 Good evening, welcome to the partially remodeled town room and the and the four boards meeting. So I'm going to call the select board to order it at the official time here at 5.06 and so we'll go to each of the boards if they have a quorum and call it. I did. Now they're ready. So finance committee. The finance committee is called to order at 6 after 5. Seeing the presence of a quorum I call the meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order at 5.06. We're still awaiting a quorum but I will quietly call a meeting to order when they arrive. Great. Thank you all. I don't think we'll do introductions because a everyone has name tags and B would take about half an hour to go through everybody's name so we'll skip that part. The purpose of tonight's meeting is to to hear about financial protections for the coming year and some other information about the financial financial health of the town. We'll have the presentations by staff with regard to that and we'll have some questions at the end and hopefully it'll be some recently good news and we'll we'll go from there. So Mr. Bachman would you like to? Yes. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chair. So you're at the first meeting of our new council chambers. The good news is that it's only going to be half the number of people is there sitting here now. So don't get comfortable. There's 13 people who are going to be elected who are helping to sit in these seats after November 6th. Yeah. And just along those lines I'm going to give you an early hold the date announcement. The new council will be formally sworn in on Sunday, December 2nd at 1 p.m. at the Amherst Regional High School followed by a reception in the cafeteria. We'll be sending a hold the date announcement in the next few days and formal invitations to follow. So that's the plan at this moment in time. Now on to the presentation for tonight. Again, thank you all for taking time out of your days. I know everybody's schedules are really jammed and appreciate you coming in at five o'clock on on the Thursday. All the material we're showing tonight or is in your hands of the members is posted online at the town's website. AmherstMA.gov slash budget. The meeting is also being recorded on Amherst media and will be available online forever. I hope thanks for permitting us to present this important information to you. We put a lot of time into preparing this and it was not one person who does it. It's really as a team. Sonia Aldridge, our comptroller and interim finance director. Maria Rocca, Holly Bowser and new to the teams. General Fountain, who's worked to put the presentation together. Also tonight we have David Burgess, our principal assessor in case anything about property comes up. And David Zomek and Deb Radway are here as well. Everything is on PowerPoint. So if you can't see one of the two screens, I encourage you to move, change your chair, get comfortable because everything we're going to talk about is on the PowerPoint. The next slide. So this is the agenda for tonight. We're going to look back at FY 18. Give you a little synopsis of what happened there. We'll do a quick assessment of where we are in FY 19, the current fiscal year. And we'll be looking ahead to FY 20. It sort of feels odd to say FY 2020, but it's where we're headed and beyond. We present information in two basic ways. We compared data from this year to the previous nine years. So you see sort of the longitudinal look at the data. And we also look at Amherst data compared to other towns. Typically the first set of communities was selected by a group of UMass researchers who identified communities most like Amherst in terms of population and levels of service many years ago. And because of comments from this group, we also added a second layer of communities that were from Western Massachusetts neighboring communities so that we could see where we stood with regards to Northampton, Eastampton communities like that. And last year we added a new slide because concerning health insurance because it was such a big issue and it saves a big issue for us and so that slide is in there again. So tonight's takeaway. At the end of the presentation, I hope you'll have a greater appreciation for a few key facts. First, Amherst has a strong fiscal and economic base. We have property that's highly valued, house prices that are stable, strong real estate market, desirable location to work and live, anchored by our colleges and the university. We have a strong school system with an excellent reputation and the potential and capacity to take on new development throughout the town. Second, the town has great systems in place and it starts with this meeting. This is unusual in most communities where the three major elected boards and the finance committee get together early in the process and come to hear what are the financial projections for the town and everybody walks away with shared information. So this is a standard that was set many years ago by the town and so I think that that system is really important for the town. I also want to, in terms of that partnership we have, I want to recognize Superintendent Morris and Director Finest, Sean Mangano, who are our amazing team to work with from the town's point of view and Sharon Sherry from the library, trustee, from the library, Jones Library. Everybody is super cooperative. We've had conversations in this past week with both of them on very important issues and the cooperation among staff at that level is just unusual. I've worked in other towns and it is really unusual for this town, so I thank them as colleagues. Tonight the overall message is that first that budgets are tight and we don't anticipate any relief from that. Second, we may need to make community decisions on our long-term capital needs and we can and we'll be able to manage both of those things. So now I'm going to turn it over to Sonia and Jennifer and Holly to go over our indicators. Everybody hear me okay? This is our general fund revenues for fiscal year this are these will be fiscal year 19 numbers up here. This shows our revenue sources property tax is our largest most reliable revenue source at 65% our state aid is our second largest at 20% and local receipts are 9% and many of these are economically driven receipts like building permits and new growth motor vehicle excise and in a slower economy these these trend down so we're very conservative when we're budgeting these other finance financing sources are ambulance receipts indirect costs from enterprise funds and occasionally votes from reserves on the expenditure side the town and the elementary schools are about equal at 29 and 30% of operating costs. The region is at 20% and the remaining categories make up the other 20% which includes the Jones library capital miscellaneous and unappropriated uses. I want to point out that capital up here says 6%. This is not to be confused with the 9% that we have that we voted in fiscal year 19 from the tax levy to appropriate from. Okay. Slide three covers property tax revenue property tax revenue is a primary source of both operating and capital spending. This includes new growth has been averaging $600,000 annually annual increases are limited by proposition two and a half unless the town passes an operating override. We did this for fiscal year 2011 with the blue line being actual dollars and the red line being constant dollars. This analysis shows that the only significant increase in constant dollars from year to year occurred when the community passed an override. Slide four covers uncollected taxes as a percentage of net property tax levy. Bond rating organizations generally consider uncollected taxes in excess of 5% as a warning trend. Amherst has steadily been around one and a half percent with 2017 being being an exception due to timing of late tax payments from a single multi parcel owner. 2018 shows that we are back on trend and down to 1.28% which is awesome. All normal procedures are followed for assessing and collecting. This is state aid with an actual and constant dollars and for those of you that might not know this, constant dollars means adjusted for inflation. State aid for the town was lower in fiscal year 17 than in 08 and both actual and constant dollars. This chart only goes up to 17 for fiscal year 17 for constant dollars. That's the last time the state website was updated for the consumer price index. If you look at this in FY19 we actually reached our pre-recession levels in actual dollars. And at the top of the slide, not on this presentation but on your papers, notes that reductions in state aid are considered a warning indicator. This is state aid as a percent of operating revenue and as indicated in slide number one, state aid accounts for about 20% of our operating revenue and this pretty much shows that we've been pretty steady at 20% since 2012. We dropped from, it dropped in 2009 through 2011 but has pretty much remained the same since then. This is my favorite slide. This shows the amount of state aid that is actually available to appropriate. Even though our state aid has grown, our receipts have grown, our assessments which is our charges have grown as well. So you see the purple line through there, that's our actual net state aid that is available. The decline in net state aid ended in 2012 and has started to increase in 2013 and has stayed relatively flat since then. These are economic growth revenues as a percent of operating budget. These include building related fees and permits, new growth, motor vehicle and excise tax, meals, hotel tax as stated before. These are driven by our economy. So we're very conservative on how we budget for these. Shows that we remain relatively flat from 2009 to 2011 and climbed slightly from 2012 to 14 and up again from 2015 and 2017. There's a lot of moving parts to this. Some years it's building permits that give us an increase. Some years it's new growth. Building permits start off early and then the next year you might get the new growth from that. I just want to officially announce we now have a forum. This is our revenue per capita in actual and constant dollars. This chart compares three major revenue sources by showing each in actual and constant dollars. The red and blue line at the top is property tax. It has increased by the allowable limits of prop two and a half. This shows property taxes have increased about the rate of inflation except in 2011 when the override was passed. In the middle is state aid, the green and orange lines. This shows state aid has fluctuated and is still below peak in fiscal year on nine. The bottom line is purple and gray. The local receipts, local receipts remain relatively flat. Operating revenues expenditures, excuse me, per capita. Although our actual expenditures per capita are going up when adjusted for inflation, our 2018 expenditures are lower than our 2009 expenditures. And we've been able to manage this by having good financial policies in place and great management at the department level. The slide compares us with communities with similar demographics. The next slide compares us with neighboring communities because you asked. Slide number 10 shows municipal staffing levels for the town's general fund employees only. It does not include enterprise funds or school employees. Additional information on school staffing levels could be found on the school's website. Our staffing level in 2007 was its highest at just shy of 213 positions. During the last recession, we tightened our belts, we did some reorganization and we made staffing changes. We are currently at 201.4 FTEs or full time equivalents. This chart shows total municipal employees and then it is broken down for public safety employees as well as grant positions. We are now very careful and thoughtful on how we add new positions. You see we've gone from a low of 188 just after the recession or during the recession in 2011 back up to 201, which is still far below our highest level in 2007. Slide number 11 shows salaries and benefits as a percentage of our total budgets. According to this chart, the red bar shows in 2013 our staffing levels let's say it's not really the staffing levels. Here it is the total salary and benefits began to rise. That is consistent with the staffing levels on the prior slide. As expected, when salaries increase and staffing levels increase, so do our benefits. Coalas and retirement costs continually rise every year. The blue line shows salary and benefits as a percentage of total budget and this has fluctuated slightly over the years. You will see that due to the changes in the health insurance trust fund last year, there's a slight uptick here in 2018. The green line is benefits as a percentage of wages and salaries. Once again, this line has remained very flat over the years. That is the result of six years of no health insurance premium increases. Once again, you will see that slight uptick here at the end of FY 18 due to three rate increases in our health insurance during FY 18. With the changes made to our health insurance and the hope that the surcharge will be paid off, we expect to see this trend leveling off again and not continuing to rise as it did in 2018. The next slide is the fun one. I drew the short straw on this one. This is the health claims trust fund. As forecasted in last year's presentation, health insurance was our biggest challenge in FY 18. During FY 15, 16, and 17, we had many large claims that reduced our previously healthy reserves. FY 18, we foresaw this problem. We knew that it was going to be serious and that our reserves were dwindling and we would likely see a deficit at year end, even after raising our rates three times during FY 18. The town and the IAC, the Insurance Advisory Committee, took action. There were many, many meetings, long meetings, lots of discussions. Together, they made the very hard choice to abandon the long practice of being self-insured and move to a fully insured plan through Maya, utilizing Blue Cross Blue Shield as our sole provider. In order to keep our rates down, we had plan changes. There was adjustments to co-pays. We had new deductibles that were put into place. Moving to one carrier, just Blue Cross Blue Shield, when we previously had both Blue Cross Blue Shield and Harvard Pilgrim, helped us to keep our costs down as well. As predicted, we ended FY 18 with a small deficit. On the chart, I believe, or on your data attached, you will see that it was, I think it was right around $1,300 was it. But we have to continue to pay all of those claims, all of those bills. Everybody who went to a doctor or had any procedures done prior to June 30th still has to be paid by our trust fund. So as the first quarter of FY 19 is just finishing up, we're seeing that that deficit has continually grown. It is over a million dollars in deficit now. In order to avoid ending FY 18 with a deficit on our books, the town meeting appropriated a $2 million loan from pre-cash. This was needed to continue to pay the run-out, all of those bills that were incurred prior to June 30th, and to avoid having to raise any deficit on our recap, which would affect the town. We put into place a surcharge in order to pay that $2 million back. That $2 million or that surcharge is being paid back in the same manner as our premiums with both the employer and the employees and the town sharing those costs. We estimate a two-year time frame to pay back that loan, and we are optimistic that we can accomplish this in a shorter time. I just wanted to note that this chart does not show that $2 million loan. If we put that $2 million loan in there, it would show that we actually ended the year in the positive, and we really technically did not. So this is not taking into account that $2 million. This slide shows the annual debt expense as a percentage of net operating revenue. We remain a double A plus community, last updated in 2014. This is our annual debt expense as a percent of our operating net revenue. This chart shows we have been consistently low. The 2013 increase is due to a refunding, which inflated that year. However, it lowered the subsequent years. Because our debt expense is relatively low, we have flexibility to issue new debt. Debt service is part of the capital budget. So this slide compares us to peer communities in the state, and on the bottom portion is local peer communities. As you can see, Amherst is at the lowest end, and that is a good thing. This slide shows long-term debt as a percentage of assessed valuation. This is our total outstanding debt as a percent of assessed valuation. We are at .66% of our assessed valuation. Our outstanding debt over 10% of assessed value is considered a warning indicator. We are well under that. Okay, so this slide compares us again to peer communities in the state on the top, and to local peer communities on the bottom. This slide is reserved as a percent of our general fund budget. This shows fiscal year, between fiscal year 05 and 06, reserves declined substantially. And ironically enough, in 05, we had to appropriate $871,000 for a health insurance deficit. And it was paid back in the form of surcharges. Also, that year, we appropriated $850,000 to balance the budget it was during the recession time. Through 7 and 10, we leveled off. And in 2011, we started to climb gradually. And as of fiscal year 2018, we were at 16.4% or 12.7 million in reserves. In 2019, we dropped to 15.3%. And that's an estimated amount. Our free cash is still not certified, so that's not an actual number yet. But this is largely due to the $2 million loan that we took out for health insurance. This is above our 15, our 5 to 15% that stated in our financial policy. And that is intentional as we plan for multiple large construction projects. And again, we're comparing to other community, to peer communities out east. And Amherst is right up there at the top, which is a good thing. And this reserves as a percent of the general fund operating budget with local communities. And again, Amherst is at the top. Thank you. Thank you, guys. So this is sort of a recap, not the recap that we think about when we talk about finances, but a recap of what we've talked about. Our operating, closing operating year in FY18 was positive. That's what we always want to be. We want to be underspending our budgets, and we want to be over-delivering on our projections of revenues. That's what makes for a balanced budget, and we consistently hit that mark. But the margins are very tight on an enterprise of size. It shows 1.96% of our, as we turn to the town. But last year, we were at 2.45%. One of the reasons that our expenses were below budget by such a small amount was because we really required every department in every part of the town to pay for the health insurance increases. We said we're increasing our cost for insurance, but you have to absorb it within your budgets, and every department did. And that meant every department was at the bare minimum come to the end of the year. So in sum, for the final results of last year, when you take a snapshot of the town's finances, we look really good. The strong on the left side of the slide is the bond ratings agency's assessment of our condition. And the other thing that's popped up is we've been interviewing finance director applicants, and we ask that they come in and they look at our finances because they're coming in for an interview and they look at what's the town's finances look like. And every one of them says, wow, you guys are in really good shape. So these are people who want to work here who are saying, oh, I want to work for a town that has really good finances. So that's been confirming information for us. And I think the reason that we're in such good shape is because of good leadership, there's strict fiscal discipline from the finance committee and the select board and all the boards. And it really does start from the top. You can't have this kind of condition without everybody being on the same page and saying we're going to manage our budgets appropriately. So as we look at the current fiscal year, as I think Sonya talked a lot about FY 18 and 19, we're all about health insurance and it really was. We had multiple increases in our health insurance. We spent a lot of time with the insurance advisory committee, which some of you might not know. The insurance advisory committee is a committee of representatives from all the town's unions. It's a very large group and everybody sits together in a room and it's not negotiations, but it's advising and on decisions that we had to make. And it was a real team effort on that. And it was arduous process because the interests of employees sometimes diverge from the interests of the town and our finances. But ultimately, I think we came to a good conclusion. It had some impacts on FY 18 and 19 because on FY 18 we had to do these increases and absorb that. FY 19, we are paying for our new health insurance as a premium on day one, but we're also paying off the tail of the previous claims and insurance insurance. They call that the tail that continues on. So we stopped paying people out of the health trust fund on June 30th, but there are still claims that when people attended, went to the doctor on June 30th, that bill hasn't come in. Those bills are still coming in. We're still paying them. Plus we had to pay off the amount that we owed through the surcharge. To accommodate that, the finance committee and select board agreed that everybody's budget should go up to 3.5 percent last year just to try to accommodate that increase, which was a wise move. And we were able to increase our commitment to capital in FY 19 as well. So I talked a little bit about health insurance already. Holly talked about we eliminated one of the health plans. We changed plan design to increase deductibles and we eliminated and we introduced deductibles and increased co-pays. And there were some other plan changes that have impacted employees. So we've been hearing a lot about, well, this plan isn't working out as well as we had hoped, but overall I think we have a quality health plan for our employees and people are getting the coverage that they need. One of the other things that's outstanding right point from the town's point of view is all the schools has collective bargaining agreements all agreed to. The town has all of our collective bargaining agreements agreed to except for one. We have one that's still outstanding that we're still in negotiations on. And then the other thing in FY 19 is sort of what you see in front of you. We're embarking on a new form of government and we're going to be figuring out how that works. We're moving away from the town meeting and moving into a council manager form of government and having a new council that's going to be involved in making decisions about finances. And it's an arena we haven't had in this town before. So it's going to be a learning process for everybody. So as we move into FY 20 we want to talk about what we expect where we're recommending that people that as you work on your budgets. So when we when you start to look at your budget look at the revenues that you have coming in. And so we are looking at property tax levy continuing to continuing to grow at two and a half percent which is the limit under proposition two and a half. New growth continues to add to property tax levy. We estimate that to be about six hundred thousand dollars this year. It could be more than that. But we estimate at this point in time this early in the fiscal year at six hundred thousand which is the average over the last ten years. State aid we're optimistic that state aid will increase by two and a half percent. We're hopeful for that. That would basically keep us at inflation. However this is not an election year. And election years is when they you can almost guarantee state aid will increase when it's not an election year. You can't guarantee that they're the legislatures less apt to put money as as is the governor. We're projecting minimal growth in local receipts. And again we're we don't anticipate an operating override nor do we anticipate using any town reserves for recurring expenses. So on the expenditure side we are estimating in one of the the agreements we have with our new health insurer is that the increase in health insurance for FY twenty would not. Be more than the average for the the entire pool that Maya insures and we're estimating at this moment in time to be five to six percent. That's a pretty modest increase compared to where we have been in prior years. And I think that it's a it's a responsible number to put out there. We won't know for sure until January when Maya releases its rate increases. For FY twenty the school is in good shape on collective bargaining the town all six of our collective collective bargaining groups are up for negotiations that will be doing in the spring. So that's a big unknown for us as as does any kind of agreements with non union employees. We have a reach we have to make a commitment to our retirement. Contribution to the Hampshire County Retirement Trust. Their long term financing plan and that we anticipate that will go up about eight percent. And we hope to continue to. Increase our capital investment from nine percent to nine and a half percent. Again that's all contingent on. The revenues and sort of the decisions that. That we make as a as a community. So the in terms of people working on their own budgets the operating budget increase of two and a half percent percent. That works out to be two and a half percent for the town. Two point five percent which is netted out which Sean can explain I think if we needed. After the charter assessment school choice adjustments. The region two and a half percent library two and a half percent moving the capital up to nine point five percent. Retirement eight percent. And we're keeping OPEB which is our other post employment benefits line at five hundred thousand prior years we've been increasing that a hundred thousand dollars we're not increasing it this year we're going to stabilize it at five hundred thousand. For the time being. The bottom line. As we build our budgets we have to include our health insurance and contractual salary increases. And point of fact is that. If you just pay for those two things that's highly likely to consume the entire two and a half percent budget increase that people have to build their budgets. New positions must be in. Incommodated within the proposed budgets. So I think that is going to be a challenge for all of us. Because we're a people oriented. Business especially the schools but all of us really are our biggest cost numbers are in people. And if you. Your budget is driven by the number of employees you have. If we are looking at new positions or new. Programs this there's going to have to be a revenue stream that's attached to that. And in the end it's we are required to deliver a balanced budget. To the council for its consideration. Major challenges that we've identified for each of the major groups for. All of us it's health insurance. For all of us really it's facility needs and that means just maintaining the buildings that we have. The for the town we have lost. A significant significant amount of revenue because we had been charging and collecting fees from the town of Hadley. When Hadley decided to go a different way and not. Choose our fire service. That meant about four hundred fifty thousand dollars that was not coming into the town. It the good news was we had a twenty percent reduction in cost and runs from our ambulance service. But it did have an impact on our revenues. Because we didn't decrease the fire department staffing at all. Because that didn't seem to be a good thing to do. So we have a whole starting out because we have four and fifty thousand dollars less than we had when Hadley was part of our system. And then we for the town we also have these unknown of the collective bargaining agreements which are outstanding. For the schools there's still question about the regional assessment. Out of district costs for special education in the charter students. And state and federal funding for grants which which they the school does a really good job at corralling a lot of grants from other organizations from the state and federal government. And we don't know what's going to happen with all those grants. And for the library beyond health insurance they have already chosen not to fill vacant positions. And they have been relying a lot on their endowment and they're trying to move away from doing that. And hoping to supplement that by increasing and being more organized about their fundraising efforts. So the big budget but the big picture going forward. So Sonia sort of mentioned the economic uncertainty and that's one of the things that really does worry us because if there is an economic downturn and we're sort of due for one and people lots smarter than me are thinking about you know or can project out the economy. But you still worry if the economics go down it impacts our town in a direct way. And we already know that we need to have our tax base expanded. We have a lot of needs that people have articulated and what's interesting is with the council race people are saying things that we need in the council races that's a really good thing. But then there's the other side of those and where's the money come from to do all these things. And then there's also just the ability of taxpayers to pay and willingness of taxpayers to pay. That's something that's always going to be on the council's mind as it starts to grapple with. It's on my mind as well. I think in terms of how we go about addressing some of these we will continue to manage our resources frugally. We will continue to seek additional sources of funds from our institutional partners and others. We will continue to look at sustainable development because that brings in new revenue. And as we start looking at capital we will need to use debt exclusions as part of our overall strategy. But I do want to this is not part of the operating but it's a big big thing. I think it's going to be the thing that's sort of overriding in this year. You know I always think about these things in themes last year is all about health insurance. Year before that was sort of steady as she goes. This year it's I think it's really about the capital projects. I think that's probably on everyone's minds and it's something that we have to talk about figure out and get started on. The capital projects in the next five to ten years we all know them the DPW building, the fire department headquarters, elementary schools, new schools, renovations to existing buildings, Jones Library, North Amherst Library, roads, bridges now, sidewalks, out there also as parking garage, senior center, fields is coming in now for the need for investment in our fields. So they all need to be addressed in one way or another. So how do we do that? Can we do it? This is where we had a little bit of a date because my first slide had a big yes with the exclamation point and then Sonya sort of pulled me down and said maybe with an asterisk. So I think the message of this whole presentation is that we're in really good financial shape and that's what we keep saying that we look good. Our debt is low, we're well managed, we have a good bond rating so we have the ability to borrow money to do these big projects which we haven't done a big project in a lot of years. I think this has been almost a generation since we've done a major construction project in this town and that's really not responsible. We have to continue to invest in our built infrastructure as a community and we've got a lot of them backed up. So we're positioned to take on these things. We've been building up our reserves, Sonya mentioned our reserves are above the 15% target that we had hoped to do which is good, that's purposeful. We've been elbowing out room in the budget through our capital including more money for capital and then there is state funding available for schools and libraries. We need to take advantage of those two funding sources. The challenges are we have to maintain fiscal discipline in our operating budgets. We need the state support from the mass school building authority and mass board of library commissioners. Projects that we're planning need to be realistic and understood by the community so that they're not overly, people don't think they're gold plated or anything like that. And we need voters to support debt exclusions for some of the projects. Which ones I'm not saying is a point, that's going to be something the council will have to decide. We need to have a plan and that's sort of the next, we'll talk about that next. So how do we do it? I think it's the first thing is that we will have the staff prepare options and possible timelines for the various elected officials to review and consider. School committee has a responsibility to determine its education plan. There's a lot of different options available to the school committee at this point and the region. And I think that's really important to have that vision in place. And then the town council ultimately will have to establish priorities and adopt a fiscal plan that we can move forward. I'm confident that we can do this as a community, that we can do this as staff for the decision makers during the course of the spring and the summer so that we have a plan moving forward. But the hard decisions need to be made, like who gets done first and all those things. I think a lot of the questions about our buildings we'll know more about and the options available to us will become more real during the course of the winter as we understand more about locations for buildings and conditions of Fort River, for instance, with the committee's work on that. So that is pretty much where we are. We have lots of needs. And I think through the council candidates process you'll hear that we have even more wants. We have to decide what we can afford and how we position each of these major projects in the queue. And we welcome your comments. Thank you. Just before we started on the Q&A section, I wanted to give the library director and the superintendent of schools an opportunity if there's anything they wanted to add and or mention relative to their budgets or their planning for the coming year. So either of you have Ms. Sherry? No, I think. No, Paul did good. Thank you. Do you have anything, Mr. Morrison, Mr. Magano? I'll just emphasize the facility needs is really sort of front and center for the schools right now. We've been hearing a lot from the community and from teachers about the facility needs. So that's sort of one of the main priorities for us. I'm on the microphone. So I said facility needs for the schools is really front and center for us. Thank you. So at this time, are there any questions for the manager or staff relative to what we just saw? Yes, Mr. Dimling. Hey, thank you for the presentation. This is excellent. I really appreciate the level of detail. So capital planning and borrowing. So I'll focus on that because I don't want to think about the two and a half percent right now. So I see all these great green bars and favorable right on the on the capital and the borrowing that we're just primed to borrow. And and I look at the state of where we're at with our two elementary building planning capital projects. And you know, we have this great feasibility study going on right now. There's a lot of great work being done there, but it's feasibility studies on a building project. And so there's no building coming out of it and just, you know, we don't yet have a funding source. And the only funding sources are either MSBA or the town. And when I project one MSBA after the other for two buildings, even in a best case scenario, it gets into the 2030s. So there's even if the educational concerns with waiting for that long could be addressed. I have real concerns of whether we could actually maintain those two buildings for that long capital wise. And so because I've never heard commentary about this before, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on is the town able to borrow in a scenario to self fund one or two school buildings without MSBA or or or is there some guidance that we could hear that if we're going to do major capital projects for the school buildings, it has to be MSBA. The question is, can the town do it? Of course, the town can do it if it wants to. I think there have been only two communities in the state who have ever built a school without MSBA funding and that's the town of the city of Newton in the town of Brookline. And because in those two conditions where the growth of their communities were such that they really needed to build a building right then and there and they couldn't wait and they have enormous resources that we don't have. Should we and is it advisable to build without MSBA funding? I think it's not advisable to build without MSB funding. I think that's a top priority that we should be in the queue is that we are we have filed already for two buildings at MSBA. But that's I think it was we'll be really important is that we go to MSBA with a real legitimate plan that the community is behind and that we're can do it. I mean, the council could say we don't want to do anything else. We're just going to build a new school and that's certainly an option for the council to move in that direction. I wanted to ask a question about new growth, but I would say that we did have a real legitimate plan that the community was behind. We already had that and it was rejected and not by MSBA. So that's why we're in such a frustrating place now because many of us were well aware how long it was going to be pushing things out as opposed to be breaking ground now. But that's not news to anyone at this table. In terms of expected growth, we said that we estimated $600,000 in new growth because that was a good 10 year average to do. And of course we did have a very fortunate year of 800,000 little over 800,000. Sorry, I missed my page. This year. But is the 600, given what we know is happening, and I know it's a 10 year average, but how does 600 really feel to people in terms of, you know, is it for sure we'll get that much and it's just potentially a little bit low or is there any chance we won't make it to 600 just because we see how tight things are? I think the 600,000, the principal assessor can correct me if I'm wrong, is that for sure. We wouldn't be projecting it if we didn't feel confident in it. The only number I'm a little bit queasy about is the state aid number, honestly. Everything else I'm pretty solid on in terms of projections. How much more than 600,000? We just don't know. I'm not sure if David wants to comment on that. Or do you want to see? Yeah. Just want to go back to slide 6.1, which is labeled as your favorite. And of course what is shown in there is in the state assessment line starting in 2013, it's been progressively increasing. And I was wondering if you have any numbers that are any anecdotal statement about what aspect of the state assessments is driving it? Is just percentage growth or are there specific pieces of assessments that this group should be aware of? That are driving that up. Although this year we're showing that it's gone up very little. So the school's net increase in 20 will be 2.6%. Normally it's below the 2.5%. But the calculation that we use, we're in a place now where it's actually going up a little. Yeah, so those years were years where the charter school in Hadley was still growing. So the assessment was growing quite a bit during those years. Now it's sort of at capacity. And so for this most recent year our charter numbers actually stayed flat. But I think one of the drivers of that increase is probably the charter school growing in Hadley. But I just want to point out that it's 2.5% increase on the base. This is just the net difference. So they're getting 2.5% just like everybody else. Well, don't be shy. So if you have any questions, I mean, well, we'll be here after the meeting if anybody has any individual questions they want to approach us with. So if there aren't, then I think at this point those committees that are continuing on can continue on their meetings, those of us that are finished for the evening. And thank you all for coming and being aware of this and and keeping an eye on on our budget for the coming year. Yes. A question about our calendar, we didn't talk about our beautiful calendar that's like in four point types so that we could fit it on the pages. We because we're in this time of transition budget coordinating group is listed here as starting, you know, in October through December. What are you planning, given the transition for budget coordinating group to start having their conversations? I think we will convene, ask the co-chairs of the budget coordinating group to convene right after the election. Yeah. So that as soon as possible. But it's an important group that gets together pretty quickly. So are there any other questions? If not, then I'll take a motion to adjourn by the select board. Would you like to do the honors? Select board is adjourned. The finance committee will reconvene in 10 minutes in the first floor meeting room of Town Hall. I'll take a motion to adjourn. School committee. So moved. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? We are adjourned. I'll take a motion to adjourn for the library trustees. Second. All in favor? We're adjourned. I was excited. All right. 10 minutes. Study it.