 I am Christine Deschler, and as chair of the Ontant Finance Committee, I'm calling the October 5th, 2020 meeting to order because this is a hybrid meeting. I want to confirm that people can hear me by calling an attendance and then also go through the script and then we'll get right into the distance of you. Starting with confirming that people are here. Members, when I call your name, please answer on the affirmative. Jordan. Here, Shane. Not here, Jennifer. Just joined. Hi. Jennifer, Sophie, Air. Ryan. Carolyn. Rebecca. Josh. Here. Grant. Here. Charlie. Here, John. Darrell. Here. Annie. Here. All Jones. Tofer. Here. Peggy. Not here, Al Tosti. Here. Dean. Here. And Dave McCann. Here. And Tara Bradley. Here. Let me go through the script. On March 29, 2023, government newly signed into law a supplemental budget bill, which among other things extends the temporary provisions of the open meeting law to March 31st, 2025. This further extension allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the body physically present at a meeting location so long as adequate alternative access to the deliberations of the meeting is provided to the public. And this further extension allows public bodies to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the body physically present at a meeting location so long as adequate alternative access includes providing public access through Zoom video conferencing, which we are doing tonight. Ensuring public access is not insured public comment or public participation. This meeting will not feature public comment. Those wishing to provide comments. They do so by emailing our executive secretary. Tara Bradley at T Bradley at town.arlington.ma.us. Please note that this meeting is being reported. This meeting is being reported. All of folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials that have been provided members of the spotty are available on the town's website. Unless otherwise noted. I will recognize members wishing to speak. Whose hand is raised by calling upon them. Please hold any comments until your name is called. Please remember to mute your phone or computer. And please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. Each vote in this meeting will be conducted by roll call. I am going to skip over. During the minutes for approval and we'll. Hopefully take care of those at the end of the meeting. We have. The deputy town manager present with us by zoom. And he will talk to us about. Articles 15 of the special. Which is. Collective bargaining. And I think everyone should have. Proposed vote. Does everyone have copy of the proposal? All right, Alex. Take it from here. All right, I'll take it from here. So thanks for having me tonight, everyone. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you. This is the article. Team of this year's special town meeting. Consider as collective bargaining. The only contract being considered right now is the Arlington police patrol officer's association. For only known as the Arlington patrolman's association. We had really hope that we were going to be able to get. Settled with the ranking officers prior to this. We're negotiating environment right now and we're, we're, we're dug in. So the status of that remains ongoing. So what we're looking to do is transfer $477,000 from the existing salary reserve and that'll fund the retroactive payments for FY 22, 23 and 24. And then increase the police department's budget by $126,909. And that again is from the existing salary reserve. And what that is going to do is we'll give us some runway to run out the, hopefully the rest of FY 24. There's some variables at play. Uh, why we're not looking for, um, that's not the total sort of projected amount that we'll, that we'll need for 24. But we have a number of vacancies right now that we're carrying in police. We've worked with the chief to sort of develop a plan to manage the finances over there. Um, we have a number of folks that are in the academy right now. And when they, um, when they are, or they're signed up for the academy, when they're actually accepted and start on payroll, we'll really sort of help determine. What, if any additional funds, we may need, and we're going to watch that because they could get in and either the fall, the winter or the spring, um, into the police academy. And so, depending on if and when they do. Then that will determine if we need another smaller transfer from salary reserve to finish out FY 24. So those are sort of like the transfers that we're looking for. And what the contract looks like is for FY 22. So we're digging back into the past year, a 1.5% wage increase on sort of their standard contract language that they had previously. Uh, in FY 23, a 2% increase with additionally some movement in a couple of their steps that was retroactive to FY 23. And then in FY 24 is where there are some fairly significant changes. And we'll kind of walk through those now. The first being a 4% market adjustment. And this was sort of an outcomes based negotiation, like our fire department. A lot of you are probably familiar with trying to get our public safety folks into the 72nd percentile. This ultimately we'll get our patrol officers just above that. But, you know, in addition, we got some big sort of gets that we really wanted like body worn cameras being the biggest one. So, addition to that 4% market adjustment, there was some movement in some of their steps. And so the distance between their 2nd and 3rd step used to be 4.8%. So that was rounded to 5% and then the distance between steps 3 and 4 and 4 and 5 was increased to 3% from 1% each. And those steps are based on years of service with the patrolmen's union. And then once we have a full agreement on a body worn camera policy, there will be a 2% wage increase that kicks into the base as well. So this is, you know, we're in a really tough bargaining environment with our officers right now. The creation of the post commission at the state level has made policing very different and more expensive in Massachusetts. We were keenly watching a few of the other cities and towns that we compare ourselves to. They were before the JLMC and we got down. We were literally the day of our arbitration. We had the JLMC folks in our building here and we ended up settling at this right sort of at the 11th hour. And so this is what we're bringing me for you here today. And I'd be happy to answer questions. Questions, Annie. So, Alex, when you say 72nd percentile, can you put that context for me? Absolutely. Yeah, sure. That's a great question. The 72nd percentile of what is colloquially known as the town manager, 12, and this is a group of 12 cities and towns, really towns that have, that all are very comparable to Arlington. And so this was a group that has been that we use for all of our compensation comparisons, sort of across the board and the town. So is 72nd percentile the goal for all of our employees? Well, the 72nd percentile was the goal during this round of negotiations with all of our community safety folks. So what started with our fire department then translated into our both of our police unions. So it's not the goal for our employees in general? It's not a stated goal, but it's something that was a state of goal with these negotiations. Do we know where everybody else is? Where like all the other cities and towns are? So where all the other employees are relative to this, this percentile scale? Not the exact, it took a lot of work to get to figure out exactly what this market looked like for all these different, all of the other unions. So we don't have all the comparable data for all of the like other unions. It's tough because we can make a pretty straight line or at least a close to a comparison between like our patrol union and like one of the town's patrol unions. But it's a lot harder to do it across like our administrative union, for example, because the duties may be a lot different. But we don't have that analysis done for other unions right now. We only have it for both of our police unions for FY 22 through 24 and our fire unions from 22 through 24. It's a lot of work put together. All right. So one more quick follow up, not something to answer tonight, but I'd love to see the data on this. If I'm hired as a patrol officer and I'm getting raises plus steps through those 10 years. What are my raises every year because they're clearly not one and a half, two and two. Can we get that data sent over at some point? Sure. Yeah, I'll be happy to send it over. I mean, I can, I can sort of answer it if you'd like off the cuff, like the distance between steps. So steps one. So we have a first year step. When you move up to the second year, there's a 5% increase in pay. When you move to the third year, you get another 5% increase. And then when you move to the seventh year, that's the next step you take it's a 3% increase. And when you move to your tenure step, you get another 3% increase. And that's in addition to the contractual raises. Those are like, that's how their wage skill functions. So like, that's the distance between steps. And then if there was a cola on top of that, the color would be applied. So if there's like a 1 or 2% cola, that would go in addition to the steps. Got it. So it works just like the schools work. Exactly. Yes, it's very similar. Great. I guess that answers 1 question. Thanks. Okay. Alex, can you comment anything about the body weren't gamma policy and what I'm particularly interested in is whether. An agreement would require in itself town meeting approval with town meeting. I know what I'm really asking is with town meeting. Ever had the opportunity to say, well, 2% wage increases a lot of money. It's not worth it. Let's not do it. I think that this would be inclusive of. Approving the ratifying this contract at town meeting. So I don't think that the body worn camera policies would stand on its own for town meetings approval. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions, Dean and a topper. Um, Alex so on. When I look at the increases. They are. They're larger than the historic trend. That increases. For patrolmen. Do you attribute that increase larger than average increase you attributed to. It's a matter of unique. The policing. Would you say no, there's some factors in here of, you know, having. Two and a half years of really high inflation. And how are you going to deal with that? Or would you say it's a little of both? Or would you say it's something else? I'd say it's, it's a little of both. I think it's mostly unique to policing. And the creation of the post commission has really changed. Um, sort of how. Police are paid in Massachusetts and especially with our. Town manager 12. Um, we've seen a lot of like. Uh, big changes in sort of like the, when we, when we say the 72nd percent, we're talking about like the, the top that 1 of our top patrolmen could earn. Um, and so we're comparing like our, you know, 10 year step with somebody else is like max step, whatever that is. So, um, we've seen some big changes. What, what really kind of caught our eye was. A week and a half before we were due to go to the JLMC, Brookline. Uh, was at the JLMC and they were hit with some massive, massive increases, which sort of gave all of us pause. And we really got a little more serious about looking to settle at the end, um, rather than leaving our fate and someone else's hands. The police have always historically been had very strong negotiations. Um, they are sort of unified across their industry, if that makes sense. So, um, I, I don't know that, I mean, I can guarantee we're not going to see the same kinds of increases in all of our other. Unions, um, which is, you know, for fair or not, that's how it's going to end up shaking on how it traditionally sort of has, um, so police are just in a very strong position. Um, and it's their world has sort of changed over the last few years. Um, and so this is sort of the ripple effect of that. I think that inflation has played a little bit into this, but, um. This cake was mostly baked before inflation got really kind of crazy. Okay. So far. Thank you. I'm sure. So, Alex, um, a four, where is the 4% getting funded from which of it is it one of the two tables. You mentioned the first table was the retroactive, which I assume is a three. Right. So creation part of the fund for all the fun. No, the, the, um, the first, so the 4% is being funded partially in the first table and then fully in the second table because it's. So we're doing a small retroactive payment for FY 24, because we're through the first roughly quarter of the year. And so, so that 4% will be applied to the, to the time that we've already ran through FY 24. And then the remainder of what you see in the bottom table will be applied there. In addition to, um, you know, the sort of step moves that they had seen in FY 23. Okay. Also, um. How does, I noticed you mentioned the retirees and a bunch of these, how does it work with respect to them? Is this just funding? Sure. Retired and but they work from in the period of time. That's exactly true. Yeah. So, so they will see the benefit of, um, so say somebody retired during the middle of FY 23. They would, uh, they would see the benefit of this contract up until their retirement date. And so this is being applied only to retirees, not to people who resigned prior to signature this contract. If that makes sense. Um, yeah, what is the rationale for being paid for the body cameras? Um, that it's, yeah, that's a good question. And that's something that we wrestled with. And that the rationale is that it creates a new working condition for the police officers that they will be sort of being, you know, had the ability to be being watched at all times. And so it's a change in working conditions for them. And that was sort of the argument. And you also mentioned that the post physician commission has made policing more expensive. Is that a similar argument or something different? Oh, man. Yeah. Post is tough. Um, what this does is it, um, it sort of exposes any discipline that any of our officers have had and puts it puts them onto a like a list that's publicly accessible. And so it also opens officers up to not being credentialed so they could lose their ability to be a credentialed police officer. And so this had probably a bigger impact than anything else on like what we're seeing on the wage increases. At least that's what we think because anytime somebody is impacted, they, they're exposed and potentially lose their ability to be to be a sworn officer in the state of Massachusetts. Thank you. Sure. Charlie in the now. So Alex, what is the dollar impact of this over the five year plan? I mean, you must have looked at that. Yeah, we did look at that. Um, I don't have it right. Just give me a second. I can pull it up. It's just, it was a, it's a 16% is like the max increase that anyone can can see. Well, actually here, the dollar impact is projected to be about $650,000 probably. Five years. Excuse me, five years. That's over the three years of this contract. Right. You're looking for a forward projection beyond this contract. I don't have that right now. We are looking at. We're getting right back to the table with these folks for our next round of bargaining. They will not be seeing increases, unless and until there is a new contract signed. I may have a follow up. Sure. So, so you're saying that the aggregate impact over three years is $650,000. Not per year. Right. Right. So, so what we're, so it's going to be about $86,000 for the FY 22 retro payments. It's going to be about $264,000 for the FY 23 payments. And then when we get to FY 24, it becomes a little bit more unclear because we're not entirely, we're a quarter of the way through the year we, we've increased our budget by a hundred and we're looking to increase it by $126,000. And so we're not sure exactly what it's going to do to our budget. Um, it sort of depends on if we're able to fill these vacancies or OT will go down. So it depends. So this is about $10,000 a year, $10,000 per individual on on a broad average spread over three years. It's a little less than that. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Tosti. Yes, thank you, Alex. I missed some of the material up front. So this is a three year contract. Correct for retroactive from FY 22 23 and now in the FY 24. Okay, so next year we'll have to start it obviously start again for the fiscal 25. What are the percentage increases for 22 23 24. Each of those years. Yeah, the top possible is it's one and a half in FY 22. It's six max in 23. And it's the, the, it's nine and a half in 24. We intentionally in a way we intentionally back loaded this contract FY 24. So our retros, it would, the, the, the cost, the union member, the APP folks wouldn't have this retro rippling all the way through the contract that it would be bigger back loaded. And so we would see a like a lighter first two years than FY 24, which is going to be a bigger year. Okay, so that's the nine and a half is not cumulative. That's a nine and a half for fiscal 24 alone. Right. Okay. Now the set you said it's that we're in the top 77%. Does that mean of the 12 towns that we compare themselves to we're in the top quarter. Yeah, well that means so we're in the, we're in the top like we're around the 74th percentile right so when we have these 12 towns that means that there are three in front of us and eight behind us. Right. And so where we fall in line so it's not, it's not a function of a percentage of what their top pay is it's where we fall in the, in the order. Okay. And finally, what is the status of the body cameras. Right. Yeah. Deep in negotiations. We have what we believed was agreement and principle and now it is being. It's being discussed with our labor attorney and with the union's attorney, trying to get that settled. I had heard that they were very close but I don't have any real solid updates. This 2% they're going to get from the body cameras if we come to an agreement. That's not part of the nine and a half that would be on top of it. That's, that's part of the nine and a half. Oh, it is part of the nine and a half. Right. The assumption is that they're going to see that. Yeah. The total value the total percent increases just over 16% over the three years. And that includes the market adjustment body cameras, colas and step increases. Okay. Thank you very much. And one more thing. If I may, I forgot to add that this also includes the addition of Juneteenth as a recognized holiday. I'm as we've done for all of our unions. Any other questions. Yeah. Alex a long time I'll say. Yeah. You mentioned vacancies. How many vacancies are there. Currently in the entire department, there are eight vacancies. I don't believe they're not all patrol. I think we have five in patrol. Sorry, go ahead. I was going to say we're looking. So we just ran a civil service list. We had 200 names and we had 10 sign. Meaning that they are eligible for interviews and they'd accept the move. And so then we have to go through an interview process with all those folks and. So we're anticipating pushing some folks into the academy, but. It depends on when they can get into the academy that they would come on to payroll. And so the strategy here is to use some of that vacancy space to. Absorb some of this large increase that we're looking at in FY 24. Okay. And is there any, is there any update on whether. The town will pursue pulling out of civil service. I don't have an update on that. It was not a part of this negotiation though. It was not at the end. It was not. It was not considered. And so. Not no update right now. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. And we have the best. More questions on the body born policy. Thank you for the presentation, by the way. So we agreed to the wage increase before we agreed to the parameters of a. Policy that. That's correct. Yeah. We agreed in principle that there would be a policy and that once it was implemented that a 2% wage increase would take effect. Is there a timeline like. No, it was, it was very quick when the deal was signed. And then we ran into some sticking points. And so I don't know that there's like a defined timeline right now. It is being actively worked on by both sides though. Thank you. Yeah. Alex, is there any chance the second. Union can come to agreement. I mean, there's always a chance. We have been. In negotiation, you know, in negotiations with them for some time and we, we held a place on this article with the anticipation that we might be able to get there. So I would say there's always a chance, but I wouldn't call it a good chance right now. Any other questions, the deputy comment. All right, well, thank you very much, Alex. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Good night. Night. All right, so. Let's take a vote. Is there a motion. Okay. Any discussion regarding article 15. Support motion. Support. Any discussion. None. All right, we'll take a vote. Did I hear anybody? All right. All in favor of supporting the proposed vote for article 15. Say yes when I call your names. Jordan. Yes. George. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Brian. Here at Carolyn. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. John. Daryl. Yes. Annie. Yes. So far. Yes. He isn't here. Yes. Yes. Dave. Yes. All right. That passes unanimously. The other. Finance article is article. To which we already covered when we supported to support the. Overriding the slide boards commitments. So we've done that. So that is the. End of the finance articles. Now. What is left to the special. Our zoning articles. And. I know that some people want to. Talk about. And so we'll have that discussion, but. Few things that I want to cover before something. First of all. I want to read an excerpt of our by locks. Put everything. So according to the town bylaws. The finance committee shall consider all articles contained in any. Section. The bylaw goes on to say nothing contained in this section. Shall preclude the committee from considering. If it's used to. Articles which do not require. Or request an appropriation of money. I interpret that to say. While. We cannot find on anything when you should be cautious. About treading. Zoning articles. Or articles that don't. Really have a financial impact on the town. I think that's not a policy. We should also be careful. However. We'll talk about that tonight. But I see that there are two steps. That we have to go through one. Whether to raid in. And secondly, if we do. What does that mean? So. I know Charlie has presentation. I know. You have. A report. A report to that. Yes. So I'll let Charlie go first. And then Annie. And I'll open it up. To the rest of the members. But a couple of grounds. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And I'll let Charlie go first. And the rest of the members. But a couple of ground rules. Keep your comments. To finance. That is the only job we do here. Is. Make recommendations to tell me about. Financial matters. What we want to hear tonight is what. What these zoning articles may. How these aren't articles. It's not whether it will solve the housing crisis or not. It's not whether it will lead to a more diverse or less diverse population. It's not about whether it will solve the or a worsening climate change. It's about the finances, the town. This may be one of those issues where you could take one vote as a finance committee member. And then build the other way to tell me. No, it's when tonight you have to keep your finance committee. And I know some people are very passionate about these issues. But your job tonight is as a finance community. You are so passionate about these issues that you don't think you can do your job as finance committee member. You might want to think about recusing yours. All right, with that, and you have your hand up. I just have a quick question, given that you read us by law. You're not interpreting that by law is saying that we cannot vote. You're not interpreting the by law about our voting as indicating that we are not to vote on zoning articles. I, my interpretation of that article is that we can, we can opine on anything we want. But my interpretation is that we should be cautious about waiting in on zoning matters. Because that redevelopment board reports telling one of those matters. So, then, when we talk about opine, do you mean providing a note in our report or do you mean taking it over? I don't know how the discussion will, where we're going to go tonight. So I just want, I just cited the bylaw so people keep that in mind during tonight's discussion. So, you're reading by not just one more time. Sure. This is article seven of the town's bylaw under section four duties. I'll read the whole thing. The committee shall consider all articles contained in any warrants except articles on zoning upon which the zoning bylaw requires a report to be made to the town by the planning board. And those articles which do not require or request an appropriation of money, which articles shall be considered and report made to the town by the select board. Said committee shall make recommendations and shall report in print if possible at or prior to each town meeting. But the omission of said committees so to consider recommend and or report shall not affect the validity of any vote or other action at any time. The committee shall also make such generous suggestions, criticisms and recommendations as it may be. Nothing contained in this section shall include the committee from considering if it's used to. Articles which do not require or request an appropriation of money. I just mentioned one thing. It's personal. My wife kept bringing this up over and over again saying at town meeting when the finance community when someone asks if the finance community is analyze the financial impact. If we say no, we're going to look really stupid. Just offering that as an opinion. So, Charlie, then Charlie, then Annie, and then we'll open it up. Or comments, questions, discussion. Rebecca, do you have a question? I had a procedural question. I think. Would you entertain emotion at some point to table the discussion until we had a representative your discretion either someone from the ARB or a member of the planning department staff. To clarify some of the questions about what's actually contained in the report. I'm a little bit anticipating the presentations having seen them, but I'm concerned that there's disagreement about what, what the report says. Would it be appropriate for us to wait until we had. The ARB's recommended vote for Tommy. Yes, I'll, I'll, I'll entertain emotion and passes and tasks. And that would happen later after the presentations, if I chose. I'd like to have the presentations and then open it up to some discussion and then whatever motions people want to make. Or not. Thank you. All right, Charlie. Thanks, ma'am chair. I'm wondering if somebody advised me to say how I can. It should be a green share screen button. Oh yeah. And then you can share your whole screen or you can just share your whichever window you have. So I want to share. Go back to zoom. Actually, go to basic, go to basic. There we go. And then you want. Do you have a lot of stuff open. Okay. And then share. Okay. Okay. So thank you. And members of the committee. So, let me preface this by saying that. Well, I told her now, Bray some questions about the cost of the. Proposed. I don't have the envy. I just I'll just say the MBTA communities act. I don't know. I mean, there's so much going on there. It's hard to describe. What. What any one recommendation is going to be. So I said about looking at this working working with Alan and so for. To try to understand. What drives. What financial impact of. Expanding the capacity might be. And so. I'm not expressing here any. Any opinions about any aspect of the. Discussion, except what I perceive is. What happens if you expand the housing capacity and increased. The population in our and therefore increased the population. In our own. So I have some thoughts here about a background, how, how I. What about and how we went about analyzing it. What resources we used and then trying to relate. This to our current. Revenue raising scheme in our own. So. One of the things that we know about this MBTA community. Law is that if you change the housing capacity and I'm speaking here to layman, not as somebody who's. You know, terribly intimate with the intricacies of zoning. But. We don't know when this impact is going to take place. We don't know when, when, if, or ever. There would be any housing. Expanded. I mean, this is. These are variables and various people with various opinions. So my approach has been to say, okay, let's assume that this takes 20 years, but let's, let's just call the endpoint, which is the maximum. Capacity, which gets expanded. Let's roll that back to tomorrow. In say, what's the difference between today and tomorrow with that capacity. Built out and what does it mean to our current finances. With the implication that. You know, prices go up salaries go up. Housing costs go up. All of that stuff just rolls along and that'll play itself out in the future, but this gives us a glimpse of what it would mean if we had this. Event happened tomorrow. Okay. I also want to introduce or. You know, expand upon the idea of municipal expense elasticity. And we are, we're long familiar with that in Arlington because. We deal with it every year with our own public schools. If we have one more student in our own public schools, we increase the budget by 50% of the prior years. Standard cost, according to DSE. So that's, that is a budget that has elasticity with respect to population, meaning the students, the users of the service of 50%. So there's, if the school department is elastic. With demand. There's no reason not to assume that other departments are elastic also. But they're going to vary. And then. So I'm trying to say, how do we make a comparison of the impact of housing capacity elasticity taxation revenues, etc. And our taxes are, we always talk about taxes on a parcel of land. And of course, in the community, we don't deliver services based on parcels of land. We deliver services based on heads, people headcount students in school, you know, seniors who need support, etc. So the municipal expenses vary on a per capita basis. So what I've tried to do with the help of toper and Alan, who are tough partners. Is to understand the, how revenues roll out on a per capita basis versus how expenses roll out on a per capita basis. So this document was developed over some time and, you know, it's hard to get your head around what exactly is being proposed. And I think Rebecca raised a good question. We don't know exactly what's being proposed, but there have been numbers thrown around that that one meeting I went to in July said suggested a 50 or more percent increase in the housing stock in Arlington. So, you know, how do we, what we needed, I thought was a model to address this. So, it's a long term issue, but I've explained that I'm hoping we can all mentally sort of roll it back to a difference between today and tomorrow. And it uses much of our financial and demographic information that we have to understand how population density and ethnicity will affect the town's finances should capacity housing capacity be increased. This is a list of different resources that I've used to try to understand the problems. I mean, this is just a small, the open literature is just a small sample. There's hundreds of websites and stuff. One of the most informative is a population growth density and lots of providing public services paper written in 1992 by Professor Helen Ladd that I think it's Duke University and I actually corresponded with her. And it seems, even those years, way back then, they understood that municipal services were elastic with population. And then on the left hand side, but just different databases in Arlington or in the OR, a municipal data bank, etc. that have resources that apply to this. Or using this analysis. And by the way, I have all of these on our website in a folder which I can share that people are interested. Okay, we talked about Helen Ladd. So, what we did is look at all of the different parcels and what the categories are. This first chart is just a parcel count versus total valuation of the. parcel in Arlington, and there are actually one or two small parts, one or two incidents way out on the right hand side, commercial parcels, whatever. But the top box shows the mean parcel valuation for the different categories of of housing basically on a per parcel basis. And it also shows the average tax revenue per parcel. And my point is that it's very hard to understand these numbers with respect to the cost on a per capita population basis. So the bottom box shows the, the valuation by household, and then using the reported standard reported number of 2.38 people. And by the way, you can look in five different databases and you find some different difference in the population of our own in some difference in the counter houses, etc. So I just picked the one that I found 2.38 individuals per household on the average. So that tells us the average tax revenue per capita from these different classes of of housing. And I think that the MTA communities act applies to three family mixed use three family or more density, but as I said, I'm not the extra. The box on the right hand side addresses something that which any sort of very only objective. But I think her objections are unfounded. It's what's the cost per capita. What are we spending per capita in the town of our own. And from the finance committee report, you know, the fiscal 24 total expenses $207 million. We also had about $38 million of money, the fraying those expenses coming in from the state, the federal government, and also from global receipts. So they weren't really residential taxes there. They're just taking the cost. So our taxes are supporting this $169 million of expense. Now, we, if you go look at the budget, you know, the, the five year plan and the, the, the overhead stabilization fund and everything rolls in and out in various ways. But all of those are really tax revenue. So that 169 million is what the taxpayers are paying every or at last year. And, and if you do it on a per capita basis, it's 30, almost $3700 3673. The other thing that I was got smacked by this because I never looked at it before I never thought about it. And you can't see it looking at the top box. But at the bottom box, you can see that single family taxpayers are paying more than the average cost per capita. And, and other, other residential households are paying less on a per capita basis. Without going into the distribution of on different buildings and how many people are in them, etc. This is just on average. So I'm going to skip all of these other charts, which just show that we actually hold out the average values and the meaningful data from various databases. So, what does that tell us the question is, if we have an average tax revenue per capita, that's lower than the average expense. And we start to build out at a higher population density. What does that do to our revenues. And I took an example like when I was speaking to Dana man and to Alex, they were talking about 882 and 887 mass avenue. And by the way, I think these numbers are, I think the actual tax revenue is 62,000. But this was the number that was presented to me in discussions. But if you take, if you take that improvement from the original facilities or buildings that were there to the new one, you see a big jump in tax revenue. However, we would also increase the population in that building by 29 units. And if it has an average occupancy of 2.38, we've increased the population by 69. If you say, well, what if it's only 1.5, then we increase it by 44. And then the tax revenue per capita is a number that's much lower than the average expense that we have normally. So my suggestion is that while we have created new tax revenue and which, and that may be a benefit. On a very short term basis, if applied over a large number of cases like this planned expansion and capacity. We may not be doing the budget any good. Okay. So, okay. I saw the spoke to all of these items before you can read them, but basically is different elasticity elasticity to different departments. So we, we created a model. This is Alan Jones. Exhibit D or whatever I can remember exactly in the finance committee report last year. And the, and the, it just is the categories and the first column are the actual numbers for the town meeting last year. And then purely from a subjective viewpoint of looking at each department with the one exception of the school department. We came up with elasticity numbers that said, well, you know, maybe the accounting, the controllers department doesn't really need any more staff if you increase the number of people in town. But, you know, maybe the police department does or maybe is the treasurer's department does because you have to put out more tax bills or something to that effect. And by the way, I'm this analysis is totally agnostic as to who's paying those taxes. In other words, a multifamily unit. Like the taxes might be paid by the owner of the building and the people who live there might be paying rent, but fundamentally, the people who were rating those units are the source of the revenue that's getting paid to as taxes. So anyway, this model that we did came out to an average elasticity, a weighted average elasticity across all the departments. You see some of them have elasticity numbers, some of them have nothing. So the weighted average elasticity is 42%. This is the school department's half the budget and has 50% elasticity. That means the differences between the average and the school department 8%. That means in this model, the rest of town has an elasticity of about 35 or 36%. Now, you know, if you want to get into an argument over each one of these categories, that's fine, but I would, I'm going to try to argue that this elasticity is real in a lot of different places. So, and one of those is if you look across the cities in town. And we actually Alan Jones did this. Look, this chart shows the budgets versus population across the 351 cities we have. And it's not 100% elastic is about 1.85 or something like that is the slope. But basically, if you look at the samples that I pulled out on this box down the left hand side. Watertown has a budget of 188 million, according to the BOR in population of 35,000. So you go to a double that population and the budget in Birmingham is 312 million. If you take our only in 45,000, 46,000 population with a $200 million budget. And then you go look at full river, which has twice the population. The budget goes up by, you know, 175% so. So, and the charts at the right indicate that this elasticity applies over 351 cities in town. So, it doesn't say it doesn't say that the model that we've generated and the previous slide is 100% correct. But it says the concept of the U.S. is the valid. So, in this chart, and again, you know, Annie in her retort. Had a different number she said, a 7% increase in population, which could be, which is not shown here. But when you run the numbers on a simple model that we took, okay, this is not necessarily the way to play out. But we have no visibility for that. But simply took a 34% free family distribution, 33% for the eight units and 33% over eight, over eight units, those categories using current valuation needs. The fact that all of these units are producing tax revenues on a per capita basis, less than the average cost means that there's going to be a shortfall in the revenues versus expenses. And, and this shows at this 42% elasticity, it starts at about $4 million and goes to $17 million. If you drop back to a 7% increase, there's still a deficit, and it's about 1.8 or 1.9 million, which sort of fits with this graph if you build something in there at 7%. So, the point that I would like to make, unequivocally, is that if we increase the density, and we increase that number of housing units, we're going to increase our expenses faster than we can increase the budget, unless we raise taxes. So, building more multi-family housing units is not going to solve any deficit problems. It's only going to exacerbate. So, we also, well, we can skip this. This just says what happens with the U.S. this is more than 42%. Obviously, the budget deficits go up. So, sort of, sort of wrap this up on a per capita basis and across the general budgets. The per capita revenue is not in these multi-family units. It does not grow as fast as the, doesn't solve the deficit problem. Basically, that's the red lines and the blue lines that you see in that chart. And that average cost per capita this year is $36.73, and these different units just don't meet it. And I also looked at, in addition to the $887 and the $882 mass avenue, I also looked at $117 mass avenue, and the same result comes out that is vastly below the necessary contribution to break even. So, the conclusion is that whatever we do, when the states apparently require us that we do something, it's going to cost us money. It's not going to make money. And, you know, whatever the town meeting wants to do or finance committee wants to do, I'm just suggesting that we not stick our heads in the sand and believe that we're going to be creating excess revenues when we're going to be creating excess deficits. Thank you. Annie. So, unless you really want me to, since my slides are all text, I'm not going to throw them up, but I think you've all seen them. So, I will, I'll walk you through and try not to just read them. I want to start by setting some context for this. So, I might objection to the analysis these guys did is that it's a forward-looking model, and it makes a bunch of assumptions. And I don't agree with some of those assumptions, although I do agree about this question of elasticity if you can judge the elective city of particular lines in the budget. They don't agree with their choices about what that elasticity is. So, that's the first thing. The second thing I'd like to point out is that we could actually produce a model that told us something about what we might be looking at if we passed NZPAC. Because the town population hasn't increased by 8% over the last decade. So, we could do a backward-looking model that said what was the effect of a 3% increase in population, including student population on the budget. And I think that if we're going to do an analysis and presented the town meeting that that would be a more effective analysis because it's based on actual experience including the construction of many multi-family units. So, I want to talk a little bit about capacity because it's a very basic. We're going to continue with your model, Charlie. I think you have to adjust your assumptions about population growth that might occur under NZPAC. So, the meeting that you went to in July where they were tossing around numbers of possibly doubling the number of units in town was based on a model produced by the state where the consultant for the project had not filled out all of the parameters. They hadn't put in setbacks, open-state parameters, parking parameters, so on and so forth. The working group made a final recommendation that the model said would increase the number of units in the zone to 7,000 units from the 2,000 units that were there. So, in addition to 5,000 units. So, that should be the population number we work with. Actually, the producing model presents that in the town meeting. Except that the ARB then instituted a minimum one unit of parking per unit and that reduces according to the state's model the number of units from about 7,000 to about 3,300. Subtract the 2,000 units that are already there. And what you get the model telling you is that there might be an additional 1,300 units. We take the 2.38 number of people that we know was the average per unit. We get 3,094 people. We added more people than that in the last decade. Which is why I suggest a backward-looking model. So, that's a 7% increase in population, which is probably an adjustment that you want to make to your model. Now, the other thing is that I looked at the elasticity of the school budget and it produced this very large number. What I did is I went and looked at how many kids are there in town and how many kids per unit and I multiply that by the increasing units. And if all of those units had the same number of students coming into them as we do for the general population. And I think that's a conservative approach because there's always the possibility that someone will build a multi-family condo like the building going up at 10.21. Besides, they're going to move into that condo, so it's a single-family household. They may not have to do the pool, but they're single-family household that didn't have kids, now may have kids. So let's just assume average kids per unit, even a multi-family housing, generally has fewer students. That results in an additional 403 students coming into the APS over whatever that period of time is. And so the number, the dollar number, to cover that increase at the current density number could be smaller. And we're using current dollars. I didn't adjust for the fact that that number will go up. So I want you all to keep those numbers in mind. And also, we should keep in mind that the capacity number under MBTAC is coming from a model that says nothing about what's already sitting on the pieces of land that we're talking about. So that you can't really know what's going to get built or even what might possibly get built unless you go more parcel by parcel with a real estate developer and look at what the potential is. Those parcels include buildings that are so tall and so large that it would be financial suicide to knock them down and build what's allowed under MBTAC. Okay, so per capita expenses. I calculated the per capita expenses slightly differently because we can't actually take the school population and spread it out across per capita. Yes, that's how the expenses go, but that's not how the service demand rises. The service demand for school rises per student. And so if you're just looking at town services per capita costs per person is $1,745, which changes, I think the picture, how big the gap is between the single family capacity and the amount of revenue being produced by all of those multi-family units. Yes, and we should also keep in mind that we have 211 fewer kids in elementary schools right now than we did in 2019. We're actually on the ebb of the ebb and flow. Another reason to do the look back look is that it covers an increase in beginning deep rents into the population that we have experienced because our student population ebb is in flows according to generational moves, right? And not according to how much housing were built. Obviously housing affects it, but the kids that caused us to have an enrollment crisis to redistrict and add rooms to elementary schools in the middle of the last decade didn't move into multi-family housing. We moved into two family condos in East Arlington because there had been an age of population there and it turned over rather rapidly. And because of how the real estate market worked, that housing became attractive to families with children. So, 8887 Mass Ab, I just want to suggest that the capacity of the 44 students, probably not really what we're talking about, 22 of those units are studio apartments and only one of them is a two-bedroom. So, I set the headcount there at 30, which puts the amount of income coming in per capita at $1,667, not $1,000 that are reported on. And then I made some smart remarks about how that's really a commercial property. So, another reason that I think we should do the look back is that we can't even accurately model our budget up. Our budget models, numbers for the out years change every year. Whatever the five-year plan says, this is what FY24, whatever it currently says are costs and our revenue in 2029. We know that by the time we get to FY2029, all those numbers will have changed. That's been our experience with this model for the last almost 20 years now. And part of the reason it changed is because of new growth. So, I just think, look back, better idea. Yes, I was upset by the use of the word subsidizing when it comes to who lives in what and how much taxes there are paid. We pay taxes according to the value of the property that we own. We don't purchase a bundle of services. Some of us use very few town services, even though we're paying the taxes on a single family home, and some of us use a lot. Alan never had kids in school. He's never used as much service capacity as I did with two kids going to the APS. Even though we both live in single-family homes and pay high taxes, it's probably higher than mine. Let me finish. That's not a financial argument. Okay. So, I think if we're, I personally don't think we should weigh in on zoning articles in the sense of taking a vote on a position. We should vote whether or not any particular zoning article should be passed. But if we want to make a statement, then I think we need to have a consensus about what model is that we're using. And I would hope that you would all understand why I think of, look back the last 10 years, where we have both experiences of how our budget grew and how our population grew. And I think the data model we construct is the appropriate way to look at this. And so I am with Rebecca that I think that we shouldn't delay this discussion until we can build something we can all agree is the right way to look at it. I'm sure I had something else to say, but Charlie threw me for a little bit, so. Well, if you think of it, I'll raise my hand. I don't know what it was this. Go ahead. So I did do one little piece of analysis that I think speaks to this issue of elasticity, which is that I went and I looked at how many patrol staff we had in 2002, which is far back as I could go 2010 and 2020 and compared it to population. And in 2002, we have 47 patrol officers that was one for every 902 residents. In 2010, we had 43 patrol officers. And that was one for every 996 residents. And currently, or 2020, we had 49 patrol officers for a population of 46,308, and that's 945 residents per patrol officer. So the question that I have is, if we're seeing service capacity required by per capita numbers, then what is the correct number of patrol officers per capita to provide consistent services to the residents of Arlington. And why don't we do that one did analysis for all of our budget. End of speech. How it sounds. During this exercise. I had sort of a bond breaks on mobile bed. Moment that maybe said, well, the result of more shows shouldn't really be a surprise at all. The objective of the MET community that is to increase housing. And since we have very little undeveloped space, it means increasing population density. And I think we can all agree that our property tax revenue. Is largely proportional to the occupied square footage. That's the tax of the properties and residential properties are on the bulk of it. On the other hand, the cost of being Arlington increases to a great extent with population. Revenues are being determined by how much space we have. It's occupied. And the cost is by how many people live in that space. And, you know, it just sort of, I think we can all agree that increasing the population density increases the ratio of people occupied space and fill that gap. The other way to do that is for per capita taxation to increase. And, you know, what I would like to counter individually or possibly as a finance committee, there's a notion being proposed out there by unnamed people that some of the communities will help reduce our structural deficit. And I think what comes out of just simple understanding of the dynamics is that it won't help you actually make a structural deficit worse. So regardless of all the gritties of elasticity and stuff, if we're going to agree expenses increase the population revenues increase with occupied space, it just sort of falls out of that. It's pretty, you know, there are a lot of different ratios and factors in there, but yeah, I think that just a basic rule. It's a rhythm. So, first, I want to thank you and Charlie for their presentations. I do think I think they're both highly informative. You know, I guess the tact I'm going to take right now is I'm going to sort of start by referring to the last sentence of our second paragraph for our duties as a committee. Okay, that's Chris thing right since the committee shall also make such general suggestions criticism and recommendations that may be expedient. Right. So I guess I get to make a criticism suggestion or recommendation. My criticism is, um, I think as both they and Charlie pointed out, this is a seismic shift right in the operation general substance of the town without a fully thought out product from the town of what the ripples look like. Like, as somebody who I think sat through countless school enrollment meetings to talk about expanding buildings and building buildings and replaying ones. I didn't like any of it. Like, I didn't want to be in any of those meetings. I don't think any of the parents who sat there wanted to be in them. But yeah, we don't know what the impact what are we going to do with 500 kids show up. What are you doing. We don't know what are having the same right. And what are the answers for incremental services. Right. I mean, I think Charlie for doing the work they can do the work but I don't. I'm not. I don't think it's fine. We should stand on that. The town should do the work town's job to do it. It's like any said, it's the town's job to go back and do the work like the town's job to play. It's like that stupid game that we play in government right where it's like you walk into. You want to talk about the town branch and so you walk into the treasurer's office to ask a question about your assessment like, oh, that's not treasurer. That's assessor. Right. Well, that's really this department. I just need to talk to someone from the town. You're all from the town. Right. And so what we're doing here is we're kind of playing. We're playing the same game. Right. Well, well, we're the ARP. We're not we're in charge of the budget. Well, the working group, even though they were going to think of the select board was like we can't control stuff dealing with other stuff. So don't worry about it. And I don't think that's I don't think that's a good way to do that. I don't think it's a good thing to say we'll deal with this and we won't do any real modeling. We'll just throw it in front of you. So my suggestion to the town is they need to get off their butt and explain to us how this is all going to work out. How is it going to work out in terms of students and police services and fire services and capital and this and that. And kind of, you know, put a line in the sand and they're not. And I think that that is, it's problematic to, you know, kind of steam forward with a request to make it change this big without doing all your work behind it. That's my two cents. Any other Rebecca. Thank you. So what I'm concerned about, I think I alluded to earlier is that if, if we want to discuss this, we have to start with the facts from which we do the analysis, which I appreciate both of these presentations for people really getting into the weeds. But, and then we add our own opinions and values and conflict recommendations, but if we don't have a very clear sense for the facts in the recommendation from the ARB, I think it really, you know, models our recommendations. So my understanding, I was only present for the beginning of the ARB meeting the other night, but my understanding of the vote at the end was that the capacity that they're talking about is something like 3500 on land that currently has 2000 units. So an additional capacity is something like 1500, which is very different from an increased capacity of 15,000 minus the 2000 that are there. So I, I feel like we need to have a good consensus and perhaps that requires a statement from, from someone who put this together about whether we're talking about 1500 more units or 13,000 more. Yes, because wherever you follow on this, you know, a factor of 10 is a huge difference, whether you're in favorite of it or not. One additional thing I would say my understanding of the capacity calculation is that the best is based on each unit having 1000 square feet. And I think it's not likely that 1000 units which each have 1000 square feet would add 400 kids to the schools I think so you're either talking about larger units that you put kids in. In which case you have fewer units or most people in Arlington who live in 1000 square foot units do not have kids in their house, but, but that would be a fantastic thing to ask the school department, where do the kids live do they live in multifamily units, 1000 square feet. So, that's where I stand I would like a consensus at least in the committee about how many units we're talking about before we start thinking about a position. Well, I think, first, in this room, do we, do we have a concept, do we have the same understanding about what the increased capacity is because I think some of the concerns would be alleviated. It sounds like what Charlie suggested we want sort of minimum compliance. And my understanding from the ARB is they're very close to minimum compliance right now. So, if we all understood that then, then maybe we're all kind of on the same page. Jennifer. Hi, thanks. So, I was on the school committee during the beginning of coven and one of the big frustrations everyone had is that we couldn't give them a plant and we couldn't tell them what was going to happen. And, and it was, and I think this feels very similar to me. We have a tremendous amount of unknowns. We know, you know, cost for the town do not go up, just because we add a person. It has a lot to do with what kind where that person is living, whether that person has kids. When we added, you know, units in Brigham, we had a lot more kids and when we added 365 or 360, we had virtually no kids right so so the, the amount of tax revenues that we got didn't cut, you know, in 360 like way outpace the amount, the extra cost for the town and in Brigham's maybe it equaled out or something so I think we're talking about, I think the reason that nobody can produce a model that everyone's like oh yeah yeah now we know what's going to happen is that there's just a lot of uncertainty. So, we don't know who wants to sell their property. We don't know the other property for family reasons not just because the value of their house goes up I mean, my house has doubled and I haven't sold because of that I'm going to sell when I'm too old to climb the stairs. We don't know, since 177 communities are doing this we don't know what the demand is in Arlington relative to other communities. Because we're not alone in increasing capacity. It might be that other communities are more attractive than we are for a builder to build in. We don't know what kind of units you know are they going to be small studios or are they going to be larger units. We, you know there's some evidence that multifamily housing produces few kids but that's usually because they're smaller could be that the demand in Arlington is for very large units and then we get a lot of kids. It could be that the kind of buildings are built have dumpsters and that costs a lot could be that they don't have dumpsters. So, I understand the need for kind of analysis and certainty, but I just don't think we're going to get it. I would recommend that we that the finance committee not take a position. I think there's been other things that have affected revenue and expenses in town, like local option taxes or marijuana dispensaries or the mixed used things that we've passed in zoning before that we haven't taken a position on. In fact, I was explicitly told that we don't take positions on revenue assumptions we just take positions on budgets. So, so that's my basic thing I think we have a tremendous man uncertainty and that's why we can't get sort of, which is frustrating for most of the town and also that this just isn't the kind of thing that the finance committee has, as far as I understand it and I've said been on for very short bit, but has taken a position on in the past. So, Topher first and Jordan, and then Charlie for a second. I'll toss it. I'll toss it. So, to for Jordan now. So, just a few comments here on the ARV adjustments. We stuck it out to the end. Congratulations. But another thing was they took neighborhood down with three stories. They did a bunch of stuff in East Jollington, I don't think we have a file not yet. But I would agree the capacity is going to be less. I would also say more we know the thing was, yes, it would be worse if it was a larger capacity that the basic point was, you know, was basically that this does not seem to be helping the budget. This is probably going to be worse. And as far as what we weigh in or not, how many members have been going and asking where it's the plan, what is the financial impact, what's the finance community think about this. And there have been people weighing in saying, stop that Oh no, it'll be fine. We can do this. So, you know, in some sense, there's already a recommendation out there. I think we have to decide what we agree with it. We're looking to or support it. So if we do say, we don't take a position on this, then we also have to say, precisely why. And I do think that will disappoint some of the members will. As far as, you know, and the model itself, like I said, it's population kind of logic in terms of how much it is larger. You can get into the questions of, you know, the details. I wanted, I want to believe that I do want to I want to believe that this sort of thing with fixed and help our budget I would like to find something that will close this deficit. So, but I saw the numbers. Jordan. So, so I don't want to rehash too much of what's already previously been said, but I will say that I, my opinion on this is, I think that it's, you know, given our role and what we do and making recommendations as to the budget. And whether we approve or dis or not approve what the budgets are, I think that that's traditionally been our role. I think, even though this may disappoint some town meeting members, I don't feel like it's appropriate for us to be dealing with hypothetical population growths and what the impact is going to have on the budget I certainly appreciate the efforts of the two parties that put together their projections but I think at the end of the day I think Dean you sum this up probably the best we don't you know these are projections that we put together and it's really not. It's really outside of what our expertise is and what ultimately our role is. So I just don't feel like it's appropriate for us to be weighing in on hypotheticals I think that we should focus on what we traditionally do and making recommendations on the budget and to not try to weigh in on projections for things that are outside of what our expertise is. There are vendors out there who do specialize in what these types of hypotheticals that we're talking about are. If that was something that was desired by the town then I think it should have been something that town administration should initiate, because they do exist so without saying much more. So that's my position I don't think that this is something that the finance committee should be taking an official position on. I think it sets a dangerous precedent, moving forward. Regarding zoning articles. Thank you. Thank you Jordan, I'll toss the. I think I'd like to make a couple of points quickly and then a suggestion. Jennifer mentions the tremendous uncertainty in all this data. You get your new something somewhere. Okay. The disagreements between Charlie and Annie. I think the people I have tremendous respect for are tremendous unknowns here. To vote this in requires a majority vote to repeal it requires a two thirds vote. I think this strongly argues that the finance committee could be recommending that we do the minimum. Anyway, it's 2046 or something in that area. We do the minimum. We see how it goes. And then if, if, if the financial impact is not significant, if revenue comes in better than the town meeting can always move forward and do more. But it certainly argues towards doing the minimum now which we have to do by state. And then see how it goes and then we'll have actual numbers rather than projection. So I guess that would be my recommendation. That if the finance committee is going to take a position, we argue toward towards the minimum, see how it goes and then we could always adjust it later on. Thank you. Well, I'd also like to thank. Currently, you know, and go for creating this model. But I, I guess I have concerns about as well. I think that people do expect kind of a simple answer about what the impact of this policy will be. And I think the model provides a simple answer. You kind of write at the very end, say, between 4 million and 15 million or something like that. That's a number that's going to stick in people's heads. Very firmly. And I feel that it's not a simple problem. And that the model of your streamlining everything. And I have some some questions about the model. But I think that if Fincom is going to endorse your model, then we need to have more time to study it and look at the not, you know, the formulas, etc. And so it doesn't feel comfortable to me to kind of endorse something based on those kind of summary statements. I would also note that we just voted on the police union contract 600,000, excuse me, $600,000, which is just through 24 that's going to have a bigger impact going forward. The override is obviously a big policy change. That's also going to have a million dollar impact. So we have to kind of keep this all in context of the other big decisions that we make. And that we, you know, we think about, I do like Annie's idea to look back. That gives us kind of, you know, I think the most concrete evidence we could look back to when Arlington's population was 60,000 and figure out what the per capita expense was in today's dollars that might be another interesting piece of information. I don't know, let me just ask some specific questions about the model, just to make sure I understand it. In terms of the increased tax revenue, are you taking into consideration like the impact of the process should two and a half and the fact that our total basis is moving up. No, no, it's just as a snapshot today and tomorrow. No, but even today and tomorrow, if we build all that out our basis would move up and we our revenues more than just the. Yeah, that's taken into account for a minute. Okay. And the per capita. I guess I have a problem with the average per capita being applied across the board. Could we get more exact per capita information from the census information. For that. I mean, in the time that I have, I just couldn't find any geographic breakdown per capita. But I would note that we had, we had to expand both the Thompson and the Hardy schools after we rebuilt them. And then that's largely a two family or more neighborhood. So it seems to me that we can have children in multifamily housing. You know, that we'll go into the school system. But I, but that's just the answer. The answer is your question is, didn't have that information. Right. Is the, the valuation, the relative valuations is that what, like, what time period is that from like the average. This is the current database of the session. Okay. You know, this is 2023 or 24. Okay. And then I guess the other thing that I think about is like the illicit elasticity percentages you apply and things like that. Obviously, for some things, there's an economy of scale. Right. And so I'm not sure that your average elasticity might seems high to me, I guess. It's so. Okay, two comments here. One is that if you look at the ratio of municipal expense versus population across the straight process state. Okay. It's almost, it's a straight line out of us local 1.85. So there is somehow in that data, a message that municipal expenses are elastic with respect to population. And it's not small. But the person in the second case, I will be the first to admit that if you put five people in a room, you can come up with five different estimates of what department is elastic. Or whether it is or not, you know, that's, that's very subjective and we have very little objective data on that. However, as I mentioned, the town has accepted 50% elasticity in school. So there must be a there is a belief here that municipal services are elastic. And just let me finish this one thought, the 42% average elasticity in that model means that the rest of the town outside of the school department has got an order over 35% elasticity. You know, you can push it down. I don't know, I'm not, I'm not tied to it. And I'm not tied to the absolute precision of the model. What I am tied to is the, the way it works, you know, you know, the population goes up the cost go up. And that to me is, and I, and you know, I did, I did run through Andy's numbers, the 7% and, you know, our school number increased the dollar increase in the school number from our model came out actually lower than the dollar school, the school estimate that anything. Right. So, you know, I guess my point is that if we look at our expenses next year, assuming that our population remains the same. All of a sudden, because of the decisions we're making with the override, our per capita expense is going to go up significantly. Right. 5% 10% actually the way we did this is we is you're right in that one year period they're going to go up. So, the, the number that we use for the per capita expenses were the operating costs of the town in the entirety, less outside money coming in to pay to the phrase on. Okay. So the, so the override, the ups and downs of the override, etc. washes through there. This is a, this is a number that is I think I understand what you're saying. I don't want to cut you off, but our expenses for the school department are going to in real dollars are going to be increasing next year. I think I asked the finance committee not to support that with a sprint. You did, but I'm just saying that. So you might argue that, and then if we didn't even know that, and we don't really know what water pounds doing and we don't know what Belmont's doing, you know, in terms of their serious stuff. We didn't know that all of a sudden we would say, well, you know, it must have had a big population growth because all of a sudden the expenses went way up because everything's elastic. But that that's not what actually happened. Well, that's so I'm just saying that I think that again, I wish that we could just say kind of in a simple way. Yes. If we have more people are expenses go up and therefore this is going to have an economic impact, whatever we do. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's a bad thing. We do make choices like that. Sometimes it's worth spending more for some things. I just am concerned I wouldn't be comfortable taking a vote supporting your model and the summary statement that's making a guess. Just because again, if you shift the assumptions a little bit, you'll come up with very different numbers. So I would if you're going to arrange that's got an impact of a million dollars to eight million dollars or something. I might feel more comfortable with it, but we come out with a fairly strict number. I just, I don't know. This wasn't an attempt to come out with a strict number. This was an attempt to show that that the general idea of increasing residential housing and reducing deficits are incompatible. In other words, if you increase the density and you build out more housing, you're going to have higher expenses. Well, couldn't you say the opposite though? And again, with the economy scale, if you lost 20% of our population, then our per capita expenses would probably go up. So I don't know how you justify that. Actually, in the school department, when the population went down, they reduced the budget. Right, but I don't want to take much time, but I think that the agreement that we made in terms of the school department's budget and the fifth percent growth. That's kind of like a, you know, it was a model, a way to approach with a formula, which should be going to the school budget and might not have had, you know, might not represent reality. It was just an agreement that you kind of, you know, come to terms with the school committee. Yeah, so that's true of any budget. Yes, but you're trying to predict reality here. You're not, you're not, you're not, your model is trying to predict the dollars. It's not saying, well, we, you know, I don't know. It's not a budget document here. I don't know. Anyway, that's what I'd say. Thanks. You finished. Pardon me. Thank you. No, thanks. Yeah, next, but I have a question. When is the state, someone has to know that knows the answer. When is the state demanding. December 31, 2024. Except that he would then be ineligible for the fossil fuel ban. Pilot, we have to make a decision by early November of this year. We don't get the camera. Right. And how much is the car? Well, the carrot isn't money. The carrot is something town meeting voted for overwhelmingly, which is to no longer allow fossil fuel hookups and new construction. As a climate change. Mitigation measure. I'm asking what do we get by doing this now. We get to participate in that pilot, which is what does that provide us that provides us the right to, to say that all new construction must be electric only and not use gas or oil or energy. We don't get a check. Right. We don't get it. It's not a dollar. No dollar. And so it's December 2024. It's November 21, 2024 is our hard deadline. If we don't do that, then we get, then we get the. But it's November 11th for the fossil fuel demonstration pilot. Most of your demonstration pilot. Never more 11th. Next year. This year. Grant. Well, thank you everyone for all the analysis and. But I'm not. I'm not, and I think for the analysis, I wasn't looking for in strict numbers or anything else like that. What I think came out of it was more like a postulate where. It's kind of like gravity, right? Things fall. The wind resistance may be different, but things still fall. I'm not certain with all this. Did we. More population increases expensive. Is that. Is that a shared view. With animals. Is it sort of the opposite where, well, no, it won't increase. No, that is a shared view. Our argument is about whether or not revenues will keep up. Right. And our argument is also about the variables around elasticity. I understand. And I understand all the assumptions within. And so if we agree that it does increase costs. But we, you know, no one knows the number. You know, that when, but we can take a position that that is. If we agree on that we could take that position with no numbers that look. More units cost more. Not taking position about, you know, again, I could be up to everyone else, but it is. We could state make a statement to possibly that they, by the way, you know, what goes up must come down. More units cost more money. That's just a thought that maybe we could. We never get these numbers are just. Yeah. So anyways, that's my suggestion. If we're going to make any position at all. We just make a simple statement. That statement. That simple state. All right. Anyone I haven't heard from. Yep. Anyone I haven't changed. I'm for a process question. I sort of, I keep reading the, the bylaw. And I just don't understand it says articles on zoning upon which the zoning bylaw requires a report to be made to the town by the planning board. Okay. But they may or may not include any fiscal analysis. Okay. I'm just reading the bylaw about which defines our jurisdiction. So now second time around Charlie, you had your hand up. Jennifer. Hi. Yeah. So I would not be in favor of something that just talked about the increase in expenses. I think what the town is interested in is what's the differential. We know that revenue is going to go up. We know the expenses are going to go up. But we'll revenue go up more than expenses or expenses go up more than revenue. And it seems to me that that has a lot to do with whether there are kids that come with a new housing, which is an unknown. So I just don't think that we can make an accurate prediction. I do want to say I've sat in on all the McKibben, you know, discussions and the school committee had a chance to interview him and talked about things. And he was very, very insistent that the single most important factor in whether you have additional kids in the school system is how many seven year olds you have in a neighborhood. Because when you have a bunch of 70 year olds, especially a housing stock that's older and maybe harder to maintain, that's when the housing turns over. And we kept asking him, we said, well, would this help make a difference? And would this thing make a difference? And he was like, absolutely adamant. No, you know, so the school population and the expenses for the town, you know, do go up and down based on what the population of our region looks like. And one more point is that one of the things that I've been very impressed with in this town is when you look back and you see that increase in in 6000 people over the past 10, 15 years and 13 years. What? Okay, it's 4,000. 4,000, I'm sorry. Oh, right. Okay. Well, there was it. Right. There was, we were at 40,000 at one point, but you're right. We're at 42 more recently. So, is that actually the town, the town staff has not increased. And that might be because there's some strain and that we don't actually that we probably need more, more staff than we have. But, you know, the pressure is really from the schools, right, that we just increased school staff a lot, but we've actually barely increased town staff. And again, that is whether that's a good thing or a bad thing that just sort of very striking when you look back at the budgets. That's it. Thanks. So Charlie, what does your model assume about new growth? New growth in the tax levy. It's, it's built in. In other words, the, the, if we say that we had a 33, 34, 33, 33% distribution of free family, less than eight and more than eight. Okay. So that creates tax revenue for new growth. It's based on the actual tax level of a number of sample properties, including 82 and 87. Yeah, relatively recent all the family bills. Okay. So I must have missed that. So you did build in new growth. Yeah. And that was one of the questions. All right. And then the way that I got to my school dollar amount was by taking the $8,800. It's a deficit number and multiplying it by that headcount that I came up with. That gave me a lower number than the difference. Charlie, I gave me a lower number than the difference between our current school budget for general fund contribution and the number that your elasticity. That's why we came up with a different number. We did it. Correct. And the assumption in that first column in the model is a 15% population growth. When you put a 7% population growth in there, the 400 students come out of our model just like they came out of your model. Okay. In other words, it's not has nothing to do with the model with the basic assumption. I get it. I'm just trying to match our son. So that's okay. That's why I said before that. Our number was a couple hundred bucks lower than your number in terms of the total cost at 7%. Got it. I think that I agree with the folks who are saying that we shouldn't take a position on this. There's never been a zoning article that hasn't affected the budget because zoning articles affect what gets billed and what it's worth and how many people and how many residences are allowable under the zoning by law. So on and so forth we voted increase devoted mixed use, which creates multifamily housing we voted to increase the far which creates multifamily housing. We've, we've taken many such votes in town meeting and the ARDs and many such recommendations without the finance committee ever being asked to analyze the financial impact based on the fact that it was going to produce more multifamily housing. And I don't think we're prepared to do that analysis now three weeks ago I asked Eric Helmuth to ask the town staff to do an analysis so I don't know where that is. And I did ask for it, because it seemed to me like they should do that. I didn't until I did some numbers. It didn't occur to me that based on population growth over the last 10 years we can do a look back. So I can go back and suggest Eric and call the town manager and as an individual citizen and suggest they try to do that look back. But I don't think it's something we can go on tonight. I think it's a group that says that shouldn't be taking position. Unfortunately, I don't think we can say well expenses will go up without saying what happens to read. I'm ready to make a motion to say no position I'm just making you suggest. Make a motion. Yeah, we got out. Darrell, did you have your hand up. Go ahead Darrell. I hardly endorsed what Annie and Grant said earlier. I consider myself competent to do a lot of things. Deep analysis and deep understanding of issues like this is not one of my areas of confidence. And I don't think it's really within our purview as a committee. And I think we would get ourselves in deep, deep trouble getting over our skis as a work. Somebody's willing to make a motion about no action. I'm, I'm more than happy to vote for it. No position. No position. All right. Darrell you making a motion. I'll make the motion for no position. Second. Al Tosti. Yeah, just to correct something that was said. The town has increased some staff over the last 10 years. But not as much as the school because the town was willing to take a hit of lower increases because of the increased school population. So there was a reason why the town popular, the town. Employees weren't increasing as much as they might have wanted to. And the second thing I just want to mention is repeat what I said before. If there's so much indecision. If there's so much we don't know, then, then maybe the finance committee should be encouraging to the town meeting to be conservative and how they, and how they enter this. You don't go at the minimum that's required by the state and see how it works. So. I think that might be a financially responsible position for the finance committee to take. Thank you. Thanks. So, Al, are you making a motion, another a different motion that we. Take the position at the town meeting should go with the most conservative option. Yes, I think that we should go with the minimum required by the state because there are so many unknowns. Al, can you formulate the motion. Yes, that the finance committee recommends that the town meeting. We should go to accept the minimum required numbers as put forth by the state. Until further information is, is accumulated. There's second. Second. Further discussion. Al Jones. I don't recommend it was HL Mankin said every complex problem has a simple solution. That's wrong. But I think in this case, I hope that everybody has understands the arithmetic of the model well enough to know that increased densit with increased density. Population density, the expenses will rise faster than the increase in revenues. They both have fixed and variable components. I think you can, you can vary things all over the place. And you still end up with a negative slow that says increased density will save a negative impact on the structural deficit. And I want to loop back to what my wife asked whether or not we take a position. When someone at town meeting stands up and asks. The finance committee analyze the financial impact. And the moderator asks our chair. There should be an answer. It's up to the chair with the answer is, but I think we need to be prepared with that answer. And, and hopefully not say, no, we didn't consider it. Okay. Yeah, so. I think we're going to move on to Alan. Plasti's motion first. No, that's the, we aren't going to make the recommendation of the minimum or, I mean, the air be is going to come out with whatever they come out. And it's going to have some number. I don't think it's will be likely to be. That's how you, I guess, it's not likely to be a 2046 capacity. And we can say, I don't know if we want to say that, or we will say just, you know, a lower number is better. I think that's where the air is going to go anyway. And so I'm a little bit, I'm not sure how we would, how we would vote to say, you know, the air be should do this, I mean, they're going to come out with whatever they come out. So I'm not sure how we, how we say, you know, do this number, I think we can say, we think we could say, well, you know, more conservative is better. I don't know if we can really say the minimum. We can do that. To the question of whether we take a position or not, we understand some of the residents of the weapons to do that, given that there's not uniform agreement, everything is. We could take position that there are too many variables for this to be known. You know, or we can, you know, take position and the chair will have to answer the question. But there are opinions out there. There are things being made by various people and I think part of why we got into this was saying, well, wait, there's these claims being made and we still just keep that in mind. People making individual opinions now. And so that's the body versus not take a formal position. I think part of why there's been asking to do it for this place. There are zoning changes, but this is one of the larger ones that we've seen. Let me ask you, Annie, do you agree with the statement that increased density. Will increase expenses faster than revenue. No. I don't agree that. And. Topher, you have issues with. Altos these motions you have. Substitute for an alternative. I would say that based on what we've looked at is a lower, lower capacity numbers are safer. In terms of budget. You want to make a motion or just leave it as is. I'm sure I'll make that subject. I guess it will be or do you want to make it a separate motion. Make it as a separate. So your motion is that the finance committee recommend to tell meeting. That they are that they. The lower capacity number. My answer is safer. Okay. Is there a second to. So. The back. Thank you. So first to the questions of. Either out of motion or this motion that we recommend to a lower capacity number. My understanding is the ARB has a specific proposal that goes in front of me. Now, if anyone chooses to. Propose an amendment. Can we say in advance. What amendment we might hypothetically support that seems a little premature. Right now we have the ARB's proposal as they discussed Tuesday night, which my understanding is they believe they are finished with this article. They've posted it. Correct. That they're, they think they have their final version. Posted it today. Posted the word for the article today. Okay. So if the, if the ARB has their proposal. I guess I think it's sort of on Saturday to say, you know, if someone in the future comes up with a proposal. It's possible that that the finance committee might prefer that amendment over. Over the ARB. I think it's premature to say that. It is amendment in the war. Yeah. Right. Someone could, but I think someone could make an amendment to make it only 2000 rather than 35 hundred. No. They would have to amend the map. Then a very complicated amendment. All the parcels change. Parking. I want to say one at a time. I want to say it's that I. I think it's. It's to my mind. It's too complicated for us to say that we would prefer. We prefer something entirely different than what the ARB is. The second thing I would just say is having been in town meeting, the thing that I find helpful as a town meeting member is when there is a consensus from a committee. Like if the finance committee was like, we are all in favor of this or even overwhelmingly in favor of this or overwhelmingly opposed to it. That would be super helpful for a town meeting. But I think that what we're seeing from this meeting is that there's a diversity of opinion and there's also a diversity of inclusion. About how big a deal it would be. And then on top of that, you have the question of, is it worth it? If it is a big deal. So to my mind, this isn't the kind of thing. That town meeting would find helpful if we have a close vote. I think that they might find it helpful to just know. There was a diversity. And the finance committee. And some of the people who have the best prepared presenter. So I think that there's a diversity of opinion. And there's also a diversity of conclusions. About how big the deal would be. So I think that the best prepared presentations are town meeting members. Who could make those to town or to town meeting in general. Or could be invited to town meeting. And maybe that's something that town meeting members need to see for themselves and consider for themselves. Given that we don't have some huge. Thank you. Sophie. Thank you. Sophie has chair as the floor. I'll get to you out. Okay. First a question and then a comment. The question is, does it have to be, does the motion have to be, we recommend something or maybe. You have an opinion or. Something lighter than you recommend. Right on. Does it have to be a recommendation? No, we have a recommendation, a suggestion or criticism. Right. So. I don't know if I don't know how I feel about a recommendation with that work, but. And then I actually just a comment. When I was a town meeting member has the opposite reaction. I always looked for when committees were close and votes, because it showed to me that there was end up discussion. And then I could probe it and that's when I would go and ask the questions. And I think I would say, well, if you were interested, you shouldn't have me. So I guess I differed. I thought it was interesting as a town meeting member to see when there was discussion and that there was something to actually think about versus just rubber stamp. And I think that was a good point. Everybody agreed. So I should just go with that. No. Yeah. I didn't hear the last recommendation. But if I could just clarify the wording of what I'd like to recommend is the finance committee recommends the town meeting that they approve. The lowest available number consistent with the requirements of state law. And so whatever. We're saying because of the. Of the confusion and lack of data at this time. We recommend the most conservative or the lowest available number consistent with the requirements of law. And whatever that number is, that's it for them to decide. Topher, do you think that that is. All right. Jordan. So I'm sorry, the current motion is to recommend the minimum number to town meeting. Is that correct? Most conservative option. We have, we have a couple of motions so far. One is the, what else has to just articulated that the finance committee recommends that town meeting. Adopt the lowest most conservative available number consistent with requirements state law. Right. And then there's, then there is a motion that. Yeah. That's correct. Darrell's motion, which is that the finance committee take note position on the zoning articles. Okay. So this is currently Al's for recommending the minimum to town meeting. Correct. Consistent with state law. Yeah. Minimum amount available. If nobody makes a recommendation. Or that's lower than it's the ARB vote. So if we have a motion with a lower number, then we recommend the lower number consistent with the requirements of law. And Al, I have a question. What if that. Substitute motion. Has other things attached to it. I'm sorry. What if the, if that alternative motion and has other conditions attached to it that we are uncomfortable with. Or could be uncomfortable with. You know, we, we, we can't. Prepare for every eventuality. All we're doing is say, is taking the position. That we don't know a lot of the data. Nobody knows the data. We have to do the minimum required by law. That's a necessity. Then let's be conservative. That's. If. You know, I, I don't think. I think there's going to be some, some weird changes. That's going to make it apply to all of Morningside. I think the changes are going to be some, maybe what the ARB is going to be. And maybe my guess is that a change that's lower than that. So. Darrell. I'm trying to have an internal debate about whether to withdraw my motion in favor of Al's. What's the, since we're on the floor from. Well, and he just said, and he just said that if you withdraw your motion, so you're going to make the motion. I think you should just let that. All right. Yes. Anyone have any additional motions they want to make. Charlie. Madam chair. I don't have an additional motion, but it seems to me that. The discussion around how the motion argues towards. Being conservative. And in the present, in the analysis that. I told her and Alan and I did at the end of the day, we recommended. Something like that, something that's like so to the minimum amount that the state pushed forward or whatever. And we've had a lengthy discussion here about the. Various financial intricacies of. One model versus the other and whether gravity goes up or down. And. I think all that's been somewhat valid. So. Maybe whatever. Whatever position that chair is willing to take, or has to. We'll take in front of town meeting. Should be. Should have the preamble. That. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The town by law. Advises the finance committee not to make. Pronouncements on zoning regulations. But that the finance committee has. Had extensive discussions about potential financial implications. Doesn't have enough information to come to the conclusion. But recommends conservative action. You know, without maybe such a strong. Conservative, but, but caution or something. So are you. Making a motion. No, no, I'm not suggesting a. Speech that you can give you by the town. Anybody have anything else. Yeah. I guess I, unfortunately, I can't support house motion. I should have another question of. Our modelers to my left. The, the, the, in the summary in the last slide, it says. Sort of worst case. That, and it up at 15% increased happy tomorrow. Would add $4 million to the budget, right? Yes. So. I think as a town meeting member, if I put that other hat on, there's like a concern. Well, oh my God, this is going to like blow the budget out of the sky. If I take your statement at face value and say, well, that's not going to happen tomorrow. That's going to happen maybe over 10 years. Who knows. So maybe in the coming years can add $400,000 for a budget, which is less than we just appropriate for the police. I think it's we're getting over our, again, the head of our skis to, to. To find influence the number for the capacity. It's just, I think we could say as a committee, obviously. We're, you know, we worry about dollars. This is potentially could have some impact. But it's not going to have an enormous impact again, based on your model. So that's kind of where I said, I just can't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't support Al's statement even. And even like publicizing your message, like as part of the finance committee discussion, you know, that even makes me nervous also because it's just hard to accept exactly what the numbers are. If it's 4 million, it's 3 million. It's just, it's not 25 million. It's just not like so severe that. We need to make a significant pronouncement without. Well, quantify qualifying. Okay. Last, last few comments or questions. Jordan and then Al Jones. Jordan. I was just, I was just wait, I thought I was, we were voting on the motion. So I have nothing to add at the moment. I was only going to respond to Josh. It makes you feel better. I think that if the slide that was presented in town meeting, that it would be adjusted to reflect the area of his recommendation, which is probably half of 15%. I think we're going to do the same. It's the same calculations. You get the same result. It ends up with $1.8, $1.9 million. But it wouldn't be, I mean, you write sometimes extreme numbers like 20,000 get out there and they stick, you know, and that's what we're going to do. We're going to do that for sure. So again, it'll be like 1.9. If that happened over 10 years. At the end of 10 years, we've had that. Two million dollars. I think. To me, the important point that I was right. Jennifer is that increased population density will. Have a negative impact on the structural deficit. The slope was negative. I'm not going to tell you about the exact slope, but it's always going to be negative. So. I'm going to take Alan's last time. I'm going to point out where this is where this analysis becomes incredibly difficult. I don't think we should take a position. Okay. I was thinking it's like, now it's going to an eighth grade or like, right? Because they're going to become adults and they won't live in our own 10 car market. You should have to buy a million dollar house. Right. Because that's what I was going to go for. Right. And I was like, look, here's what we're going to do. We're going to spend the cost of housing and add a ton. I was not going to go up, but you have to pay $2,000 more a year in taxes. So you're not going to buy a million, five house. And I've been to a million, say 500,000 on your home acquisition. You're going to pay two grand a year for 40 years. So do you want to pay 500 grand or 80 grand? The math in the deck would say you want to pay 500 grand. Right. You don't want to pay 80 grand because 500 cheaper than 80. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. Right. And that's where this topic becomes incredibly complicated. And we're just out there looking at our own interests. And we're not looking down the road. And we're going to look silly long-term. And that's where I'm concerned. Is because no one factored in. That's one thing we didn't factor in. I just to cost curve debt on housing. If all the communities follow term. How does that weigh in cash flow? I think that's why we're doing this. Because I think that's why we're doing this. I think that's why we're doing this is important. I said a long time ago, right. Home values matter for your. Right. When I'm dead and my kids. So my house that matters. Right. But it doesn't matter. So. You got. So we have two motions. So for us. The L foster motion. Then the Daryl Harman. Motion. I'll take Al's first. We'll have a roll call vote. Does anyone have any questions about what it is that we are voting on? Would you mind just reading it for. You got it. Okay. Recommend to recommend that town meeting vote to accept the minimum required. Numbers. As required by the state and tell further information is gathered. I approve the lowest available number as required by state law. I don't think that's the most recent. No. It's conservative number presented. The most. The minimum. The minimum. The minimum. The most conservative. Available. Number consistent with requirements. State law. Right. Is that right now? Yeah. I said, you know, we're not necessarily requiring the minimum. Number. We're requiring the lowest avail. We're recommending. The town meeting approved. The lowest. Available number consistent with the requirements of state law. Right. Is that right now? Yeah, I said, you know, we're not necessarily requiring the minimum. Number. We're requiring the lowest avail. We're recommending the town meeting to prove the lowest. Correct. Whatever the lowest available number of the town meeting has in front of them, consistent with sneak law. So the ARB makes a recommendation, let's say it's 3,500 units. Somebody amends that to bring it down to 2,500 units. Our statement would be you should vote for the amendment to the main motion and get the number down. Be the one. Yes. Okay. Just want to make it practical for everybody. All right. Is everyone ready to vote? Yes. All right. Jordan. I vote no. Shane. No. Jennifer. No. Sophie. No. Ryan's not here. Caroline's not here. Rebecca. No. Josh. No. Grant. No. Charlie. It's name. John's not here. Daryl. No. Annie. No. Al Jones. Yes. Sofa. Yes. Peggy's not here. Al Tosti. Yes. Dean. No. Dave. No. Eleven no's. One extension. And three. Yes. Kara. Yes. Okay. So that motion fails. Next is Daryl's motion of taking no position. Everyone understand what we're voting on. Did we just do that? No. No, we're not. All right. So Jordan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. No. Ryan's not here. Daryl's not here. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. No. John's not here. Daryl. Yes. Annie. Yes. Al Jones. No. Sofa. No. Peggy's not here. Al Tosti. Al Tosti. No. Dean. Yes. Dave. Yes. I have 10 in the affirmative. Five and a minute. Thank you. Yep. So that motion passed. So the finance committee will take no position on the zoning articles. And I will be prepared to say why, which is essentially we don't have sufficient data or recommendation in the faith to help me. All right. All right, that is done. How about whipping off minutes? Which minutes are we going to start off? So we have June 26 of earlier this year. So this is where Eda and Alex came in for the end of year transfers. And there was also the elastic clause and then the update on summer projects and working groups. I forgot we had some projects and working groups. All right. Have people reviewed the minutes? Are we ready to go? I don't know. We have a little bit of approval. Is there a second? Second. All right. Tate, Abo, Jordan. Abstain. Shane. Yes. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Abstain. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Abstain. Grant. Oh, yes. Charlie. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Annie. Yes. El Joan. Yes. Sova. Yes. El Tosti. Yes. Ding. Abstain. Tate. Yes. Four abstentions and one, two, three, four, five, six. Eleven. And it's approved now for the minutes of September 28. And in provisions changes to that. We'll approve. Second. All right. Jordan. Yes. Shane. Abstain. Jennifer. Yes. Sophie. Yes. Rebecca. Yes. Josh. Yes. Grant. Yes. Charlie. Yes. Darrell. Yes. Annie. Yes. El Jones. Yes. Sova. Yes. Tosti. Yes. Ding. Yes. Dave. Abstain. Two abstentions and 13. Yes. The minutes have been approved. All right. Does anyone have anything else? All right. I will hope to get out a report. Very quickly. So we can get back to town meeting. Let's plan everyone's plan on meeting at 730. Before town meeting, the person at town meeting, which is the 17th. To say the 17th. And we'll talk about whether we need to meet. Again. While town meeting is in session. Right. Is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Thank you. Good night. Sorry to stand without seeing you.