Thank you. I'm sorry. As council members return, please turn your video back on so I know we can get started. Athena, please take the screen down. As counselors return, please turn your videos back on. Pam, you need to turn your video on. Turn your video on. Dorothy, when you return, please turn your video back on. Michelle, you're back. All right. I have news for you. It's still November 7th. And this is now our regular town council meeting. I'm not going to go through all of the preliminaries I've gone through before in the interest of moving on. I want to mention that there is one public comment period. Excuse me, there are two. There's one during the hearing that will be held in just a moment. And then there is another general public comment period for those of you that have come for that purpose. The announcements are on the agenda for the upcoming meetings of the council. One that has been mentioned already is November 21st. And that is our public forum on the FY24 budget. And I believe we are setting the time for that to start at what time, Athena? We'll let you know. And then December 5th, we have the state of the town address. We are going to go on very quickly so that there is no more confusion. And I'm going to move item 8C up in the agenda. 8C is the motion to postpone on November 1st. I'm going to make a motion and seek a second. I moved to postpone the motion that is on the floor made by Lynn Griezmer and seconded by Anna Devlin-Gothier to November 14th, 2022 at 630. Is there a second? Shane, seconds. Thank you. I'm going to very quickly speak to the motion. I uphold the town council and all members have indicated they are available on November 14th, 2022 at 630 p.m. I am doing this because there are several amendments to the motion that is on the floor and some new motions under consideration. Thus, this item will take up considerable time. The town council began meeting at five o'clock tonight which means we're now into our fourth hour. And we are now engaged in our regular town council meeting and we have quite a few items to go. So with that, I'm going to ask if there are any questions and if not, I'm going to bring it to a vote. Okay, Shalini. Yes. Pat DeAngels. Hi. Donna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. Lynn Grease-Mersen. Hi. Mandy Dracanicki. Hi. Annika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Maroney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Todd. Hi. Alicia Walker. Yes. Thank you. There's one other thing that I would like to mention and that is item 14 on the agenda. The town manager's appointment of the human resource director. Due to the timing of the town manager's appointment memo being not within the 48-hour period and with consideration of the town's commitment to the highest standard of transparency, I've decided to move the confirmation of the human resource director to the special meeting agenda on November 14th. With that, we are going to go on to the hearing. It's a tax classification hearing. Principal Assessor Kim Yoo and members of the board of assessors are with us. That includes, I saw them earlier, hi, Leigh Hinds. And Richard Morris is probably in the audience and Ken Hargraves. Hello, Kim and Sean Magano. Lynn, can I just ask a quick question before Kim goes ahead? So we have the FY23 tax classification hearing presentation. We put the residential exemption study presentation in the packet. Do you want both presented or just the FY23 classification hearing? I think the classification hearing is fine. Okay. Thank you. Take it away, Kim. Okay. Thank you. Just bear with me while I share my screen. There's something wrong with your microphone. And I don't know what, but we have a great deal of difficulty hearing, understanding you. Okay. Let me move a little closer to my computer. Is that a little better? Yes. Okay. I'm just too far away. Kim, do you want me to share it and just click through it or do you want to go ahead and do it? Sean, if you'd like to share that would be fine. Don't move away, Kim. I won't move away. I'm sorry. Okay. So this looks very familiar to many of you. And before I actually get started, please feel free to jump in if I do move too far away. So go ahead, Sean, and go to the next slide, please. Okay. So this is just a reminder of what we will be discussing tonight. We'll be voting on the single or split tax rate. The open space discount, small commercial exemptions, and the residential exemption. Next slide. You need to speak more loudly and closer and slowly. Okay. Thank you. So the weird thing is, Lynn, I can hear her fine. So it must be something between the room audio and the, and the zoom audio because I can hear her well. So I just want to point that out that I can hear her fine. And how can I problem the last time? Okay. All right, go ahead, Kim. Okay. So the tax classification is an act that was passed 44 years ago in 1978, which requires the municipalities to classify real and personal property into these four classes, the residential, the commercial, the industrial, and the personal property. If you could go to the next slide, please. Here I have for you the definitions of all of the classes, which we did go over the other night, but briefly for anyone that wasn't there, the residential class includes any units that are for human habilitation. So any, any unit that you can live in, single family homes, two family homes, three family homes, apartment buildings. These will include accessory land, such as swimming pools, garages, basically anything that is not attached to the home. The commercial commercial property includes any place that would conduct a business such as storefronts offices, as well as chapter land, which is for farming and recreational use. Personal properties, again, is just the manufacturing. And then again, quickly, the personal property is any sort of taxable property that is inside of the business or home. If basically, if you can tip a building upside down and shake it out, anything that would fall out would be considered personal property. Let's go to the next slide, please. This is just showing you the distribution by classification. So we have a total of 6,938 parcels here in Amherst that are taxable. So this just shows you that 88% of those are residential. About 6.5 is commercial, 4.5 is personal property, and we have about less than one that would be the industrial. And I just want to pause for a moment and just check in that everyone can hear me still okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead to the next slide, Sean. So this side just gives you a brief overview of what the split tax rate is. And that's something again that we will be voting on tonight. So if we vote in a factor of one, this is a single tax rate. So this will continue on as we have been for many years now here in Amherst. If we decide to vote a factor of less than one, this will allow us to split the tax rate and shift the burden within the commercial, industrial, and personal property class so that the residential class will be paying a lower rate. And then if we do a factor greater of one, this will do the exact opposite and it will give the commercial class, commercial, industrial, and personal property class a lower rate than those of the residential class. Next slide, please. So this slide is new to you all. This is the updated information that I was not able to present to you a couple of weeks ago. So basically what this is, is showing you the impact of a split in a single tax rate with our projected tax rate for the single for this year. This shows our average single family home of 446953. And if we had a single tax rate at $20.10 per thousand, which again is our projected for this year, taxes would be about $9,000 on average. And if we did a split tax rate with a tax rate of $18.85 per thousand, it would be in and around $8,500 in tax for the average single family home, showing there a difference of $960. And then if you look over on the commercial industrial, the average commercial value in our town is $554,396. So again, if we do a single tax rate of $20.10 per thousand, we've got about an $11,000 average tax bill. And if we do a split tax rate where the, again, the residential rate would be $18.85, it would put the commercial rate at $30.19 per thousand with an average of a $1,700 tax bill. So difference in commercial between single tax rate and the split tax rate would be about $5,500. So you can go to the next slide, please. So again, this is just sort of a quick breakdown of how the residential exemption works. So this is another thing that we'll be voting on tonight. Basically, you have the ability to give up to 35% of the average value of the residential class. And this is something that is only in the residential class. So this will shift the burden only inside the residential class. This will not affect the commercial, industrial, and personal property. However, it will raise the tax rate for all classes. And then you can go to the next slide, please. And again, these are just the qualifications for the owner occupied parcels. Again, it's only the residential class. So it's single family homes, condominiums, part of two and three family homes and part of mixed use properties. Non qualifying parcels would be again, non owner occupied properties. So second homes and rentals. Homes rented by. And occupied by family members who are not listed on the deed. Properties that are held in trusts. Regardless of the purpose of the trust. Any large apartment buildings. And then nursing homes, group homes and assisted living facilities. So again, I just want to remind you about the. Properties held in the trust. And homes that are not. Occupied by the person that's on the deed. This could negatively affect. Quite a few members of our community. So just keep that in mind. When voting on that. And you can go to the next slide. So here again is just the pie chart that shows you. That we are about 66% owner occupied versus the 34% owner occupied. And again, I think that I want to reiterate. These numbers would probably adjust. With more study that's done. If we do decide that we want to. Input the residential exemption. There's a lot of work that would need to go in to make sure that these numbers are accurate. Anybody that does not respond to any questionnaires that have been mailed. And or will be mailed. If this is something we do decide to do. Have that ability to. To, to file an abatement and just be that charge. So again, just keep that in mind. I know it's not in the presentation, but something to really think about is that's also going to cost our overlay to increase. For these particular abatements. So just another little thought. When thinking about this particular exemption. Next slide, please. So a very quick summary. Again, it's just a redistribution of the tax levy. Inside of the residential class. So for those property owners. This exemption has been labeled as a misdemeanor. Since it actually does shift inside of the residential class and does not. It doesn't, it doesn't consider someone's ability to pay. If there is a potential that, you know, someone would have a higher tax bill. And then also. Tends to affect our renters. This exemption has been labeled as a misdemeanor. Since it actually does shift inside of the residential class and does not consider someone's ability to pay. So it tends to affect our renters in apartment buildings. Because it's, it's possible that the apartment buildings will have an increased tax rate as well. And again, you know. If those who either choose to live the apartment life or can't afford to purchase a home. May see that negatively affected them. Because that apartment building. Will go up in rent potentially. And then. The exemption is, is not a misdemeanor. It's a misnomer, right? Sorry. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. The other exemption that we will be voting on tonight is the small commercial exemption. And this is pretty much the exact opposite of the residential exemption. This will be for businesses of 10 or less people of the value of less than a million dollars. And basically what it would do is give those businesses. An exemption. And shift the burden to those of 11 or more employees. Being that we don't have very many. Large businesses in Amherst. You will see later on that I would recommend that this. Be voted that we do not accept the small commercial exemption. Next slide, please. So again, just the recommendations here by myself, as well as Paul, our town manager, that we continue on with the single tax rate for all property types. So a factor of one. And that we do not vote in the residential, small commercial or open space exemptions. And I didn't touch on the open space exemption because we don't use the small commercial exemption. That's it for tonight. Any questions? Okay. I'm going to ask if there's any questions from the council. This time we've already had a presentation of this last meeting and. I think it was last meeting. Maybe it was back in October. Pam. Thank you. And thanks again for this presentation each time we hear it. We understand a little better. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I heard in a recent. Rental registration by law forum. Was or input from a survey that we put out was. Concerned from landlords that. That we were that we were seeing that they're. Assessed values were going up. And that they might pass their assessed these increased values were going up. And that they might pass their assessed values. And specifically our income producing properties. Actually being assessed. To account for income. Or is it simply like the rest of us, you know, big spoiler alert here. We're all paying more taxes. Can you answer that question, please? All right. So specifically, I can't say each and every property is using the income and expense method. Can you hear me a little better? Yeah. Okay. So, so I can't say specifically which properties are using the income and expense method other than the fact that. The larger apartment buildings, any commercial industrial buildings would be using the income and expense method. However, when it does come to smaller, for example, for example, We have to use three family, two family, single family homes that are rented. Unfortunately, we can't use the income and expense method. Because we would have to use it evenly across the board. And for those properties that our, that our owner occupied, there is no income and expense. So the state really frowns upon the mixed use of. The income and expense method in that form. larger apartment buildings are using the income and expense method. Are there any other questions from the council? I'm going to move. Okay, Jennifer. Yes, I guess it's following up on that somewhat. So we don't have a lot of large businesses in town, but some of our large apartment complexes could be considered like a large business in terms of the income they generate. But are you saying that we wouldn't, the reason for not wanting to tax them higher is because it would be passed on to the tenant? Yes and no. So the apartment complexes cannot be considered commercial based on a state regulation that they are someone's residence. And so that it has to be qualified as a residential parcel. However, again, we do use the income and expense method on those buildings currently. So whether or not the tenants are seeing that increase, I'm not aware of that, but again, we do use the income and expense methods for those parcels. But Jennifer, building on Kim's response in terms of the residential exemption, one of the reasons we don't recommend the residential exemption is because that would shift a very large additional tax bill onto the large apartment complexes that we do believe would ultimately get passed on to renters. Thank you. Pam, your hand is still up, but I'm assuming you've snuck down. I'm gonna move to the audience, either in the room or on Zoom and ask if there's any questions or comments. Seeing none, are there, I'm sorry? Yes, there is. Gabrielle Dabila, Davila, I think it is. Please enter the room, state your name and your comment. This is regarding tax rates. Oh, sorry, I wanted to make a comment about a different topic. When should I do that? We're going to do that next. Thank you very much. Okay, great, thank you. Are there any other comments with regard to the tax rates that we're doing the hearing on at this time? Okay, seeing none. Any other councilor comments? Then yes, Kathy? Yes, just to make sure I heard it correctly, Kim, what you were saying for the small business owner, it seems to me it's similar to the resident's analogy that some small business owners are renters of their space, so that even if you were trying to benefit them, you wouldn't get them. You would only get the small business owner that also owned their building. Is that correct? Yes. Thank you. Michelle, you had your hand up, okay. Are there any other comments from the council? Seeing none, then I am declaring the hearing closed. Pardon me, we just need to do a vote on closing the public hearing. I'm sorry, I'd like to make a motion to close the hearing. Is there a second? Second. Okay, then we're moving to close the hearing. Lynn, I would just like to say thank you to everybody for bearing with me with the volume. Absolutely, thank you. Shalini Balmille? Yes. Pat D'Angels? Aye. Anna Devon-Gothian? Aye. Lynn Grishmers? Aye. Mandejo Haniki? Aye. Anika Lopes? Aye. Michelle Miller? Aye. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Pam Maroney? Yes. Kathy Shane? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Aye. Jennifer Todd? Aye. Alicia Walker? Yes. Hearing is closed. Okay. All right. I just wanna make a couple comments so that we catch everybody up who's joined us. Prior to the beginning of public comment or to the beginning of the hearing, I wanna make sure the people in the audience, whether on Zoom or Amherst Media or the town room, understand that we voted earlier to postpone the motion on the floor that was left over from our November 1st, 2022 meeting to Monday, November 14th on 2022 at 6.30 p.m. In addition, we're pleased to see so many public educators and students were with us earlier today. And we invite you to make public comment as well. Recognizing, however, that it is the school committee that you negotiate with and it is the school committee that submits their budget to us. So would those people who would like to make public comment, please raise their hands. Lynn, I have a sign-in sheet for public comment here. Okay. And has everybody who just raised their hand signed in on the sheet? Thank you. And then we have other people in the audience. Okay. And so, Athena, I'm going to have you begin. The first person on the public comment. Hold on before you do that. First of all, we're going to allow public comment for only three minutes. We do have a clock. If you can make it less than three minutes, we've already been sitting here for four hours and going on five. And we do want to hear from you. When you come forward, you come sit at the desk, you press the little button. It's on. It's on. Thank you. And make sure you speak into it so we can hear you. Okay. Athena. Lynn, can I? Yes. Over here. Lynn. May. Michelle. Briefly. I'm sorry. I couldn't see where. Quickly. I just wanted to clarify that this is a public comment. General public comment. General public comment. Okay. I also just want to express frustration that while we have been here for four hours, these folks have been here for a long time and I've watched many of them walk out. And I feel a lot of concern about that because they came here to engage with us. And I understand that we have a protocol that we're following, but I'd really like to think about how we can retain folks who are coming to speak and figure out ways that make that possible. So. Thank you. All right. Athena, are you ready to begin? The first person on the list for public comment is Vera Cage. Good evening, everyone. My name is Vera Cage and I live at 12 Long Metal Drive, apartment 21 in Amherst. I'm here to support the educators and to ask that you support education in this community and prioritize it. I'm not gonna waste too much time on the subject, but I do want to share some salaries of a department that has a lot of six-figure salaries. $159,965, $101,706, $190,421, excuse me, I'm gonna go back to that figure. $119,382, 116,162, and one, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and at least 20 other town employees enjoy a six-figure salary. And that's the Amherst Police Department. And we have a police officer that's making more than that $190,000 salary that our town manager earns. So I think that I'm really concerned about the pair of educators' salaries and that it is a disgrace to know that across the street, we have a $1.8 million renovation project to overhaul all the parking to put, which is good, a park, but a million dollars is coming out of the CPA funds, the Community Preservation Act funds. And as a person who's working class, raising a family in this community, it's always jarring to know how much money can be flying around and then we're not taking care of the people at the bottom to shore them up so that their salaries or their income is close to the highest, closer to the highest paying members of our community town employees. Where is the time that I have left, 30 seconds? I have more to say, but I want to have you all think thoughtfully about the nine individuals, the nine young people that the police confronted and detained, and that they also are high school students trying to make it, trying to survive, whether it be their junior year or their senior year, and they really want this to be behind them and that you all hold, and including the town manager power over their fate and their destiny and their future and their emotional wellbeing. I'm out of time. I just want to thank everybody for the time that you are putting in to listen earnestly and I think that we are able to do things in this community when we put ourselves behind it. I've seen projects move and I want the same energy for the young people that also need to be able to be supported because we're gonna pay more if we don't take care of our young people when they need us the most. Thank you. Thank you. The next person on my sign-in sheet is actually the first person on the Zoom list. So should we alternate for in person and Zoom? Yes. Julianne Hines. Please enter the room. Thank you. State your name and where you live, Julianne. Hi there, thank you, everyone. I have actually moved. My new address is 41 Pine Grove, but it is great to be with everyone tonight. I had to duck out for a meeting from in person, but I am just here to reflect what I think you see in a lot of the signs and faces of the educators who are here to join you, which is a commitment to our schools, to our town and to our community. Our educators have been committed to raising bright young people like myself and many of my friends for over a decade now. And they've done it again and again and again for multiple generations. And I would just like to say that them asking to keep a wage that is rising with the cost of living doesn't feel like a ballpark too far, given some of the statistics bureau just mentioned, as well as us embarking on a pretty large track renovation and library project. I'm not against any of these things per se, but I am more feeling that it is important. We equally value our educators, our town staff, and the people who are at the bottom of the totem pole. That's in my opinion, what social justice is about. And it's important that we value these voices, value their contributions to our community and value their livelihood quite frankly. And it's embarrassing the fact that our school district has to have basically a mini survival center for some of our para educators. That's not good. And I think quite frankly, there's no other way to put it than it's sad for me and my fellow students to know that this is what is happening to some of the staff members in our building. And we feel for them and we understand the pain they're going through and the right avenue to reach justice is to come to you guys and say, hey, these people need to be paid a living wage and we need to value the work that is done here in town by all of our town staff people, especially those who put in long hours and aren't justly compensated. So I appreciate everyone for listening to me tonight. And I hope to join you at your next meeting discussing the CSSJC. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Asana. The next person on the list is LaMico McGee. I don't have your residence. So if you could just say, state your name and where you live when you speak, thank you. Good evening. My name is LaMico McGee. I am an ARPS employee and I am the APA president. And I just wanted to speak tonight about education in the Amherst community, the community that I serve. The relationship, and I think most people notice in here, and so it's just a reminder, that the relationship between the quality of schools and the tax base and the value of homes and the community is absolutely tied together. And so the quality of the schools and the quality of service we provide in the schools is directly associated with whether people actually wanna live in this community or not. If we want young families with children to move in these communities, they make those decisions to buy, to purchase homes based on the quality of the schools. And that's one of the biggest decisions they make in their lives is where they live and where they educate their children. And so I think we need to think about that. I heard someone say that this may be an issue of affordability. We can't afford to have poor schools if you want to have this type of community where you have a tax base in which you can build a new track or renovate a library or build some brand new schools. And I will tell you, we would love to have a new school, but it's the people in those schools that serve the children that determines whether they get a great education or not because I've worked in some places that I've worked in some brand new schools and that's not what makes the school is the teachers, it's the educators, it's the parents, it's the clericals, it's the administrators in that building that serve the students that make the school. There's a crisis in education right now. And I've asked the school committee and I ask you town council, what is your plan? Educators are leaving the field. That is how stressful working in education is right now. And on top of the stress in a post-pandemic society and managing the behaviors of students and being short staffed, then to have to be concerned about how you are going to take care of your family because you're just not earning a living wage. The community that you love that you serve that you can't afford to live in it. And that is unfortunately what our employees are dealing right now that we can't even afford to live in these communities that we serve. And so I want you to think about that. That 1%, it's really interesting that we've been negotiating for a long time. You would think that 1% would be stuck in someone's head they would know it off the top of their heads. That 1% of what our payroll is. I will say that we didn't ask for 14 million. I'm not sure where they get that number but they just keep on repeating the same information. But that's not what we ask for. But we do ask for fair negotiations and for us to get a living wage for our employees and for us to serve our students and create the quality schools that will be necessary to maintain the tax base that you want here in Amherst. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. The next person on Zoom is Gabrielle Davila. Okay. Hi, my name is Gabrielle Davila. I'm a District 5 resident, although again I'm calling in from college. I just wanted to look over what the union has been asking for. And just to sort of reframe the conversation as it's going. So the union has been asking for direct negotiations with the school committee, open to all the members. I mean, that's an entirely reasonable demand, I think. And I think that any basic knowledge of the way unions operate would tell you that that ability to directly negotiate is critical for the union to serve its purpose. They want respect and adequate pay. I mean, that should be obvious. They want substitute pay, right? And this isn't even something that's gonna necessarily impact their union members. This is just to keep the work conditions better. And then what do they want? They want cost of living adjustments because we're living in a period with huge inflation, safe working conditions, a reasonable workload. So what are we doing here? I mean, we're talking about educators, paraeducators, the people who help educate our students and are often helping educate the most vulnerable students, the students who need the help the most. And we have people right now at this meeting asking you, our town representatives, hey, would you mind valuing para pay and the power of an educational union as much as you value building a new park or improving our library? I mean, this should be our first priority, not just because we want to care for the people who we have unfortunately placed at the bottom of our societal totem pole because I do think it's our responsibility as a town to take care of each other. But this is not some random union. This is the educators union. And their demands are in line with what is needed for the school to function in a good way, which is essential for students. And as was just mentioned, if the school's not educating well, you won't attract new families. And then you get into a spiral where things start to go downwards. So this is the time to show who we are as a community that we're a community that values our educators as much as we value our police, right? I don't think that's unreasonable. If it was up to me, and I think if it was up to the young people of this community and in general, the actual people of this community who you are supposed to represent, that we would represent educators at the foremost. We would want them to get more than the police and more than a new park or a library, right? So I don't think it's unreasonable that a bunch of people are gonna come on tonight and ask you to value educators as much as you value the other facets of the town. And I think that this is another opportunity for this town council and for this community to show who we are. I mean, do we want to be a community that tries to pay our educators and paraeducators the bare minimum? Or do we wanna be a community that wants to step up, provide the best school system we can and provide the best pay we can for the people who are making those students have the best experience as possible? Thank you for your comment. Alex Lopez. So I'm Alex Lopez. I live at 265 Potwine and I also work at Summit Academy, our alternate high school here in the district. I appreciate that you all have been here for four hours. My school doesn't have substitutes. And like when someone's not there because we're in the middle of a pandemic, we can't turn around and say, well, sorry, your class has canceled because we don't have a teacher right now. And so as a para, I end up subbing. No one subs for me is the para. And so I understand the frustration that we're here even though the school committee is the one who's actually supposed to have proposed a budget, actually had that budget be an appropriate number to deal with inflation and that we have to come to you. But we also heard them today say, Peter said, we're not even advocating for more money. And when we've done it in the past, we've been ineffective at it. So yes, we are here advocating for more money because we see our colleagues walking out the door and we're the ones left holding the back. And a lot has been made today about our para educators, but I actually wanted to read a statement from one of the clinicians who works in one of our highest need settings. She says, I'm currently employed as a clinician for Amherst Pellum Regional School District, a title and a role that I not only take very seriously but also hold very dear to my heart. We have seen over the last few years the need for more therapeutic supports in our school system to provide for the ongoing needs of our students. And I will take this time to share with you all that I have done to prepare for this challenge. Because in the last five years, I've accomplished a great deal. I received my master's of social work, a graduate certificate in child welfare, my school adjustment counselor's license through the department of education and my license to become an LCSW. In addition to those degrees and licenses, I'm also a certified child and adolescent trauma professional as well as a court-appointed special advocate. And I did all of this while being a single parent in battling breast cancer. While most would agree that I've earned my right to receive a living wage, the school committee has made it clear that they do not. Currently, my take-home wage is under $40,000 a year. And because of this, I'm left with no choice but to work a second job. So in addition to working over 40 hours a week for the district, I also work as a server with a catering company. And during one of my weekend shifts, I found myself serving the parents of one of my students. I hope this makes you feel as embarrassed as I was, especially so when they asked me why I was there serving their food when I was a therapeutic professional. I am currently working towards getting my LICSW, a license that is not paid for by the district, but one in which they benefit from greatly. I pay my outside supervisor $200 a month for two years in order to be able to sit for the exam. And I hope you're able to see before you a community of people that have decided to dedicate their lives to the children of this very community, your children, our children, not in the hopes of becoming rich, but with the hope that we can make this world a place where everyone's child feels seen, valued, and cared for, even when we are clearly not afforded the same luxury. When we talk about the fact that we look at our budget and prioritize our debts and then figure out how to split up the rest, that's the person you're deprioritizing. Next on Zoom, we have Tracy Zafian. Hi, so I wanted to speak about the parking on Lincoln and Sunset, but if there's other public commenters about the schools and things, I'd be happy to wait until those comments are done. Okay, Tracy, if you want to just raise your hand again and we can take you at the end. Sure, that's fine. Thanks. Next is, I think it's Margaret Sawyer. Yeah, hi, thank you. I'm here similarly to talk about the school budget and the need for the town to release more money for the school committee to be able to fairly negotiate with the union. It's clear to me that it's the town that has to make the bold step of releasing that money. And I see it as a responsibility that you all have and it makes me think about the history of how town council has worked. And I wonder if we even had a town council the last time that there was a contract passed by, and the last time that there was an educational contract with the teachers union. Excuse me, I'm getting over a pretty bad cold. I know I sound kind of crazy. But it seems like there's a lot of like, oh, this is how we always do the budget. This is business as usual. Now you all know and you're the new town council and here's how we always do it. And it's gonna be a lot of responsibility on you to see that business as usual could result in a strike or business as usual could result in a terrible contract negotiation because you're the ones with the purse strings. It appears to me that the school committee is not able to get the big enough chunk that they need to adequately negotiate with the union unless you release it for them. And you're hearing now from your budget people that the way it always has always happened is everybody equally divides the leftover pot. We put a set aside an amount for savings and it seems like it's on you all to decide whether that's what you really wanna do this year or whether you're going to help school committee adequately negotiate with the union. And I hope you all can be bold and not just accept business as usual and how it's always been because I would hate to see our teachers have to take drastic action. I have two kids in the schools. I sub in the schools. Sometimes I see that when I do they're desperate for subs. So there's tons of times where pairs sub and they're all just working as hard as they can. Thank you. Next is Laura Pegliaro. I'm sorry, Pegliaro Rulo. Hi everyone. Thanks for your time tonight. I'm Laura Pegliaro Rulo. I live on Concord Way in Amherst. I appreciate you guys being here for this length of time. We moved here, my husband and I about five years ago from Washington DC with our two children and our jobs are still in DC and we could have selected anywhere to move. And we selected Amherst almost exclusively based on the school system, the quality of the public school system. My husband and I are both products of public education. It's where our values are. We lived in communities that also valued public education and I'm here to support the educators tonight. I wanna talk about two things that really resonated with me over the weekend as I was contemplating this meeting. The first is the 2% increase that teachers are requesting. You know, I think we can all agree that the past two years have been hard on everyone and with inflation being what it is right now, that's really compounded this pain and made it more difficult. And the 2% increase with an 8.2% inflation rate is the same as a 6% decrease in pay. And I wanna make sure that point's really heard because these educators are the reason why families like myself come to this area. The second point I wanna make is explicitly around the budget. So I spent some time looking at the budget for the high school, the middle school and the elementary school over the weekend. And as you guys all know, these budgets incorporate not only funding for educators, but also transportation, maintenance, the full cost of educating students. And looking at the total number of students in the school, 180 days in the year and then the total capital spend for 2023, it appears as though we are spending $18 an hour per child. And what really struck me about that figure was that that's the same that I pay my babysitter for my two kids. I have a child in the middle school and a child in the elementary school. And what we're asking these educators to do every day is far more than what I'm asking a babysitter to do when they take care of my child. That figure, that $18 figure combined with the cost of living wage with inflation. What it tells me is that what I hope is that we moved here because of these schools and what I hope for my children. And when I see those numbers, it doesn't strike me that this community is really prioritizing education. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We don't have any more hands on Zoom. So I'm gonna go to the list again in the room. We have Danielle Seltzer. Hello, my name is Danielle Seltzer. I'm a resident of Turner's Falls, but I've worked in the Amherst school system since 2011. I would like to share some numbers with you all. So I'm a member of the APA negotiating team and our first ask for cost of living increase was around 8% per year. Our last offer at our last mediation session was 3.5% in the first year, 4% in the second year and 5% in the third year. I bring that up because I think if you do the math it won't add up to 14 million. So I'm not sure where that number's from. The school committee's original offer was 2.5, 2.5, 2.5. Their last offer was 2.5, 2, and 2. Some other numbers I'd like to share with you. I work at Amherst Regional High School. Last year we had a cost of living adjustment of 0.6% for teachers. That was $391 in my paycheck, split up over 26 pay periods. That's before taxes and deductions. The retention rate before that 0.6% increase at the regional school district was 92.7%. After last year's increase, the retention rate at the high school, in the middle school and high school, is 77%. If you compare that to other area districts, which you can by looking on the Desi website, you'll see that districts like Northampton, Beltrotown, Granby are all in the 80s and 90s. So yes, retention is poor everywhere, but it is particularly poor in Amherst right now. Another number I'd like to share with you, there's some personal numbers. I'm 35 years old. I have a master's degree. I have 30 credits of graduate work beyond a master's degree. I'm Orton Gillingham certified. I'm licensed to teach English at the middle and high school level. I'm a licensed special educator at the middle and high school level. I have an advanced certificate in the teaching of writing, and I make $1,653 per paycheck. I cannot afford to own a home. I have no equity. All I have is my income. I do not do this job for the money. I do this job because I love it. However, what I'm requesting is my dignity, my ability to only work one job and to have respect for my employer. In mediation, for those that don't know, we do not face the school committee. Everything is done over Zoom through a member of the Department of Labor. He hops back and forth, passing messages along, and we sit and wait. I recognize that we are two parties that are far apart that hopefully will come closer together, but it is hard to know how close we can come together when we do not see our employer. One request we are making is to return traditional negotiations. A member of the school committee spoke earlier about the public not knowing or understanding how hard it is for him to ask for money. My response to that would say open bargaining would solve that problem. Thank you. Next, we have Jeff Friedman. Hi, my name is Jeff Friedman. I live in Northampton, but I'm in Amherst High School, 24 year veteran of the math department. I have three children on my own. Excuse me, I've got a little cold. I have three children on my own who went through the Amherst schools the most recent of whom graduated in June of this year. I purposely chose to move to Amherst 16 years ago so that my kids could experience the excellence that is our ARPS schools. I wanna say thank you to each of you for your service to our students, our schools and our communities. And I thought the school committee folks were here, but I guess not, but nonetheless I will proceed. It's through your policies and yes, the budgets that you review and approve that you help continue the tradition of excellence that is our ARPS schools. I am wondering by a show of hands how many of you have had or currently have children of your own in the schools? Some of you do, fantastic. Sorry? Some of us graduated. Oh yeah, well fantastic, great. Thank you for your service. Thank you coming back to serve. I think we can all agree that many of us are here tonight because of four things. We believe in public education. We value the remarkable tradition of excellence that's our ARPS schools. We recognize that that excellence is the result of an unwavering commitment to our students, our faculty and our staff, a commitment that's been preserved by the labors of our predecessors on this town council, on school boards of the past, in our classrooms and in our community. And fourth, we know that our district, in our district, good is not good enough. Great is what we strive for and expect because we know that within each and every one of our students lies greatness. So I'd like to add a fifth thing, one that has appeared to be really in doubt in recent weeks and months. One that I truly hope is in fact, not in doubt at all. And that is this, that we recognize that it is the people as many of my previous folks have said, it's the people, the employees of this district, your employees who are the keepers of this excellence that is our ARPS schools. That includes the bus drivers, the cafeteria workers, the custodians, our administrators, teachers and absolutely our parents.