 I'm going to make Lynn a host and Andy will make you a co-host. I'm going to call the meeting of the finance committee of November 16, 2021 to order. And this meeting pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 is conducted by remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so if I zoom or by telephone. And no person attendance members of the public will be permitted. But we certainly are planning on having you on having members of the public who wish to participate in public comment to be able to do so and we will get public comment in the moment. The first thing that I would like to do is just come through the members of the committee. And just as I call each of your names, let me know that you heard me and confirm that we can hear you. So I will start with Lynn Guzmer present. And Kathy Shane here. I think I heard. Okay. Pat Danculus president. Present. I got to run. Yeah, I thought I was, it's coming to CRC, so I got to get the right papers. I'll be right back. Okay. But we know that she's here. Bad hallway. Bernie Kubiak. President. Okay, so. try and move us through, do we have any, let me see if there are any members of the public here. We have two attendees that I noticed. So if either attendee would like to offer public comment, please raise your hand and then we can bring you into the room. We can bring you into the room. Andy, we also seem to have someone on the panel who's public. Wait a minute, I've lost my some reason. Kathy, if you're referring to Bill Cazan, he's a note taker. Oh, got it, thank you. And Andy, we're looking at your email right now. I'm having a real problem with my screen. Why don't you take this down and I will put the agenda up, Andy. Yeah, please put the agenda up. I'm not, I didn't mean to do anything. So I'm having problems with my screen at this point and I'm trying to get back to where I should be. Okay, can you see mine? Yes, please. Okay. All right, that's the agenda. Okay, so hopefully we're back to you now. I wonder what I want to do is go back to the participant list and unless somebody can do it for me, Irv Rhodes does have his hand up. So we did say we'd do public comment and we're trying, we have a very full agenda. So do remember that everybody who's present here was present last night, but if you have something to add, please join us and do so. So Irv, you can... Irv, you need to unmute. There you go. Yeah, but I'm muted, I love technology, especially when it doesn't work. I was having the same problem. I understood that, Andy. I was really sympathizing with you. So these, I want to keep these remarks very brief and they're being made in the spirit that, hey, we're at the beginning of this process, this budget process and that these remarks are made so that we can begin a conversation and open up a dialogue about them. So first one relates to the school budget. I am not now on the school committee, but I will be sworn in in January. When I am, I will be urging the school committee not to make any budget cuts for FY23. Additionally, I will be urging the school committee to request that the town stop docking the schools for charter school costs when every other town in the Commonwealth does not. Now this is a sort of wonky budget kind of maneuver and this will open up this conversation on this topic because it does have financial consequences for the schools that in this upcoming fiscal year could amount to over a million dollars. And what I don't want to happen and would like to stop happening is that whenever we bounce budget, that we don't bounce them on the backs of our children. The second remark is in relationship to the amherst of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly. And there are two items in the proposal that I would like to highlight. One is the Youth Recreation Center. The outline language in the ARPRA proposal states that youth recreation programming and development of a youth empowerment center at a cost of $500,000. The Recreation Department will first explore the possibility of developing this in-house. If that is not possible, then an RFP may be used to solicit outside proposals. I would suggest that this not go forward. I would suggest that the AHRA is which sees this as a social justice and a reparative and restorative justice issue. And having a youth empowerment center slash community center is something that would go a long way towards answering this. We would suggest or I would suggest on my own that we, because we are exploring these, the AHRA is exploring possibilities within the community for already existing facilities, that we enter into a partnership with the Recreation Department so that we can go down the same road the same time towards the same objectives, expending the same funds. The other one is in the area of affordable, low-income home ownership via condos, co-ops or co-housing on town-owned land. Looking at the proposed ARPRA spending on this item, $1 million is proposed to essentially keep doing what Amherst has been doing for years. And that is providing low-income rental housing without a pathway for home ownership, thus denying the ability to grow equity. Home ownership is the number one generational wealth builder. Money in this round of ARPRA funding in the round two should be directed towards low-income home ownership, especially for African-Americans and other BIPOC populations. Additionally, other funding will be forthcoming from the state for housing in January. This couple with the newly signed infrastructure federal bill will provide additional resources. Amherst can do this on its own without looking for other outside resources. All that is needed is the will to do so. Thank you. Thank you, Irv. Sarah Marshall also has her hand up. Just give me, Irv, if by chance I disconnect you, please come back in. I can help, Lynn. All right, I'll thank you. Okay. All right, why don't, are you gonna do it? Then you're gonna bring Sarah in? Yes. Okay, thank you. Hi, everyone, you hear me? Yes. Hi, Sarah. Hi, I just wanted to say that I sent an email to Andy with some comments just within the last hour. So I just hope he will circulate those to you. I don't want to take the time now to read them, but just to let you know. It was fairly brief if you just want to touch based on what the topics were so that we don't leave the committee in mystery as to what it is, because I... Okay, well, let's see if I can get to my mail without disconnecting from Zoom. Do you still hear me? Yep. Otherwise, I can read it if you can't find it. Yeah, why don't you go ahead as much as you like? Okay, so there were three points and I'll try and summarize them and then Sarah can add in as she wishes, but she says it's good to town budgets revenues conservatively, however, since it appears that we routinely finish the fiscal year with significant free cash conservatism costing town services. And essentially, it was raising a point that I probably would have brought to the committee to later anyway. And that is whether we should be a little bit more towards the spending side so that we take a little bit of higher risk of ending at a deficit, but at the same time avoid the consequence that we have each year that we are ending each year with a fairly large surplus. So that was point one. And Sarah, each time I finish one, if I haven't stated it correctly, to your satisfaction, please add, okay? The second one is she says that I'm concerned the town is instituting new programs and will not be able to fund adequately once our funds are gone. Can the budget be aided by a plan to transition? Say please funds to the Cres Program so we can see what is ultimately the net cost, if any, to community safety. And the third one was please recommend catch-up funding for the schools. The cuts to services have been real and significant. I would note that in our elementary schools less than 50% of students are white. So adequate funding for schools has direct racial justice impacts. And she concludes granted the only 9% of the students are black, but she reminds us of our commitment to racial justice. So those were the three points raised and Sarah's email that she was referenced. Is there anything else you want to add, Sarah? No, I don't. And thank you very much for reading them. I guess you'll all see them in print soon. Yeah, I will forward them, but I have to warn the committee that I probably can't do that and share the meeting at the same time. So it'll be after the meeting. But while we're obviously while we're still working on the budget guidelines. So with that, unless there's- So you can put me out of the meeting. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anybody else who wants to be recognized for public comment? And if not, then I want to get back to the agenda itself. And the next thing on the agenda is that we were going to reserve the very first portion of the meeting to see if there were any questions that had arisen about the financial indicators presentation that were not posed or responded to adequately last night. So see if anybody else has. I'm going to ask one in a moment, but I want to see if I can turn to the rest of the committee first. And I see that Bob has his hand up to Bob. Yeah. I've got a couple of questions. I don't know if we want to go through, open up the presentation or not, but looking at the revenue per capita over time, if I do the arithmetic correctly, we're getting a growth of revenue per capita at about roughly 4% to 5% a year, but inflation is roughly 3% a year. So we're really only getting about 1% to 2% of a year of growth above inflation. Is that correct, Sean? I would I don't know the exact map on that, but I would say it's our budgets generally go up between 2% to 3% a year, somewhere in that range, I think, in Amherst. Right. And again, I'm sorry, real quick. In recent years, it'll be higher because of the pandemic. As we come out of the pandemic, it's going to be higher, both for FY22 and FY23, I think we're going to see higher growth than normal. But if you look back at between 2% and 3%. Yeah, I'm just looking at, I'm thinking about the long term here. And again, the operating expenses per capita, if I look at that, the numbers, it's page nine of the presentation, it's roughly 2% growth over time annual with the constant dollars being roughly 1%. So again, we're not adding a lot of revenue or per capita growth very much higher than the rate of inflation. We're a little bit a couple of percent above the rate of inflation. So that really has an impact in terms of, as we move forward over the next four or five years and as we're implementing these new programs, there's going to be a need to figure out how we're going to pay for them. We're not going to grow our way out of them, I don't think, or grow way into them. So I just wanted to make that point. Thank you. Kathy? I think I'm building on Bob's point. I haven't done it since after last night, I had to get up for another meeting all morning. But I was going to do a best guess at what does 2024, 2025 look like just on a, since if you look backwards, the revenue side is a glide path. You can estimate it, and then it's the new growth that varies. So trying to do what ifs our expense side is growing in the following ways as we add staff. And for right now, and I think it's building on one of our public comments that, yes, we can tide this over with some ARPA money. I actually want to go out four or five years. But I know we don't budget that way. But to say unless we get Biden money for infrastructure and or state money for some stuff beyond ARPA, are we in trouble in 2026 by what we do in 2023? So I'd like a look at that. And so that's a request as well as a question. And then my second question, and if we wanted to do some catch up on schools, and we pulled some money out of reserves, I wanted to do a what, what does the wage side, the labor side of schools, with wages plus health insurance plus pension, how much are we expecting that'll increase? And how much higher is that than 2.5 or 2.7%? So just, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I don't know. Bottom up kind of, if we have the people we have now with what we know about step increases, what we know, because 2.5 won't cover or 2.7 won't cover a 5% health insurance increase, a 7% pension increase, step increases, and I believe there is some cola in the contract. So I just wanted to get a better sense of whether I call that current services or not, but just the wage side to understand what we're facing. And, and with that, it's, if we put some money out of reserves, could we avoid doing what we did last year and do that kind of catch up? So I wanted to quantify that. So it's a question as well as a request. That's it. Andy, can I speak to that a little bit? So, so the elementary schools in the past several years, there's been several years with a 2.5% increase was sufficient to maintain level services and sometimes add programming. The elementary schools don't have to absorb the pension impact. They don't have to, the pension is not in the elementary school budget. The town covers that, just like all the other operating departments covers that first. So it doesn't come out of the town, the school budget directly, which is a huge help because it's a 7% increase. So there have been years, there have been a number of years from my experience there where the 2.5% increase was sufficient for the elementary schools. Every year is going to be a little different. Looking at how special ed costs are changing, special education costs are changing, collective bargaining agreements aren't settled. So every year is going to be a little bit unique, but the elementary schools are more stable in that way because they don't have that pension there. The regional schools are different because they do have to pay for their pension. And then we have the assessment method issue that has kind of compounds everything that we'll talk about on Saturday. And then the other thing with the regional schools that's different than the elementary schools is, so when we look at the elementary school budget and we say a 2.5% increase, we're doing a 2.5% increase on the total budget that we give to the elementary schools. When we look at the region and we say a 2.5% increase, we're doing a 2.5% increase on the assessment that we pay to the region. The assessments to the region only make up 60 to 70% of the regional budget. The rest of their budget is chapter 70 and other state aid, which unfortunately is usually flat or grows very slowly. So we may give a 2.5% increase to the region, but their overall budget increase is probably going to be in the one to 2% range because the other revenue sources they have don't grow because of the way the chapter 70 funding formula works. So the region always has a, in most almost every year, I can recall, the region always has bigger budget challenges that are sort of beyond the issue of what the school gives them. It's just regional problems that a lot of regional school districts deal with because of how they're the financing formula. And then real quick, while we're on school, I just wanted to clarify one thing that was in public comment. So the elementary schools, so for example, this year, the elementary schools are getting more money from charter and choice. They're getting a larger increase. The charter and choice tuition is not in their budget. What we have left over from many years ago when charter and choice used to be in their budget is that we adjust their overall budget each year by whether charter and choice goes up or down. And charter and choice is sort of stabilized at the elementary level right now. So in the past several years, there's been some years where it's gone up, where charter tuition goes up, and that means the elementary school budget increases lower. And then there's some years where charter and choice tuition go down and the elementary school budget is higher. So like this year, it's 2.7% instead of 2.5. So it works both ways. However, I do agree, and I talked to Tom Andrew a little bit about this. It's sort of confusing and honest, it doesn't make that material the difference at the end of the day. And so it is something we might wanna look to stop doing at some point in the future. I'm not sure if this is the year that this year it actually benefits the schools, but it is sort of confusing to explain to people why we do this and how it's attached to something we used to do many years ago. Yeah, first of all, Sean, I wanna thank you and the staff for an outstanding presentation last night and just share with you that we've already received compliments about it and the extent to which it goes above and beyond. So first of all, thank you. I feel the need to get a much more solid picture about what we truly are spending on the schools. And whether that means you take the school budget as you have it or the school figure that you have it and you put in footnotes, but I'm hearing both last night and now that the town budget carries some of the fringe or benefits or something healthcare, I guess, for the schools. And yet when we look at the school budget and this came up last night, people are saying, oh, look at that big increase for the town, but the schools are only getting this. Well, I hear that, but if we're paying their healthcare, then that should be counted in the percentage for the schools, not the percentage for the town. And then this ongoing confusion about whether the tuition charter or whatever is in or not, somehow or another, we need to understand what the school budget is, both elementary and secondary in a real picture that allows us to say, oh, gee, the town is only doing this percentage and the schools are doing this percentage because last night it was very clear people were not happy in what appeared to be the schools not getting as much as the town. And yet I'm hearing the town budget absorbs some costs for the schools and we're not adding that in. Can I respond to that quickly, Andy? So health insurance is in the elementary school budget, it's the pension that's not in any operating budget. And so the pension is just one of those things that we cover off right at the beginning with whatever revenues we have, we pay for the pension and that includes school employees, library employees, town employees, but that isn't in the school budget or the town operating budget or the library budget. The best report that we could ask the schools to give us some sort of comparison, the end of year report that is done each year by the school department, they have to report their school spending, they also, we have to give them a number each year that shows what portion of our pension assessment is the school portion, they have to report that and they also have to report charter and choice tuition. And so the question is, education spending versus our elementary school spending are gonna be two different numbers. If you look at how much we spent on education, that's gonna be higher because it will include charter and choice tuition. If you look at just how much we spent on the schools, it'll be a little bit lower because again, it's not including that charter and choice. But this end of year report will have all that. And so we could look at that over time to get a sense of how it's changed over the years. Cause I think if you look back again, because it just, and this is not any fault of the elementary schools, but because of charter, the expansion of charter schools in the area and how that's grown over the last 10 years, I'm sure you'll see large growth in the charter costs, for example, not as much of an increase in the elementary school growth, but overall education spending I would imagine has grown because of that. So I want to touch on the subject a little bit before calling on Bernie, I do see your hand up Bernie. I've been doing some calculations over the years and trying to compare us with other communities and the percentage of funding that Amherst allocates to education in comparison to peer communities and really understand whether we're different. And the answer is that we really are not different. And we're pretty much in line if there's any community that is funding a less of a percentage for schools that's one of our peer communities, I think it's Northampton. And I can go back and look for my spreadsheets on that and share it with the committee. But I think that we have not done the adequate job always of explaining that to the public as far as the charter question and how charter expenses are counted in the budget allocation decisions, each community is probably different, but Sean, you and Matt might know this better than I do. I'm sure you do. And that is how decisions have been made in most communities regarding how much growth goes to schools versus how much growth goes to the remaining parts of government. So. Is that a question, Andy? Okay, it's okay. Yeah, if you have any answer, please. Yeah, I mean, in this town, and I think this is why we've had such strong collaboration with all departments is that we've always been, in most years, all departments get sort of a comparable increase and it's really promoted everybody working together. There have been years where some departments have gotten more or less based on sort of individual needs of that specific year. And I think that's what we presented last night was that we have a unique challenge this year implementing the Cress program. And so that's why we would be proposing a larger allocation for the town. Just a couple of observations. The CPIU, the standard inflation rate is a lousy predictor for cities and towns. Inflation tends to run higher in municipalities than it does for the typical family because you don't purchase the same basket of goods. So if you're looking at 3% inflation, you can almost guess that it's gonna be a point higher for cities and towns, regardless of where they are. I was a little taken aback about the observation last night that we have to be fair and fair means giving everybody the same portion of growth and the like. I don't think that's necessarily the case because things do change and priorities do shift. In saying this is head with two grandkids in the school system and a third one going to enter before too long, we spend $23,000 a year per pupil. The only other school in Western Mass that spends as much as Southern Berkshire, otherwise you have to go to the Eastern part of the state to some of the small towns out of the Cape, some of the wealthier bus and suburbs to find comparable schools that spend as much or more than we do. So when we're talking about that, I think it's important to understand that we do spend a considerable amount of money per student on the schools. And that doesn't mean that that's adequate, it just means that we do that and that needs to be recognized. And the third thing is, is I really appreciate the point that I think Lynn was making that when we look at programs, whether it's the schools or press or the fire department or at least anyone, any program that we look at all sources of revenue so that we have a whole, a much better idea of what gets spent, whether we budget that revenue or not, whether it comes from grants or not. So we get a better idea of what the impact is and what the level of effort is. So that's it, thanks. I'm actually gonna pass, sorry. Okay, Matt. Well, I just wanted to say hello to everybody and nice to join you and just echo what Bernie said about the importance of the per pupil rate as sort of the most significant way to look at school budgets. And Andy, I know kind of talking about the regional agreement, the importance of a rolling five year measure for the regional agreement because year over year shocks to the school system can really throw that number off. But I do think that per pupil amount is probably the most important thing to message to the community. My question, I have to confess, I mean, you all know, I'm just trying to give my head around all of this. So I'm very much a novice in this conversation, but I just can't stop staring at your slide 9.1, the operating expenditures per capita slide and just seeing how much lower we are than our neighbors and comparable towns in terms of operating expense per capita. And obviously understanding that as being favorable from a big picture budget perspective, but I would love to just hear Sean sort of speak a little bit more to that metric and how and why it's so low with our tax rates where they are and all the other factors that sort of go into it. Yeah, so I think it's one of those sort of double-edged swords, right? So from a financial standpoint, I guess it's a good thing to have low operating expenditures per capita, but when you dig into it and you kind of see why, you can understand some of the challenges that we have. And so as a town, we're trying to provide services, not maybe equally across the board, but we're providing services for roughly 40,000 residents. A big portion of those residents live on tax exempt housing that aren't paying taxes and contributing towards the, you know, in the same way other taxpayers in town contribute towards the budget. And so I think that's why our operating expenditures are so low is that you've got a big denominator, but the resources coming in are from a smaller denominator. You know, we're not getting taxes from all 40,000 of those individuals or of those, of that number. So I think that's why it's low. We have a big denominator in terms of who we have to serve, but in terms of the money coming in to support them, it's a much lower base. And so it produces this outcome. Again, if you look at, and a good example is just to look at us in Northampton, if you look at Northampton, they have maybe 12,000 fewer residents, but if you look at their tax base, I've only got it recently, but I guess it's probably larger than our tax base. And again, that's because not all 40,000 of our residents contribute towards that tax base in the same way that, again, it's a homeowner or somebody who lives in has their own property would contribute. Yeah. Yeah, I assume it was related to that. Thank you. I just want to build on that, Sean. The other way to look at it is say that our denominator is artificially high. You know, that, you know, if we weren't, it's hard to do the counterfactual, but if we didn't have as many students, if you adjusted Northampton for pull the Smith students out and you pulled our students out and said, divide, you get a very different story. And it's not that our, we have services that go to the students, but it's not quite the same as long-term residents in terms of schools and use of our recreational layer, you know, it's a flowing. So it's going to be true in any town and I don't know how many comparable towns there are where half of the population is in higher ed and passing through rather than long-term. We just aren't that many. Right. So I don't think it's a prize in that Dartmouth. If you're looking at this slide, Dartmouth is the one that's right next to us and they're not, they don't have quite the same student base that we have, but they're probably maybe one of the closer communities because they have UMass Dartmouth there. So I think that's not a surprise that they're next to us on this list. Yeah, that makes my point, Sean. And maybe I don't know what UVM in Burlington, but where the university population is relatively large share of the total population. And then you're dividing by a population that includes them. It's just different. I don't know, you know, I'm not making a larger judgment on it. What's interesting is I pulled, Dartmouth is at a 9.9% property tax rate, you know, and it just, because I thought the same thing about the university's people being there. And I feel like that it's an interesting connection to Herb's public comment about sort of the, you know, the home ownership base in town in Amherst. Trying to find comps for Amherst in the Commonwealth is a challenge. I know I've tried to, I don't like this list of municipalities we have here. I don't know where it came from. It doesn't seem right to me. And you know, I've spent considerable amount of time my first time on the finance committee trying to find 20, 25 towns in Amherst and in Massachusetts that are comparable to Amherst. And it's just a tough fit. You gotta, there's, it's hard to do, but the presence of students is a real impact on these kinds of measures. Yeah, I mean, at the schools, we had, when I was there, we would always try to find comps. And we had the same issue. There's very few communities that were comparable to us. And one of the things I think, I think it was the superintendent observed is that one of the metrics we're most comparable to is actually the statewide average in terms of demographics. I don't know how it would play out in terms of this scenario, but on the student front, we were closer to the statewide average than maybe any other community. Would we ever be able to do comps on the pilots that the other towns get from their either private or public universities just to put that up? Because when you said we don't get revenues, UVM up in Burlington made a pretty big long-term commitment to the town of Burlington. So I just don't know whether collecting that information would potentially be useful when we're in strategic negotiations. Yeah, and I just want to clarify, I don't mean to say like, we don't get any revenues from the, obviously the university being here as a huge economic driver. I just mean in the same way of, with property taxes, how that would come in. I meant, yeah. Right, I think we have done a little bit of that. We've talked to some other, talked to Dartmouth about what they are seeing, but no, that is something we can keep doing in terms of, and we've also looked at Northampton did a pilot program a few years ago, I think. And so we've looked at what they did. And so that's something we can continue to explore. In this last question, I want to go on to my next topic that we need to get at, but getting back to the question of treatment of charter schools. Is there anybody who would have statistics or have information about how other communities are treating the charter tuition within their budget allocation process or is that just so individualized that it's impossible? So any regional school is gonna, it has charter school and choice tuition, it's gonna be in their budget. It's just the nature of how the, it's just a separate governmental unit. So regional schools are always gonna have it. So we took it out of our elementary school budget because that was, I think requested by the Department of Revenue, Sonia at the time, right? So my guess is most are gonna not have it in their elementary school budget. They're gonna be doing it like we do where they kind of treat it as an assessment and just pay it once. But I think in terms of data, I think the only way we would be able to figure out how everyone does it is to reach out and call them to see how they treat it. And we could certainly like Northampton and Hadley, we could reach out to them and see how they handle it in their budgets. They might be good comparisons for us because they're dealing with the same charter schools that we are. The next topic I want to do is that I think it's important that we do some brainstorming as a group about what issues are going to be the major points that we think need to be covered within the draft guidelines. So we've talked about a few already, but I think it'd be worth trying to just have a lot of what they, all might be so that we can try and get a handle on how to proceed with the guideline question. Andy, do you want me to pull up a blank sheet and I can just put stuff down as people brainstorm? I think that might be helpful. And I think we've talked about the three that Stereo Marshall had brought up already. And so they probably just ought to go on the list. And that is whether we should whether we've been too conservative in our budgeting process. Whether we're treating the schools in a disparate manner because of the nature of the way that the charter tuition is being handled and future planning for what's going to replace ARPA funds to things that we're now funding by ARPA funds that have an ongoing aspect. So I'm going to look to others to just chime in. See if I have covered. I need to get back to a participant list now to be able to see who raised hands is. So I'm just going to go in order that I see on the listing, Bob, Pegner. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I wanted to, I think we probably covered this, but I think the size of the reserves and the contributions to the cash contributions, I do think we need to look at that. I think there's a kind of a guideline that's been around for a couple of years now, which is we're not going to use reserves for operating costs. And maybe we have to think about that a little differently, at least during the startup time for these new programs. So that's one. I think echoing what Kathy has raised, and I've raised that before, I think we need to also think about fiscal sustainability, especially getting a full picture about the next four to five years, with both the ARPA funds and the starting up of the new programs, the capital projects starting to kick in. I think we're just going to have a lot of turn in our budgets. And we need to kind of have some, at least I personally need a better understanding of how everything fits together. I also think that part of this, I think we need to reexamine the public safety issue and try to figure out how to right size if we can, and it may be a challenge, the police, press, fire, EMS, public health, any other kinds of things that impact public safety and public health. I think we need to really take a hard look at what do we need from these various organizations for the key public safety at the level that we wanna have it. I know in the past, we've talked about level funding versus level services. I don't know if that's even an issue now because the town isn't gonna have level funding. And I guess we could talk about level services for the schools and library, but I think that's something where we may have to revisit that. I don't think we've talked about this at all, but I do think keeping the capital projects at 10% of the levy is a good idea. I think that should be considered. I think what Kathy brought up earlier, looking at pilot payments, I do have the same concern that maybe we're not getting as much from the educational institutions as we could or should. And again, I think we should have a better look at that. And I do an echoing curves of public comment. I do think we need to maybe make home ownership support we need to address it as part of the overall budget. How are we gonna do this? What level are we gonna support this? And how can we do that sustainably? But I do think it's an important element of what we need to accomplish over the next few years. And that's what I have off the top of my head. Thank you, that's helpful. Matt? Wow, so much of what Bob just said, really is kind of where I was at. I wanted to start with the 10% of the levy capital point and strongly agree, I think, with what we heard from Sean and Paul last night on that topic. And then I think also just perhaps give some guidance on the multi-year plan for that. Are we talking about staying at 10% for multiple years, given these projects, exceeding it, what happens there? I also similarly, given how much of Crest and some of the community's safety work is tied up on state and federal grant money right now, I think, just giving clear guidance in terms of, how and when to integrate that into the general funds budget is gonna be really important. The only, I kind of just did owe everything Bob said. The only thing that's somewhat new is I was curious, I know we had some pleasant surprises in terms of growth this year, based on last night's presentation, but I'm curious how that compares to our neighbor districts. And I continue to ask if we're doing enough to incentivize growth and receipts in terms of business development, economic development, downtown work, things like that. So just keeping an eye on that as a way to, in addition to the property tax base and state aid, but to continue to build growth and receipts as a source of revenue. Thank you, Anthony. Lynn, I just wanna, I'm gonna do a little bit of an addition to what Bob said on fiscal sustainability. He used the word multi-year. So I would just like to put that in, we do it for capital, but we don't do it for operating. So I just add the word multiple year. So we're looking at fiscal sustainability over multiple years. And then I have a question, because I like this list a lot, I must say. I have a question, and I think it's a different point. When we get the grant money that we're getting and we're about to get. So we got CARES, we got some big allocations that were directly for Cress and some sustainability money. Is there a way in our guidelines and or the final budget report to be showing that? Because in some cases where the operating budget is not showing you, if you compared the operating budget to the town revenues from our normal sources, you would say, how did we get everything done? And it's cause the schools got a whole bunch of CARES money. So they did some stuff that they didn't have to pull down on their operating budgets. And when ARPA starts flowing in, so it's kind of a, I don't know how to show it because it's not long-term. With the state grants that we get for the schools, they're more an ongoing source. So they make sense of another source of revenue, but it would help for people to see that some of the bump ups are not pulling necessarily down on the property taxes. They're pulling from another source. So that is sort of a, we don't usually show things that way. Then I had, let me just try to think of what my other one was. Was something related to this? Well, maybe I had my, yes, so it's like showing more. Oh, this, I'm putting my hand down because I had one more thing and I completely can't remember it. So, and it's different. So I'll see if my memory swirls around and comes back to it. Okay, Ben, raise your hand again. Did you think of an Dorothy? Well, I'm going to pick up some strains that have been mentioned before and try to bring them together. And that is three cliches, quick fix, short-sighted and bait and switch. The health of the town depends on neighborhoods and families and small retail and services. And yet what we've got ourselves into is this box where we're going to do the capital projects. We're going to fund it by just letting apartment buildings be built downtown with no retail and not family friendly and not affordable. So we need to change what we're doing. And for example, when people mentioned home ownership, the town is in the process of developing some property right now for affordable housing. We don't even know whether we'll get any more housing town owned property, except that little piece may be connected to Rolling Ridge. But we have the combination of Belcher Town Road and Eastry, a good piece of property, but it's going to be all rental. It's going to be rental, again, not home ownership. So we have this development that we spent yesterday afternoon on that's 17 houses, townhouses proposed for in the middle on sunset. And one of the members of the committee, when I got up this morning at six, I get an email that she sent me at midnight, not able to sleep, thinking about if that is students and there are four bedrooms in each of these 17 houses and then thinking of how many cars that would be and what that's doing to destroy a neighborhood which is going to, we have a tax base of home ownership people right here downtown who are going to leave, we're going to leave because of these short-sighted things. We know we have a housing thing, but we're not building housing for families. We're not doing anything from home ownership. So I think the first thing we have to do is to do a lot of rethinking, not just keep moving ahead like a big ocean liner that can't turn around. I mean, I had a talk, one of my students gave a speech on the Titanic today and I was beginning to feel like, hey, maybe we're on the Titanic. We have to say, we people keep talking about home ownership, they talk about families. Let's take this property that instead of putting out an RFP for another rental unit with cars parking in front like a motel, make a family affordable neighborhood and think of ways to protect the residential neighborhoods that you have to keep the tax base you have and to downtown stop trying to cut out retail from the mixed use. I mean, that's what's going to be my next meeting. Tonight at seven to reduce, reduce, reduce calling it mixed rate, mixed use, but it isn't. So I think that we've been doing a lot of stuff but we've been working so hard, too many meetings, not enough time to really sit down and think and say, what are we doing and where are we going and where is this leading us? Because if we want to be a town, we have to have affordable family neighborhoods and we have to have some small retail and services that are in our downtown. So that's my comment today. I need to know, Dorothy, what was the third term? Quick fix, short-sighted and what? Bay and switch. I mute myself by habit when I finish and then I don't unmute myself. Yes, we say we've got a crisis of not having affordable housing and yet we're not building affordable housing and we're not building housing for families. We're building expensive apartments for students and then saying things like students don't need cars, they don't need parking and they all brought their cars because my husband went by and checked the parking lot at UMass and he said, he was empty on the weekend. That means it's not students. I said, no, Bob, those are students. They went home on the weekend. We just were in the middle of a COVID crisis. Kids have been spent more time with their families. They have jobs, they have girlfriends. They're not, there's not that much fun going on on the campus. We hear all these crazy parties, they're not fun. That's some kids' desperate attempts to have fun. So the kids are doing it like Stony Brook where all the campus goes home on the weekend and the kids have their cars here because they feel we're in the middle of a crisis, they gotta have their getaway car. I mean, I understand their feeling. I left New York City after 9-11 and the first thing I did was buy a good getaway car and move someplace where the family could gather and there's a lot of stuff going on in people's minds. And I think we have to work hard to create Amherst as a safe town, a place where families live and a place of safety and protection and to focus on that. And then the rest will follow. That's my thought. Two quick observations to make that I'm gonna call in Kathy and Pat. Quick observations are one, they're really related. We have to be very careful to remember we're finding this committee and not a committee to cover every subject that is of concern to the town and concern to the council. And so the comment was made in public comment and a little bit here about housing policy and the CRC spent a lot of time developing a housing policy which was approved by the council. And that is now our housing policy. And I don't think that it's appropriate for the guidelines to suggest that we do something that amends the housing policy that should really, if people are unhappy with any aspect of it, including the fact that it doesn't deal sufficiently in their minds with home ownership support. I'm not sure the finance committee is the right venue for it. And the, so I think it's a general matter what we ought to be looking at for all of these things is to make sure that we're sticking to the topic which is we're trying to develop budget guidelines. And if it doesn't tie directly to the budget then it's something that we really need to sort of either recognize and set aside or just subside. So, Matt, you haven't spoken yet. So I want to say that I did not get the initial things that you stated that we got from Sarah Marshall. I only got this much of it because I was trying to get the sheet up. Oh, let me go back to her email quickly. She had three. One was the ARPA funds issue. One was how we're dealing with just budgeting conservatively and whether we budget to conservatively always ending up with a surplus that then makes our reserves grow as opposed to being a little bit more aggressive in our budgeting philosophy and taking a little bit higher risk but not ending every year with significant additions. And the third one was catch up funding for schools and recognizing that we need to be thinking about it as a justice issue in addition to an education issue. So, Pat, I'd like to recognize. I have just a little tiny thing to add. There are many things that I care about already in the list and I'm already going to break what you just said, Andy, just a little bit. I think in terms of home ownership, we need as a town and possibly as a finance department, I don't know, to look at rental moving to home ownership and that happened in the Pomeroy Lane Cooperative. There was a 15 year benefit to the developer and at the end of 15 years, residents could buy their units. So there are some creative investigation of moving from rental to home ownership and I apologize because I know it's out of the thing but I had to say it anyway. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to go back to Kathy. The one I couldn't remember is actually linked to the 10% per capital lint. So later you can figure out how to organize this but when we do the guidelines, make it clear to people who are reading it that that 10% also has money for maintenance and that we, so what's in that 10% because people think of capital as like a machine, a building, but if we underfund that, we have buildings that are falling apart and a few schools that I just went to, we're talking about why their school deteriorated faster than it otherwise needed to do. So just making a point in that capital piece Lynn that that includes maintenance funds. So when we talk about it, it doesn't seem so abstract. The other piece hearing this discussion about home and housing and housing policy, we haven't in the financial guidelines mentioned but we maybe should that we have, we are not the committee and the town manager, isn't it? But we have something called Community Preservation Act and that a lot of the principles on what they're funding, it's a source of revenue for housing in particular. So I think it would be useful just to have something about it people, most people that I talked to who aren't in this room have no idea that we have a well over a million, a million and a half often each year and sometimes more than that, and if any of it is long-term. So just it's taxpayer money, but just to talk about it that we have a source for some of this in another in addition to grants that is supporting the town. But the maintenance fund one, I just wanna make sure we remember to talk about it in the financial indicators. We made a big step forward in most recent JCPC of because Jeremy came to us, we created a maintenance fund with a long list of things he could do to protect buildings and I thought it was a really good idea. That's it, hand down. Thank you, Matt, see your hand, put it back up. Yeah, I just briefly wanted to say that the guidelines may wanna speak to the economic development director, I think it's called position that was cut previously. Not, I'm not even even taking a position on it. Just it does seem like a topic that we may want to address in the guidelines. Thank you, Dorothy. The reason I brought up housing was because revenue growth was a big topic last night when we talk about the budget and with Kathy talking about increases in percentages and inflation that it's, my first thought today was, when she was going through that, was if we don't do something, we're gonna be in deficit. In other words, we can't stand still because of certain costs which were going up, particularly to do with healthcare and pension and our desire to get a better handle on that. So revenue growth has been the big topic that we've been going on and I'm saying where we get the revenue growth from matters. So that's how it related to the finance committee. Yeah, I don't know how to deal with that. Just going back to something I keep saying to other people in various contexts is that we sort of have an unusual situation in Amherst and 50% of our land is either not belongs to nonprofit institutions or we have taken it out of taxation by making it conservation land. And almost all of the rest is in residential areas that there's less than 4% of the property that is commercial. So that as we try and do something, where does it go? And those are the two buckets of places that it goes. And the feeling is that in this goes back to the master plan that we need to do something out of increasing revenue with the part that's at less than 4%. And I think the question that you're getting at is then how do you do that? And what's the best way to go about doing that? And that's where I get into this question of what is the role of the finance committee and what is the role of other committees? But I think that the basic question of trying to increase revenue is important. I think that the other thing that we've observed and I don't know how this fits in anymore is that so many houses are turning over to rentals that's driving up property values and residential property and that that's having a tremendous effect on affordability is an issue and the ability to do something residential areas. But again, I can recognize the problem but I'm not sure that it's gonna be solved with the finance committee. So I think that what we're, John, you have to your hand up, right? Yeah, just two things that came up last night that I think the town manager and I would appreciate getting guidance on and the guidelines would be the proposals from the African Heritage Committee, the reparation proposals and also the ladder truck. I think it would be helpful to us to know what this committee's position is on moving forward the ladder truck. I know we're gonna discuss that again soon, maybe this meeting if we have time. Yeah, John, I think that my sense of that, the ladder truck should be part of that broader discussion on public safety. I completely agree with his bugs thing of trying to get it all in one pot rather than dealing with each piece of it. It would just be, I don't know whether it belongs in indicators or not, but that recommendation of talking about it together rather than each piece. I did send out to you what Michelle had forwarded, which was the specific AHRA list, I said that earlier. Pat? Well, I'm gonna say something that's gonna get me into a lot of hot water. It's a proposal and they would like all of these things and I can understand that we have to make a decision about what we can do as a town and what aspects of what they're saying, we can actively contribute to and what we need to move away from at this point. So I think it's gonna be a tricky and important discussion. I agree, it is going to be. And I think that's true for a lot of things because what has happened this year, that I think we're really grappling with is that we've passed a tremendous number of policies on the council level that are very ambitious, starting with the first year when we did the energy and climate action policy and goals. And now this year, the housing policy goals and goals that ended up being divided sort of between the AHRA and the community safety working group, which are redesigned of public safety. And then our ongoing goals, in addition, education being when the people talk about most, but also trying to upgrade our most sick buildings and just generally address capital needs. So we've built this tremendous list of once, which was what I was saying at the beginning, at the very beginning of the meeting. And I think that what we sort of, if anything, need to communicate to the council, it's not that the finance committee can solve the problem of picking the right priorities, but the finance committee points out that we need this step. And we need to understand that establishing priorities means not doing something else. And I think that the other thing that I'm just going to say because it's been on my mind for so long and it's been alluded to here, is that it's sort of become the solution everybody turns to last night was, oh, just cut the police department. And I think that it's a simplistic solution as often comes up. But we need to address that issue. And I think that's a good point. I think that we need to address that issue in some fashion to say that it's a matter that needs to investigation and discussion, but it probably is not going to solve the problem to the extent that people are looking to solve the problem. So I think we've done a pretty good listing of things that we might want to be pointing out to the council and the budget guidelines. And I think that we've also done a pretty good job as we go through this thinking about some of the critical issues and then I'm going to go back to the group because I see the hands come up. But that initial question of do we treat all segments equally, which has been historically what we do with trying to have an equal increase for education municipal and library, whether that is a core recommendation that we stick with or if not, how we propose to deal with it. This committee does have to come to grips with that one. Bernie. Yeah, I forget who said it, but it seems to me to be accurate here that you can talk all you want about programs. But first you have to fill the puddles. You have to remember to fill the puddles. So that's, you know, there's a base of activity that the town has to do regardless. And I think people ignore that. There's a certain operating principle, certain set of operating instructions that we have to follow and we have to fund. And then beyond that, we need to make some choices. And it's not that programs are competing with each other. It's that we begin to see where we can create the great, you know, respond to the greatest need for the greatest number, perhaps. And that's going to be, that's going to be a struggle. If you look at the report that was issued by the community safety working group to look at their numbers. All their proposals exceed the entire police department budget. You know, so I'm happily the Crest Program budget and structures being reworked. But I think the council has to be careful. Whenever the council puts a policy, a proposal out there policy out there, that they need to cost it out. And, you know, great ideas are great ideas, but they're, they all come with, unfortunately, with the price tag. And I think that's one of the things that we'll have to look at. And the council will certainly have to look at is, you know, because again, to go back to how we started this discussion, we have, you know, a great deal of, a great deal of needs and a great deal of wants and a limited amount of money. So just to wax, philosophic for a minute. Thank you. Dorothy. I agree. We have to do basic services, which are building the potholes and doing the fixing the sidewalks. But you, we were asked to give some feedback on the ladder truck. And I think we have to just go ahead and start it's because it has such a long time to go. I mean, it's, it's just no quick turnaround. There's no, oh, we'll just get ourselves one. It takes longer to get that than, than a lot of other things. And it's huge and it's so easy to ignore it and to want to walk around it. And I think we have to just do it just to say, we're going to start and order that truck and pay for that truck because we will need it. We will need it. And particularly since you're building more high rises. And we have a college with high rises. We need a good ladder truck. And that's a basic service that we have to have a truck that can rescue people or they can help put out fires and buildings. So I'm with you on that stick with the basics first. And that's one of the basics, even though it's very, very expensive. Let me point out a couple of things on the ladder truck, because I've made reference to it last night. And, you know, I've heard lots of discussion on ladder truck over the years. One is that it's not the big buildings. It's not going to go to a multi-storey building in Southwest dormitories and on the university campus and use a ladder truck to save people. That's got to be done through sprinkler systems and other things because you can't get a ladder truck that goes at high. Ladder trucks from what the fire department told me in previous JCPC meetings are actually most useful when they enable firefighters to be above a fire and be able to then use their hoses in a downward fashion. And so it's a complicated issue. So just I say that just to be careful as to how we word this question. I don't think we need to describe firefighter strategies, but just recognizing the importance of the truck. The other thing is, is that I pointed out last night the cost. That we're talking well over a million dollars. And if we're going to do it, then we have to encourage JCPC to build it into a single year because it's a borrowing plan, which means it's going to be paid over a number of years. It's not going to be paid in a single year because I don't think that you can purchase that size of a piece of equipment, size being measured by dollars on a cash basis. I'll just do a quick rejoinder. I think that means we can say the ladder truck is necessary to save homes. It's a good point. Yeah, no, I think the ladder, I'm not. I have heard, you know, every time the fire department is time to talk to JCPC when I've been on JCPC and talked about the ladder truck, they always give good reasons why it's an important part of the equipment that they need. And I just don't think we have to get into deeper, but I do think it is important. Interject very quickly. I can tell you from the fire that we had at the sonic building in Belcher Town, that building wasn't under control until Amherst showed up with the ladder truck out over the fire and saved three or four of the structures. Yeah, I'll just add to when Chief Nelson briefed us, I think last year, he talked about it's not just going up, it's going out. So they can reach over a house from the street and not have to drive up on the lawn and all that kind of stuff. So that, that, that's for everybody, you know, everybody can understand they need the fire truck to be able to reach their house, you know, back from the street. Andy, I just want to mention, I can't raise my hand. Yes. So after Kathy, maybe I could talk. Go ahead. You go first. Okay, I actually want to go back to the ladder truck and the reason I asked the question last night that I did and that is, do we have to have the appropriation in place to order it? And the answer is yes, we do. So somewhere in here, it's time to put this appropriation in place. I actually had an opportunity today while I was getting some lunch to ask a few more questions of an eligible fire person. And the cost of this truck goes up about $100,000 a year. And the wait for it is probably a minimum of 16 months or more. Actually, interestingly enough, communities around us do our ordering ladder trucks, including Belcher town and North Hampton. But the issue that has to be dispelled is that you cannot charge people for mutual aid because your ladder truck shows up. That's not how mutual aid works. So I, I'm actually with the group of people who thinks it's time to move this particular issue up the line of funding. The one we have now is absolutely useless. It's dangerous. It shouldn't ever be used. Yeah, and I, it all is I'm saying is that if we believe that, then we're going to end up and this is appropriate. The proposal to fund a truck that involves borrowing to pay for it. It's going to be paid for under a number of years, but as soon as a council authorizes the borrowing, you can place the order. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think there's a step to be taken. I don't know if Sean has anything to add to that or disagree with that. But. Kathy's. That's right. I just, in terms of sources of money for it. Two questions. Could ARPA funds be used for part of it? Since as I, you know, Create an obligation. And we manage it. I think that's a good point. Will the infrastructure bill could. That's been passed and then the state could. Essential equipment like this be considered part. Of the infrastructure. So. Those are both questions for easing the. The direct pull on the capital budget over. I suppose we could fund it for 10 years, but. I don't know if that's a good point. I don't know if that's a good point. I don't know if that's a good point. I don't know if it's $10,000 a year without interest in it. So more than 100. So it's a question. You know, are there. Are there some matching grants that we can get. And then my last one is, I don't know whether there are variations on ladder trucks. So. In Europe. Steve mentioned this at one point, like three years ago. That sometimes there are ladder trucks. That have everything on them. And then you've got the water and pumper truck next to it. So I don't know whether there are variations. That you get what you want with the height. That are less expensive because two vehicles go out. So that is also a question, you know, on a, do we have any choices? Having said, I didn't want to talk about the ladder talk. I was, I was Googling ladder trucks and comparing them across countries three years ago. I think that's a good question. I think that there's some towns have a linkage fee. In their zoning laws. So when particularly large buildings are being built, it's the five story buildings that the chief said, or particularly in need of. They, they pay into a pot for fire and EMS. Because of the, the difficult to be a managing fires. Not new mass tall, but the four and five story as opposed to a two story home. So I think at this point we should probably, because we have a long agenda for today. What my proposal is, and I mentioned in my email. That if I could get a volunteer to work with me to try and see if we can take this list and work it into a draft. Then present the draft began at next week's meeting. And this could be, it would be a principal part of the discussion to look at the draft and critique it. And then we'll go through a series of modifications that don't necessarily involve a meeting, but we can do it with just sending sequential drafts and giving comments back to a single point. So that seems, that's my suggestion as to how to go forward. Does anybody else have a different methodology to conclude this process? And do I have anybody who's interested in. Working with me on it. Oh, if no one else wants to volunteer, I'll volunteer. I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How are you doing the lot right now? School building. But. I can help out if you want someone to review or to. And it or something I can certainly do that too. Okay. So. I'm trying to get out of this without making sure I, and make sure I don't lose it. I'm trying to stay out of it. So. Difficult. We need you, Bobby. Working on minutes. I would be saying, gee, this is my minutes too. I think this is very helpful. If you stop sharing the screen, I think you don't kill it. Got it. Thank you. I'll work with Bob and Kathy. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm on this and. Andy, I'm always willing to give it a read, but. I'm not going to volunteer to do right now. Right. I have a large writing project called town manager evaluation memo. Trying to take. Different evaluations and make them look like a single evaluation. It was bad enough when it was a five person select board. So Gabriel Gould is in his back with us and. So I wanted to. Bring us over to the. And the maintenance fund aspect of it. I don't know. Okay. Do you want to start and tell us what you were proposing. And from the. The perspective and then. You've seen sort of my thoughts as to how we might want to do his process. There's a couple of people I don't know. If you are not aware, we have presented the town council now designer, you board and disabilities act. And we go before historic commission tomorrow. And TSO the week after that. And then we'll be bringing this back to this town council. In early December that we would like to. Build and donate to the town of Amherst, a permanent performance shell on the south common. Part of that would be also bringing to the table a maintenance fund. And a. Programming fund. We'd like to, to program it and front it for a couple of years and show people what it's really capable of. But for this meeting, we're really discussing the maintenance fund. And when we mentioned the maintenance fund originally. Some of the counselors. Were concerned that does this go to the town? And is this main, like held by the town. And maintained by the town, or is this something that the bid maintains and shows free. You know, I'm not quite sure how the best way to do this is. And there are some questions about how to do that. And where the fund should be held. And, you know, where the, the. Maintaining. Expenses should come from. Is that town or is that bid? So we are welcome. To any and all recommendations. And this will be something that we're giving to the town one way or another. And we will do so. How is the town wants it done? Thank you. One. Your hand was up. So. Okay. So I appreciate that. You know, my suggestion was, is that we think about it. At this point from. A little bit at the time perspective, but the, we. Have you done any work. With your architect or otherwise in looking at. What the estimates would be for. What a maintenance fund should be. How much per year. And how do you come up with the number? Well, we're looking at. You know, It's a wooden structure that will be. It'll have. It'll have. You know, You know, It's a wooden structure that will be used when. It probably doesn't start in the first year because it will be new. And. Is to. Andy, our proposal is to have a $250,000. Fund. At the start of building. And how did you come with the number? Well, we're looking at. The number of projects that we're working on. And what that will be. It'll have like a finish on it that can be easily wiped off, et cetera, et cetera. That we're working with the architects on. And I really looked at other organizations and other communities and what they have put into their. Maintaining of. It's hard to say a similar structure because of course, this is very unique. But we looked at sort of a 10 year period. And that's what we felt that would need for repairs and damages. And hopefully the fund sits somewhere where it. Garner some interest. You know, something safe. You know, I don't know. I mean, that's one of our questions. Does the down. Like Sean, does the town put something like this into a Vanguard fund? You know, low risk, low interest. You know, or does it go into a money market or a CD? You know, those are some of the questions we have because if it. Just sits in a checking account earning 0.001% interest, then it's not going to really get us further than 10 years. So it would depend on when we need the funds. So some of it could go. If we only need. You know, one 10th of that in the first year, then it's possible we could put some of it into a CD and get a little bit more interest CDs aren't really paying much right now. Yeah. And we do have money markets. So we would have to work with you and others on what the timing of when those funds would be needed. And I guess I have one quick question. Is the, do we envision that this fund would also be used for like the. Upkeep or the cleaning if there's cleaning needed on an annual basis or would that fall to. Town staff or volunteers or others to. Sort of keep the structure clean. I imagine it could wear throughout the year. Yeah. Well, our MOU with the town is that we are in cleaning for the downtown area. So we would of course, I think that we would have pride of place in this and probably, you know, have our morning crew look at it every single day and pick up any garbage or, you know, as, as it is Amherst, maybe human feces or whatever it is that's there. I guess we're, we're sort of hoping and seeing that with the rebuilding of the North Common and the beautification of that and the way that the common is treated every day now. It is very rare that we're picking up garbage or picking up issues from that area. The respect in the community for our green areas is exceptional. Okay. Good. Thank you. I don't, I assume that we are not. Necessarily going to be charging a fee for the use of the shell, although I'm not sure that that has been determined. But I would wonder if one of the ways to replenish the fund. Is that that fee would include a contribution to the ongoing maintenance. Of the facility. And, you know, and there may be a point in time where we have to charge a modest, but nevertheless usage fee. You know, suppose some group wants to rent it. And they're going to bring in a, you know, a show of some kind or a group of some kind. And they're actually collecting money from attendees to come to that show. And then it seems to me that a usage fee. Could to paid to the town would be appropriate. Lynn, I'm not a hundred percent sure of this because this isn't sort of my bag, but I don't think that any funds can be charged. Two people. If unless it's for, so like the case of Amherst, for example, what's free to all, but the food is what they paid for. I don't think that there is a legal way to do something that you would be able to charge admission to on the common to see something. I think you could do suggested donations and I think the sliding scale fee for the use of the comment for the use of the stage itself would be very smart for the town to do. I would like to be on the sliding scale because, you know, one of the things that we'd like to see is the Irish dance group be able to come and use it and, you know, or Amherst LA or, or, you know, the high school group. And I don't think that they have a big budget for that. But if it's a, you know, if it's a non-profit or something doing more, I think that that's very smart. And from our standpoint, the lighting and sound equipment that the bid will own and have in a travel case, if you will, we will be renting that out to individuals with a production manager type of relationship. That's how lighting and sound and production will come with the stage. But, and, and that would be just to keep replenishing the lighting and sound equipment and also the maintenance fund. I can't remember how East Hampton does theirs. But I vaguely remember making a contribution or something while he entered. And then they had some way in which they would, it would be useful to understand how they manage their performance shell, which has been extremely successful. Yeah, we can, we can reach out to East Hampton with my understanding the same as Gabrielle's, which is we wouldn't charge people to attend, I think, because it's a public comment. I think that would create some other accounting issues if, if there's a revenues and there's revenue sharing and things like that. So my understanding is that it'll be sort of a free performance program to bring people downtown. But we can certainly reach out to East Hampton and see how they do theirs. In terms of what the maintenance fund is envisioned to cover. I think when Ray, when they were presenting it, there are some lights that are embedded in the structure, you know, either coming from the floor or coming down. So would the maintenance fund also be that the electrical wiring needs to be fixed, needs to be redone? It's sort of, it's a soup to nuts that someone, she sounded like this will be super sturdy, but it's that someone comes along and just decides in the middle of the night on one of the fun things might be to see one of those lovely folds, whether they can tear it down, you know, yeah. So your vision, it would cover all of the above. It should cover all of the above. Of course, it's something really, really terrible where to happen, like somebody brings, you know, heavy equipment to tear it down. But the structure has been looked at by probably, you know, one of the top structural engineers in on the planet in the world. And it is very, very sturdy because it has to withstand microburst hurricanes, heavy, heavy snowfall, torrential rain, winds. You know, we really looked at this from the New England weather. You know, part and at this point, I just want to make sure it can even withstand a flood and that's why we're going with a Goshen and local stone for the base of it. So it would take a lot to break a fold. But I don't underestimate people. So Kathy, if that's possible, I would say that there would have to be a save the, save the shell campaign because that would probably cost more than the maintenance fund. The maintenance fund is really for I carved my name in it. And I, I have to graffiti it. It needs, you know, the lights need to be replaced every now and again, because that's how lights work, right? But it is an exceedingly sturdy structure. And any lighting that will be built into it, those will be underground conduits. So those will not be something that someone can, you know, run over with a lawn mower and break or anything like that. And that we've talked to the DPW about and looked at all the ground underneath, what is underneath and what is not. And the location actually is quite perfect for what they do. And there's a 12 inch type underneath, but we don't hit that. So the other question, if we're close with that is whether there's any possibility of purchasing any insurance either for the town, through the town or to provide insurance for those kinds of incidents. Yeah. I think that there should be sexual insurance and I'd be happy to reach out. I think the town normally works with. We do all of our insurance through in Charter. I'm happy to reach out to them and find out what that could look like. That would probably be paid through by the maintenance fund. And if you're going to talk to East Hampton, find out if they have insurance on theirs. Bernie. Yeah, I'm thinking about what we went through in Delta Town with the daycare center. The town owned the daycare center, the town insured the daycare center. And then we went through the daycare center. And then we went through the daycare center. But then they were the operator and provider. So I think what we might want to think about here. Is accepting the gifts of the performance shed. Putting it on the town's building inventory, ensuring it, and then asking the, the, the having a contract with the bid to be the manager of. The performance shed. So that if someone wanted to. If someone, if, if a troop came to town and wanted to be the manager of the maintenance group. We have a fee that we charge. You know, we take the town out of the day to day. Operation of the shed. And the bid would then be the, the manager, the maintenance group. They would. They would have, they'd have to demonstrate that they have the quarter of a million dollars. Maintenance fund available to them. So we're going to go ahead and do a little bit of a little bit of detail and then we'll go ahead and do a little bit of a little more detail. And then we'll go ahead and talk to town council about that. So funny. I don't see myself in. The rate. Same order as you're calling on me, people. That's an interesting idea, which brings me to the question, which may be beyond the purview of the finance committee. And that is who is going to schedule the shell. That is something that we, the common now is you fill out all the paperwork. It's now in line. It's quite lovely. You pay a fee to the town. You pay an extra fee for electricity if you want to use the electric and the town has a calendar for that. There are different ways we could go about this. We could go about this. So let's just say it's the rotary. The rotary wants to use South Common and they want to use the performance shell. So they put in a proposal to the town to use the South Common and the performance shell and maybe that just gets an added place on the quote unquote form. Another way to do that, what Bernie was saying is that they come to us. We do all the paperwork for them. We do the common rental for them and the performance shell is part of that and they do pay us a fee toward maintenance of the performance shell. And if they want lighting and sound equipment, we have different levels of rentals for those. So we'd be happy to do that. Again, I think that this is probably two to three years out from being a reality and we would bring on a staffer who is in charge of working on that because that would be, I'd hope, quite a full-time job if it's going to be used as much as we'd like to see it be used. But we're open to either. We didn't want to come in and say we own it. We schedule it. We decide what doesn't, doesn't happen there. That's not the intention. But we also know that everybody has a bandwidth. So we're happy to step up where we need to to make sure that this is something that could be used and really utilized by many. There would have to be a joint scheduling capability because the town manager would be receiving additional requests for scheduling the south, the south common. Yeah, which would negate anything with an audience for just the shell. I think it's a very good idea that you will be in charge of the lights and the sound because theater people will do whatever to get the effect they want, which could be very destructive to the shell. Then, of course, you do have to charge because you're bringing a person with that, which I think, again, that is a very, very good idea. I mean, I'm in from educational theater where nobody's in the sound booth, nobody does anything without it being under control of the theater department. So our stuff is in good shape. But that's not what you're going to do. But so there is this minimum fee. And then this this group of people that want to perform and you want them to perform and they don't have the money for the minimum fee. What do we do now? That's where the downtown Amherst Foundation comes into greater effect because after it does what it's trying to do, which is build the Drake Live Performance and Music Center and this shell, we become a grant making foundation, which is the long term goal. And somebody comes to us and applies for a grant that they want to be able to do this. And the downtown Amherst Foundation hopefully will have the annual fundraising capacities to match those. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I just wanted to mention, with insurance, it's not just ensuring the structure. It's we have to consider liability insurance. Somebody's dancing and breaks their leg, you know, they'll be a lawsuit. So that needs to be part of the insurance. However, that's being done. So a question I have about insurance and Sean, I don't know if you can answer this is the incredibly beautiful redo of the North Common has, you know, almost like a stage capacity on it, you know, a nice round face that I think is going to be a concrete bottom. What do you do for liability insurance for that whole area? It's going to have tiered levels. It's going to be very open to the public. What happens right now? Someone climbs to Mary Maple and falls off and breaks their hip, you know, that those are questions I have. Yeah, so if it's town property and somebody gets her on town property, then our insurance would, you know, assuming that there's fall and things like that, our insurance would cover it. So I don't think that would change with the ban shell going on the South Common. We're already ensuring that area. So that's the liability side, the structural side. We would have to cost it out and depending who pays the insurance that that might increase the cost. But the liability insurance is there and the activities that happen on that common, I don't think change all that much. There are already our concerts there and big gatherings and things like that. So I'm not sure the use of the common changes all that much, even with the ban shell there. Okay. Yeah, I was thinking about the fountain, the water, you know, the fountain and tweeter, you know, it does that have some odd additional insurance for someone if they, you know, flip on, you know, and crack their skull or something. So it sounds like it's all covered by the town because it's town property. Yeah, there's lots of, there's lots of sort of smaller, less used provisions in the insurance. But again, with this one, I think it wouldn't change how much the use. So I think it would be fine. Towns have a pretty comprehensive general liability policy. And then the, that is not as expensive as you might think. Andy, can I just make a couple quick ones? Yeah, so it's good to hear that the bid is open to sort of operating and especially the maintenance fund, because I did talk to the town manager today. And that's one option we'd at least want to consider is just to take the administrative burden off of staff would be if the bid wanted to manage that maintenance fund. And then the other thing just to keep in mind and the timing may not work out perfectly, but it is, it was one of the, one of the things we were thinking when we proposed this is we did propose the economic empowerment officer last night as part of the ARPA plan. And one of the major functions of that role is to support local artists and cultural organizations. And I could see them playing a supporting role with this ban shell, whatever, whatever falls on the town or falls on the bid, I could see that position supporting this. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. All right. Well, I just wanted to say hi, Gabrielle. Nice to meet you in person, sort of finally, but the cultural council is continuing to review grants and one big area that our applicants struggle with is finding appropriate venues. And so just really appreciative of your work to, to make this happen and to sort of unify, centralize, you know, the cultural life of the town. So really excited to see it happening and really impressed with the level of financial planning and thought that you put into this presentation today. So thank you. Thank you, Matt. Dorothy, do you have something for your hand is up? So you're muted though. It was residual, but I have to leave at 4.15 to pick up my granddaughter. So when I disappear, you know, that's where I am. Okay. Yeah. I was going to try and wrap this up in a few minutes and see if we can get something written up on where we are. I think we've probably done pretty well with it. And then the last thing we have to deal with is the proposed orders. So I know that Matt has to leave and you've just said you have to leave. So I posed the question in a moment, not right now, but think about it as to whether either of you have one of the orders that you feel that you would like to take up first, otherwise we'll just take them in the order that are presented on the agenda. But finishing up on the shell. Lynn, did you have something else? Yeah, do you want to motion on the shell or what? Yes, why don't we? I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council to enter into a MOU or contract with regard to the maintenance fund and its use. Second, the Angeles. I don't know what else we can say at this point. I just want to make sure we're very clear. This is great. Let's move it on. Okay. So I wrote that actually down and it was Lynn moved and Pat seconded the motion is that the finance committee recommended the town council to enter into an MOU or contract for a maintenance fund and its use. Don't it just one piece doesn't want we have to say recommend that the town manager because the council can't enter into it. Yeah. So I think I said just the town enter into which yeah. Okay. We'll change it to town and Bill is the official version. So I got it. Do you want me to read it back but I have? Yeah why don't you? I said the motion is that Greece removes that the finance committee recommends that the town enter into an MOU slash contract for a maintenance fund and its use with the Angeles seconding. It should probably say with the bid. And sorry to be narrow about this but we have to recommend to the town council that the town so don't we need that one other so Bill it just needs to say recommend to the town council that the town enter because we're not directly recommending to the town we're recommending first it's our own step-by-step process so. Got it. Okay. You're muted Andy. Andy no one can hear you. I don't know why I'm muted because I didn't mute it but anyway. So well we would I was going to just say since this is Matt's first meeting when we take votes what we do is we ask the members who are counselors to vote and we ask the resident members to indicate whether they support the motion that way everybody gets a voice but we address the charter requirement which says that it is not the resident members and non-voting members but we want to otherwise it enables us to report to the council on behalf of all members of the committee so that's how we've been doing it and it seems to be working pretty well so with that in mind I'm going to start with Dorothy. Yes. And Pat. Hi. Kathy. Yes. Alun. Hi. And I'm a yes. Bernie. Fourth of motion. And Bob. I support the motion. And Matt. Support. Okay so we have a unanimous vote with five council members voting yes and with the support of the three resident members for the motion. So Gabriel thank you very much and we want to thank the bid for its creativity and continuing to move this forward and moving our downtown into its next stages so thank you. Thank you everybody have a wonderful day. Yeah you too. Okay so getting back to Matt and Dorothy we had three orders that were presented to us last night and is there a request from either of you to take one up first? I'm good until 4.30 also Andy so we maybe ought to make. Okay so Sean do you have them to put on the screen or does Lynn have them to put on the screen? I have them I can share. I can share my screen so let me start with the first one. Yes. Whatever you put up first we'll do the one we discussed first. Okay so I think it's this one. Do you see should be 8B1? Yes. This is just the transfer specific one to stabilization funds so there's two stabilization funds one the general and one reparation stabilization fund. And does anybody need an explanation of the policy behind it? I know Matt's new but has been doing a lot of reading is to and it was in the memo itself that you had sent out and I think was available to everybody so is there any questions or discussion about this and I need to go back to my oops I did the wrong thing which has been lost so any members of the committee have anything that you would like to ask or say about this proposed order otherwise I would take a motion. I'll make the motion. Okay. I move that we approve the appropriation and transfer order FY22-12A town of Amherst free cash and stabilization fund. I think it's we're recommending to the council. I move that we recommend to the town council that we approve the appropriation and transfer order FY22-12A town of Amherst free cash and stabilization fund. Second. And there are actually the division is to two stabilization funds that are specified in the order and I assume that that's part of the motion that's that division. Yes and I didn't know what you want me to read that the two pieces or not I can. Or you could just say as recommended by as recommended and presented to the finance committee. Okay. What I want to just point out is that for this purpose we are dealing with one portion of the reparations fund that has been previously discussed and is we're not dealing with anything else today at this point from the ARHA recommendation and I don't know that we can do that today we may need to come back to that at our next meeting but I'll put that out. So there was a second on this. Second. DeAngeles. I don't know if there was. So any further discussion? I don't have any further discussion then I will start this time with we'll go keep going down the list so I'll start with the resident members first. Bob? Yeah, I support it. Okay, Bernie? Matt? I vote yes. Lynn? Yes. Kathy? Yes. And Pat? Aye. And Dorothy? Yes. Okay, so again it's unanimous with support of all three members, resident members of the committee. So I want to put the next one on. So this one is a transfer to a trust fund so that's why it's a different order than the prior one and this is catching up for what we cut both FY 21 and FY 2 what would have been our contributions to the OPEB trust fund and again OPEB is the OPEB trust fund is where we are building a reserve to make sure we can honor our health insurance obligations to retirees primarily health insurance among some other benefits but health insurance obligations to retirees that cost is growing and so we're building a pool of reserves much like the pension system is doing to make sure we can honor those commitments into the future and so this amount is equal to what we cut in FY 21 and what we cut in FY 22 from the regular contribution we make. Are there any questions members of the committee have regarding this recommendation and how it fits into the OPEB plan or anything else? Lynn? No, I'm ready to make a motion. Kathy, were you a question or did you? Just a quick question. Sean, does this get us back to even and then in the next year we would be budgeting this amount? I mean we'd be bugging what I call the normal amount so this gets us back to even is that what this is? Sean's gone. That's okay. I think the answer is yes. Kathy, the answer is yes. This allows us to catch up for the two years where we didn't put the full amount in and in this next year we will put the full amount in that we have been doing. That's all I wanted to confirm Lynn. It's the next year I was confirming I knew we were catching up. Lynn, motion? I move that we recommend to the town council that they approve appropriation and transfer order FY 22-1-12B, town of Amherst free cash and other post-employment benefits, OPED trust fund. I second it. Okay, thank you this motion. Any discussion on the motion? Start this time with Bernie. Proof. Matt. Support. I vote yes. Lynn. Yes. Kathy. Yes. Pat. Hi. Dorothy. Yes. And Bob. I support it. Okay, so again it passes with unanimous vote from the council members of the committee in support of all three president members. And now we get to the one that had the most discussion last night, I believe. But Sean, anything to add? Yeah, so this one is an appropriation for specific expenses. I think the one here that from a staff perspective that we really need to do is the dog park portion because we can't complete that project without that additional appropriation. The other two, we prioritize roads and sidewalks because we've heard that priority from quite frankly JCPC and from the council and others about the backlog of road repairs and sidewalk repairs that need to be done. Again, I think we're open to alternatives if there's something that the council, the finance committee, deem a higher priority. But I think we put this out there because we have heard this is a longstanding priority and there's a huge backlog. So even with an additional contribution, it's not like we're getting ahead on roads. We're just reducing how far behind we are on roads. And the other thing is we won't typically borrow for roads or we're trying, we try not to borrow for roads. I know we talked about the ladder truck and I think Andy pointed out correctly that's something we normally would borrow for. Whereas roads are something we typically wouldn't. Yeah, I think in all of my years in the Amherst government, we did it once and that was when Johnny Santee was time manager. It was a borrowing and he ran into the problem that the roads need repair before you finish paying for the roads he repaired. The question that I have is on this one because we're talking this is for an appropriation as opposed to a transfer. We need to have that public forum. Correct. Yes. So yes, and that that is scheduled for next for Monday, the 22nd. So I guess the question for the committee is whether we should be prepared to reconvene for discussion after the public forum or how to proceed with this. And in prior situations where there have been forums that we have noticed the meetings as finance committee meetings and have reserved the option for the finance committee to have a brief meeting during a recess of the council meeting to see if it wants to revise its prior recommendation based upon comments made at the public forum. But it otherwise puts us in a weird position of making recommendation before we heard from the public. The other thing we could do is just meet playing on doing that meeting and not even make recommendation today. So that has not been what we've done in the past. So I guess we'll start with to see if there's, I see that there are three raised hands. I just, Lynn. Whoops. I also want to recall that one councilor wanted to separate off the dog park here. And if we do that, which I'm fine with doing, I want to make much more clear that it's really restoration of the cover for the landfill. That is, you know, it's our own, it's a responsibility we need to do. And it's required by the Department of Environmental Protection. Three word the or the proposed order so that it's supplemental appropriation to repair the landfill cover as for the dog as a part of the dog park project. Yeah. And I would ask Sean to make sure that and Sonia to make sure that that has the right cut, right wording. Yeah, we can work with Dave Zomek to make sure it reads accurately. I mean, I don't have a problem with it saying so we can proceed with the dog park. But the reality is people are saying, oh, don't spend money on a dog park. Well, I'm sorry, we should spend this money anyway. So do you want, do you also suggest dividing this into two separate orders? Or I did because I think that we may have some counselors who will go with the first two, but not the dog, not the landfill cover. Okay, let me see what other comments we received. Andy, Andy, Dave Zomek's in the audience is, I think he wants to make, I want to see if he wants to follow up on that comment. Is it possible to bring him in to just respond to that? Yes. I'm bringing him in now. Keep forgetting Athena's here. So I've been listening a little bit and, you know, whatever the finance committee decides to do about splitting this or not is, you know, obviously up to you all, I was just trying to clarify it's Lynn, it's a little more subtle than the way you phrased it. And we may need to, you know, I can certainly work with Sean and Sonia on any background material or how we word this. But it's the protection of the cap has been ongoing the entire project. So it's not like the Department of Environmental Protection said, you need $75,000 additional dollars to protect the cap. It's as we've addressed the drainage issue and discovered that the cap was more extensive than we thought, the project has had to change. Let me give you one tangible example, which I think everybody can understand. And this was kind of news to me in the world of DEP. So because the cap is almost all the way out to Belcher Town Road, working with the DEP, we determined that we, because of the extensive distance, we couldn't pierce the cap with fence posts for the dog park. So if you think about it, our design called for say, I don't know, let's call it 45 fence posts, I can get the exact number on the front part of the dog park. Well, the plan did not did not consider the fact that the cap went that far. So instead of being able to drill 45 fence posts or however many whatever the number is, we have to pour a concrete pad, if you will, a long narrow concrete pad into the ground and DEP will accept that as protecting the cap. What they don't want us to do is puncture 45 holes in the cap in that location. So I just wanted to make clear that this is the kind of iterative process that we've gone through with DEP and each step of the way they've said, well, you know, we've learned something new. Now, this sounds a little like, well, why didn't the plan anticipate this? Well, the cap was put on in 19 in the 19 minted late 1980s. There's no survey plan of the cap. And it's very hard, you can't go around just puncturing holes in the cap to find where it is. So I don't want anybody to think we didn't plan well for this project, we think we did our due diligence, we know we did. But it so happens that when we began to put in the fence posts at Beltertown Road, we hit the cap where we didn't think it was. So does that give you an idea of how the costs escalated beyond what we budgeted for the project? So that that alone is tens of thousands of dollars of difference, because the cap was determined to be more extensive. And we had to come up with an engineering solution. So we wouldn't puncture the cap in 45 places. Does that make sense as one example of how the budget had to grow a little bit? It makes sense to me. And I think you've asked a good question. So before I call on everybody else on other issues, I asked the people indicate whether they have any questions of Dave about what he just said and the reasons for going, that the budget has gone up by the $75,000. We firmly understand that. Kathy, is that do you have questions on information along those lines? Yeah, I do. Andy, I mean, I have a separate comment, but I'll just focus on that. So I definitely think it needs to be split. And I think Dave, you need to write a paragraph to go with this, because now it's not just, it's clearly related to the dog park, you know, that if we didn't have a dog park, we wouldn't have a problem. So it's not, you know, what I heard last night was someone said, we're going to have to do this one way, the other. It's not that simple. So I think we need that paragraph, which may improve people's willingness to vote for it or not, but I think we need to make that clear. And what you just said to me was totally clear, you know, what it is we need this money for. So, and I'm not talking about a page, I'm talking about a paragraph of an explanation, what this is needed. It's clearly directly related to the cap, but it's not that if there was no dog park, we would need to spend this money. Yeah. Okay. I would just add, I also have another comment, but I would add to that that just mentioning again that this is required to comply with the DEP permit. It's not something that we're doing out of choice. Exactly. It was the whole paragraph on, we have to do it if we're going to have this dog park, but it's related to the cap. Exactly. And might I add that we are more than three quarters of the way done with this project. So we are, we're at the finish line and this these things that were discovered late in the construction season are really the only thing holding it up. And our hope is that we don't need the entire $75,000. There may be some turnback if we, if the cost of one of the things that I just talked about isn't as large as it might be, then we may not use the entire $75,000. There was one other thing I was going to mention. Yeah. So I'm happy to do a, happy to do a, you know, a little memo on this. Okay. And of course if $75,000 is not needed and it comes in somewhat less, then the excess remains some free cash. Exactly. Um, Pat? Yeah, I kind of wish I had had this cooler donation last night. Oh God, I don't want to pay for a dog park to supporting this, but now I'm feeling that I definitely want the issue split. And it's not clear to me that we have to have a fence at all. So, so I think the paragraph is important. I don't know. Um, I wish we had this last night. Pat or Andy, could I just ask about what you mean by you don't think we need a fence at all? Why do we need to fence in the dog area? Um, the dog park has hundreds of feet of frontage along Belcher Town Road, a very, very significant cut through to Route 9. Most dog parks, the majority of dog parks have both separation from roads and this, that is, you know, the frontage along Belcher Town Road. And secondly, we need a fence to separate large dogs from small dogs because the two do not go well together. So there is a small dog area and a large dog area at this park. And we, you know, all of this was through consulting we had with Dr. Ted Diamond, the local vet and many other members of the dog park task force. So there are two separate areas. One is for small dogs and the other is for large dogs. And then we need a fence to keep the dogs in because this will be a an area where dogs can run free. So we don't want the dogs to be able to run out into traffic on Old Belcher Town Road. So that's the purpose of the fence. Okay. Okay, Bob. Yeah, I just wanted, are we done with the dog park? No, let's stay with the dog park. Let's stay with the dog park. Linda, do you want to come to the dog park further? No, I'm sorry. This is for something else. Okay. Linda, do you have anything further? Yeah, I think the word that I'm looking for is we're doing this to further protect the landfill as we complete construction of the dog park. That's not... You're right. We don't have to do this. Yeah, we're running into a problem now because I think we'd probably have to differentiate the wording of the order from what we want attached to the order as explanation. And Sonia, who's the one who helps us with wording of borders, it's probably the expert on this, but because it is for the fencing to revise the fencing of the dog park project to protect the landfill. And I don't know if you can put that much into an order or whether it needs to go into a supplemental. Sonia. Yeah, typically we require from department heads or whoever's putting forth the appropriation request to do a memo explaining why they are asking for more money. And these memos can be attached as page two of the order for further information. I wouldn't get too specific within within the order itself, but we can always attach memos as additional information to orders. And maybe we should start making a practice of doing that if it makes sense to do that. Yeah, if it makes sense. So why don't we consider a motion that would recommend a separate order for the dog park appropriation that would that will recommend $75,000 as a supplemental appropriation for that project with a memorandum attached to the revised order explaining the need for the appropriation. Yeah, I can get that for you tomorrow morning. Well, I don't know about the memo that's Dave. Wendy, I can't raise my hand, but can I speak after Kathy? Yeah, I was just going to say, Andy, I don't think we want to vote on recommending to the council. We're just asking staff to revise this order to split them, right, with a memo. That's what we're doing now. Are we splitting all three? Are we splitting all three or just the I think we're trying to split off the dog park into it into its own. So it can't it wouldn't you'd have to have another transfer order number for either this one keeps it for roads and sidewalks and then dog park gets a new one. Yeah, that's why there's ABCD. So, Andy, can I just mention one other thing? So one other thing that will come to the council will likely come to the council maybe next week or possibly the week after or the meeting after that may affect your consideration. So I just want to raise it now. So it's not a surprise. We're experiencing another project that's coming in higher than expected that we will probably have to come back for additional funds. And that's for the pumper truck for the fire department. So we the council authorized $450,000 in borrowing for that vehicle. And it's coming in quite a bit higher than that. We're still working to figure out what the exact cost is and what our options are to to mitigate and how we're going to procure that truck. But regardless, it's likely we're going to be coming back for we could either come back to increase the borrowing authorization, which is is maybe the easiest. But given we're talking about allocating additional funds, I just wanted to raise that. The other thing we're going to be looking to put into that pumper truck that wasn't in the original estimate is the the zero RPM technology that we put into the ambulance that makes it more efficient considering this is a 20 year vehicle. We thought it's one of those things we kind of have to do to stay consistent with our goals. So I just want the committee to be aware of that too, that that's something else separate from this list that'll be coming forward. But it doesn't. Thank you. That's helpful to know. But I think that we're back to emotion. Kathy, do you want to word emotion? You seem to have. Well, what I'm wondering is whether we're simply asking them to come back to us with a split order where one order does this wording and one order is a reworded dog park. So is that we're making a motion to ask the staff to do that? Is that correct? That's that's all I was questioning as opposed to voting on them voting on a recommend to the council. This is just asking the staff to come back with this revised. Does does that impact our ability to hold the hearing on Monday? I don't know if that's a question for Athena if the order changes. Athena has her hand raised. Athena, go ahead. If I can. I did post the notice that is required under the charter that the appropriation and transfer order and it includes the dog park. So I think if we were to split it, we would still be covered because it was noticed properly. I think if we adopted as a separate order, that wouldn't be a problem. Okay. Thank you. I mean, I'm willing to make a motion, but I think we're asking the staff to rewrite this for us rather than making a decision on it right now. And I'm ready to have a discussion about the road and sidewalk, but I don't I'm fine with making motion. It just seems like an extra step. Sort of gets back to the question that I had raised at the beginning, which is does the committee want to make a motion now on whether or not it recommends now to orders or does it want to wait until after the public forum to make that to take that action? Bernie, given Dave's explanation, I think we can go ahead and, you know, endorse these and let the, you know, I'm sitting here debating to myself like you just can't take Dave's explanatory memo and attach it to this order and have it go before the council like go to the hearing is like that. Other than the fact that there may be some counselors who don't like the idea of the God part, but it just seems to be the adding the explanation. Having this go forward would be the most parsimonious thing to do. I just had another quick comment. We need we need a recommendation from the council from the finance committee before the council takes an action. So I would say probably the easiest thing if the finance committee wants to recommend that the council adopt it as a separate order. Then you can do that and that's something that can be done in between now and Monday. And then we would present the council with a separate order on Monday to adopt rather than waiting to make your recommendation waiting for a separate order to make your recommendation. Sonia, will the second order be FY2205C? Yes. So one will be and we don't have to, I don't need to know which one. One will be this dog park and the other two. The other one will be the road and sidewalk. Yes. So let's see if there's any discussion on roads and sidewalks and then if after that discussion, if there seems to be support for both, I'm going to make a single motion to recommend appropriation and transfer orders FY2205B and O5C as a single motion. So is there any discussion regarding the road and sidewalk recommendation? Bob? Yeah, I have a question as to whether the million dollars and the $250,000, whether specific projects have already been identified or whether this is just kind of, we decide to spend this amount of money and the town manager or I'm not sure who else would decide where this particular money was actually spent. No. So no projects have been identified. Yeah. I mean, the DPW, it'd be the town manager and the DPW that would work, the DPW superintendent that would work together to decide how these funds are allocated. You know, they have their unofficial list of the roads and the conditions and how they prioritize what projects get done each year. So it would just go along the same path that they typically do. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. My question, I realize we almost never know, Bob, where it's going to be spent and then we find out later what did or didn't happen because even when it's at the top of a priority doesn't always get done, but my question is the allocation. What if we actually have a really high priority for sidewalks? So what if instead of a million and $250,000, we split the total and did, you know, $625,000 for each? No, I'm just dividing them, rather. And the reason I'm asking that is for sidewalks, we might be able to do more repairs and we might be able to actually start on doing a sidewalk expansion. We were told once years ago when we thought we were on our way to an East Pleasant Street sidewalk and a study was voted on and it hasn't happened yet that that could be done in the $300,000 range. So I don't know whether that's still true, but does our month, do we get more outcome that people can see when we spend on sidewalks? So I don't know the answer to that and it affects how I think, certainly I have no problem with the money going for these uses, but I'm wondering, I'd like to know more about the split and whether we could get more done on the sidewalk side if we didn't split it the way it's being proposed. Yeah, so I mean, I don't have a lot to say on that. I think if that's the feedback from the finance committee, the town manager would consider it. Again, I think you'd have to reject this or send it back to the town manager for revision. But I think the town manager's open to that. He's aware of the high priority of sidewalks. But again, roads, we just know there's a sort of documented backlog of road repair. So again, I think that's feedback the town manager would be fine receiving. And I'm just saying this is, Guilford told us in JCPC that we, for a million dollars, we get a mile of roads, which, you know, so it's less visible to people that something really happened. And so I wouldn't want to hold this up. I think it's important to be spending this money, but I don't know the answer to my question. Yeah. Sonia? Yeah, I would just like to add, because roads, and I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes, it will be up to Guilford or the town manager, depending on what kind of contractor he has to put together for a road repaving or whatever for sidewalks. But because this is being appropriated in the same order, you could, if you wanted to, you can kind of ignore the 1,000 and the 250 and just consider it repaving roads and sidewalks because it's a total. And we just give a list of what we expected to go. If one costs more and one's a little less, we can move that money because it is in the same order. It's just like the capital program. If one program costs less and one costs more, if there's extra in there because it's voted in the same order, we have that flexibility to cover it within that capital plan. So, can he give any thought on that suggestion of making it? Well, I think Sonia's thing is that if we're voting that we like the million $250,000 when I'm adding them together, that we could be voting a million $250,000 and leave it up to later how much of that is sidewalks and roads. And then I don't know whether, if we want to have an emphasis on sidewalks, do we ever get it? So, I'll wait for Lynn to react to it. I realize that that's an easier way to go, Sonia, because you're saying we're flexible once we vote this money. We could spend all on sidewalks. So, anyway. I do want to point out that some people felt this money should be spent differently from the council. They felt it should be spent for other priorities that were not funded when we didn't use as much of, when we didn't put as much into the smaller capital JCPC recommendations last year. I'm personally fine with this except for the fire ladder truck. But I would like to suggest that this be two motions. I'm prepared to make them and that it be split because I do think that we may have a difference of opinion on the dog park. Well, we had agreed, I think, to do the dog park separately. I'm ready to make a motion and then if Sonia can just agree with me on the numbering, we'll be fine. Okay, go ahead. I move that we recommend to the town council that they appropriate the appropriation and transfer order FY2205B and order appropriating funds for the town of Amherst capital program roads and sidewalks. Period. Shane seconds. And then the next one will be FY2205C. Sonia, thank you. And do we want to specify in the motion the amount of $1 million, $250,000? Yes, I'll take that. So that's acceptable to make in the second order to specify the amount, I assume. So I'm going to go ahead and unless there's somebody who raises a hand to ask for further comment, we'll go ahead and vote on the first motion, which is the one that has just been offered regarding an allocation for road and sidewalk repair. Matt? Hi. I think that was Pat, who said I. So I said Matt, but that's okay. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm picking up where you are on my list and just going in the same order I was before. Dorothy. Left. She's gone, Andy. I think that may be gone also. Who is? Matt may be gone. Also, I don't see him. Yeah, he said he was only here till 430. Okay. Bob? My support. Ernie? Or. I vote yes. Lynn? Aye. And Kathy? Yes. So I think that we are on this motion. Foreign favor from council members, two members, resident members are in support, and there are two members of the committee who are absent. One is resident. One is council. Right. So that's how the minutes, what the minutes should reflect. Second motion. Okay. I move that we recommend appropriation and transfer order FY 22-5-05C in order appropriating funds for the town of Amherst, no, appropriating funds for town of Amherst capital program dash supplemental dog park appropriation. Second, the Angeles? Okay. Any discussion? You should have the amount of 75,000. Seeing no discussion, I'm just going to go ahead and I will start promoting this time and vote yes. Lynn? Yes. Kathy? Yes. Pat? Yes. Dorothy, I assume is absent. Bob? Or. Ernie? Poor. And Matt, I assume is absent. So having with that vote, we have the motion passing with forevoting in favor from the council to indicating support from resident members and one council member and one resident member absent. And I think that completes the work for today. I think we know that the next meeting is a week from today. I'm going to work with Kathy and Bob on a draft of the council guidelines. And you have something to email to the two of us, Lynn, or three of us rather. Lynn? Yes. I do have something I'll be emailing to it's you, Bernie, and Kathy? Bob? Bob. Bob, I was volunteering you, Bernie. Okay. You, Bob and Kathy, got it. My only question, Andy, the reason I raised my hand is are we going to address the reorganization financial implications? Oh, that's right. Thank you. We just need to get that out. Let me come back to that in a second. Sean, did you have something? Only that we may, this may be fine for next time, the discussion of whether we should have a budget coordinating group meeting. I don't know if that's a finance committee discussion or a council discussion, but it was raised last night. And so I talked to the town manager about should we get something scheduled at some point, a BCG meeting schedule. And that actually just to, I have to go back and look and see who is even representing us on the budget coordinating group, because when we actually do a BCG, it's not the full council, the full, it's subgroups of each, much like JCPC. I seem to remember that, I think it might be Kathy and me, but I'm just not sure. I think I'm right, Kathy. I have to just go back and look. We didn't, we haven't dealt with this. We haven't had a separate one. I think this year we need to have a separate one because of the discussion last night. So let me get, Sean, let me get that to you who we are. Thank you. And then they have to decide who their representatives are. It's all laid out in the charter and I'll follow up. Yeah. I can reach out to Sharon and Mike and just have them make sure they know who their reps are. If they don't have reps to get that sorted out. Great. Okay. So I think that I'm glad you brought that up because when we do the draft of the guidelines, we will have to indicate that the allocations may be changed by recommendation of BCG that the finance committee would review any recommendations received from the BCG to determine whether we would recommend to change. But that makes sense. As far as the two reorganization plans, now I have to go back to my calendar unless somebody just remembers it off the top of their head as to are we, is the hearing I think that TSS schedule was, was it December 2nd? That's my recollection was the second recollection. It's December 9th. So we can have, we can do this at our next meeting. That's what I was going to recommend. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sure that yeah, I guess you're right. We can just take care of it. Do put a push button until next meeting. I think that's important because we now have two members absent and the resident members may not have had a chance to review the memorandum that Paul had sent to the council because I didn't forward it till this morning. So we will put that on our next agenda. So that we can move forward and we will actually have one additional meeting possibly on December 7th, but we don't want to, I think we want to try and see if we can address it at the next meeting. Anything else that any members of the committee have for this evening, other business or additional questions? Otherwise, I'm giving it a few seconds to look. Those were adjourned and I thank you very much. It's been a long and difficult meeting and I appreciate everybody sticking with it. So thank you.