 So I'm going to start with the open meeting protocol. My name is Charlie Fosca, Chair of the Finance Committee, permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipate on agenda or on agenda. This meeting is being recorded. And can't hear me. When I call your name, please answer that in the affirmative of your present, Grant Ibbian, Shane Blundell. Here. John Ellis. Here. Mary Margaret, Carolyn White. Mary Margaret Frankelman. I'm here. Arif Padaria. Jonathan Wallach. Here. And Arif is here. He's just... I know he is. Ryan Beck. Peter Howard. Here. Shailene Fokers. Daryl Harmer. John Deist. John Deist. Here, there. Alan Jones. Yeah, I'm here. Annula Court. Here. Bill Keller. Alan Tosti. Here. George Cozer. Here. Christine Deschler. Here. Dean Karman. Here. David McKenna. Here. We just try... Carolyn White. Ryan Beck. Shailene Pokers. Bill Keller. Okay, no answers on this. Thank you very much. We have a quorum. Is Alan Jones here? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Also anticipated speakers tonight, we have Anne Chaplin, Sandy Pooler, and possibly Julie Wayman. The open meeting, the Onkin Finance Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's order of March 12th, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we've been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings and as such, the governor's order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings in a publicly accessible physical occasion. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The order, which you can find posted with agenda materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded so the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is reported by law. This meeting will feature public comment only in writing by email to lizdigginsatown.arlington.ma.us or in her absence to cfoskittatown.arlington.ma.us.com. .us. For this meeting, the Finance Committee is convening by Zoom app as posted on the town meeting website, identifying how the public may join in comment. Please note that the meeting is being recorded and some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that your broadcast may be captured by the recording. All supporting materials have been provided that have been provided to this body are available on the town's website unless otherwise noted. The public's encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless the chair notes otherwise. The chair will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks. The chair will be down the line of members inviting them to provide any comments, questions or motions. Please hold until your name is called. Further, please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking and please remember to speak clearly in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. For any response, please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking. If members wish to engage politically with other members, please do so through the chair, taking care to identify yourself. Finally, each vote in this meeting will be conducted by roll call vote. Thank you very much. Okay, so. Starley is Darrell, I'm here. Thank you, Darrell. Got that, Peter? Yes. So- And Brian Becker showed up too. Oh, good. Hi, Brian. So, again, a call for budgets if you haven't got your budgets in and please be sure to put them in the calendar or send them to Liz so that she'll know that they're available. There'll be no meeting on March 24th. And vision Arlington is having a town meeting candidates night. And we thought that a lot of finance committee members who also might be town meeting members what might want to attend that meeting. I'd like to make a couple of comments about department review decorum. So, I've had some feedback that some members of the town management team and department managers, et cetera, have felt at one or two think time review meetings that their work was taken with less than the degree of seriousness, which it deserves. So, I'm just mentioning this. I have to say that it's vague and vague in general comments and not well substantiated, but nonetheless, it does concern me. I think we have to remember that these various department managers are professionals. They're seriously engaged in their business. They're trying to do a good job. And no matter what circumstances we might find them in or what circumstances we might view their budgets, we still have to continue a relationship with them. We should treat them with the utmost of gravitas and respect. So, I just wanted to pass that thought along so that we can be sure that we're, when we advance on their budgets that we do so with appropriate amount of seriousness. The next item on the agenda, minutes, Peter. I asked Liz to circulate the minutes on Thursday, but as far as I can make out, she didn't do it. So, we'll always have a chance to look at them. All right, I'm glad you confirmed that because I thought I was delinquent. I said, what can I have done with those minutes? Okay. So, the next formal item on the agenda since I expected that this was gonna take a little bit longer is the town manager. But I don't know if the town manager, I think they're gonna come at eight o'clock. So, maybe we can just jump to some budgets at this point. At the last meeting, we were in the middle of the DPW budgets. Maybe I'll just digress for a moment. I sent a memo out today to everyone in basically following some comments that Christine made two weeks ago, three weeks ago about the difference between actuals and the fiscal 20 actuals and the 21 and 22 budgets in also some of the conversation that we were having at the last meeting. I went through the spreadsheet that's on our SharePoint site and compared the department's budgets from fiscal year 20 actuals and the two budgeted 21 and 22 columns. And so, I summarized that in the memo. In, I eliminated, I didn't include any of the schools in the pension funds and I eliminated Snow and Ice. The pension and the insurance I eliminated because they're sort of personnel related. I didn't include any salaries and I eliminated Snow and Ice because it's somewhat controlled by factors really outside the direct control of the town. The balance of the expense budgets are the ones that most of you have been looking at at various times. And what I found was that there was a 24% in a weighted sense and an average weighting there was a 24% difference between the fiscal 20 actual budgets and the fiscal 21, I'm sorry, let me say that again between the fiscal 20 actual expenses and the fiscal 21 budgets. The fiscal 21 budget and the fiscal 22 budgets are pretty close together so there's not much of a difference there but they're both budgeted columns, not actuals. So, I guess the first thing I concluded was that the observations that Christine Dechler made were, reasonable observation to make. I don't know why all these budgets have these differences. I didn't go back and look at every single one and try to explain it. I figured that since you're all gonna be looking at them, you'll have the opportunity to dig into those details. I did discuss these with Alan Jones because I wanted our computer expert to check him out and make sure I wasn't messing anything up. And he actually went back and did some further analysis. I don't know, do you wanna comment on your CAPRA work, Alan? I took a hint from Dean and I went into the FY20 audited cappers where they have the actual expenses for FY20. Now, they do include the salaries so it's a really different set of data. And what I found going through all the departments is that there is a variation from department to department but if you look at the whole budget as a total it was only about a 1% variance. One thing I did notice in the audit, there's the actuals for FY20 and then there's a carry forward column that is probably money that was encumbered in FY20 that probably not spent till 21. But in most cases, the FY20 actual without the carry forward is what matched the FY20 actions in the budget book. So I'm not exactly sure how they booked the carry forwards but it looks like in the budget book they're using the, they call it the cash accounting for FY20 and maybe our Dean can elaborate on that. But bottom line is I didn't see, including the salaries I didn't see any massive over budgeting but again, that included salaries and the expenses are a relatively small percentage of the entire budget. So I'm happy to send that spreadsheet out. So I'm perplexed why the actuals that the numbers that we get as actuals have such a difference with respect to the budgets. That's still in my mind an unanswered question. Right, but you're looking at the expense part of it. Expenses only, not the salaries. Whereas I add, the audit includes expenses and salaries and the salaries really swamp any variations in the expense. Probably, yeah. So, and I'm not suggesting here that there's anything nefarious afoot. I'm just trying to understand what the basis is against which we're supposed to be measuring things. And I'm concerned about the differences. So I think it deserves some questions and explanations made from the manager's office and the comptroller's office just so we understand where the numbers come from and what their meanings are. Dean, did you have anything you wanted to add to that? Being our resident. No, he summarized it well. Resident CPAs. Oh, I think I would summarize it well. Okay. Okay. So while we're waiting for the manager and deputy town manager to come aboard, Christine, can I suggest we pick up on the DPW budgets? We could, but we'll be interrupted at eight. I don't know if you just want to do other budgets, smaller budgets or go back into DPW knowing that we'd have to stop again. Well, all right, there's no section. Yeah. Mr. Chair, we haven't voted on the CPA committee yet. You're right. Here comes Sandy and Adam. Sandy and Adam are here. Okay. Hello, Adam. Hi, Sandy. Hi, Charlie. Okay, we're rescued by the bell. I told the select board that a very important committee was waiting for me, so they wrapped it up quick. Okay. Well, good. So Peter, the record should show that Adam and Sandy, is Julie going to join us tonight or not? I didn't know what she will. Okay. In fact, she just arrived. She's here and just turned us. Okay, great. Hi, Julie. So the manager and deputy town manager have received some questions from various corners of the finance committee, including we're looking for some explanation on the Health and Human Services budget, the IT budget and possibly we had some questions from last week on the DPW budget. And we were also going to discuss article, I think I'm trying to remember now, which in the two warrants, which it was, but it's article on transportation. And then Sandy might make some comments on the remote meetings article. And then I don't know if there will be any remarks on the expense budgets in general that we were just speaking about. So let me turn the meeting over to the town manager and deputy town manager. So maybe perhaps the easier one for me to start with, I think it was article 73, the one in regards to the Uber and Lyft transportation fees. I might have that number wrong. Is that okay with you, Mr. Chair? Yes, it is, let me see. I'm not sure which, the honest, which numbering system we're dealing with, but. Is that the co-transportation one? Is that what you're talking about? Yes, it's the $39,000 specific amount. That's 60. We haven't talked about that yet. Yeah, no, because we wanted to get some information from the town manager. And that was article 65, 39,153. Yes, that's the one. That's the one. So that is, that's a very specific sum of money for a specific reason. Several years ago, the state passed a new fee on what they call transportation network companies. And per that statute, they created a transportation network division of the Department of Public Utilities. That collects a 20 cent ride per assessment on all TNC rides originating in Massachusetts. So TNC you predominantly are familiar with as Uber or Lyft or services like Uber or Lyft. So each year, half of the per ride assessment is dispersed to each municipality based on the number of rides originating in that municipality. And the funds, again, statutorily must be used to address the impact of transportation network services on municipal roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure or any other public purpose substantially related to the operation of transportation network services in the city or town, including but not limited to the complete streets program established in general law and other programs that support alternative modes of transportation. So we have to, we can only spend those monies basically on transportation related matters or infrastructure. The first year we received these funds, we put the monies towards the implementation of the permanent bus rapid transit lane in East Arlington. The second year that we received these funds, we put them towards the sidewalk replacement project in Arlington Center. And this year, we plan to ask for the allocation of these funds for continuing sidewalk work in Arlington Center and other accessibility work on sidewalks throughout town. So we're trying to keep it necessarily off the roadways as there's a highlight for alternative modes of transportation. So I think what we'd be asking for the committee for favorable action by the committee would be to endorse or approve the expenditure of those funds on again sidewalk improvements and accessibility improvements in town. Any question for the manager? Any questions for the manager? Yes. Peter. Adam, are those funds in hand? Are they from last year? The ones that you're... Yes. These are actually, there's a pretty significant lag. The $39,000 amount is from revenue collected in 2019. So yes, they are in fact in hand already. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions on this matter? Okay, we'll take a vote on that at the end of the meeting so we don't hold people up with these roll call votes. So then the second subject that caused some questions in general was the growth in the health and human services budget from fiscal year 20 to fiscal year 21 to fiscal year 22. And I believe the aggregate growth was something like $172,000. The growth in, and then there was a new department created and the growth in the new department was between the budget of fiscal 21 and 22 was $30,000, principally in expenses. And there are some related questions about two new employees or two new positions I should say that were allegedly or potentially covered by COVID related expenses, but maybe we're not. I don't know where we actually wound up on that. Mary Margaret, have I said that correctly? I think that we wanted to make sure that those two people were, that we had more hours for people because of COVID for the people who'd be working in public health. But there were a number of questions about well, the diversity one, but also I think that I answered most of the questions about health and human services, but there was one question about the two vacant positions that we're gonna be, those people will be rehired at a lower rate. We discussed that. Well, I could take a crack at some of that. Go right ahead. So to start with the two health agent positions that are in question. So we use utilizing CARES Act money that was the first round of federal support that was passed back in calendar year 2020 in response to the pandemic. We created and or paid for out of the CARES Act to health agent positions. Significantly focused on contact tracing now focused on both contact tracing and working as part of our local vaccination efforts. CARES Act monies were initially only allowed to be utilized until December 30th, 2020. Kind of weird that it wasn't the 31st, but December 30th, 2020. However, subsequent action by the federal government pushed that date till December 31st, 2021. So what we've proposed in our FY22 budget is for those two health agent positions to remain to be funded by CARES Act money through December 31st, 2021. So through the first half of FY22 and then for the general fund to pick up those positions for the remainder of FY22. So from January one until June 30th of calendar year 22 up until the end of fiscal year 22. We would only continue to utilize those positions if the circumstances of the pandemic required it. We've maintained those positions in the budget utilizing both CARES Act and general fund money to be sure that we have adequate resources to get us through whatever remains in this pandemic. I fully acknowledge sitting here tonight things are looking much better. Rates of vaccination are increasing, rates of transmission are going down, but I'm not myself fully ready to say that we're through with the hard work that the health department's been doing over the course of the past year plus. So I think what we've really done is try to put in place a budget that makes sure we have the resources that we might need if variants were to get out of control or unexpectedly there was to be another surge in the work continued. I think what I would have to say is I'm giving you the assurance that I'm trying to give you the assurance that as the pandemic ebbs, we will start to move back down towards the prior level of staffing for health agents for those that type of position in the health department. So I don't know if you want me to stop there and see if there's any questions on that subject. Mr. Chairman. Al. Could the new money which supposedly is coming towards us be used for the second half of fiscal 22 for those two positions also? Or do we know that? We don't know for sure yet. There's a chance that could be allowed. The language in the American Rescue Act talks about premium pay or premium time pay for those responding to the pandemic. So I think that speaking to either stipended work or potentially over time work, I'm not sure that we'll be allowed to use it for direct salary expenditures. If we are, I wanna talk about it with Sandy, but I would almost guarantee that we would try to do that. But I think we're in a little bit of a waiting game. Hopefully in the next week or so, we'll see the more detailed regulations from the Department of Treasury telling us exactly how we can utilize those funds. So any other questions for Adam? Looking for hands. I have, I'm sorry, I have a question. Go right ahead, Mary. I mean, not a question. It was more that I, and I think I told you this when I talked to you last that those two positions were also working or the two positions we had already were working more hours. And that's part of why there's some salary difference because they're working more hours than in previous year. And again, like Adam said, let's hope we don't have to continue using them that many hours. Mary Margaret, are they working more hours or do we have less grant money that are paying for hours? They're definitely working more hours. And I think she's, and she probably is using all the grant money first that she can, but I got the impression that they, in addition to that, they were working because they were, it's new people and the grants can somewhat pay for that but the existing people we had were working more hours than they would have in a normal year. So that's accurate. So Adam, I think I heard you say that after December 31st, if there's no further requirement from the pandemic that these positions will be dissolved, is that correct? Yes, that's correct. If we're not contact tracing, if we're not still doing some form of mass vaccination, we would look to eliminate those positions. They're not part of a permanent growth in the personnel staffing. The plan is not to have, no, I agree. The plan was not to permanently grow the base of the health department. Mr. Chairman. Yes, Al. Okay, there's three other positions. One is the public health nurse that's grown from 38 to 64. And then we have the new over offsets. And then there's the sewer of weights and measures which is more than double. And then we have the program coordinator for AYX-SC that's gone up by about 20,000. How much of this is taken up with the offsets down below? In other words, are they just broken out and put in the offsets for more transparency or are there really growth in those hours and why? Especially the CR of weights and measures. I think Sandy's prepared to answer that. Go ahead, Sandy. I'm gonna start with the public health nurse. If you look at the offsets below, there's $26,470 that are offsets that come from the medical reserve core funding. So it is, as Mr. Tosti said, just a matter of trying to be more transparent. The public health nurse always worked those hours and we in the past had only shown the general fund portion but now we're trying to show all portions of where that nurse's funding is coming from. And then the sealer, in a similar fashion, the sealer, just give me one second to... The sealer is shared between several towns, right? Correct, correct. And we increased the sealers, well, we've offset $12,302 from the sealers salary in this budget. So that makes up pretty much all the difference between what was budgeted last year and what's being budgeted this year. Again, it's a transparency attempt. That obviously wasn't transparent enough. No good deed goes unpunished. I'm learning that lesson over and over again. And the third position was the AYCC program coordinator. AYCC program coordinator. I think it's AYHSC. I'm sorry, AY? Yeah, sorry. Oh yeah. Oh, I see, program coordinator. Yes, just a second please. That one, there is $20,176 that, again, is an offset. Again, somebody whose hours weren't changed but whose funding source is just made more explicit. Thank you. Christine, did you have any more questions? I have a question on an expense item. I don't know if you want to move to that. Maybe we can just deal with the personnel for a moment. That's fine. So keep your hand up, Shane. Thanks, Charlie. It's sort of a personnel question, but more about CARES Act. So we have like the CARES Act, we have a second transfer money coming. Do we expect that we will use all of the money available in the CARES Act? And if not, are we thinking about ways that we could redeploy it to offset general fund expenses? Does that make sense? Go ahead. I could, thank you. So we have to do extensive finalings with CARES Act. Originally, we were eligible for about $4 million in costs. We have still on the table that we have a file for and we could potentially add if we identified the right cost, about $600,000 at this point. So we do keep looking at it. And if there are other costs, we will try to file for as much as that $4 million as we can. That's just where we stand today. And we have a whole year to continue to identify those costs and continue to file it. Thank you. Alan? Questions about the expenses, maybe the same as Christine. Okay, so Christine. The 37,000 contracted services expense. Can you just clarify what that is for? Are we now carrying it because a grant, we lost a grant. Did we ever pay that money, pay those expenses from general funds rather than the grant? Can you just tell me more about that? It is because we lost the grant, it's money that we pay to the Somerville Homeless Coalition for their services for homeless and other people. Both, I mean, as I learned more about it, Adam probably knows better than I, but there are homeless people throughout Arlington, both kind of down by route two there in the woods, but throughout town and so we use Somerville Homeless Coalition fairly extensively, we used to get grant money that covered our share for paying some of the homeless, but that grant stopped rather suddenly. And so now we are picking up the tab for those services. Adam, do you wanna add anything? Yeah, I mean, I would just add that what those services are are the hours of outreach workers that work for the Somerville Homeless Coalition that partner with the Health Department and the Police Department in providing services and referrals to primarily the homeless population that's currently living in the MuGar Woods. They have encamped in other parts of town before and there are a smaller number of homeless people in other parts of town, but the service is primarily focused on those currently encamped in the MuGar Woods. Did we utilize those services without a grant before? In other words, we got grant money to provide these services and we've been using grant money, now the grant money has dried up, right? But prior to the grant money, was any part of that already in this budget or in any budget of the town to provide those services? In other words, I guess what I'm asking is, are we now paying out of the general fund for expenses that were until now always covered by a grant? Which raises the question, should we still continue to provide those services when the grant money dries up? So I think the answer is, I think how to answer this. So we for a long time have utilized town time to provide some level of these services, but had previously only ever had access to Somerville Homeless Coalition services via the grant. So from that point of view, yes, this is the first time we're asking for town resources to pay, town tax dollars to pay for services rendered by the Somerville Homeless Coalition. Andy, were you gonna add something there? No, I was gonna speak just to the money question, but I think Adam has been much more involved with kind of the day-to-day or overseen the services that go in between the police and HHS, which I think goes to the issue of why these issues are important. I think we've just done a lot of work with the people with the homeless in town. And I think have tried to keep them safe and keep the rest of the public safe. So I think they are important services. So I wanted to ask you, Adam, if you could elaborate on the types of services that the Somerville Homeless Coalition provides to the town for these homeless people. So it's predominantly social work services, both in terms of direct social work with those living in the Mugar Woods, as well as referrals to services for different levels of potential mental health treatment or substance use treatment. And I think perhaps most importantly, it's referrals and even assistance with filling out applications for access to housing, whether it be either temporary or permanent housing. I mean, ultimately our goal in doing this work is to house the individuals that are living in the Mugar Woods. We were successful again via a grant source, I believe last year in housing eight individuals that are still housed. The challenge is with homelessness growing in the region, this has become an attractive spot for people to come and take up residence. So we've had success in housing people, but there's still more people residing in the woods. Ultimately, like what we'd like to do is find either other grant resources, potentially state or federal level sources, we're also pushing the Mugar's to date to no avail to help us, but ultimately we do this right. The goal would be to provide housing to those living here, living there today, and then to find the right steps to take so that that space is no longer as welcoming a place for the homeless to encamp, encamp, excuse me. Thank you, Arif, no, Jonathan, I thought I saw Arif stand up, but Jonathan, Jonathan, what are you doing? Yeah, sorry, I was just trying to multitask here, unsuccessfully. Adam, would we be able to use any of the American Rescue Plan Act funds for this purposes? So I think the answer's similar to the answer I gave to Al about the health agents in that maybe, and it looks like there could be one of the criteria that would allow us to, and if we were able to use some of the Rescue Act funds, I think we would, both for these services that we're talking about, we could potentially have a conversation about paying for it out of Rescue Act funds as opposed to the General Fund. I'm also hopeful that we might be able to utilize some of the Rescue Act monies to find either temporary or permanent housing for the people living down in the Mugar Woods. So I think there are possibilities there, John. And what about rent relief? I think as I read, again, the four general criteria is I think looking at rent and relief will be a possibility as well. Very good, thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions on the Health and Human Services budget for Valentine's Day, you have your hand up. Yeah, just quickly, could the, if the property transfer tax, I think that's what it's called, which is on the warrant for this year, if that passes, would those funds be eligible to use for this purpose or related purpose? You know, honestly, I'd have to double check on that to be sure. I know that they certainly are intended to be used for affordable housing, whether or not they could be used for homelessness prevention or services. I'm not positive, I could look into that. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Chairman, Annie LeCourt has her hand raised as well. Yeah, Annie. So Adam, so we've housed eight people. Do you have any idea what the census is of folks that are still falling in that catchment area? The last I heard was about 10 people. Okay, and I know Christine will probably be able to say off the top of her head, but perhaps you could mention how hard it is to house someone who's a member of that population and why it costs so much money because it does cost a lot of money to rehouse someone who is homeless. So I'm definitely not expert in those matters, but I, both in working with Christine and her team and just by the virtue of the work that my wife does at the Pine Street and I have a little sort of, just enough information to be dangerous, but the cost is really in that a lot of the people living, a lot of homeless people need some type of supportive housing. They're not necessarily ready to move into some type of independent living in an apartment. Some certainly are and some do with limited assistance, but many of these people need either supportive housing or a high level of case management. So it's not just the cost of rent, but the cost of personnel to help those people get housed and stay housed. So yeah, taking someone from the streets and then getting them stabilized and supportive and then eventually hopefully to more permanent housing can be costly based on that need. They need that help to get back to where they need to be. So then let me ask you a quick follow-up question, the theme of which I think you will recognize from our previous emails. Wouldn't we be better to invest in more social workers in the town and sort of take the police out of the picture here in terms of dealing with this population and providing them assistance? So, I mean, this might be a deeper conversation than we wanna get into tonight, but it's tough, right? I do think we can and should think about expanding our ranks of social workers in the Arlington Police Department. But I know firsthand that most, if not all of the social workers that we have working for the town wouldn't go into those woods without a police officer with them. And I don't mean to suggest that the people living in there are dangerous, but there is hesitation or fear with entering the property, especially after hours of dark. So I think it's a tricky wicket to work through. I mean, I'm not refuting your point, Annie, but I think it's a challenging, I think having police involvement in some way is important, but I think your point is well taken at finding ways to enhance our investment in the town's social work capacity would be money well spent. Anything else, Annie? Arif? Yes, so I have a question following the same line of thought Adam is maybe Sandy made the comment, but the comment was made that it's not only keeping those, the homeless safe, but it's keeping the town folk safe. And so being a resident of the town, how do I feel safe? How does my kids feel safe? And I don't mean it in any negative way. So let's be very clear. What I'm trying to say is if there are homeless people around, I don't know what the intents are. Intention is I have a 14 year old son. How do you intend to keep the town safe? What are those exact services, measures? Maybe it's obvious to everyone else, but if you could just classify those or mention them, that would be helpful. So I mean, I think the main effort we undertake is very regular outreach and service to those living in the Newgar Woods identifying who they are, getting an understanding of whether or not they have any prior criminal history. And if there is any reason for us to have immediate concern about dangers they might present to the general public, that is actually one of the critical roles that Officer Joe Kniff plays with the outreach team is working with them to get identities and learn more about the people. If there are people in camping in the woods with outstanding criminal warrants or matters that would need to be addressed by law enforcement, those would be addressed. We've been fortunate that the people living in the woods to date haven't had criminal histories of, I think, I can't guarantee no criminal histories, but either none or limited criminal history such that concern about past behavior posing a danger to the community would be very low. Again, moving on from that. So we wanna know the people who are in there so that we understand what level of security and protection might need to be provided. Moving on from there, it's not really, it's not a safe, sanitary or healthy place for them to be living. So we're trying to find ways to get them housed. I think ultimately though, or if I can't promise, I can't promise a solution overnight or full safety and security. I mean, I couldn't do that even absent the presence of homeless people camping in the MuGar Woods. But I think via our outreach, we've scoped the situation as best we can to have an understanding of the risk that it might pose. Okay, thank you. And is this in conjunction with other towns, I guess, right? The neighboring towns, is that correct? Yeah, we do keep in regular contact with Cambridge and Belmont, at least for where this population is currently located. In past times where people were camping along the AOF, broke closer to Somerville, we worked more closely with the city of Somerville, but right now the work is more tightly with Belmont and Cambridge. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Oh, so Adam, I have a related question to the comments that you just made. Suppose that we were very fortunate and we were able, you said, I don't know how many people, let's assume there are 10 individuals living there in the woods. Suppose we were able to get all 10 people housed in Arlington somewhere, okay? My question is, is this a regional problem? I mean, are these people coming from Arlington or are they coming from Cambridge and Boston and other locations to that position so that no matter what we do, our success is just going to provide an avenue of relief to other communities that aren't helping to support this effort. So it is most definitely a regional challenge. I don't know offhand the origins of the people currently residing in the woods, whether or not they're from Arlington or not. It's definitely a regional challenge. My experience in terms of the Thorndike area, the ALWIFE area is, I've been aware of a homeless population in that area as long as I've worked here, so over the better part of the last decade. They, people have lived under the overpass so that goes over the, you know, the route to overpass that goes over the bikeway, sometimes camping by the ALWIFE Greenway, sometimes camping in the Mugar Woods. And the reality is government action, whether it be state or local government action, often has prompted them to move from one location to another, but there has been a seemingly very consistent presence of homeless people living in that area. I don't know this for sure, but my best educated guess is the red line terminating where it does makes it an attractive location because of transportation access for these folks. So I think you're, I mean, part of what we've talked about a lot internally is if we were able to house the people currently camping in the Mugar Woods and hypothetically, I don't know that we would or could do this, but then we hypothetically fenced the property to make it inaccessible. Sitting here tonight, I'm not convinced that solves the problem. I think there could very well still be homeless people who would choose to find a place. It could be just over the border in Cambridge or just over the border in Belmont or it could be in Arlington, but I do think it is an area as there is still a regional problem that people would find attractive while homeless. A difficult problem. It is. Any other questions on health and human services for town management? Okay, thank you for that, Adam. So I guess the next subject that had some concern was the evolution of the DEI position into a DEI department and an apparent increase in the expense levels. And maybe you could give us some clarity on that position. And I believe one of the members asked the question, why if we hired a DEI manager to help address this whole issue in the town, do we now have to hire a consultant also to address the issue when that was, we thought the purpose of hiring the director. So I guess I'll start at the beginning in that it would be effectively too well. Back in FY20, so in late calendar year 2018, we made the decision to create what at that time we call the diversity, equity and inclusion coordinator position. It was sort of the culmination of a number of years of Christine Borgen-Jono working with me and the human resources director and Sandy trying to figure out the best way to provide administrative support to the Human Rights Commission, the Disability Commission and the Rainbow Commission. Those decisions also were coming around the same time that we were aware that Jack Jones, the long-time weatherization coordinator who had been acting as the ADA coordinator on a volunteer basis was planning to retire. So we knew there was a big gap to fill from the ADA coordinator position point of view. And in both in town and more broadly, even back in 2018, there was a growing interest in focusing on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. So we proposed for the FY20 budget to create that position. Again, it was at that point a coordinator's position that would be reporting to the director of health and human services. So that was approved in the FY20 budget and Jill Harvey was hired. I always forget if she started in December of 2029 or January of 2020, but right around that timeframe. So right in the mid-year of the FY20 budget. She came on board right away. We'd already planned on starting training for town department heads and supervisory staff on race, equity and leadership with the National League of Cities and it was not short after that training that both the pandemic hit and then sadly not shortly after that that the killing of George Floyd occurred, which obviously really ignited this discussion on a national level in terms of race in general and of course race and policing. So Jill upon starting very quickly got up to speed and realized how much appetite there was across the three commissions that she was providing staff support to for the work that she was doing, which demonstrated a few things to us that, one, she was, the work she was doing was important enough and made a priority enough in the organization that making DEI, a division of the health and human services department seemed appropriate for us to do. And also the amount of work that she was doing sort of, I would say on the training and organizing and programming level was being overcome by some of the administrative work that she also had to do for those boards and committees and commissions. And it was for that reason that we decided mid-budget year to provide her with part-time administrative help. So then promoting her to director and again giving her an administrative assistant. Now going forward into FY22, we've created this division with the director and administrative assistant. We're providing not only continuing internal training to department heads and supervisory staff, but Jill is partnering with Alensa Michelle who's I think the consultant here referencing Charlie to provide a series of racial justice teachings to the community as sort of a pilot program for about 60 residents who are participating in this and we'd like to make that a series and continue to do that. So I think it's hard for me to find another way to say other than the appetite for this work is tremendous and there's a lot of work for us still to do in Arlington in terms of really focusing on equity and intentionally trying to make improvements and make gains in Arlington. So finding the right way for Jill to be able to spend her time to work with departments, the program and plan around issues of equity while also providing trainings to town staff and residents is that combination that has led us to also be requesting funds to be able to hire consultants as appropriate. I have, you know, normally I would want to more confidently say, you know what the one, two, three, four year outlook might be but another piece of the work that Jill is doing is building an equity action plan which is what we wanna use to guide the next several years of our work around issues of equity. And I think once that's done I can more confidently tell you how I see the work rolling out both financially and from a personnel point of view over the next several years. But right now, I mean, I even myself probably spend 20% of my work week on issues of DEI right now which might sound high, but it's very real. I have individual regular check-ins with Jill with the Human Rights Commission less frequent but still regular check-ins with the National League of Cities and the work that they're doing human resources discussions in regards to how we can continue to try to diversify our work for us. So this is really an issue of priority for the town from my point of view. And I know this selects board in its endorsement of the creation of an equity action plan as well as the endorsement of the racial justice teachings that are currently underway reflects the commitment to this work on the part of the leadership of the town. Alan Jones. I guess you sort of touched on this already but I was just looking for a good definition of the purpose and the goal of the division and how that can be measured as the number of phone calls you get is it less than 20% of your time and will it be measured? Is there opportunity to measure just to make sure that it's money well spent to achieve stated set of goals? Well, I think there's some aspects of this that are harder to measure than others but there's definitely some aspects that can be measured. I think the easiest to measure is making strides or improvements in the diversity of our workforce. We are still a majority white community but Arlington's not necessarily as white as it once was. It's probably roughly 80% white whereas our municipal workforce, I don't have it handy but I think our municipal workforce is nearly 92 or 93% white. So at the very least, I think we'd like to work towards having a workforce that's reflective of the makeup of the community. So I think that is something we could very easily measure. We currently measure workforce diversity statistics and we can measure that against current stats over time. I think another big chunk of the work that we wanna do is really identify and dismantle the presence of institutional racism across Arlington departments. I mean, that can be measured in that it can be documented and shared. I'm not sure if that's the precise use of the word measured but we wanna go department by department, policy by policy and identify where programs, policies, documents, applications are perpetuating systemic or institutional racism and eliminate them. And I think that, again, it might not be the exact use of the word measurement but I think that that's work we can document over time. Some aspect of this is trying to make Arlington as welcoming a place as possible or at least Arlington town government as welcoming as possible and that's hard to measure. But I think that is also part of this overall goal. Yeah, I guess I'll be blunt. In a couple of years, we're probably gonna ask the taxpayers to open their wallets again. And when they look back and say, this happened, was that money well spent? It'd be good to have a portfolio to show, yes, this was money well spent. So I just, whenever we're, even now, even things that are well established, I wanna keep in my mind, how do we go to the taxpayers and say, this is money well spent? What we've invested here, we've gotten a good return on. So that's really where I was going with it. Thank you. Can I also add that she is taking over the Managing the Human Rights Commission, the Rainbow Commission and the Disability Commission and also that she was just recognized, I saw in the paper, she was just recognized for her role statewide, so. True. Some measure. True, that is true. So, Mr. Chairman, any heavy hand up? Yes, I just wanted to ask Adam, whether or not he would agree that in general, one's budget should reflect one's values. Yes, that's what I try to tell everybody. So yes, I believe that is true. Any other questions for the town manager on this budget? Yes, John. John, you're a mute. Adam, the federal government just probably just voted a huge amount of money in the budget for relief, et cetera. And I'm wondering, and I thought there was a fair amount for cities and towns. And I'm wondering if that impression is correct. And if so, can it help with our unfunded liabilities with the pension things? John, I think that's, maybe we can come back to that a little bit later, if you don't mind, it's sort of off the current subject. Okay. I am happy to speak to that when the time is right. Okay. Thank you. So, I just partially would echo what Alan was just saying. You know, if I were to take a very dispassion to view this you know, it seems to me like you're asking for an open checkbook over the next several years without a plan and without a method of measuring success. I mean, the idea that we should have a workforce in town that's representative of the population is a good idea. But, you know, from my understanding, we've had trouble hiring people regardless of their ethnicity. Okay. That just, you know, having firemen and police let's the word, poached by other communities. And I can think of a recreation director that has been in and out of Rawlings and several times moving to other communities. I mean, there's a certain difficulty in maintaining a workforce. And I'm not sure that these goals are maybe even achievable. I don't know. And I'm trying to relate the funds you're asking to what the goals are other than things to be that are nice, but are they achievable? And at what cost? So, I definitely, and if I sounded like I was asking for an open checkbook, I'm sorry. That wasn't even remotely my intention. I think what I was trying to say is I can't confidently tell you that I will be recommending a decrease in that budget in years to come. But I think we're gonna, from the equity action plan that we're developing, learn more about how we see that work playing out from a staff versus consultant point of view in future years. I mean, potentially we might agree to disagree about the value of measuring the diversity of the workforce. I mean, I do think, again, we can document the identification and then eradication of instances of institutional racism across town departments. So I do think there is tremendous value in doing that work. Thank you. There are other questions for town management on the subject of the DEI department and the budget. Okay. Thank you, Adam and Sandy. So the next subject was IT. And let me turn that over to Al and Arif. Al, do you want me to take this? Sure, go ahead. Okay. So I sent an email to David and it copied Sandy Poehler. And so I'm gonna go through my email one by one. So maybe, and some of the ones Sandy, if you don't or Adam don't have the answer and they're more IT related, you can just tell me. And then David can provide that answer because David responded to me today saying, he had sent the questions to Sandy Poehler and he was with his answers, his section of the answers. And then it was waiting for a response from Sandy. But my understanding was that some of these answers we'll get today from you guys. And then the remaining you can email to us which the sections are for David. So let me just flip over here. Okay. So this was, I presented our team had presented the budget to the Fincom a couple of nights ago. And some of the questions that came up. Number one, ICS. Several of the committee, I'm just gonna read it out. Okay. So for everyone to know, several of the committee members have been hearing about ICS being retired for the last three to four years. What is the timeline for ICS truly going away? Quote unquote. So if you could please give us an understanding of it. ICS is currently used for our water and sewer billing. We have been in the process of trying to convert that fully to Munis. Later this year, I think David's email says fourth quarter 2021. He anticipates that changeover. Once it is changed over, I think there are two things we would look at. One, keeping ICS in place not to do any further billing, but just as a backup in case questions come up into the future about status of accounts or making sure that when data were converted from ICS to Munis that we didn't miss anything. Sometimes there are back bills that have to be paid or leans and so forth. And so it's important to go back and look at that. After about the first year or so, I think the issue is what do we need to do to keep that those data in place in case the treasure collector or the assessor need to go back and look at it. Whether that means keeping ICS going or transferring that those data into some other format is yet to be determined. I will say however that currently we have between ICS and Informix, I think 30 seats, 30 licenses to be able to use that software. And in the future, because people won't be using it generally, we can cut that down to probably a couple of licenses. We spend about $7,000 now on those licenses. And so I expect in the future, a year from now, we should be able to reduce that to a lower amount. And then maybe even eliminate it a little week. Again, we've had conversations, but have not determined the exact right way to be able to access that old information in case we need it. Okay, so I know you had an ICS. I'm just gonna ask a follow-up question. It might be too technical. And so we can go to the IT there, but. So there was an ICS consultant helping with this integration and all the rest. And I'll just ask the question. As part of this migration, you know, why not back it up into a more relevant and current technology? Because Informix, I mean, I realize Informix, I know of Informix since 1986, 1990, I built my first company in the database world. And it's definitely not around anymore. I mean, it is in a very meager sense, but definitely a very old system. So I'll just leave it out there. You might not have the answer to this, but any migration, you know, should involve some aspect of backup recovery scenario to begin with. You know that by any chance as to why, because it's even going a year out after that, I can understand that back billing and all that is necessary, but cannot it be done in a more relevant and more relevant and current technology? Well, we have the capacity and we will back up some of it into Munis, but those records go back a long way. And so our capacity and ability to put all of that into Munis is limited. We have had discussions, as I mentioned, about what other technology to use so that we don't have to rely on ICS and Informix anymore. That is a discussion being taken up within IT and they have not yet made a recommendation as to what other technology we might use, but it has been discussed. Okay. All right, well, I'll leave it there. The second question was about Informix which you touched upon. And so unless somebody else in the committee has another question about Informix, the Informix question was as follows. I think it's been mostly answered. Let me just read it out for completeness. Informix also and importantly, the back end to ICS Informix, when will that be retired? You had mentioned that there is a need for the utility billing to become stable before this happens. However, there was no concrete timeline stated. The FinCom would like to have a retirement sunset date for ICS and Informix in writing. I suppose you've told us the timeline just to be repetitive that by Q4 2021, the last existing water and sewer billing system will move from UNIS after which you'll keep the ICS for backup for a while, perhaps a year, ICS and Informix licenses will go down from 30 to two. Is that all correct? That is my best guess when I say two, but yes, something like that. I'll leave it to IT to make that final call. Okay, you had said couple and a couple I translated to two. I think that's a reasonable guesstimate. Okay, fine. Thank you. Let me go to my next question. So line 5305, this is a long, a bit long, so bear with me. But software maintenance for which the budget, 2022 budget says 109,210, an increase of 61,210, which is 127.52% increase. I'd ask the question, break this down or please break this down and explain the spend in this line item. Also and importantly, we feel that this line item is misclassified and in parentheses as are many others in this budget, close parentheses. As this is not truly software maintenance as it includes software purchase, recurring costs and the like. When will that nomenclature be addressed? Continuing on from a prior email, I had explained to the committee that perhaps the 109,000 comes from 20K for five departments, plus incidentals of seven to eight K. Not sure if that's it. Also, there was a mention that 25,000 was for Office 365. And how was that represented? So in short, please provide a comprehensive breakdown of this line item number 5305. So if you could please. So the current spending in there, there's about 26,000 for a data cloud, hosted server imaging and backup software. 2,405 for desktop authority remote delivery software. 3,430 for APC Symmetra UPS license renewal. 3,200 dollars for untangle, fireware slash intrusion detection license renewal. 4,700 dollars for web root antivirus license renewal. 5,088 dollars for Barracuda archiver license renewal. 1,800 for JITBIT help desk software license renewal and $725 for MDAMAN email license renewal. Totally in 47,716 dollars and 56 cents. So that is the basis for the current spending. And then there is a request to increase this for some of the new things that IT is looking for. The layout of these into this line item or another, I think it's something we're always looking at and then certainly open to continuing that discussion. Again, at the end of it, the importance in the department isn't these line items. It's the bottom line. We do make an effort in talking to the departments to make sure things are lined up correctly. And David in his response said, I believe we can do research to make distinctions between licensing and maintenance for FY 22,23. Let's see. So the total layout for monies for the licensing software that we're talking about is 175,000 dollars. That includes $6,000 for writing of two apps for health and human services, inspectional services modules. In addition, there's a capital budget request for $132,860 for purchasing the software, this licensing software and $42,000 that's in the 22 operating budget. We have applied for grants, but we're not awarded those grants for this system. And then over and above that, the increases that they're looking for is $20,000 for an increase for the Office 365 licenses. Okay, so I got all that 47,760, which is the 48,000 that you had mentioned, which is the current spend. So the delta of 61,210, which is the new increase. I didn't hear that exact breakdown. Could you help me with that one? So I think the last 20,000 of that is for the Office 365 licenses. And I think the rest of it is for the licensing software. Licensing for what? All the, you know, for software for departments that issue permits. We don't have a permit module. We looked at it in Munis, but it was too expensive. So we've looked at other modules to do that. 40,000 is for license software for permitting, permitting, and Office 365 was, well, I was originally told 25k, but okay, 20k, fine. That's what a David's email says. No problem. So that adds up to 60k, okay. So that's the net increase, right? Okay. Okay, if you could do me a favor and send me all that stuff or David's sending me that stuff and writing because I'd love to have it circulated. Certainly. I thought he had sent it to you, but I declined. Oh, he had sent it? Yeah, no. No, if I had it, it would have been great. But anyways, okay, so then I go to the next line on the next question, line 53, 53. I'll read it again. Munis software support. First, you had mentioned that this budget was 10k overstated. So we plan to remove the 10k from this budget. That's fine. That's fine. Okay, great. So that 10k is now removed. Second, you had mentioned that there was a hosting agreement, and I say you, this was addressed to David just a week ago, and mentioned that there was a hosting agreement that was being signed imminently and that that would provide a payback slash credit of up to 52,000. That's calculated 13,600 times four months for the maintenance that was prepaid on the on-prem Munis software that would no longer be charged once moved online. So the question asked by Affincom was, should we not reduce the budget for the line 53, 53 by 52k? That's additional, not that other 10,000 that we just mentioned. And if not, why not? And additional comment I received on this was, if you're getting a refund, the gross amount should not be budgeted but the net amount. So any comments around this 52k and how we should address that in line 53, 53? Yes, so the contract to be able to move Munis from being hosted on town computers to being hosted in the cloud should go through the end of its legal review this week. So we expect to be able to move forward and get it signed with Munis. If we get it up and running for the end of this fiscal year, we may have two or three months at about $13,000 a month of savings. If that is the case, that savings would happen in fiscal year 21. So in other words, the money wouldn't be spent this year or be refunded this year. And so I think what it would end up being is coming back to the general fund as free cash. I do not think that that would have an impact or should have any impact on what the budget should look like for FY22, which is the budget that's currently under review. David has asked that, and I'm going to read this, I would request that we keep this money to pay any consulting costs as a result of paying either Charles Norton or Eric Weil for software support. Charles also supports, in addition to the ICS work that he's done, supports the assessors, Patriot Property System, Infectional Services System, Police Department, Ticketback System and a number of other processes. I do want to make this reiterate. I think many of you are probably aware that Charles Norton has worked for the town for many years. He's retiring. So we have taken him out of the water and sewer budget, which is where he was fully budgeted in the past and taken his $100,000 salary out of there. I think we've left something like 25 in there in case we do need him to come back to do anything with ICS as I was talking about before, but we had moved him out of the general fund because he really wasn't doing tremendous amount of general fund work, although occasionally he may do some consulting. So it is the IT directors feeling that the savings will happen this year and not next year and that therefore next year's budget the request not be cut. Okay, thank you for that answer. I'll move to the next question. I'll just pause here. Any questions so far from the rest of the group? I see Annie has a hand up. So I want to ask the question. Annie and Alan had their hands up, but I think why don't you just get through your questions and let's go back, okay? Oh, there's just three more questions. Yeah. So in the salary section, the position for the new IT director was being advertised at 124K and not 153.7K as was noted during our meeting when we met with David. And as we had wondered why it was at the top of the great salary table. So the question is, is that really what the salary details should reflect? What is the true update for that line? And more importantly, one of the questions asked by the Fincom members was, do you believe that you'll be able to attract individuals at this salary? What is the realistic number please provide? That is a very good question. I do not know the answer to that question. I think it's a difficult question. I do think that it would be our preference not to hire at the top of the scale. I also think in this environment, particularly for IT jobs, we will have to pay a competitive salary. I do not know what that salary is. We are just starting the recruitment process and I do not expect it to be completed until June. So by level of funding it, we thought that was the most cautious or prudent, excuse me, prudent is the word I want to use. Prudent way to budget. The decision about the salary we pay will not ultimately be based on the number that's currently in the budget. It will be based on what we think that we can, a reasonable amount we can pay to get a highly qualified person to fill the position. And if we hire somebody for less, then of course we'll return any excess money to the general fund at the end of the year. Okay, so just to be clear, you're gonna leave it at that number, the high end of the range and then see where it ends up and then adjust it accordingly. That's correct. Okay, let me move on to the next question. I lost the page, oh here we go. Okay, given all the spend on the application, hosting and software automation in general that is continuing to happen in our town systems, my comment, great stuff by the way that should reduce the number of personnel required and thus we would not see a reduction in sal, and thus would we not see a reduction in salaries and headcount. And that comment saying that these savings may be in other budgets. I don't know, so please perhaps clarify. So I think the most obvious example that is Charles Norton's position, which we are cutting out of the water sewer budget and we will, there are other changes to water sewer that will come about because of the health insurance numbers that we just got in on Friday. So we will have a revised budget for you for that and for some of the other enterprise funds, but that certainly has been the most direct personnel cut that has resulted from these units upgrades. I don't have a list of other possible cuts because I'm unaware of other cuts that are looming. I do think the areas where we've worked, we've increased efficiency, we've increased customer service, and that is part of the reason that we've had to continue to invest in munis and other things. We used to have systems that really did talk to each other and it made our comptroller's lives and pressure collector's lives painful. I think things are moving much better now so we're able to get things done much more quickly. I will say, I may have mentioned this to the finance committee the last time I talked, but one of the things that we bought recently was docusign, which enables people like Adam and department heads to electronically sign contracts, which means that we've taken somewhere between two and four weeks out of the process to get contracts approved because we no longer have paper moving back and forth. That means recently that we've put out bids and contracts for things like field repairs and playground repairs and we've gotten very good bids back. I think we're saving a considerable amount of money because we're getting those bids back a month earlier than we ever were able to put them out for and there's more competition. So I do think that these investments in technology has made us more efficient. It doesn't necessarily always mean that we're going to lose staff, but I do think that there are very real cost savings that have accrued because of them. Okay, so net net just in summary, you're saying these savings, yeah, we understand about efficiency, that's great. And thank you for that. But in terms of effective savings dollar wise, they will show up in other budgets. Is that what my takeaway is from this? Yes, yes, because it's in other departments where you'll, if there, and there was in that case of the modern sewer department. So is there a way to, I mean, this might be hard to do, but is there a way that you can quantify that or at least highlight that so that the next time around I'm grilled on this question, there is an answer that I can easily point to. Sure, I would be glad to, when we come back with the water sewer budget, which should be in a matter of a couple of days because we're again, just getting the health insurance stuff together, I will give you a number that you can refer to for those savings. Okay, thank you very much. I think we've come to the last question. So there was a presentation by Elizabeth Dre during a meeting on Monday, March 8th, where she, via warrant article number 21 wanted monies to be appropriated for remote meeting participation. The question from our FinCom is, does this money need to be appropriated or can this effort be absorbed by the IT department? So I think there are two areas in which she suggested possibly spending money. One was for Zoom licenses so that meetings could be broadcast just as they are now. That is money that we've been able to use CARES Act money for. And I think it's certainly part of next year we'll continue to use CARES Act money for. I don't know exactly what the structure of meetings being broadcast on Zoom is going to be. I think that is one an issue of how the open meeting law changes or doesn't change going forward. The governor has allowed by his proclamation has allowed public meetings to continue on Zoom. It is not clear yet whether that will continue to be the case. And that will have relevance for how committees meet and how citizens do or do not get to participate and speak at those meetings. So we are still waiting for more information and clarity from the state on that. I think we also secondly need to talk to committees about how they want to operate. You have some committees like finance, like board school committee and the redevelopment board that are currently broadcast on ACMI. I think these committees have to make a decision whether you want to continue to use Zoom or not. We have had, we're just, we need to have those conversations in the future with the committees. And in addition to there are several other committees that are not broadcast. And I think we need to make decisions about whether those would be continued to be broadcast on Zoom. As from a policy point of view, I think we are in favor of the idea of openness. And I do believe we will continue to have Zoom licenses, but we do not have a comprehensive plan going forward at this point as to how those will roll out. Finally, the other area for spending might be, it has been suggested by Ms. Gray that we buy either Chromebooks or iPads or something like that to give to committee members and or members of the public that ensure that they have access to Zoom meetings. I was not in talking to her able to identify any identified need for anybody who would need that equipment. I also have my skepticism about whether that is a proper use of public funding to be giving people public iPads. So I would not support that expenditure both because I don't think it's needed. And this is my personal opinion that I don't think it is something we should be spending money on. All in all, I have some skepticism about why town meeting needs to vote on this in the first place. And I certainly would not suggest spending money. We have been doing a lot of work at the administrative level on making meetings public. And we will continue to look at that going forward. And so it does not seem to me that this is an article that is really necessary, frankly. Perfect. Thank you for the comprehensive answer. No, I guess there are some hands raised. Thank you, I appreciate it. Okay, so Annie LaCorte, you had your hand up. You must be tired of being up all this time. It's being taken care of for me by my minions. So I had a couple of questions back on the IT expense budget. The first one is that we determined that about $40,000 of line 5305 is going to put in the new permitting system. And it's showing up in an expense line. So I'm wondering whether or not it's $40,000 worth of licensing that is going to continue year over year or is this a one-time investment? I think it is on. There are some ongoing licenses as I understand it. I can confirm that though. Okay. If I could jump in for a second, there's $132,000 capital item for new permitting software. So I think $132,000 it was mentioned as a capital expense in the capital budget. Right, I get that. Where I'm going is that often these systems are paid for by a small surcharge on the permits. And it sounds like that's not what we're doing here. We're actually licensing the software. We would, if we have a license that would have to run as revenue through the general fund and be re-appropriated and not just incorporate, we could, it needs to be an appropriation if we're taking in license fees. Right. So we'd still have to appropriate the expense. And then if we have increased revenue because of it, we could offset it that way. But we can't just absorb it behind the scenes. So could we get an answer to the question of whether or not there's going to be some kind of offset. Like I'd really like to know what their pricing structure is because it's unusual these days that you would pay $40,000 a year in license fees for. Annie, I think the select board has to set fees, right? It's not that. It's that the pricing is usually, I think it's a conversation we take offline. So I will follow up with you on that. Okay. But my other question then is about the Mutus software maintenance. So we're moving to a hosted solution, but it's not reducing our annual cost on unit maintenance. Is that what you're saying? It's displacing some of the costs like having to buy and run those servers. Right. With having to pay them to keep the data off site. It's a decision about moving that way that IT has gone back and forth for many years. But I think they think even though economically it doesn't change the situation that significantly. In other words, there's no big savings. In fact, it's probably a little more expensive. There is greater reliability. We won't have to worry about it as we move IT out of the high school over to DPW and having something go wrong with MUNUS all at once because the MUNUS is problem at that point. No, no, I'm not at all questioning the move to the cloud. I would, every part of our systems would move to the cloud. And it sounds like mostly we're doing that, but my concern was that we're not getting any cost savings on it. It's a pretty high licensing amount for a year even though it does everything for instance to nuts. But there's just a question. Not a desire to make any changes would bring their cost. Great, if you can follow up with me on permitting that would be great and we'll do that offline. Allen Jones. Two really simple questions. It looks like all of the Office 365 licensing is going to be covered by the IT budget. Can I therefore take those out of the Fincom expense line? The 22 licenses. I think so. Let's just double check with that. I assume that you can use those licenses. I don't know if you've had conversations with IT about that, but because I have not. As usual, they say to ask you. Ha, ha, ha, ha. It's really just, you know, where does the money get spent? But if we can take it out of the Fincom line that would be great. Yeah, I will, I'll confirm that and I'll follow up with you on that. Okay, second question and I'm not sure this is the right time for it is the question of the cost of providing email addresses for town meeting members. So yes, it would be somewhere north of $20,000, I think $22,000, they're about $90 apiece and there are 252 town meeting members. So that's equivalent to the licensing cost for the whole town staff is what you're saying. It is the same as the town staff. We get a reduced rate for some of our public safety personnel, but for the rest of us, it is that fee. Yeah, I mean, 90 is not a reduced rate. That's 50% more than I pay, but still that's $60 a year times 252 is a lot of money, but. Yes, it is a lot of money. It is also not yet clear to me whether under that license, which is supposed to be only for town employees where the town meeting members would qualify. I'm still working to get an answer on that. We could probably save money if they don't qualify and just buy retail, but it's still a lot of money. Thank you. It is a lot of money. Thank you. Any other questions, Shane? Thanks, Charlie. Jumping off Alan's question, Sandy, are town meeting members subject to the public records law? Well, town meeting is subject to the public records law, but and if you were to use a town or supplied email, then anything in those emails would be subject to public records requests. Thank you. Alan, Shane, okay. So I see no other questions. So I would just like to make an editorial comment if I may. I think the various questions on the IT budget have been exhaustively asked and exhaustively answered. But I think Annie in sort of two instances touched on something that has vexed me for a long time. And that is, I don't think we have a comprehensive way of tracking reductions in operating expenses that flow from making a capital investment. And that's what I think Annie was touching on with respect to some of the software acquisition. And I think that Sandy, a related question or related topic, you were mentioning these cost reductions and efficiencies that result from software or permitting software and other types of software that enhance the operation and they reduce the cost. Now, I know, for example, and I'm not specifically citing the treasurer's department for any particular reason other than I have a multi-decade relationship to it. And that is that we long had very expensive cash handling in the treasurer's department with multiple cashiers and people standing in line paying money, et cetera, et cetera. In a number of years ago, one of our finance committee members did an exhaustive comparison of Arlington to five or six other communities and the size of their treasury departments versus the size of the population, et cetera. And we consistently came out higher, more people in the office, more hands-on doing things and fundamentally less efficiency. Now, I know recently in the last several years we put in some new cash management units and tracking systems in the treasurer's department. And I don't think we've seen any reduction in staffing. And you mentioned that we have these other software programs that we're investing in and that they produce cost reductions and efficiencies which show up in higher levels of service. And it might be a higher level of service to the taxpayer to have a lower cost. In other words, we shouldn't automatically assume that if we can do something more efficiently and at a lower cost, we have to then go ahead and do something else keep justifying the cost level that we're at. So my request is that somehow we incorporate, I don't know if it's a cost benefit analysis or some sort of a view where we understand these investments that we're making, what the cost reductions are and how do we translate that into a benefit for the taxpayer other than institutionalizing positions inside the town government? That was an editorial comment. I don't know if you have any answers to that, but. I would just say, I think we are always looking at the efficiency of departments. I think that one, number two, there are growing demands from the public for more electronic access, more the ability to pay bills in different ways. And I don't think the town has much choice but to keep up with those demands. It's the 21st century and people just expect us to do business that way. We're not, we're three, a lot of these investments are replacing things that were just not working right, not efficient and could not keep working the way they were. We had to make investments to get a functional system and I won't talk about any particular department. I mean, I know there have been discussions about various departments. We have had discussions with several department heads about what their needs are and if there are opportunities to make cuts, I think that we have and we will continue to make cuts. We will also try to be responsive to the ever pressing demands of the public here who expects the town to run well and that is what we try to do. Thank you. Don't misinterpret. I'm not looking for quote unquote wholesale cuts here but people retire, businesses and departments can reorganize and people can shift around and we can wind up providing high level of services with automation with lower personnel costs. So every position doesn't have to be filled when it, you know, when someone retires or leaves. I mean, there are ways to achieve personnel and cost efficiencies through, you know, somewhat benign efforts as opposed to quote unquote cuts if you can understand what I'm saying. I do, thank you. Okay, thank you for that. The next, Charlie, I have a question. Yes, John. Sandy, I thought that the federal government was providing large amounts of money to cities and towns in the new budget. Is that correct? And what might we expect that? Do you have any idea? Well, there has been a report put out by Congress about how much money is out there for a wide variety of purposes, including making up for lost revenue. They have set a standard to say the difference in what we are getting in, well, they're using FY19 as a base year. So we have started tracking the difference between what we've been taking in in the current year in FY19 to see what losses of revenue we can demonstrate now and going forward. There's also a whole lot of potential spending on continuing COVID programs. So things that we might have to spend money on that would not come out of the general fund. We can insulate the general fund from those expenses. So we'll continue to do that. There's also a large possibility of spending money to provide relief directly to businesses, to renters and others. And so I do think a substantial part of the money that's being talked about may end up going in that direction. We are waiting for regulations to come out from the Treasury Department to define the specific terms for all of those areas to set the parameters for how we measure things like lost income and how we define who would be eligible for relief. And we don't yet know what those things are. So, John, I'm sorry, it's a long circular way of saying I don't know the answer yet, but we're looking at it very closely and we will grab as much of this as we can to replace lost revenue and have it go into the general fund. And then the rest of it we will use to help the public as outlined in the walk. Mr. Chairman, I would just also add, I have a spreadsheet and an email with a brief description that outlines much of what Sandy just described that I can forward to the chair and to Liz Diggins tomorrow to share with the committee. One additional point I know John had raised earlier whether or not these funds could be used to benefit long-term liabilities such as pension costs and unfortunately, the statute or the bill actually explicitly prohibits use of these funds for municipal pension systems. So, well, we'll wait to see a little more about whether or not OPEB is included in that, but I know for certain, we won't be able to use it to offset a pension liability. Thank you, Adam. You're welcome. Thank you, Sandy. All right, Charlie, I have a question. Yes, Mary Margaret. Given the way we're structuring the diversity committee, with the commission that she's taking over, we would no longer have to fund, correct? So we could at least take that money back. You know, we give them like $1,000 for committee, I believe. Oh, I think the committees would still very much be asking for those funds for their small expenses. Okay. Okay, so I think that you have addressed the major issues that we had before us. The sort of the last item, Sandy, is this question of expense budgets. You and I chatted on the phone about that today. And related to it, I had the subject of the DPW budgets, which sort of is related to that subject. We had a long conversation about it at the last meeting. And it's actually related to just the general issue of how expense budgets are presented. You have any comments you'd like to make on either the presentation of the expense budgets in DPW? And I'm referring to the differences between the budgeted, I'm sorry, let me get this straight again, the differences between the reported actual expenses in 20 and the budgets in 21 and 22. Sure, I'll start and then, Adam, if that's all right, if you wanna add anything. You can certainly start, go ahead. So within the budget book, we report on what is spent within a current year's budget. So in the budget book, you see, for example, FY20 actuals and what you're seeing there is a report of how much was spent in FY20 from what was appropriated in FY20. However, in departments and particularly DPW, it is often the case that they will encumber money from a previous year, let's say the FY19 budget and spend that money in FY20 instead. So just to give you an example, in natural resources, I think in the budget, it says that the expenses in FY20 were $331,000. But if you look at what was carried over from the previous year, it was actually $403,000 on a, so from year to year, there's more money being spent than shows up in the budget book. There are, we've tried to publish the manager's budget by just keeping within current year's spending because we think that's how it has historically been printed and is therefore useful that way. If you also take money, if you print a budget that shows taking money out from one year and moving it into the next year, and at the same time, then taking money from, let's say FY20 and moving it into that FY21, the numbers all start to get a little funky. That is a gap way of doing it. We could do it that way, but we thought it would be clearer in terms of budgets to do it the way we did. Also in DPW, they do tend to move money among different divisions and different line items so that if in any one year, there are a lot of trees that need to be planted, for example, in natural resources, they tend to move money from other areas and then spend it in natural resources so that the real spending that goes on by that carryover money is larger than the budgets in those areas. So that is one point I would like to make. The second point I'd like to make is I did see Charlie's memo today that was sent to all of you showing expense budget changes. I counted of different departments and including all the individual divisions within DPW. There were 19 of them that had no expense budget change. They may have moved money among clients, but there was no bottom line change. There were 13 in which there were changes. However, four of those were actually reductions. One of them was a change of $200. And as I think Charlie's memo mentioned, one of them was the increase in finance, which we may be able to get rid of. So as a general matter, it's been my impression that it's been my experience certainly that we have level funded expense budgets for many years running. And we occasionally add things to those budgets and we do allow departments to move things among their budget lines. But if there is a concern that we're increasing operating budgets, particularly expense budgets by large amounts, I think in general, that has not happened. There are a couple of things that we talked about such as IT and DEI where there were increases. And I think we explained the reasons for that. But in general, we have had expense budgets that have not changed, have not gone up with inflation for many, many years. So I would ask I think going forward if people do have concerns about expense budgets to share that information because I'd certainly like to know what your concerns are. But is my impression that they have not really gone up significantly in any way? So very briefly, those are my comments at the moment. Carolyn? Just for my clarification, I was comparing the actuals in the budget book to the actuals in the CAFR and in the audit reports. And the actuals in the budget book looked very close to the actuals spent but not the carry forward going forward. In other words, it doesn't look like the 27 carried forward is showing up in 2018 and the 2018 carried forward is not showing. It's almost like the numbers that are carry forward in the audit report just don't show up in the manager's book at all. So there's sort of money, it's sort of actual money that's just disappeared. It's just not there. And I guess that's at least part of the issue we're dealing with. And it can be pretty substantial in some of the departments, the encumbrances. That's exactly right. And we have discussed whether we should include encumbrances and reports to you or go to a kind of gap finance report that is included in the CAFR. Hello, I do have to say, we're not supposed to use the term CAFR anymore. So I will say the audit. I think, you know, I mean, we don't show actuals in the finance committee report to town meeting. If we did, I think we'd get a lot of questions. And the questions in the finance committee, if it would be possible to include the encumbrances, I think some of these questions we have this year just might go away or at least be reduced. So it's a suggestion. Thank you. Thank you. Any has a question? Thank you. I'm sorry, Alan, Tosda, you have a question. Yeah, so in effect, the budget book is on a cash basis. But the controller, when they finally do the books has to do it on a cruel basis. Now, when somebody- Al, if I could just interject, it's not on a cash basis because if it was, then what was encumbered in 2019 would show up in 2020. It's like what's encumbered in 2019 just disappears. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's just let Al Tosda finish his comment, please. Okay, but when somebody encumbers money from fiscal 20, for example, isn't it supposed to be for a fiscal 20 purpose? I mean, this is not the school. You know, can they just roll over money, 20 money for a fiscal 21 purpose? No, so they encumber money. Let's say they encumber $100,000. They may or may not actually spend that $100,000. So, encumbrances in of them of themselves are not good ways to track what spending is. I just wanna make that point. They might spend 20,000 of that 100. They are supposed to be for things that were contracted for, but not paid for in say 20, going into 21. It gets a little squishy when you look at DPW when they're say doing projects over the summer. That's why DPW is probably the hardest to really nail down. But other encumbrances are for previous years, expenses that just need to be paid for in the next fiscal year. When, at what point does the controller cut off an encumbrance and say, let's say after September one, if it's not spent, it goes back to free cash? Generally, we look at, she looks at them after the end of the summer. Although again, sometimes the billing can take a while. She closes it out by the end of the next fiscal year. So it gets closed out the free cash on June 30th. And that's when she really does her close out. She doesn't really close things out during the year, but she monitors that expenses are for what they've been encumbered for. Do you want to? She has to head out. I'm sorry. In effect, she has to track two numbers in the next year, the fiscal 21 budget and the fiscal 20 encumbrances. That is correct. Okay, thank you. Any other questions on this subject? It's okay if I ask a question now. Who was that? Brian. Oh, Brian, go right ahead. I'm sorry. I got another window hiding your photograph here. It's okay. I think this is straightforward and to Sandy. And that is, are the encumbrances ever accounted for in the actual line items, like for instance, the 2019 actual doesn't include the encumbrances from 2019, do they show up in 2020 or they just never appear anywhere? In the manager's budget, they never appear anywhere. In the audit, they do appear. No, I understand in the audit they do. I'm just referring to the book that we're looking at which is what's confusing everybody I believe. That is correct. They do not appear. Okay. Okay, any other questions on this subject? All right. So just my closing comments, Sandy, is that I think Al Jones made the recommendation today that we need to have a separate sit down with you and the comptroller and figure out a way to accurately represent what is actual and what is budgeted so that we can be making clear recommendations and understanding where we're coming from. My view is, if I just look at the data, okay, your budget in fiscal 21 was 2 million and 32,000 or something like that, higher than the actuals in fiscal 20. In the categories that I presented in that memorandum. And the work that Al Jones did with the audit report does not contradict that because his numbers were including salaries and other things. So I think to be making realistic recommendations or have a realistic understanding of these budgets, we have to have a clear and rational way of describing what has been spent. And right now I don't think we have that, at least in my opinion. I'd be very glad to sit down with anybody and discuss that. Good. We're always glad to hear that. So we've had the pleasure of having a town manager, Chapter Lane and deputy town manager, Pooler here for the last extended period of time. And we thank them very much. Are there any other questions for them before they can get off to relaxing what remains in the evening? Okay, there are none. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you all everybody, it's been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you everybody. Appreciate it. Good night. Good night. Okay, so before we go into the ZBW budgets, let's try to vote on some of these things that we have heard discussed tonight, all right? So the town manager has recommended supporting article, well, I'll call it article 65, it may have been three numbered for $39,153.70. So I'll call it, I'll call it, I'll call it, I'll call it, I'll call it, I'll call it, $39,153.70 for the transportation fund. Is there someone who'd like to make a motion? Is there a second? So then I'm going to take a vote on, this is the, I'm going to just call it for the transportation article. Grant Gibbian? Shane Blundell? Hi. Hi. Grant, did I hear from you? Yes, hi. John Ellis? Barry Margaret Frankelman? Yeah. Arif Padaria? Yes. Jonathan Wallach, he's not here, he just left. Brian Beck? Yes. Peter Howard? Yes. Shailene Pocrus? He's not here. Darrell Harmer? Yes. John Deist? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. Annie LaCourt? Yes. Bill Keller? Al Tossi? Yes. George Cozer? Yes. Christine Detchler? Yes. Dean Karman? Yes. David McKenna? Yes. Thank you. So that article is passed unanimously. And the next item we discussed was the health and human services budget. So, let me just get back to that budget here. Page 138, if that's what you're looking for. I got it. 138, I was looking for the table of contents here. Okay, health and human services. So, we've had an extensive discussion with the manager several nights with Barry Margaret on this budget. Do we have a recommendation? Yes, I recommend it be approved. Second. So, you're recommending that the budget be approved for... That's printed, yeah. 811,017. Yeah, that's the number. That's the number on page 138 after offsets. Okay. So, it's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or further discussions? Then I'm going to move forward with the vote on health and human services. Frank Ibbian. I'll vote yes. Jane Blundell. Yes. John Ellis. Mary Margaret Frankelman. Yeah. Areve Padaria. Yes. Romain Beck. Yes. Peter Howard. Yes. Daryl Harmer. Yes. Ron Dice. Yes. Allen Jones. Yes. Annie LaCourt. Yes. Bill Keller. Yes. Al Tosti. Bill Tosti is not here, right? Al Tosti. Yes. George Kosher. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yes. Dean Karman. Yes. David McKenna. Yes. Thank you, David. So, the health and human services budget was voted unanimously. The health and human services budget... Somebody's got an echo going here on my... David, I think... I think it's true if you don't mind muting. Could be wrong. Okay. The next budget in health and human services is veterans, which I think we already voted, right? Yes, we did. And the next one after that is council and aging. Did we vote that? I think I got all the answers, but I'm not sure that we did vote it. Peter. I don't think so. Okay. So, Mary Margaret... I think we did on March 8th. Pardon me? I believe we did vote on March 8th. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. All right, thank you. Okay. Diversity, equity, and inclusion. Also the subject of extensive discussion tonight. Right. Is there a recommendation on the budget for the diversity, equity, and inclusion department? Yes, I recommend that we vote it as printed. Second. The amount is $139,561. Is there any further discussion on diversity, inequity, and inclusion? Grant Gibbian. I vote yes. Jane Blondell. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Mary Margaret. Yes, for approval, yes. Arif Padaria. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter Howard. Yes. Chalene Pocrus. Oh, she's not here. Darrell Harmer. Yes. John Deist. Yes. Alan Jones. Yes. Annie LaCourt. Yes. Yes. Alan Tosti. Yes. George Koser. Yes. Christine Jechler. Yes. Ian Karman. Yes. David McKenna. Yes. Okay. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is quite a yes, unanimously. Let's say retirement. We did that some time ago, insurance. Okay, so that, those are finished. So the question is, what time is it? Let's see. So we had your, enterprise funds. Let's see. So we have recreation, the arena, and council and aging transportation, and Arlington Youth Counseling Center. And the REC. Yeah. And the REC. But didn't we, we did one of those, right? I didn't think so. I have the, I have a cruise sheet here. Hang on a second. No, I guess we didn't do it. I don't have a cruise sheet on the enterprise fund. So let's go to the enterprise fund for the Department of Recreation. Oh, okay. How are we going to do something easy like council and aging transportation? We can start with that if you want. Okay. Well, that is on page 180. So council and aging transportation, go ahead. And so you need to know the balance in the enterprise fund for that? Yes. All right, it's 110,551.87 cents. Okay. So the balance is almost equal to the, I'm not quite equal to it, so expensive, but a substantial balance. Go ahead. Right. Well, because of the virus, I mean, we still have to have the vans picking up the elderly and the people going to the doctors, but you can't have too many in there because they have to social distance in the van. So there's probably more trips. Also, they're using the taxis like they've had before and Uber and Lyft. And so the transportation has become a little more, a little more expensive because you can't fit as many people at a time in these, because of the woes. Those are the laws with that. So also the vans were driving people to vaccine sites in addition to going to their doctor's appointments. So basically, I have nothing to say other than can we approve it the way it's printed? A lot of the expense has to do with the travel. You get people there while they're safe distancing within the different means of travel. And also, what else are they doing? And Christine did say that they're gonna end up using more taxis in the coming months, too. So I don't have anything else to say other than the reason it's expensive is they can only do a few people at a time. So are there any comments or questions on this budget, George Koser? I just have a question since some of these expenses are clearly COVID related, both in terms of more trips with fewer folks and going for vaccines. Is there a plan to reimburse some of these from either the CARES Act or the Rescue Act? And if there is, how are we dealing with showing any offsets against those things? I understand the Rescue Act is uncertain yet but the CARES Act might. Right, but I think that might. I mean, I listened to that presentation about money that could possibly be coming, but again, that's not a given. So I think the issue really is that Christine's trying to provide the same level of service to people who really need it. And it's just more expensive because you can't fit as many people. You can't have more, you know, many people in the van. You can't have many people in a taxi. So it's just, that's just the way it is. I guess my question is, we do know what the CARES Act pays for and I thought it would pay for some of this. I'm wondering why it isn't or there isn't an offset. She said nothing about any, I mean, I think she would use any money. If there's more money coming from the CARES Act, she would use it, but there's nothing in the notes that we took when we were talking to her that was more than there are, does she need more room to transport people? There's more just more transportation costs. Thank you. I think Sandy was on top of it too. I think Sandy mentioned that that was one of the things she's monitoring in terms of the federal money. And also she's been very good about getting grants when she can and also, I think one of their galas is coming up soon. So maybe more people will donate. Well, they show an increase in donations, right? But they're showing a reduction in CDBG and they're showing a reduction in the use of retained earnings. On the other hand, you're saying that they have $110,000 in retained earnings in the fund. And they're following the Dechler theory of expense accounting. The expenses, the transfer from the general fund went from zero in fiscal 20 to 50,000 in 21 and there's another 50,000 in 22. So there's more or less a departmental increase of, well, in the bottom line, it's 15,000 going from 20 to 21. That's about 10%, 9%. So, Mary Margaret, I think the appropriate thing is to do is to make a recommendation here. And if the committee wants to get additional information, they can move to table it until we get additional information. Okay, and I'd be happy to do that. So in the interim, I think I believe we should approve this budget as printed. So that's for $140,300 in expenses and $140,300 in income for the retained balance in the fund of $110,551. Is there a second? Second. George, do you have your hand up or is that from before? It's from before, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. So it's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion on the COA transportation budget? Okay, COA transportation. Grant Gibbian. Vote yes. Jane Blantel. Yes. John Ellis. Yes. Mary Margaret. Arif. Yes. Brian Beck. Yes. Peter. Yes. Darrell Harmer. Yes. Gondyce. Gondyce. Yes. Joan Jones. Yes. Anila Court. Yes. Al Tosti. Yes. George Cozer. Yes. Christine Deschler. Yeah. Dean Karman. Yes. David McKenna. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I unanimously passed. So then the next enterprise fund would be the Ed Burns Arena. Yeah. Well, it's almost 10 o'clock. I'm just, well, we have the Youth Counseling Center too. There's RecRank and Youth Counseling Center, all of which I think are gonna generate a lot of questions. Well, let's get started. Let's see if we can get through one of them. Okay. Be brave. All right, then we'll do the Youth Counseling Center. It starts on page 183. 184 actually. All right. So let's see, what should I say about this? They're doing a lot more telemedicine for obvious reasons, but she said it's working well and it's actually easier for the clinical staff. The social worker who used to be with the police has been shifted over to AYCC, but I guess it's partially paid for by the police. Let's see, what else do I wanna say? What's the fund balance? It is, let's try in a minute. It is $79,611.73. Okay, thank you. Let's see, she is looking into any grant money she can come up with. They usually have a gala that draws a lot of funds, but for obvious reasons can't do that, but she's, they're asking for donations via mail. Let's see, what else is important? Well, I can tell you something that's important. Wow. So the expense budget, the total costs of this operation is going up by $76,296 in 2022. And all of it is made up from either increased insurance reimbursements, gifts and donations, youth service client fees or CDBG. So I think it has, the impact on the taxpayer hasn't changed since fiscal year 20. So I think that should get a merit badge from the Finance Committee for that. So moved. She's done a great job of one, getting all the money she can, as well as getting reimbursed by people's insurance. So that is, you know. So did I hear a motion for the $904,135? So moved. Sure. And the merit badge, Charlie, and the merit badge. And the merit badge. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so this is, let's see, this is the, what is this, AYCC. Alan Jones wants to ask a question. Okay, Alan? Quick question. You said a position had been moved from the police budget. Could you tell me which one it is just so I can make a footnote? The social worker. Opara, I think her name is. Okay, case manager, homeless outreach. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. So the enterprise fund for AYCC with a balance of $79,611 and proposed expenses of 904,135 and proposed revenues of 904,135 has been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Grant Gibbian? Vote yes. Jane Blundell? Yes. John Ellis? Yes. Jerry Margaret? Yes. Eri Padaria? Yes. Brian Beck? Yes. Peter Howard? Yes. Daryl Harmer? Yes. John Dice? Yes. Alan Jones? Yes. Yenny LeCourt? Yes. Bill Keller? No. He's not here. Yeah. Al Tosti? Yes. George Kosher? Yes. Christine Deschler? Yes. Dean Carmen? Yes. And David McKenna? Yes. The AYCC Enterprise Fund has passed unanimously. Okay. I think the Merrick badge. And including the Merrick badge. Okay. So it's three minutes to 10. I think a motion to adjourn might be in order. So moved. Second. Then moved and seconded to hearing the objections to adjourning. Okay. Thank you very much. I will try to sort out the warrant numbers on the new warrant that I've got today for next week. I think we have two more Enterprise Funds with Mary Margaret. We should go back to the EPW budgets. Okay, Christine? Yeah. So I just have rec and rank left to do. Okay. And Charlie, the parking is done as well. Oh, parking is done. Good. We'll do that as well to get it in on Wednesday. Any other comments? Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Appreciate your... Charlie, we should vote on the IT budget soon next time before people forget. That's fine. We'll just remind me on Wednesday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. Have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. The record...