 We're recording. Go ahead, Andy. Okay. I want to call the finance committee to a meeting to order on May 10, 2022. We have three minutes after 9 a.m. and so we're just about three minutes past our start time pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This meeting is conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting by Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public is being permitted, but it is a Zoom meeting, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real times via technological means. So what we want to do as the standard procedure is that I will go through members of the committee and make sure that everybody can hear me and we can hear them and then trying to see if you may need to call a meeting of the council. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I only have Anna here. So right now we don't have a quorum of the council. Okay. Keep an eye on it. And if we have to alert me, if we have to pause the meeting in order to convene. As far as. You know, she can participate fully. But Anna, let me just mention, we're going to do some other things first before we get to capital. So if you need to kind of focus. While you're waiting, that's fine. Thank you. Okay, so let me go through the list. So. Lynn. Present. Bob Hegner. Present. Present. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bernie. Present. Michelle. Yeah. Kathy. Yeah. And at this point we haven't heard from Alicia. So. With that. I think we're on to the next topic, which is the agenda. Review part of it. And what we're proposing to do. For several different reasons is to. Do the third quarter report. First. And then go back and get into the other agenda items having to do with the FY 23 budget. Do you want to pull the agenda up, Andy? No, I don't think that we'll need to. I think that it'll be more important. If we do this is to. Get the third. If we want to have the third quarter report on the screen. And I don't know if Sean's prepared to do that. With the plan is between Sean and Sonia. The reasons to do the report first is that. It might help inform the discussion of the FY 23 budget to know. How we're doing with the current year. So with that. If there's no objection from the committee. I will go ahead and ask Sonia and. Sean to begin the presentation. I guess that's me, Sean. Okay. Thanks for the opportunity to present the third quarter report. Everybody. The general on the general fund side. We'll go through the revenues first. Most of the revenues have already hit their budget and amounts. And then we'll go through the budget. And then we'll go through the budget. And then we'll go through the budget. And others are just timing of when they will come in. But again, I want to remind everybody this is. This is. Revenues coming in in a much lower budget estimate than we normally have. Can I just. Pause you for just a moment, Sonia. Alicia Walker has joined the meeting. Andy, do you want to check that she can be heard? Yeah. Alicia. Welcome to the meeting. Thank you, Andy. Do note that it might be your birthday according to Facebook. So, so happy birthday. Can you hear it? Yes. Thank you, Andy. So we just started. And we are going with third quarter report first because. How we're doing with the current year. We just, we just started the report. And the road was that it might. Affect later discussions. Sonia had just started. Sonia, back to you. Okay. So as I mentioned, the general fund, most revenues have already hit their budgeted amounts, but it's of a much lower budget than we normally have. where this was a significantly reduced budget. I'm just gonna hit on a few of these. Investment income has done well. Licenses and permits have remained strong due to the development around town, if I can get it out. Hotel, other excise like hotel, motel, meals, tax are doing better than we anticipated. However, cannabis has dropped significantly. We're only at 50% collected to date. We're at approximately 96,000 so far. And last year and the year before at this time, last year at 150 and the year before it was about 160. So, and that's due to one of the establishments dropping off from recreational to medical. I'm not sure which one, I'm sure Sean can let you know that. Property tax and state aid are all where they should be. On the expense side, budgets are being hit pretty hard with a lot of these cost escalations. So, our budgets are really tight right now. The last quarter, we're gonna need to watch them very carefully and this is for all budgets, including, I mean, some have surplus in there because they've had vacancies and stuff in there, but a lot of the operating budgets themselves are being overspent. Knowing that there's gonna be savings in the salary side, just wanna make that clear. But this is also true of the enterprise funds on the expense side. And we expect fuel and utility costs to go up. So, we have 3.9 payrolls left to do so far this final quarter. So, we're watching all this and watching all the expense line items. The revenues on the enterprise funds look, the percentages look really good at 75 and 70% expended. However, there are some large debt payments that haven't been made yet. Those are due in June. So, once those go out, these percentages will change. Transportation fund is a little behind, but better than last year. But again, it's a reduced budget. Again, cost escalations have affected the operating, the expense side of those budgets. Solid waste and transportation are tight, but they're doing okay. I go too fast. That's it. That's my story. Okay, I'll have two questions and then I'm going to see, I will keep an eye out for a hand. Could people raise hands for about other questions? The first question that I had was, usually we have ended the year because of very careful budgeting at the beginning of the year where we're cautious in amounts that we budget both on revenue and expense. That we end the year with a surplus for the budget, which then helps us with our free cash balance and allows us to make transfers, including last year to the reparations in addition to stabilization funds. Are we in a position this year where we might end up in a different situation than prior years? I don't think it'll be as good as last year for building up our reserves, but like I said, a lot of the operating budgets are tight. So I don't know how that's gonna end up this year and we are gonna return some money. It just won't be like it was last year. I forget what it was last year. It was quite a bit on the expense side. On the revenue side, we seem to be doing well. Like I said, a lot of them are already met. So there'll probably be some excess revenue for this year. Sonya, can I add to that real quick? Sure. One other thing that you'll be in this year that's unusual and we talked about it when we were talking about the track and ways to fund the track is the regional assessment. That's normally zero variance on the expense side, whatever, we budget the exact assessment and then we pay that assessment to the region because they exceeded their E&D last year. They're reducing our assessment this year by 400,000. So we'll have a $400,000 variance in our regional assessment. So that shows up on the expense side for us. But just to point that out, that'll be an unusual item this year. Thanks for reminding me of that, Shawn. Okay. The second question I was gonna ask and you don't have to answer this now, but I wanna make sure we get back to it is about Water Sewer Fund, whether there's anything that we should be considering in the report that you just presented about those two funds that we should be considering when we get to the rate discussion. But I do see that Lynn's hands up and Michelle's hands is up. So I wanna let other people ask questions and get back to that one. Lynn. Given that we have a quorum of the council president, I need to call the council to order and check to make sure that Dorothy Pam, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you, Dorothy. And Anna already spoke and so I'm going to assume she can hear us and we can hear her. Thank you. Did you have any questions or? No, that's what I needed to do. Okay, Michelle and I turn it to you. Thank you. Yeah, the money that, so the money that's been allocated for our new departments, including Crests and the Department of Equity and Inclusion, both for this fiscal year and for next year, I mean, those departments are going to take time to build and to grow. And so there's money set aside, but all of the money may not be spent because we haven't hired the people and all the other pieces haven't kicked in. So what will happen with that excess money that isn't spent? Does it just get rolled over or what happens with that? It depends on where they are. If there's any encumbrances or contracts in place, that will carry over into the next year. However, anything that's not encumbered or already in a contract will close out to fund balance. So it will flow through fund balance and free cash. It's operating budgets are for one year only unless there's commitments beyond that. Okay, yeah. I was just talking to a community member who sort of like alerted me to that and who said, you know, basically there's gonna be, there's money that's been allocated for these things, but we haven't made hires, it's not gonna be. So I just wanted to clarify where that money would go. Thank you. The other thing I'll just add to that is, so if there's a overage or a budget deficit in another area within that area, if there's savings in that line, it would go to offset that first. So, you know, individual line items don't really flow to free cash. It's really the sum of everything that flows to free cash. But you can see on this, when I have on the screen, you can see the community responder program, the 170, there's no expenses because we've been able to charge, use the earmark that we receive, the DPH grants and a little bit of ARPA for anything we've needed so far. So is there a way to sort of get a better understanding of where you think will be at the end of the year with respect to these new line items and comparing them to what has been expended based on hirings and other expenses associated? There is, but it won't be for a while. I mean, I just sent out the year end process letter to all the departments where they're gonna have to tell me how many more electric bills they have to pay through the end of the year, you know, what their normal expenditures are, what outstanding we haven't, the way we do fuel for this public safety is it all gets delivered to one place and it gets allocated out to all of the operating budgets that hasn't been done yet. So I would be really reaching trying to do that. And I just wanna point out that free cash is not a real simple calculation. It isn't, you know, what turns back for the extra revenue. It also takes into consideration accounts receivable. It's, so I just want you to know it's not like one, two, three, here's our bottom line here. We should go through the state there, you know, they'll hit us for little things or things we might not have missed. I just wanna remind everybody of that. It's not a simple. And one other thing in regards to the community responder program. So we do have expenses now, just so everyone knows this reports through March 31st. So since that time, we've hired a director and so they're well-being here. So there have been some expenses and there will be future expenses depending on the timing of when they hire the other positions. Thank you. Yeah, there's a whole process of the Department of Revenue has to certify the amount of our free cash so that we don't know and can't use free cash until it has been certified by DOR. It usually happens around November or so, but it's a slightly moving target. Yeah, I can guess in July at the end of the fiscal year, but it's not final until almost the second quarter. Lynn, your hand is up, sorry. Yeah, just a comment on the marijuana. I also think we're starting to see the impact of neighboring towns having stores right on our border, particularly Hadley. So that I don't think it's just because I think it's RISE that decided to go all medical. Paul may want to say more about that, but I would like to also use this opportunity for Sean and Sonia, who are the experts on this, to explain, to go beyond the issue of if there is access in one part of the budget, how does, is that dealt with? Is there a percentage that can be reallocated to other parts of the budget? Because I think at this point, because of the two extraordinary situations of the DEI and Cress, we're looking at larger amounts that might be left over at the end of this year, but yet we have a budget in which increased costs for everything from gasoline to whatever are eating up parts of our budget we hadn't anticipated. So that's my only comments, thank you. Well, I can say that even though we try to stay within a functional area, meaning general government, public safety, community and development, even though we commit to staying within those guidelines, and we pretty much do, the operating budget is voted as one number, so which includes all of those functional areas. So we have that flexibility that if there's savings in health insurance under benefits or something, that that can kind of offset any negatives in other departments. I try not to move budgets there, so you get a clear picture of which operating budgets went under and which, so you really kind of know, you'll see you'll have extra in benefits, but you'll see, I don't know, community development might be over 5,000, but bottom line, it won't go over what was voted. Is that clear? Yes. You can't, on the enterprise funds, they're restricted to each enterprise funds, water and sewer separate, and they have to be run like a business and they have their own free cash, which is called retained earnings. So that's got to net out the same way within their enterprise funds. You can't have any, the only legal expenditure deficit allowed is snow and ice. Anything else you have to raise on the next tax rate or provide for it before the tax rate is done? Did that. Yeah, and I just, for those of you who were involved in town meeting in our prior form of government, we used to close out the year with this in the fall town meeting, making some transfers at times between functional areas that's not required in our current form of government. So it's a slightly different process since it's not appropriated by functional areas appropriated by a whole. Paul. Yeah, I just want to note that we also have been very successful at getting grants for some of the, for the Crest program and others. And that's, we try to hit the grants first when we have expenses so that we get the reimbursement from the state. So even though we budget at a certain level, it's not those, those programs aren't moving forward. We might be hitting the grants instead of the operating budgets. Thank you, Bernie. Just ask Sonia to remind us of any caps there might be on the amount of money that could be moved from one budget to another or one functional area to another. I don't really know that right off the top of my head. We've, I don't think we've ever had that problem. So I haven't really paid attention to it. I can look that up right now. Yeah, I haven't done my homework. Yeah, I haven't done my homework, but back in the good old days, it was like 5%. I think, I think there were increase for some reason. I think I read that, but I'm not 100% sure. Okay, at any rate, folks should know that the Department of Revenue looks over all this stuff. Oh yeah. So there's a review of it that's done and any mistakes are caught and corrected. And we're fortunate to have skillful people doing this stuff so we don't have those mistakes to be caught and corrected. Yeah, and just, just adding to what Bernie said, in particular on the revenue side, took a couple of years for me to, for this to sink in. Sonia was telling me this every year, but on the revenue side, they really look at what we're projecting for revenues in our budget. And if we project something that's higher than what we received the year before, we have to have a really, really good, strong argument for it. Otherwise they want to see you build your budget based on what you received in the prior year. So when we, so we're proposing for FY23, a lot of that's based on what we've received and what we either expect to receive this year or we've received them past years. That's why it takes a little while for the budgets to kind of catch up because we're trying to be conservative in that way. Anything else in the way of questions from counselors or committee members? If not, is there anything that you have observed in the Water Sewer Enterprise Fund report that you just presented that affect the rate or you think we should be considering during the rate setting discussion that will happen later? Yeah, Sonia. Okay. If I jump in on that one. Sure. So I think we're looking at this report. The Water Fund is the one that's most concerning to me. I think the Water Fund, both funds are tight on expenses and some of that's just unique to this year, stuff that they're dealing with this year, but the revenue side in the Water Fund is a little more concerning to me that it's not coming back as quickly as we anticipated it would come back. It's doing better than last year. It's not way behind, but I think it was what at 72% or 71% somewhere in that range. We were hoping it would come back, beat our budget target and come back even faster. So I would just raise that flag as something that we'll continue to monitor is how quickly water consumption comes back. It's really tied to the consumption. It's that the rate is whatever was voted, but the consumption drives that. Kathy? With your caveat just now, Sean, we're voting on water and sewer rates for next year. If it comes in a lot worse, have you already built that in to what we're looking at? Or does that mean we might have to do a correction at some point? Or are there enough reserves in the water fund that we wouldn't have to make an adjustment? For FY23? Yeah, just for FY23. Right, so there's enough reserves in that fund that we might have to make a correction if consumption doesn't continue to come back to where we thought it would be. But we are also, we're not bringing it back all the way to where it was prior to the pandemic either. We're still sort of doing an incremental step back to pre-pandemic levels. So we are sort of hedging a little bit in terms of it going back to normal. And we have a reserve that we can utilize like we had to last year if it doesn't get back to where the targets were projecting. But at some point, so last year we did use reserves quite a bit. We will want to be conscious of trying to build that reserve back up at some point in the near future if we do have to use it again. All right. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm that we're not, we do have the ability to adjust the rates, the water and sewer rates during the fiscal year, is that correct? We typically don't because of the way the billing works. So we bill quarterly, we bill sections. So to change it mid-year, I don't wanna say it's impossible, but I don't have, have we ever done that Sonia? I think it would be really complex and confusing to the public if we were to change the rate. That's why we usually do it on July 1st because that's the start of the next cycle. So again, I don't know if it's impossible but it would be really difficult. And we also have some sort of, I don't know if they're legal commitments but some promises to the university and colleges that we let them know what the rates are for their budget as well, which it's a big number for them. So basically it's very difficult to do that. Yeah. Okay. So we have to be thoughtful in terms of what rates we set to make sure that there's enough play in the budget that we're not gonna run into problems. Right? Absolutely. Thanks. Lou? Yeah. If we're done with this, I believe it was stated that Sonia needed to leave with the quarterly budget report. And if we're gonna move on to water and sewer then I have other questions but are we done with the quarterly report? I think that's up to everybody else. I think it's a good just advisory for everybody who didn't, wasn't here right at the beginning. The reason that we're doing the order that we're doing is that Sonia is time limited and so she has to leave. And if you have any questions that you think you might wanna ask later about quarterly report and you wanna ask the expert, this is the opportunity. I just wanna remind everybody that these quarterly reports get posted on the accounting website. And there's a lot of information there. I tend to send people there all the time and they're asking me questions because they're pretty much answered in this report. And then the draft report that I'll write for the meeting on Monday of the council, I will do a brief report about the quarterly report and what in our discussion that was just held and we'll include the report in the packet for the council meeting. Okay. So with that, I think we can go on and I don't know if we wanna do rates or wanna put them off and go ahead and work on the FY23 budget in a way because of other counselors who probably hear more for the budget discussion and maybe we should get back to the budget general questions and capital. So is there any objection to going to that before and then coming back to rates? Seeing none. So getting to what the agenda was, the way that it was phrased is that we were going to, item number two is FY23 budget review to allow just an overall questions and discussion about the overall budget. Put that in again just because it's still a new document to everybody. If it's department specific, try and hold that to the department and then we wanna get back to the capital improvement programs. So I'll start by just asking it whether there are any further general questions about the budget, Bernie. Well, not questions as much as some commentary. I really, the budget document itself, the way it's constructed, the way things are explained is outstanding. And I think the GFOA guidelines were more than meth. It's tough to be enthusiastic about something is like a budget document, but being a sort of muni fan, I really enjoyed going through it. And not that I'm gonna net question stuff, but I just think the way it's presented is it's really meritorious. So thank you to all who worked on that. And as we go into the budget, I just wanted to make a couple of observations with a couple of quotes. You know, David Plouf was one of Obama's campaign managers and counselors that did a lot of municipal work and he used to advise people who were running for mayor or council that you can be as visionary as you want, but remember you've gotta pick up the trash and fill the puddles. And I think that's something we really need to keep in mind as we go through this document and go through our discussions, we gotta make sure the basics are covered because those benefit every single person in Amherst and there are expectations about that. Some of the stuff is pretty prosaic, and people do expect to have those services. The other quote is from all the tribute to Stan Rosenberg. Politics is a lot more fun when you have money to spend. As we look forward, we're not gonna have a lot of money to spend, we're gonna have a lot of need and not necessarily a lot of money. So this will probably not be fun, but you know, we're gonna have to go through it and go through it thoroughly. So thank you everybody. Thank you very much. That was helpful. Is there a reminder, Alan? Bob has his hand up before me. Here, Bob. All right, thanks. Sean, it would be helpful. I've been looking through the budget and especially on the page 46, the revenue expenditure summary and the long-range financial outlook. And I can't see the recovery funds, they are from the ESSER funds in there. And can you tell me what line item they're in and how I can tell? I'm concerned about not only how much of our budget this year is through those funds, but as we go, especially on page 48 and 49, the long-range outlook, as those funds get used, where does that show up in the budget? Yeah, that's a great question. Before I answer that real quickly, I just want to confirm, did everybody get their budget book that wanted one? I know they were going out for delivery yesterday. I don't think finance committee members got them yet, but Angela's working on it. Okay, great. So ARPA is not in there at all. So this is just general fund. ARPA is, we treat that like a grant, so that's a separate fund. We did put a separate section below explaining what ARPA kind of outlined in the ARPA uses, but I get your larger point. It would be helpful to have a sense of what are we funding from ARPA that's ongoing and what is the plan for phasing that back in? So I can put something together for maybe by the time we get to the kind of recap that I can share with everybody that shows what that is. I mean, the major thing that we have committed to are the four firefighter positions that we're funding those from ARPA. We're gonna do that for the next couple of years. And then I think it's FY25 or FY26 that we would fold them back into the operating budget. We would have to do that within our, whatever the operating budget guidance is for that year. So it would stick to what's being shown here unless the guidance is higher that year. But I get why that would be helpful. So I'll put that together. Thank you. A couple of things. First of all, Andy, I think it would be useful at this time to just remind people of what the charter allows us to do with the budget and what it doesn't allow us to do with the budget. Because some people are new to the council and even those of us that have been on the council need to be reminded annually about how we have to look at a budget. The second thing is I had an opportunity yesterday to attend a hearing. It was basically on essentially ARPA spending. In this case, I was particularly there because of the centennial hearing. But I'm hearing people from other cities and towns and associations sound an alarm about getting your ARPA money committed and spent down because of concern of the flip in the house and Senate and the possibility that they might start recalling money that's not spent. The other thing I observe is that as much as we have made commitments way back in the fall regarding our ARPA funds, if we really look at how much we've spent, I think it would be useful to understand how fast are we spending it down. So it may be just a warning to the town and to all of us that as we look at the town's needs, and I do mean the town's needs, that we look at, you know, looking at that balance we have left in ARPA and deciding where we're gonna commit it sooner rather than later, so that we're not sitting on money two years from now that's still not spent. Yeah. My only comments, thank you. Can I add to that, Andy? Yes. So we've got about nine and a half, 10 million of the ARPA funds sort of committed. It's not gonna be spent within the next year. Some of the large parts of the commitments are for affordable housing or for homelessness, things that, you know, we're moving as quickly as we can on them, but they just take time to use those types of funds. But we do have some funds that are not committed for anything at this point. Part of that was to see how this budget year ended, as potentially we did this a little bit last year, if our enterprise funds had deficits, if we had general fund deficits, we could potentially backfill it with ARPA. That's one of the allowable uses. And so we're still kind of waiting to see how that goes. And then the other thing we were kind of holding it for is to see how Centennial played out as well. That was one big project that we knew there were gonna be some concerns with. I think you've all received some of the positive news. You know, I don't wanna say it's definite, but optimistic outcomes around some potential grant funds and the state house revolving fund program that will help get the Centennial project back in line. So it's possible we may not need to use ARPA for that, which would be great. So I get your other, I think the plan all along was if we don't need that money for Centennial or for some other deficit that this fall, we would be looking to conduct another process to allocate the remaining funds, whatever hasn't been committed yet. Okay, so I'm gonna be straightforward and say that I think the elementary school needs to be high on that list. Thank you. The school building project part of the elementary school. The school building project. Thank you, Andy, for that, Claire. Yeah, the question I had for you, Lynn, is when you were at this hearing yesterday, was a discussion about spending of ARPA funds and the fear that it might be reclaimed aimed at the state legislators' slowness about it committing its ARPA funds or was it about local communities? It was all over the place. And I mean, this hearing, I was there for a very narrow thing and everybody else that was there was for everything else out there. It was about a house bill. It was about the spending of the house bill and it was to urge people to go ahead and have the legislature spend the money and not save it. So, yeah. Yeah, because that is a big separate tension. You may be hearing that at MMA as well, Andy. Yeah, I'm quite certain that I will. Michelle? Just following up on what Lynn said as a new person on this committee, as we're going through the budget, department by department, what is our role? Like, what do you expect from us? You know, if basically what you're saying is that we can only go down, not up. What exactly are we doing in this dialogue? Anyone wanting to take that? I just wanna understand so that I can come prepared and not waste anybody's time here, really. Just try to understand what we're doing here. The charter and state law, which are tied together is the charter was drafted consistent with what state law for budgeting in cities is of that coincidence, specifically says that the chief executive mayor or the town manager presents a budget and that the council, as it considers the budget can reduce amounts in the budget, but cannot increase amounts in the budget with that one exception having to do with schools, which is a separate topic. And I had sent out some information about that earlier so that people would be aware that there is that exception that's incorporated both in our charter and in state law. That is why I have been since we've had the council and chair of the committee trying to get the council to think about what it wants to say to the town manager about our wishes and guidance in December, January, so before the budget is developed because after the budget is developed, we can only consider according to the charter and state law provisions. And there was one exception, and that was when we were talking about the Cres program that we had some discussions and some additional adjustments I think were made at that point, but that was a rare, I think probably the only exception. And so I think that's probably the best I can do to respond to that. I think that it's very important that we understand what the cycle of the budget is and recognize that the guidelines have an important part because that's where we can say something. Once we're at this stage of the budget, it is very difficult to make the changes that are needed both in a legal and in a practical sense. Kathy. Andy, can I please ask a follow-up question to your response? Yes. Okay, just from a process perspective, I don't understand why we wouldn't do this then earlier. It feels like we are going through something that's already been developed. And what I'm hearing you say is that there's not really anything we can do except reduce, although there was this exception for Crest to do that, which I think happened out of a dialogue that we had with the town manager and through the wishes of the council. So I guess I'm just trying to understand, is this genuinely a dialogue that we're having with the town manager and with Sean where there's flexibility? And if not, then why don't we go through all of these departments earlier when the guidelines are being developed so that meaningful conversation can happen about each of the departments? Andy, can I respond to that a little bit? Sure. So just taking the step back in the process. So we do the financial indicators in November where we kind of give a forecast of what we're expecting. We started holding the budget forum at that point to allow sort of input before the budget gets developed to have the sort of dialogue I think that you're describing so that the town manager can hear that and also the council can hear that because it's before they develop the budget guidelines. All that dialogue gets rolled into whatever the goals are and the budget guidelines that go to the town manager and then we shape the budget or he develops a budget that meets the goals of the council and meets the budget guidelines. When we get to this process, I would say this is more about evaluating that budget document and how it meets those goals and how it meets those budget guidelines. When you're hearing from departments, it's part of it so that you can confidently say to the public, you've reviewed every section of the budget that you've reviewed every department. You've asked questions, you've heard from them and one of the things you'll see in the budget document is you'll be able to ask questions on it. If there's variances, you can dig into those and find out why there might be variances in certain departments. You'll see where there's been additions, programmatic additions for the Crest Program or DEI so we can talk about those. You'll see service levels. Sometimes I'd say a lot of questions around service levels to try to understand how the activities of each department may be changing. There's some departments that are more interesting than others in that respect. Please have interest in service levels. The fire department has interest in service levels because it's really tied to their day to day. So I would say this process is more about understanding what's in the town manager's budget, you know, how it aligns with the goals of the council, how it aligns with the budget guidelines and then hearing from the departments that you can confidently say you've reviewed every part of the budget. Thank you, Sean, that's really helpful. Yeah, I guess there's one other thing that I want to recognize, Cathy, but in July, based upon prior experience and good practice, that's a good time immediately after the budget is adopted for the new year to look back on the process and what we thought about the process and what we would like to do going forward. And second piece to that is that this is a very important juncture in the history of the development of this process for Amherst and that is that the first council served for three years and it was in a little bit of a different status because when it was developing its guidelines for the year it had been through the process before except for the very first year and it was the select board that kind of set the process off as opposed to the council but we developed something that in the first three years that was beginning to work well but it needs adjustment because this is our first experience with new members of the council being elected replacing people who were leaving the council and how that might be accommodated into the process also the fact that we're now going into two year cycles and no longer we'll have a three year council that will not happen again what we foresee as best practices but I really think that's a July discussion at this point we need to go on with the budget review for now so I guess that's the only thing I could add. Kathy? Just a couple quick comments one I'll say on this topic we have to respond to Michelle we have increasingly started thinking not just in the summer but through the fall and we put it in the budget guidelines having a discussion and also in the town manager goals to the extent we want shifts we make those known early because there's a lot of back and forth that then has to happen so trying to think through where those are because right now unless there's some magic we don't have any ability to increase our revenue and so the important thing is to keep thinking of what money do we have and where does it go? So just that's just a quick comment but there's that lead in the other is on Lynn's comment on anything we haven't literally committed to even if we have as a line of it and this may be I would like to think of for the school building the elementary school building and Sean I just would like if you can get some clarity on what we can use it for we had at least one resident say they thought she thought we could use it toward design their design fees so what we will since we have to spend out thinking in terms of what assuming the project keeps moving forward what we will be needing to spend it for in 2023 and which of those expenses could be eligible the way the opera rules work and you know all the components so I'm not asking for an answer right now but just to go what Lynn is what could be eligible so we can think in terms of what money is available and what it could be put towards as we try to think of how to pay for this project and I think just responding to that yeah there's some categories that basically allow the town to use the funds the way however we want the one thing I'll say is and we can model this maybe when we do an update we can model what this looks like is I don't know how satisfying the impact of let's say reducing the debt exclusion if that's the way the town goes of reducing the debt exclusion by a million dollars when it's spread out over 25 or 30 years and over the whole tax base I'm not when you see the impact of what that is I'm not sure it'll be up to you to decide whether that's you know worth it as opposed to using it for something else with a more immediate impact no absolutely you know so you know what doesn't have to be in the debt exclusions so just that that's just if it's if it's wide open then we just need to look at the total dollars thanks I think we have to keep taking into account that perception is important here and that if we can reduce the impact of the school project by a million dollars that may not mean much over 30 years or 20 years but it will mean something immediately and I've said this before about ARPA and other grant funds when we get them we really should be using them to put out fires and take care of immediate issues to put ourselves on a sounder basis rather than looking at you know we have to do some we have to keep our eyes open for prospects in future needs but I really think that this is an opportunity to take care of as much as we can outstanding projects at standing expenses and get ourselves on a firmer basis going forward so we can afford to build new programs okay anything else on the budget generally otherwise we should turn over to the capital improvement plan Sean have you given thought as to how you want to present the discussion on the CIP so I think we started it at the last meeting I did the overview of the summary and I did send out some following follow-up documents about the the sorter and or the the library not sorter the library shelving and the ladder truck so I don't know if we just want to see if there's additional questions or if anyone's had further time to look at it and have other questions happy to answer those I can also bring it up if anybody wants to go through it again so I did take the opportunity to read particularly the one about the ladder truck and I but I also I'm trying to look around Anna are you the only one here from JCPC Kathy Kathy I'm sorry okay so I'd like to hear from Kathy and Anna kind of the just a little bit more of the recap of the discussion at JCPC on that item I actually found the memo quite compelling particularly around the issue of being able to save lives as well as because the aerial is kind of taking care of but the ability to transport equipment higher and also save lives is very compelling but I would appreciate some more on that thank you I but one way or the other we need to buy a new truck thank you yeah Anna I don't know whether you want to jump in on this ahead and then if there's anything I I'm sure you won't miss anything but I'll add it at the end you know this this got raised Lynn I'm sort of midway through we we had already agreed the need for the ladder truck and then reading the Hampshire Gazette it said North Hampton was buying their ladder truck new one and the price difference came up so that generated the memo so we put it in and you'll see the way we wrote up the JCPC report was it looked like this brought a lot more benefits to it the reason we were paying more was what this equipment could do for us it was more multi-use so we we left it we basically left it to the town manager to talk more about it and make a decision and so the decision is now to go for the full you know and I'll just say one more thing when way back when at one of the council retreats the issue was raised not by a current counselor that Europe Europe does ladder trucks differently than we do and it turns out it looks more like the North Hampton ladder truck where it is basically a ladder you know it can get you up and then the pumper truck comes along with it and that it was a question of the the trucks are smaller that way they fit better down narrow streets there were some reasons for different ways of approaching equipment we didn't weigh in on any of this we really left it with a it made sense that it could do this lift it could do some other things and that the expense look like there was a rationale rather than saying go for the one million so so on I just is that where I mean we we didn't really come down on a do one versus the other it was more there was a rationale yeah yeah I mean I think really they're like Cathy said that it was it was a justifiable difference and that the basically it's a platform versus a stick right and so it's it's safer for the firefighters to be on the platform it's I believe the hose runs all the way up so they don't have to carry it up with them and that was one of one of the biggest difference in terms of speed to get to the fire in terms of you know the the benefits for our firefighters where they felt were significant in that case so I think yes we we did choose to kind of leave that decision up to to you all which I apologize for doing that but or and with the town manager's input but I think it was we understood by the end why the they wanted the platform versus the stick and and they we asked them about Northampton and I actually ran into one of them the other day and and re-asked the question and they talked about how you know the the differences in building size is one factor there while they can go I believe they can go up to the same height it's really the matter of safety for the for the person fighting the fire and ease of getting equipment up there are some towns that have a preference for those stick the stick ones versus the platform like Boston apparently only it's like exclusively buys those from tradition but they didn't feel that was helpful for us and they felt that a platform would be more would be safer and more effective for for Amherst so I want to be very clear I support the decision and I support the purchase of this having now looked at it for I think at least the last four years as a potential on the budget I do want to ask and I guess would be Sean and Paul I assume just as with the ambulance that once we actually go to order this we may find that the cost escalates and you're going to have to come back for an additional appropriation would that be true potentially they try to put a price out that was up to date and based on a state contract so there may be provisions in that state contract that allow price increases but if you approve the budget we have a cost escalation reserve in there so so that potentially could help but yeah there's always that potential that the price could go up just to the cost escalation reserve is an innovation this year that came out of JCPC when we were seeing what was happening to vehicles that had been they thought ordered in July and now the price in February when we were looking at it was something different so the volatility of the prices in terms of upward so that at least in our thinking was a one-year effort in terms of FY 23 and then we could look at it in the future and we were able you can see it in the write-up we were able to fund that because we're now regularly getting reports on previously appropriated money for capital that weren't wasn't needed and the school said there's one that they could cancel out and we could repurpose so there was we didn't have to shift around a lot of capital lines to get to that so I don't know Sean on how much you're thinking I guess we'll know in FY 24 whether we still need that or not or we back to something more normal that when you order something for a certain price it actually is delivered at that price rather than it's something higher so I had one other thing I did want to bring up though while my hand is up we we did not have a discussion and I and I don't want to have the discussion now but I think we should at some point the inventory is a really good practice that we've started doing and we have what I would call surplus buildings listed literally one is surplus in that we're about to knock it down the old Hitchcock Center it's scheduled for demolition and so there and so I have never heard a discussion on what is the planned use of that and should we keep carrying it on our books or should we sell it um you know on uh just on it's a capital asset and so we've got two in particular the South Amherst School um and the Hitchcock Center and then South Amherst School is listed if you look at inventory we use it for storage the thing I know that's up in North Amherst is the North Amherst School which is partly used it's rented out to a community service agency it has head start it has with we also use it for storage but I just think at some point it would be useful to have that discussion um and I shouldn't use just the word surplus unused right now would be not in use I would say the Hitchcock Center once we knock it down became surplus it's a genuine piece so I just want to flag that because we did not discuss it other than note that those were on the list and I'll lower my hand yeah uh Paul do you have anything I did so the Hitchcock is actually that building is actually on conservation land so that is land that is owned that is managed by the conservation commission so it can't we can't like sell the land or do anything like that because it's in conservation the other buildings we do have a property surplus committee that looks at these properties when we're prepared to do something with them they have identified a parcel that the affordable housing trust is looking at that's just a piece of land that the town owns in order to try and see if we can develop affordable housing on it on strong street as far the other buildings you know some of them we have inherited you know through either the school department giving us east street school to school and then that went through the process of making that converting that into affordable housing which we're in the process of doing now we the school department they surplus the southeast the campus of the summit academy which is on south on the south common then they gave that building to us and they still have all their stuff in it not quite honestly so we've inherited that in its current condition in the way that was maintained under the school department so and then we just purchased hickory ridge which is another building that we own there are very there are not other buildings the town really owns beyond that but I think you you know the idea and this has come up before is to a inventory what we have in our facilities director is updating that inventory list that people I know has been shared with the finance committee that was done in 2016 I think it's it needs some significant investment of time into making that a usable document and he has that on his agenda he thinks it will take him a solid six months because it's an add-on project for him but he is going through building by building of all of our existing buildings to sort of assess the quality and to develop a real plan of action for us to maintain our buildings because that was one of the criticisms of us in terms of you know why don't we maintain our buildings and I would argue that we do we do a pretty good job on it as a huge amount of backlog in terms of what we have to invest in our buildings and the buildings that are in the worst conditions are ones that we had not owned previously so and like the Hitchcock center was again given to the town after the Hitchcock center moved so so I think that that's something I want to emphasize that we do have a large need in terms of maintaining our existing buildings and we're trying to quantify that and we'll have that done during the course as we go through through it so and I think you know but the other thing we want to do and the select board actually had said this is if we've got property that's not performing let's get rid of it let's put it on the tax rolls let's sell it to somebody let's get it let's put some housing on it do something with it and we're also looking at any they you know we have all these random pieces of property that we get by for one reason or another that we can do that as well can I ask just one question on the the soon to be knocked down Hitchcock center if if conservation land had a building on it in this case it had one has one and then we knock it down could there ever be a building on it again or or is or is that it inherited that building so yeah I think yes you can put buildings on it it has to meet the requirements of supporting the the goals of conservation or something like that Dave so Mike would know more about that but we did talk about that but it would require it to be supporting the mission of the conservation however we acquired that land I'd have to we'd have to look at how we acquired the land in the first place too okay you know I don't I won't stay with this but it was just a you know I know the common school which sits right next to what it looked at at one point and and come to the same conclusion that the building itself didn't work and so they they moved away from it thank you Mark I just wanted to say two things one is I do support the platform a ladder truck I think in in terms of the firefighter safety I think that's very important and their flexibility in fighting fires and also as I recall looking at it it it also has a pump or capability and so it can operate independently which you know God forbid we have multiple fires in the town at the same time it might give provide a lot of flexibility to the fire department so I do support that I I also want to just reiterate my concerns about the shelving in the library I know it in the grand scheme of things it's not such a large amount but and maybe we can talk about it more on Thursday but it just seems to me that the town has invested a lot in the the new library and these shelves are going to be used in the new library and that seems to me to be the responsibility of the library to cover that cost as part of their you know their their commitment to raise money for the new library and I understand the importance of protecting the the the collections the special collections but I mean it again the library has an endowment they can protect the special collections if they so choose and that's just my opinion and you know I I will defer to JCPC if they want to fund it but I I just don't see that the library given all the other needs in the town it seems like the library should be able to cover that cost thanks yeah I don't know if anyone from JCPC or Paul I know I know Sharon I think Bernie did send that as a question to Sharon to talk more about her capital request so on Thursday you'll get you'll be able to hear directly from Sharon on the shelving yeah fair enough one other thing I just know to come back and then get to Dorothy whose hand has been up and that is that Paul made reference to a policy that was adopted when I was on the select board regarding disposition of excess property and what I'll try and do is make sure I find a copy of that policy and then either it's really up to Linus to whether it just be sent to the finance committee or sent to the council as a whole but it is a policy that we as a council inherited from select board Dorothy just wanted just to add a comment that town owned property is essential for any kind of affordable housing whether it's in Amherst or in Long Island City New York where they've done some beautiful work in terms of plazas to go with some of the new buildings I would like to just say that the property Hickory Ridge would make wonderful affordable senior housing Sunderland little Sunderland has got a new development of affordable senior housing which looks very nice and Amherst really could use that that's it yeah thank you Dorothy so getting back to the inventory are there other questions that people have now Lin again it's just a process statement and that is that we don't vote the budget individually we vote it as one big recommendation and we don't do that until after we get done with all of these meetings in May so if we have questions now about a piece of equipment or whatever but we're going to see the department later we have an opportunity as Andy mentioned to bring that up okay just it's a process statement thank you I guess I have a general question to Kathy and Anna and that was when you were going through the JCPC process were there any particular items that other than the fire truck which we've already discussed that you as a committee had more discussion about that were more difficult for you and that would be helpful for us to know about your discussion on Kathy do you want me to the only one that you go yeah okay the only thing that we really did have a decent amount of discussion on was Cherry Hill oh no there's two things so Cherry Hill was one and then the HR study was the other Kathy am I missing I'm missing one resident proposals oh yes so thank you um that was like my whole thing uh so the you know Cherry Hill um we were just talking about how we might be able to make sure Cherry Hill is is self-sustaining profit-wise and what that would look like um if they can possibly lease equipment things like that um and that was something that I think Sean had and I'll defer to Sean to have maybe a better memory than me but um you know the the recreation director could look into for future years we're not necessarily suggesting major changes right now but it was something that as we look down the road we want to make sure that we're being both equitable and accessible with Cherry Hill especially given um the relative inaccessibility of golf as a sport um and we need to make sure that fees are covering the cost to maintain and run we'd like fees to cover the cost to maintain and run Cherry Hill so um that's a larger discussion that we'd like to have in the future down the road um the HR study and assessor study we really this was kind of the the technicality one where we were questioning how those were capital and the reason why I'm gonna I'm gonna take a stab at this Sean and tell me how tell me if I mess it up but the reason why we we ultimately kept them in the capital is that they're not in every year expense they're every once in a while I think every they've only been done I believe like every 10 years and they should probably be done more often than that but to put them in operating would um would require either unused funds every year because operating typically is a an annual um renewing budget versus kind of the once in a while capital expenditures so we did keep them in there but we what we talked about was potentially needing to expand our definition of capital to accommodate accommodate things like an HR study or an assessor study um and then the last thing was the resident requests and so this was something that uh you know prior to my time as a counselor I was working with some uh some folks who are in district five um to submit a resident capital request and it really was given the run around um and so and I'd like to think I have a decent understanding of some of the systems and structures um and I still was was bumped from place to place to place in terms of how to look like where it should go and ultimately it was not funded because it was not determined to be a um necessarily something that should come from JCPC they the committee determined that should be coming from DPW and so really the issue with it in the transportation advisory committee and so the issue with it is that Trent the TAC doesn't their advisory they don't make ultimate decisions based on conversations with them and there was a lot of confusion about who had the kind of authority and responsibility to say yes to resident projects similar to the one that uh was proposed this year so what we agreed as a committee was to reconvene probably I think after definitely after budget season probably later in the summer or into the fall to talk through the process for resident capital requests and make sure that they are going to the appropriate place and make sure that we're you know doing right by by our residents and and not putting a form out there just for the sake of putting a form out there but actually making it so that it's something that can be considered um and can be ingrained in the process and make a difference and if it can't we need to rethink it um and and not put it in there if it's something that would never get passed uh so those were the yeah Kathy go ahead yeah to Anna summarized perfectly the the three issues and just on the golf course there were two pieces of equipment that were being proposed to be purchased and those were withdrawn in favor of can we find some repurposed equipment out there you know that's not brand new given that a bunch of golf courses has actually closed you know where did where did their equipment go and it was both to say should it operate self-sustaining um to take a look at that and what is the plan you know so you know to have a plan that are we committed to having the golf course and just one of the points was made is the actual land is used all the time it's a recreational area so we we also even discussed that instead of saying cherry hill golf course it should say cherry hill uh recreation area because signage was part of what the recreation area wanted to do so it was a question of um the use of that um long term and to come back with the plan and the recreation director is fabulous and he said absolutely you know that he knew this question was coming and he was going to come up with what's the vision um i i would say on the we changed them the definition of capital to fit with these studies and it was also what elna said is because they're often multi-year and the that doesn't work well in an operating budget that they're not finished in the year they're started and the last is the resident proposal and we'd seen jcpc had seen this earlier we often get resident proposals that have to do with roads in some way crosswalks sidewalks um turning road you know doing some and they get bumped around if they're not already on the dpw list or at the top of the tack list you know and so it's it's a how do we handle them when residents think that they're coming directly to a committee for a decision and the committee's then deferring to something else so that's um i think it's an ongoing issue and people i think there's a high value to these resident proposal as a slot you know so i would i think the council and the town would be wise to keep that as a way of literally having a participation element but we need to figure out sort of the what i think you had to do in cpac elna also is someone comes to you with a proposal and you have to give them guidance on where to go before you can think about it um and we haven't been doing that with resident proposals those were the big issues andy because the thing i said last week i think last week or last time we met is the staff has done such a fabulous job of bringing us a balanced or nearly balanced budget that we're not in when we're looking at this we're really looking at smaller items like the library shelving bob on rather than on a how do we fill a one million dollar deficit hole or three million dollar deficit you know which of these deserving items do we push away so we went through it and the one other innovation and in the jcpc report talks about this a little bit more than the town managers in terms of kudos to the town is our facility manager has started to broaden the scope of the facility management so taking on the fire state the fire department so really what paul just said you know what is the need and so building that into an annual ask with a really careful thought of it's not it's the town hall building it's the police station and the fire department talked about how helpful that was to them that they didn't have to think of a piece of equipment versus repairing something in the building that someone was worried about the building over on another side and so that broadening of the scope of what he's looking at and then coming to us with a big package but the big package is very clearly outlined this is what we're going to do with the money i think is an innovation that's fabulous and it's it's a credit to him and to all of you i think that you put that together it was it it made thinking about maintenance um it it puts the spotlight on maintenance and what are the specific so crocker farm was in there the school was in there the north amherst x former school building it was really an eclectic a big group of buildings that he went through the plans for each of them and it was a really good thing that we're doing that i think thank you northy i'm just going to speak as a man in the street woman in the street i think the idea of having a study be part of the capital budget is very very bad capital is projects are supposed to be things that you can see touch or feel or sell or repurpose and uh as far as you know taxpayers in the town whenever they see the prices of these studies they're appalled and shocked and i think if you make a study a capital expense that that encourages them to be even more inflated in price so i just wanted to make that comment thank you can i just add to that or not add to it but respond to that and so both of these studies they will have to be bid out just on the price front i just want to be clear that they'll have to be competitively procured um you know so there'll be efforts to obtain the best price and george they just these were very specific the assessor needs to reassess houses and we can't put it in the operating budget so we're in this week because they don't do it in just one year they do a schedule of them um and so they are one time expenses as anna said they're not they're not a study to then go build a building not a study to figure out um what are we going to do with the following and so we the town has traditionally done it this way because of the difficulty of doing it any other way and and we're legally required to do it for assessors they have to do it so there's not a way of them carrying over the money so they get half the work done but then the rest of the work is the next year we we have this an annual operating budget is 12 months um capital can be spent over a couple years so it's a it's an odd way we treat what might otherwise be part of a department function that every five years they have to do something and we don't have a way of of putting it into a budget that allows the work to get done and we're legally required to do it so it's we tried to write it that it's not all studies it's not any study it's these it's a it's a particular kind of study that's this one time required um so I don't know whether that answers but that was the issue we we had we had a long discussion about this over multiple meetings um on a discomfort with something that is um and and it it's legally required so it is this the way we budget operating is one year capital can be more than one year I just I just think we can figure a way of changing the rules to make it work I think this in terms of taxpayers they would be appalled and I think we have to think about that particularly well I you know this is not a new discussion um and it's uh uh Sean will know better because he did the review uh rewrite of the uh document but the financial management policies and objectives defines capital and what is included in capital and I think that the definition of capital um has always included um something that's broad enough to encompass these studies because uh it it has been the way that we have traditionally approached it um and uh the only thing other alternative would be to look for creation of a third category and whether other municipalities have any models to work from I don't know the answer to that question uh Lynn um I can understand Dorothy's uh concern and confusion sorry about that I can't do anything um I I actually am glad we're both these studies are in here I do urge us to find another way to refer to multiple year items that are not capital uh having said that I'm particularly glad to see the human resource study in here uh we are facing as is every other employer a change in what salaries are looking like and for us to remain competitive we need to look at human resources this is something that I had urged and I'm delighted to see it here I I have to say tongue in cheek those of you that have talked about getting cherry hill to be self-sustaining I feel like I'm it's a broken record hopefully we could get there and thank you for trying to reemphasize that yet again you could probably go back to town meetings 20 or 30 years ago when we first purchased cherry hill um and have this same discussion so um and then finally on the with regard to the library shelves like any other item that either goes into the library or goes into a school an elementary school fort river and or um wildwood at this time I think we have to ask can it be carried into the new school building and or is it something that has to be done in order to make this particular item work until we have a new building I believe in the shelves we've said that they can be moved to the new building and that that would be the plan um thank you Andy can I respond to that real quick yes um that's a great point Lynn and Kathy and I did ask um in particular the schools there was a computer uh technology request um and I believe Mandy Joe was the one who asked at JCPC about you know for buying these and they're going to last five years will they be able to go to the new school and the designers and um opium have told us that they can it'll it'll help reduce what when we look at the school project they won't be buying tablets and laptops most likely they'll be buying more of the hardware that goes into the building itself but because we have sort of a robust one-to-one program already for the most part um that that that won't have to come out of the school project the school the Fort River and Wildwood project thank you Bernie um yeah I think the spirit of Larry Kelly still moving among us for the annual Cherry Hill maker break it golf course discussion having been through budget process in five towns um yeah and having faced umpteen questions about why did the uh HR department budget suddenly spike up by 12 percent I think it's better it's obvious classic cases because back when I was in JCPC and in other communities what do you do with one-time only studies and how do you avoid avoid the questions around encumbrances and everything else if you park them in an operating budget and why the operating budget spikes and goes down so it's just it there's no unless we have a separate budget section for one-time only projects um this is the best place to put it uh my impression is that $40,000 for a class comp uh study for the town side of Amherst is a very modest sum of money I would be surprised if we get um I'll be pleasantly surprised we get inspected that are uh comprehensive within that dollar amount uh in terms of the other pieces that have been out there I'm very supportive of the uh the fire department's uh platform truck request um years ago I saw the current platform truck in in action and it's an impressive piece of equipment um and I trust the fire department's made a good judgment we have a very data-driven uh carefully planned uh crew crew that does some very careful planning there um so too with the library shelf so I'm supportive of that in terms of of the capital budget one thing that this discussion does suggest is the town does need and apparently we're doing the uh Paul's has launched that project is we really need to to uh take a look at where our public property is what purposes it's used for we also need to do some planning around future needs uh it's something that towns in New England don't do well uh we don't set as we set aside property for conservation we don't set aside property for future development future use so I think we need that that's enough just one more thing to throw on the plate thanks okay anything else on capital because where we're at is um I think the next step is that we have scheduled it um at a future date um is it a required public forum I think on this one on the capital improvement plan and uh then after that um we will see if there's any input that we'll want to consider and uh we usually just um include the vote on the capital improvement plan at the end when we're doing the operating budgets because we want to hear from the public forum before we vote a recommendation Kathy I have a question Andy not for now but for when we vote when we're voting um voting on FY 23 is easy for me on capital voting on the five-year plan that is not balanced is less easy for me because I think we're over committing and we um we have penciled in right now and I know Sean has no other recourse we've penciled in a number a number for an override but we're drawing down on reserves so I would just like to figure out how we handle that last year at this time I think I voted against the capital plan even though I was completely for the one-year part of it so uh if we're voting on all five years versus one year is something I would just like to figure out when we get to that point um I'll get over to Sean in a second just to get a response to that um I think we can make a decision at the time we vote as to whether we're going to take two votes for one um I don't think that there's anything that precludes us from splitting the motion um and that's up to the committee when it makes a motion how a member of the committee chooses to frame it so I'm not going to try and get to the answer to that now um and if there are questions that you want to raise about the five-year plan that you would like the committee to discuss now then um you know it's still that's an appropriate part of today's discussion well I'll just say because I said it I think I said it last time I'm concerned that we're full speed ahead on both the fire station and DPW and that's what is the big draw in the out years because 35 million dollars of capital comes online and you see a big jump up in debt with those and we haven't had a discussion those are those was no problem when everything worked um when we had our four project discussion several years ago but some things have changed and we have not had the time Andy to re-examine um those both financing assumptions um and modeling so I don't think it's something we can solve over the one month period that we have to look at this budget I think it needs it needs a council finance committee discussion and I my sense is we're not ready for it yet so what the finance director has done correctly is just carried forward what we had already what we said last year what we said the year before you know in terms of when when these projects come online but we're competing for funds over a five-year period and it's not fully financed right now and that's you know the regional track is coming on too but in any case it's that that's my issue with it and it's not a short discussion so and I don't sure this is going to be resolved and we have to deal with the vote on what we're going to recommend on the capital improvement plan Sean yeah um so my memory is a little fuzzy on this but I I know at the council level you know the council is acting on the FY 23 proposal um they get the whole program but but they're the both the orders that will be in front of them will be to appropriate the funds for the FY 23 proposal and to do debt authorizations for just the ladder truck and the cracker farm gym project there won't be any debt authorizations for any other building projects as part of the capital improvement program so so I don't think again when you make your recommendation if it's focused on the FY 23 I don't think that commits you to anything beyond what's in that what's in that that's what I was yeah thank you okay um Lynn yeah um so this coming Monday at five o'clock we do the operating budget hearing uh on June 6th we do the capital budget hearing and then on the 13th is when we want to make sure I'm right Sean uh on the 13th is when we if we're ready as a council we vote the budget both operating in capital just to give you some sense although as a finance committee we tend to we can we have to conclude our deliberations by the end of May am I correct Andy um I guess our date is either June 1st or June 2nd I think it's 30 days after referral it was referred on May 2nd I think it will all be with the calendar some future time but yeah I the uh you know we talked about needing to do a revamp of the whole analysis regarding the building projects based upon all of the changes of information since the last review of it and I think that there was in discussions that I've had it seemed like that that was more likely to happen after we complete the work on the budget for FY 23 just a matter of staff capacity yes I would say staff capacity and also we're trying to wait we want to use the most updated information that we have from the school project as well which I think is the big we have a range but as much as we can get more precise information I think would be better to include so is there any further discussion on the part of the budget this capital improvement plan for FY 23 expenditures that was people want to raise now and if not then we should get to the I was just looking there's no no attendees at the moment so I'm not going to deal with the public comment question right now get to the water sewer rights so there was a very specific proposal it has been presented I think there's a draft order if I'm correct yeah do you want me to pull it up or the memo or the orders I think it's up to the if the committee has any general questions now otherwise who would be in a position I think of voting as to whether we're recommending orders but I want to make sure that we don't rush at discussion if there are other questions first Bob yeah I just wanted to go over again the water rate given that we have the uncertainty around where we're going to be at the end of the year and just to show if you could just let us know what kind of contingencies built into that that would be helpful yeah so I'm going to share my screen real quick so this is the water summary so there's a couple types there's a couple areas where we've scaled back so originally for FY 23 when we were starting to look at our usage we were we were going to go a little higher we were going to so this column right here versus total usage if you look at our history we were in the 1.1 range 1.8 1.9 in that range sorry 1.1 or 1.08 and you know when we talk to our TPW superintendent there's a lot of construction going on in town which will support higher consumption levels in the future between some of the developments that you mass the developments you see going around downtown but even despite that we decided to scale this number back for FY 23 and the FY 24 number we were going to go higher for FY 23 but we brought this back to a lower level so this is these two FY 23 and FY 24 consumption these are the areas we'll be monitoring very closely to see how we're doing how we're progressing through the year and we'll be able to the good thing about water and sewer billing is every month we can kind of compare to history we have a nice summary chart of year over year by month consumption so we can get a sense very early on are we kind of back in line with prior years are we still a little bit behind and what we've seen this year is we are getting closer to being back in line with pre pandemic levels but there's some areas where it's not quite there so that's one area and then on the expense side I'll just say you know we do have uh we have five hundred sixty thousand dollars for capital if the expense budget was in trouble we might um look to scale some of that back if we had to um some of that's to maintain the water system um and to make improvements to the water system um but if we were in a real bind that would be one area we'd look at um I think the last thing I'll say is one thing that's not baked into any of this is any changes to the water and sewer regulations so if there were to be any changes that were to result in higher capital costs because the the town assumed greater responsibility for um repairing the infrastructure that has not been factored in and you can see our and you can see our sorry one last thing the reserve as of um to start this year was 1.4 million right presumably any change in in um the regulations or what the the the the town is covering wouldn't wouldn't take effect until FY 24 correct I think that's part of the discussion is the timeline I think that would be one thing you know we would advocate for is any changes would coincide with potentially a rate increase as well if it was gonna um if it was gonna mean more costs okay okay thanks this has been very this is helpful um yeah so we've gotten a couple different pieces of news regarding centennial I'd like if you could review that tell me if that's in here and also I know we're shovel ready but have we actually gone out to bid yeah um so what's in here is what has been authorized by the council so it's um there's an 11 million dollar sort of construction authorization and there was money prior to that that was for design engineering um so only what's been authorized is in here in that current debt when you see the real big jump um in FY 24 um so since those authorizations we've because of the same thing everyone's seeing with other projects cost escalations driven that um those estimates up to you know we've heard between 17 18 somewhere in that range potentially um 18 million so we've been you know as we've said in some of these memos in the past we've been looking for alternative sources um to try to get back down to what was authorized um so one piece of information we just got very recently was that we're we're in the queue for the the I'll probably get this one wrong there's two there's two state revolving funds so I think we're in the clean drinking water um one which basically they finance it and we were in that program for 14 million dollars because at the time we applied for it that's what the cost estimates were at um so we're in that program at 14 million dollars or we're in the queue for 14 million dollars um if that's successful and that proceeds as planned um that would finance that portion of the project um at a very favorable interest rate interest rates uh better than what we would get on the open market right now um and there potentially would also be some loan forgiveness um in the range of 20 percent or so um so so that would go a long way towards closing the gap and then the other piece of news that we received was that the governor proposed a bill and in that bill was um funding it must have been from a prior application uh Tom Andrew may know more about this that but we were in there for three and a half million or so for Centennial um through the mass works program and that's not as far as I know that's not approved yet um it's just a bill um but if that passes and that combined and we're allowed to use both programs um if that passes combined with this other program that we just that were in the queue for we would be pretty close to being within the the funding that's been authorized um so those are both really promising and really you know kind of um I guess I would say good luck or good timing in terms of when this is all happening um and then I think the last your last question was where are we in terms of construction so now that we're in so they're ready to bid it out potentially this summer in the fall the plans are pretty close um some of that timing may now depend on the programs that we're in and and making sure that we're following whatever um guidance they have in terms of when costs would start um so we have to dig into that a little more but um they are they are ready to bid it out the summer if we're if we're ready with the funding and just one added thing on the um state revolving fund which is the 14 million dollar loan because we are a housing choice community which means that we've done our fair share of affordable housing and have complied with everything the state wants us to do on affordable housing we get an added bonus in terms of the benefit from that that program right and that could mean you know that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars I think it's a half percentage point off the interest rate um so when you you know apply that to 10 or or 15 million dollars whatever it gets financed over 20 years um that adds up so that's that's a one of the benefits of the town valuing affordable housing and do you see with the bid supply chain issues or do we just don't know that yet supply chain issues in terms of the timing um we know we know the supply chain issues have already that's why it's got up to 18 million um we haven't heard that yet um there could be um there's a lot of steel involved there's a lot of concrete involved um and yeah just to frame that this is basically a big treatment plant with a building around it it's really just a barn that holds a lot of equipment um but we we're hearing early sentiment that the supply chain issues are sort of simmering down um that the transportation issues are being resolved they're being worked through the system there's still a demand for copper and certain products and especially if anything comes from china so um I think there will be cost escalation but maybe not as dire as we had initially heard um thank you for all that Michelle so I'm just clarifying that the email we received from Paul yesterday um funding for centennial water treatment facility is what Sean or what was just being discussed okay and the way that I read that is that we had received the funding but what I heard you say is that we're in some sort of pipeline for potentially receiving funding so there's two so so that one from all accounts it seems like we're in um so that one I we're more confident about that we're in the program and so we're just follow we're going to take their lead now going forward as to what our next steps are um we have to submit an application with with different pieces of information attached to it um but that one we feel pretty good about it's the other one that was in the governor's um proposal of how to use someone expended ARPA money and some other funding sources um but that's really just a proposal and it would still have to be approved and passed in order for the funding to come to us that was the subject of the hearing that I was at yesterday yesterday okay so if I just so we had put in a grant earlier a little some time ago for a mass works grant for 3.5 million dollars and then they sort of scooped that all up and said hey we can address all these things that we had in the queue and we can throw throw them all in here and then I think there's a debate over who gets to spend that money are they it's a legislature going to actually act on it this year or they're going to hold on it for another year which would be problematic for us and just to follow up so if we do if we are successful with that does that impact what the the proposal that you put forward and if so how how does it impact it so if we're successful in both of these um it will get us very close to sticking with the plan that you see in the memo because again this that will get us back down to what was already authorized right now the costs are coming in higher so um either way we will likely have to come back to the council to authorize more funds um similar to the way the school project was where there's grants and you have to be self-authorized the full amount um subject to you know reducing it by a grant uh amounts received we will likely have to come back to you all at some potentially in the near future to increase the authorization with the acknowledgement that we have these programs that would reduce the share of the um the town share got it okay thank you so much but they that would in the macro sense not affect the rate calculation right Dorothy um I need some help on the concept of loan forgiveness because why couldn't they just do it up front um so it could you run me through how that works yeah so that's that's an area where I'll have I have to do more so this is a new program to me I don't know how often the town's at the town's been in it in the near past I don't think so um my understanding but it could be wrong so I have to do some more research is that the amount we end up paying back will be the reduced amount so it's not like at the end we you know we pay the full amount and at the end they just cut off some years I think the amount that they finance will ultimately be the lower amount but don't quote me on that because we still have to dig into this a little bit more okay thank you are we ready to have Shawn put up the I think so I mean I then I'm ready to make a motion okay um could you put up the in the can I go ahead Andy yes okay I recommend that I recommend that the finance committee I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council approval of order number fy 23-10 an order setting of the water and sewer rates to be effective July 1 2022 your second game seconds okay uh so with the motion that's been made in seconded that's substantial discussion is there anything more to be said about the motion if not I'm going to proceed to a vote and maybe I'll go in reverse alphabetical order just to do something different and ask for members of the committee to vote and for members who who are counselors and uh non-voting members to indicate whether they support the motion so doing that then I would start with Alicia yes I'm a yes uh Kathy yes Michelle yes uh Bernie support uh Matt support uh Bob or Lynn all right so we have a vote this um unanimous is from voting members five to zero and um all three members supporting the motion carries and um I believe that um I once again take a quick look we still have no attendees so we can we don't have any public comment for today um that brings us to announcements and next agenda and I think we know what the next agenda is I think the important thing is just to remember that um if Sean's going to get any questions to uh the the schools of the library that um he needs to get that today um otherwise it really won't be helpful here so um yeah and I've gotten a lot of I've gotten a couple sets of questions already so um and I've passed those along to um two department heads Kathy yeah I just have a question on schools it was what I before we went live we don't have a budget to look at we have one one page so Sean if you could if you could point me if you just give me a link I'll go and read whatever you know I've gotten a few emails describing well yeah so we have just received that this morning we'll get that posted up and share it with the finance committee perfect thank you two documents you'll be getting and so that'll be in our packet as well so I don't have to go to the verbal page okay perfect thank you Paul please share it with the full council sure thank you okay so um I don't think we I think we've uh taken care of everything on the agenda unless there's anything that people want to raise your ask in general about the committee process otherwise I think we have achieved our two-hour goal um and we even said we would go longer needed these meetings but um anything else if I don't see any hands go up we will we will need all the time next week I'll say going forward we will likely need all all three hours um so but I do want to uh take advantage for everybody if uh returning so if I don't see any hands going up going once going twice I declare the meeting adjourned thank you