 OK, this is what we're going to be covering. This is the table of contents. The rules of the road that I have in mind are we're going to hit these different slides. And in each one, I would encourage you, if it provokes any questions at all, please raise them. And we have our panel of experts sitting with me here, and the number one expert of all, sitting over, unobtrusively, by the computer screen, who will be able to field the questions and hopefully give you the answers that you're looking for. Well, maybe not the answers that you're looking for, but at least the answers to the questions that you ask. So please, as soon as something comes to your mind, feel free to speak. I want it to be as interactive as we can make it. So this is where we're headed. And this is a slide that you may have seen before. Berlin, I think, may have pioneered this one. It just shows that the budget is the result of, I would say, a lot of dynamic polling, hauling, negotiating. And the only thing missing from, well, the one big thing that I'm aware of that's missing from this slide is an hourglass held by a guy holding a reaper, as you are under the gun to actually get this done within a certain time frame. So this is also the flowchart for how budgets are made. The repeat-as-necessary part is actually a real thing. I think pretty much every budget went through at least three iterations. Is that right, Lori? Three. And one or two may have gone through five. Yes. Five? Yeah. So this is a very important kind of cyclical, threshing, reviewing, rethinking. And then finally, the board approves the budget. And then we mourn it out to you voters, or you to hopefully approve, or at least express your view on your yes or your no. So the top-line summary of this budget broken down by school, essentially, as you can see, between the asterisks and the plus sides, each one of these numbers has been approved by voters in the town in which the school is located and for U32 in the five-town U32 district. The one difference is special education expenses that are reimbursed at 100%. We have to show the gross amount for this merged budget. But, excuse me, the actual education spending, the amount that we're taxed on, is exactly the same as the sum of all of the previously approved budgets from town meeting day or from April 25th. Seven? So my name is Sandal Kate. And next year, is it going to be drastically different because will each school create a separate budget, but then everybody votes on it? This time around, we approved that figure. Next year, we won't be approving an individual figure. Am I right in thinking that? Individual school by school, you mean? Correct. This is something we're going to have to figure out over the course, you know, if this thing continues, something we'll have to figure out over the course of the year. Because whether we present it in a kind of school by school breakdown, I suspect that the budgets themselves will be developed from the ground up, school by school. And Laurie, I submit to your correction on it. But whether those school by school amounts are actually shown, or whether they're combined into a single merged line item, my own preference would be to show school by school for maximum transparency. So that maybe someday voters will be accustomed to seeing just the one line for everything. But for now, I think it's important for voters to get comfortable with whatever is. Only one vote. It's not a town-by-town vote. Right. Next year. We're going to vote right there. So, Rick? You know, I think this whole thing, the whole big argument of this equity in one town, which is an absolute horsemen, or it's not equity in any way. But I think we need to show those costs, at least for quite a while, on individual schools. We should need to see the numbers that are actually going, how they're being distributed and why they're being distributed. If there's equity there, we need to double check on this somehow. I am not trusting, after our experience over the past five years. I mean, I thought that if you know I've been involved with this school for a long time, and I don't just say that lightly, but we need to have some serious accountability at a micro level. I understand. And I think that's what we'll be focusing on, especially in the early stages, to establish that sense of confidence and trust. And just good practice. The more you see it, the better you manage things out. Can I add something? Sure, go ahead. I've had the invite me to practice me when we prep together just my scientific notes in KC. We've got something. So the one thing I wanted to add is that that budgeting process would probably look a little similar. We'll start in August. So that's when all this budget started back. And the leadership team and the administrators and the board would work together for it would be very similar in a way that it's always what's best for kids, so the best outcomes for kids so that equity would always be based on kids and not trying to take that in order to fall more. So it's a culture that we will have to establish. Follow-up. Is it OK with you? We don't need to address that. Well, what I want to avoid is sort of a debate. At this point. OK, but please don't ease the equity for kids any more. Because it really doesn't. You can say that. But if you strangle a community, believe you are strangling the kids in that community. And you've got to look beyond an education budget. You've got to look at the impacts on these communities. And that has not been done. It's been deliberately not done in this process. So if this is going to be successful, that is going to have to be crystal clear to the taxpayers. Certainly in the towns that are potentially on the real short end of this sick. Because it goes just beyond what's been spent in the school. It's on what the families are feeling of film. It's very true. And this board, I think, is going to be extremely attentive to that issue. And most of the members are having steeped in it and are wanting to make sure that we actually structure it. When we get to the amendments to the Articles of the Agreement, that's in part what we're striving to at least start doing with those. But I shall, with? I have one more question. Disregard. The reverse expenses? Yes. Say we weren't merging. Where are they in the budgets? They would be over as a supervisory union. Aren't the supervisory union members still in those budgets? No. That's what we told you, right? Well, you voted as the net amount. The supervisory union was to track the reimbursements from its budget before charging the separate schools. So what this does is just. So never really was transparent. Well, if I were told you never saw it. Before the school budget ever saw it and came out, you could see it in the separate supervisory union budget. But you would have to look over there for it, and not in the actual school budget. Wasn't there a line of individual school budgets that was our charge for the supervisory union? Yes, SEO assessments. So that would have been in each town budget as an SEO assessment, but you'd have to go somewhere else to find the actual SU budget. Yeah, the somewhere else was in the town reports. There was always the full budget for the supervisory union shown, and it showed where the revenues were there. And then it also had a line that said what were the assessment totals. So the SU budget was 9.3 million, roughly. And the assessments were a little over 4 million. And this is the difference, because those were reimbursed by the state instead of the charge to the town. Because my accounting would have been to show it all, and then show it all where it was going, where you were getting revenue from instead of not showing it all on your assessment. Which is what's happening here. I understand that. It has to do with the state reimburses the supervisory union and not the towns, which is why it's a state-required accounting. It's not something that's going to happen under this whole merger. No, under the new merger, it's all one budget, and it's all accumulated together. Did I get the answer? Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Next slide. Sure. OK, this is sort of an overview of the changes. So there is the big number at the top. The expense change, the raw expense change, is up 1.65%. The net impact on taxes, which is education spending, is up 1.83%. And then it shows the education spending per equalized pupil, which is sort of the top fraction of the education tax formula. Now, because of that per equalized pupil, the equalized pupils are going down. So that means that the education spending, even though education spending is only going up by 1.83%, because the pupils are going down, that ratio, that fraction, is going up by 3.7%. So in other words, a little bit more than half of that 3.7% increase in education spending per equalized pupil is because of declining enrollment, basically. So Scott, my impression is normally the tax rate is set by the increase in spending per pupil from year to year. So in other words, if you spend 3.7% more on equalized spending, your tax rate should go up a commensurate amount. That's not showing this. This is showing a 1.83% increase in taxes, even though the equalized spending is going up almost double. Well, I think that the net impact on taxes is that education spending line all by itself. And then the education spending divided by equalized pupil, you're right. That's the ratio by which taxes increase. But it's because of the shrinking of that denominator that the overall ratio is getting bigger. All right. This is slightly more detail. I know a lot of numbers, sorry. But just to show a little bit of the breakdown, so you can see that the various bits and pieces that work together overall in this increase. So I don't want to go through it. You can read better than I can speak. So we just want you to know that this information is there. And then, unless there are any questions, we can move ahead. I have a question. Ah, ask. Just a sec. The previous one? No, the previous one. So with staffing changes at minus 22, 573, how many full-time equivalent positions is that? Or part, you know, some part time, some full-time? Any of seven? Seven. Seven were reduced. Is that full-time? A net of seven. There were some increases. There were some staffing increases associated with the fact that at one school could no longer get their consolidated federal grant money to support a position. And then there were some reductions in force. So some were peer educators and some were teachers. So that's the net of staffing pluses in minuses. And the reduction in force, that was by-school. They had to decide what works for their building. That's the right one. OK. Thanks, Sandra. Thanks, Roy. All right. Here is a very broad-rush breakdown of the main divisions of the budget with, you can see, the big part of it is salaries and benefits, non-salaries. But a lot of the non-salary, it is my understanding, still represents work that people are doing, so that people are getting paid for. And then there's the debt service slash capital funding, which is 7% of the budget. And the next slide shows a more fine-grained breakdown of this. So again, this is something that, if you're interested, you can look at in your handouts. The main thing to recognize is the tremendous similarity between last year, or rather the current year, and this coming year budget, the one that's going to be voted on. The major budget categories are very close. And so if there are no questions on this specific slide, the next slide shows where the administrative slice there seems rather large. How close of a look is taken to see what can happen there? Yeah. I will, again, submit to Laurie's correction. But my understanding is that the state is now defining what administrative actually means. Because at present, there are a number of administrative positions that have a lot to do with working with students. So in many ways, they have a kind of instructional, mainly instructional aspect to them. They're not just back office jobs. But I don't know if you have anything more to add to that. Statewide, the state is taking a look at the chart of accountants, what it's called, and determining for every school in the state what category fits what position. So they're giving us guidance in the fall. And they've hired a consultant to verify the definitions. And we're going to go position by position to make sure that not only are we comparable in our analysis, but that it's comparable to the state. So the administrative category will be the same throughout the state and not just. I guess an example might be a physician might support instruction, what we call the administration in our school district. And it might be called instruction in another school district. So that's an example of how they're re-looking at each position. So that's just kind of moving around kind of the shell game, which reg it's in as compared to actually reducing it in any way. I understand that. But I think what Scott was trying to say was we're trying to get a baseline of what is administration. How does it compare to the state? And is it really an administration or is it partially support to students? And that's, I guess, what we know today. Student? So I see you, Delta, thank you for what you're saying. So I would also say, Corinne, that within the administrative category, we always look at what's there when we build our budgets. But it includes support personnel as well. It includes more than just administrators in that budget. And so we always look at what can we reduce in terms of the support. And I know at U32, we've reduced the number of clerical positions as well over time and tried to distribute out some of the work that's done in those positions to try to reduce that number over the last several years. I think you see that our reductions don't necessarily show up just in that piece right there. Because there weren't a whole lot of reductions last year to this year budget. But there are issues in those. Yep. This is the question about the 2% capital fund number. I'm really curious to know where that comes from. I calculate that every year for the state of Vermont. We do several hundred buildings. And that's your major maintenance of the capital investment. And that number is typically, and you look at it from 20,000 feet, 2% is the extreme low end of that. And it's closer to seven, what that number should be. And that's even a dangerous number to go on. And that's based on not so much the budget, but it's 2% to 7% of the replacement cost of the buildings. So I'm really curious, you know, from my work in the past, if we ever get our hands on the capital funds so that we aren't bonding, it will have a really significant impact on our tax rate in terms of stability. But you have to be realistic about putting money in. And it's manageable if you do it on a yearly basis. And that's certainly a high priority of mine over the next. And the board hasn't emerged, hasn't discussed it out here. But it will be, I think, a major theme among other major themes. But still an important one. Or just where the 2% comes. Yeah, and you're going to be even less happy when we see the next slide. Oh, I'm sorry, same. But not yet. This is my only chance to even go. So number one, it would be lovely another year if you kept the same colors for the same items, OK? I can see that something's flipped and everything kind of moved ahead one. But when you're trying to compare apples with apples, it's nice to have them all be red forever. And then in this current year's budget, there's a 1% for board of education. And I assume that's a state board of education. No, actually, that's the various different school boards. All right, but it doesn't show in next year's budget. Yeah, I think this year and. When we go to the numbers, you'll see it's one of those individual spots. It is right here. So it's $685 less. Or no, more, sorry, more. That's on the next chart. Right, yes. That's why he keeps wanting to get there. Yeah. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, straining at the leash. So you remember the pie slices of the last chart? This shows a numerical comparison. So you can have some sense of the percentage changes. Basically, they're all kind of one or within plus minus 5%. And that one that is not is the one that I figured you might not be happy with, Rick, is the capital transfers down by 19%. And Lori was explaining to us to learn earlier that this was actually, in part, a kind of result of both Middlesex and Whistler needing to pull back from the penalty zone. If I'm not mistaken, Chris, you're right. So this is the sort of thing that is definitely a yellow flag that we would want to make sure that it's not the capital fund that gets rated when times are tight, that we have to, because over time, that would lead to far greater expenses if we don't keep up with that. So I really can suggest that. Yes. That is that you, to retain that discipline and to actually take, capitalize your capital fund, but retain the interest savings in a separate account. And they're going to be substantial. Right now, I looked at the capital funds for the town. And it looked like the only one that could even be close to where it should be is East Montpelier. But the irony is that they've got the least liability sitting in their buildings. And that really concerns me because we all have to make, I suspect that those funds are not being spent properly and that they're not being capitalized properly. And so we need to do that. And you know how to do that. I provide you with tools through that fight. Simultaneously, you've got to put some fiscal controls to prevent the improper use of those dollars. And to make sure that they get them to the specified capital. Because the second you start pulling out of the capital fund is no longer a capital. It's not going to work for you. And that's the number one thing that kills them everywhere is the lack of administrative discipline in spending. Because they see a big amount of money. They need it for something. I get that. A way to beat it is that there's funds, especially you've got six schools out there that are generating a lot of interest incomes in the years where those accounts are big. Instead of giving it back to the taxpayers, you've got to put that into an account, but also have controls on that. So that it gets used, you basically you have to go through some approval to be able to do that to make sure it doesn't just get squandered because that's a few million quickly. I believe Lori is really good at that. Yes. She is. Is there a building over there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is one. The only way, you know, the way we're doing that is to basically have capital expenditure as a separate voting item. So that every year, so that the community is going to vote a certain amount that goes into it. And then you have to get the community to say, you take it out. When I go to the Calus capital model, that's what I recommend to the board. They didn't do it. They didn't take it. They took it. They took it. They took it. They took it. An article. The only way you could take money out of it is if that was a line item in the capital fund, and if you wanted to take out for any other reason, you had to have the taxpayers to get approval. I mean, you literally need that level of discipline. You won't get it any other way. You've got to keep tight brain on these or they will be able to use them. And then it's much more of an example of it. that is one bill or two in fact when we have one six years ago and then of course now we just, we have a set amount that we know that we need to put in every year on top of the fund. I guess it's pretty close. Well it's pretty close even though it is large right now that you know we want to make sure that we're not going to fall back into asking the community to. Yeah this is great. This is going to be part of the ongoing discussion. Well this is only two percent of the budget here but the impacts on tax rates are huge and you don't. And the crowding out effect on the situation of spending on actually teaching children. Yeah so there's no objection shall we move on? Oh yeah okay here's the enrollment picture. We're in a period of declining enrollment and it happened for quite a long time and who knows for how much longer. There is no real consensus explanation for why this is happening. It's likely that there are many many different factors of work that are kind of pulling in the same direction down. But this is yet another reason why we want to keep a control on bonding because bonding is a great tool when you're in an expanding population environment. The tax base is expanding you can invest and then look forward to the growing tax base to carry that bond. But in a shrinking environment it becomes an albatross. So anyway education spending for equalized people. This is the left hand column is the budgets as voted by town in March and April. The right hand column is the merged budget. This June 25 budget is the right hand column education spending for people. You can see sometimes as you would expect for an average sometimes they're higher sometimes they're lower and they are all treated alike for education spending for people in the merged budget. Can you please? Can we go back to that? Of course I will. This is Alan Gilbert by the way I've been in the state by name before. So this is a very interesting chart. Because what it tells you is that spending per pupil is not equal. Will not be equal the next year in our unified consolidated district. Is that right? Well it won't be equal to what it is in the town by town voted budgets. So one of the main goals of EC46 is equity for kids. And in the last 25 years equity has largely been verified by equal access to school funds. Now that we have equal access to school funds for everybody in all six of our schools can we expect over time for these numbers to actually be the 18709 to be the same for everybody? So that in the kind of budget that Sandel was talking about for next year if we do it school by school that you know build it school by school that that kind of scaffolding will show basically pretty close to the same equalized spending per pupil for every school. It's a very good question. So Alan Gilbert for clarity's purposes. So what you're saying is that for each school the number of student equalized students times 18,000 just use that number of 18,709 would be essentially the budget for that school. Well I'm actually asking how are we going to achieve equity as measured by money which is how act 60 has measured equity. So it could be the budget is done that way but it seems to me over time with the exception of U32 because high school students are supposed to get more money from the state. I think it's they get a hundred and eighteen percent I think Laurie as opposed to a hundred percent. I think the 18809 reflects that. Yeah but we have two elementary schools that are actually spending more than U32 despite the fact that U32 is supposed to get extra money because it has high school students because high school kids are supposed to be more expensive to educate for all sorts of recent science labs, driver ed, whatever. Expenses are higher. So you know I guess U32 is often a category of its own. It could presumably be allowed and should be given 13 percent more in funds but if we want to talk about equity among the elementary schools financially we'd have to have the same amount for people. Yeah it's a very good point. Yeah yet another thing to factor into the equation for budget development starting in August. Can I add something? One thing to remember is that there's three schools they are seeing there as high spenders. U32 is pretty much done paying their bond right? 2022. 2022 and East Montpelier and Middlesex and Berlin. So our numbers that we were not able to totally finalize today when we were doing numbers with Lori but for example at East Montpelier there's $2,900 there that's just part of the debt. So once you take the debt out of Berlin and Middlesex all of them come down a little bit. So it's not just a spending for school. You can't take the debt out. The numbers are right here. Tonneau-Hallus is getting $16,720 per equalized pupil. It's the lowest in this group but we are paying the largest tax increase, 12 percent. More than that. My point is that some of this difference. We're paying that bond debt. I'm not trying to separate it because the real environment also affects the kids. So it's part of the whole thing. What I'm saying is that there's other schools that don't have that right now. So we're not really comparing. So this is looking backwards of the past year. And there is a debt factor in the schools that have debt. But you're absolutely right. Debt is going to be an ongoing factor. Debt is going to be great. You've got to look at two different... You can't just look at this table. You've got to look at the tax rates. And you're essentially paying for the difference. Where is the equity in this? We were actually able to look at that in greater detail. Coming up on our next... Yeah. So this is basically just the usual list of the four enforcement of the education tax rate. It's a multi-story fraction, basically. There's education spending at the top divided by equalized pupils. Divided by property, dollar, property and income, dollar, yield. Is that right? And that is all divided by the common level of appraisal. And before it's divided by the common level of appraisal, it's multiplied by the statewide education tax rate. So is that pretty much right? I can't believe I got it right. You've been working out for years. For years. I know. It's so true. So anyway, I guess... Thank you. The common level of appraisal is always sort of represents... It always seems to feel like the last kick in the pants for tax purposes. You'll see the following charts. Basically, all of the CLAs, all of the common levels of appraisal are declining. And because the tax rate, the CLA is a denominator, a declining CLA means a higher rate. So you can see here, you might... Again, it's another one you want to consult your handouts on. But this, I think, you know, you can see who gets what. Middlesex gets it hardest. I think Calis maybe, and Worcester to a degree as well. And Berlin, not so badly. And East Montpelier, not so terribly either. So... Yeah. If you're having trouble with anything to sleep tonight, this. Remember this. So this is the detail. We've put it in because it's a little on the technical side, but it's important to have in mind. There's always a factor that I know you just saw me almost forget to mention it. But, George, did you want to say anything? No, it just reminded me why, when properties were selling, not everybody wants to record the CLA. Oh, for the CLA. Yeah. And part of the problem with the CLA is that, I guess it's a rolling average over three years. And even a rolling average over three years in some of our towns, so few houses sell in New York that they're trying to do a statistical operation with like a microscopic sample. And it's bound to kind of do crazy things. Even average over three years. Okay. Now, here's where we get to sort of the tax details. Once again, I'm not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on this, but this chart on your handouts, this is from the budgets that were voted in March and April, the town by town or school by school, I should say, to include U-32. School by school budgets in March and April. And so you get a combined impact on residential tax rate. You should use that as the baseline when you compare with the merge rate, which is voila. So, yeah. This is basically the same chart showing the merge rate. So you have to kind of move back and forth. Calus is the only example that I can remember off the top of my head, which the original increase would have been 4.2 cents in the town-voted budget. In this one, it's 0.123. So the difference is 8.1 cents, an increase of 8.1 cents. So you can work out what that difference is for your town. It stinks right now. We have some of the lowest spending for a lot of people, and yet we're saying that it's sort of a high tax rate. And I want to split this budget. This is, okay. There are a few things to go before we can fire a tour of the town. Okay, income sensitivity. This is another one. Insomnia? No problem. This is sort of, again, you can refer back to this. There's a range of both town-by-town and income segment-by-income segment for income sensitivity, which is a kind of analgesic, I suppose, for some of these tax increases. Yeah, and here's another one that you may want to refer to. We've got a lot of these that you can take home and enjoy. The interesting part here, for me, just from a kind of socio-economic standpoint, you can see sort of the bottom third of income is on the left-hand side. So you see that the property is capped with income below 47K. On the right-hand side, it's 25%. Wister has 22. Berlin, 15. He's from Peeler, 14. Middlesex, 13. And then if you go to the middle zone, the middle segment, they're relatively close in terms of how much of the share of the middle in each town. And then when you move over to the far right, you see the high end of the income spread, those who are not sensitized, income sensitized, who are paying full freight on their properties, and what proportion of the people are there in each town. Rick. I mean, again, this just said fueling the fire. I mean, you can see a lot of the neediest peoples are in the town getting hit the hardest. There is the equity. There is, I mean, I'm just astounded. And I am not holding you accountable or anyone in this room. Our legislature should be shuttling manure out of, this is unbelievably bad policy. I mean, this is a travesty. How does it help students to have their parents especially way more than call us over their taxes? How does it help the students? The one thing about it, I think part of the message or this slide, is that the lower end is getting sensitized. It's not getting taxed in the same proportion. They're, you know what I'm talking about? So, the lower, they're- Who is paying? That's what I want to know. Yeah. It's still going to be a difference. It's probably not. And how much difference does it make? The three people I know who are in that first column get a miniscule amount off. I mean, it's enough for a box of cereal and something. It's just, it's nothing. Yeah. I mean, it sounds good, but it works out to be nothing. Yes. I'm trying, oh, Corinne. Corinne, Berlin, I didn't say that before. So, it's really painful to talk to residents and taxpayers when any of them that have really been following along know that Act 46 was first tutored back in 2015 as it would save us money and to see that taxes are going up. So, what is it that can be said to them in light of this as far as, you know, will there be any cutbacks, whether in salary or personnel at central office because there's fewer meetings to prepare for? Are there other cost-saving things that are being looked at? Because we all know this budget is just kind of like honest just because of the way things unfolded. But as far as what people are looking toward next year, you know, is there any little light at the end of the tunnel that I can point out to people? I'm light at the end of the tunnel. I think the only light at the end of the tunnel is basically us and our effort. As Fuller mentioned, we're going to start digging into this as early as August and with, you know, trying to see where there might be ways to take advantage of this without sacrificing the good things that we have. Can I just suggest the gentleman that I'm from? Yes. Can you take advantage of his knowledge, your board members? Oh, yeah. You're not up there? Not on this board. Well, a lot of what I mean is as this current, the new board starts working in all of this, I think everybody's brain. Oh, absolutely. Because that, to me, I have noticed over the last several months that hasn't been happening. It's been kind of a closed thing going on here. We all of a sudden, I know what's happening. Yeah. That's because we're- Get the people that know. Get their brains. Yeah. I have to confess that I've, the amount that I've, we're basically doing a lot of improvising as we go and trying to be driven on an inhumane, it's sort of like a death march timetable. But I was- Everything that goes wrong is all your fault. That's the whole point. That's why I'm here. I'll let you. Yes. I was just going to say the other thing is that, it brought home to me again Monday night when we had a tarot cell meeting. And until now, we have had 32 board members to deal with all the issues or projects or whatever in our district. Now we have 10. So you can see why we sort of feel like we're being, it doesn't seem clear to you because we're trying to get our feet under ourselves and stand up and do the work. The other thing that I want to say, sorry, as far as the 32 board goes, you know, we came up with a really fiscally responsible budget. We had to cut positions. We revisited this multiple times. So it's not really us per se that you're going to end up being upset with because we did spend the time to do what we had to do. And we had budgets that passed. So that being said, we tried to do those things that you're talking about. And positions have been cut. And administration positions have been switched around, at least on our level. So it's not like it hasn't happened. And maybe it wasn't this year, but it was last year, the three-year prior. So you can't beat us up because of what we've come up with for a budget. And then? Well, I was going to say, it hasn't been a tight timeframe in the sense of the four years of public meetings and Act 46 discussions and the committees that started. There were a lot of public meetings and discussion. And it didn't come out to a point where people voted for some of what were supposed to be tax breaks. I don't know that they would have been. But since November, when it became known that we had got something by June 30th, it may feel like it's been crushed or tightened the timeframe. But there really has been a long time of Act 46 discussion and public meetings and information. It's been there in eternity. It has. And it hasn't been easy. And it hasn't always been... Well, there's nothing easy about it over those years of a lot of frustration and a lot of public input. So I think the... It may feel that way right now, but there has been reams of notes over the last four years over this process. That's true. Over the process, but not over the other, the Unitary Budget, which has complications and impacts that we did not grapple with because we're looking for the alternative governance structure to maintain local vote. So this year will be a nightmare and difficult to say the least, just because you're going to have the same amount of money, but much more different competing interests amongst the different... The needs that need to be set up. Yes. I think. Yeah. The needs that need to be set up. Thank you, Chris. Great. The problem with this is the school board's done a tremendous job, all of them, in developing this and more. I mean, my God, I've been involved with that, and they've been... They're heroic efforts. The problem is in the mandate and the change that was directed by Act 46. We don't see our politicians sitting in this room. And Lily talked about all the process. I was there. Scott and I have been in this longer than anybody in this room. So before Act 46 to Act 46, we were lobbying against that ourselves. And that, we've been there all along this conversation. It was really set up as a one-size-fits-all model and it was a railroad process. When we tried to create an alternative government system, it was denied. And, you know, the outcomes that we're seeing on these tables were preordained outcomes by incompetent legislative activity. And I'm going to call it what it is. You know, I don't speak easily. This is a judgment-free zone. No, no, no, no. A judgment, it was on the part of the AOE, whoever, you know, Rebecca Holcomb who created this and the legislature. And you know, you were in the sky. They very much directed and even misled us through this process, saying the sounds that went in fact they didn't. We are really ending up with exactly what they said at the beginning. And I will name names, Tony Klein, and, you know, and Jan Ansel, and Anne Cummings. Also, we were going to have flexibility. We were not given that flexibility. And so now we're caught. You know, how are these numbers going to fix themselves? And let's say we vote this budget down, which I'm certainly going to vote against ethically. But, you know, at the meeting just the other night, the answer that the reunified board gave are how we'll just keep submitting the budget until they pass it. Exactly. Democratic process. It sounds like there's to be a union debate. Are they old city? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, should we look at the next slide? Anybody? Yeah. The floor has been passed for 36 as a legislature. I will give up every one of our representatives in legislature, voting yes. Rack 46. Everyone, our two or three senators did. Only Anthony Napoleon was the one that did not. So, yeah. Can you put more legislation at the time it passed? There's been changes since then. Very few, because some of them will be put right back in. Kim, just. More all of them. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, I just want to say that, you know, I don't want to be contrary, but one of the things that we're not doing with this vote in my mind is fighting after the six. Like, we were elected to this council and they get bored to keep doing what we had set as four members that we wanted to do, and what we're going to do for next year's budget, right? Stay with our mission or vision, our implementation plan, trying to reduce the achievement gap, trying to base our decisions in the information that we're getting from. Like, that's our job. You know, students, learning, and, and I've said this to Scott before. They're, you know, there's a different arena for that. Like, to me, what we are doing here today is, it's for the kids and it's for the budget and, you know, and I know that the tax numbers are, are, are affordable, but with this, with this vote, we don't, you know, vote however you want to vote, but just remember that it's about what we all did right here is, you know, the different boards and the time that they took to put what is best. Well, and I don't mean this in a balance, I know, you know, like me hearing the kid thing, but, what, what, all you, but to me, in my mind, all you've been doing is honoring the work of the board members that you elected. That's all I'm going to say. So, right. So, right. Yeah. So, two public hearings. The second one is going to be on Monday. When we do these, no public hearing is exactly like any other public hearing. So, if you, if you have, if you find yourself with questions in the meantime, if, if you just want to, if you just have, you know, want to make points that you think we need to hear in order to be able to do our jobs in future, whatever should happen to this budget, we'd love it if you would have come and to send your friends, neighbors, family. This again, in your handout, by your contact info. I think, you know, this is really hard. For me, personally, it's really hard. I think, from the point of view of the allocation of resources to the schools, this budget is about the best that we can get. Because, you know, it's been arrived at by people who know what they're doing, really care, who know their schools and have worked it out in such a way to get where they got. And we've just taken those, and as we were said, we're honoring that work by combining these budgets together. On the other hand, as has been said many times here, and as I feel myself very acutely, I think that the allocation of costs to taxpayers in a fair and equitable manner is terrible. So, my own, having thought through this anguished over this, my own senses, a little bit of, I can't believe on a cream of floor, was happy me saying yeah. I'm sure it will again, that this budget is probably the wrong battlefield to fight the fight, that from my, by my estimation, if we try to we try to fight the state on this, we'll, we'll lose. My own senses is that the agency of education, the legislature, they don't really care. They're, they feel that they have the upper hand and that we'll just break our spear tips on that, you know, Adam and Ty in the surface. If only it were Adam at the stand. But there's nothing we're able to hold on. Well, we've never been able to hold on. No, you know what Scott? I have, I have completely, I have completely messed up because the articles, the amendments to the articles were agreed on, which, we're going to run. Thank you, thank you Roy. That was fantastic. Um, this, this is what, um, Rosemary was talking about quite lightly. Um, the budget ballot is, is very simple, clear, not a, it doesn't pose any technical problems for voters. I don't think. I hope. It's yes or no. It's yes or no. These articles are much more complicated. The only way we're going to get people to be able to vote intelligently on these is to prepare them really well. And we're doing this, I mean, um, a bunch of people here put a lot of time and effort, including Florian, Chris, and Dorothy. Um, into amending these articles, coming up with text that will provide going into the merger, the same way that Callis, you know how Callis changed the, the easements and, you know, the property use agreement in order to convey with the property. This is a way of conveying, um, with the district if, you know, this thing continues. So article one is basically about giving, um, if you want the town to have veto power, pardon me, Chris, give me if I mango this to battery. If you want your town to have veto power over this board closing your school, or the voters of the five town district closing your school, vote yes on the first article of this. And article two, that's the three year terms? Yes. I don't know. It's the, 35 more members. 35 more members. Not three year terms. Right. Yeah. Three people per town. Three people per town. Thank you. If you want, um, three people per town instead of the present two, vote yes on the second article. Um, yeah. And then the third. The third. The next page. Article of the third. It's probably another page. Yeah, the next page. Good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good. Oh, right, right, right. Right. If you want, if you want to tell this board to encourage, to create stressors for greater public participation, vote yes on the third article. Um, it's great to, it's great to, if you want to see that, great, oh great, and four and five, sorry, it's like on the, no, no, it's kind of right. Um, the article of one and two are in the default state articles and we are amending them. But the next three, I think are, are new ones. Are new articles and it's preface to the word tentative because we haven't accepted them yet. So don't let that word wor- Yeah. If you see tentative, yeah. go for it. So who added, who added article 15, 18 and 19? We had a state or a new one. No, okay. This is nice. All of these amendments are us. Okay. All the amendments and the new articles are our own. Yeah, thanks. Great. So, so, the state, I'm going to punch her and say cram down their model on us and these are all modifications to the state's model. Correct. Yes. So if I were to be done there too, a lot of articles were not allowed to be amended in any way. Correct. Yeah. We had very limited ability. They did a great job in trying to work through this. But, you know, we didn't, there wasn't good flexibility. I mean, this was definitely forced on it. Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. So you're adding articles 15 and 18 and 19. What do you, what do I know about articles 16 and 17? Are they something that, I don't see them anywhere. Yeah. That's because they're not being changed. They're defaults, they're just No, 16 and 17 are just, so article four, the article that they gave us was up to 14 and then this article 18, 16, but 17, 16 and 17 aren't in any, aren't in the packet that I got from the time of court. So, Are they still posted somewhere online where I don't know if they are. I think it stopped, the state default on it just stopped at 14. Yeah. They stopped at 14. Can I see your, Yeah. You might have to say that. You might have the approval. So this, this is what I got. Yeah. From the time of court. And there's no article 16 and 17. They call this, this one is eight. Yeah. Yeah. That's approval. Yeah. That's good news. Well, I can't work. Yeah. We'll, We can say, I said, I have your understanding of this and do the article right now. Are there articles 16 and 17 selling somewhere? They're on the ballot. They're right down there. Yeah. I'm sorry. There's a number. Oh, there she is. Yeah. So, this one is 16 and 17. Um, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, So, And then within Article 1, you have to go to the next pack and find Article 4. And then you go back to Article 2, and you got to go back to Article 7 or whatever, and here. It's a very poor juxtaposition of an article that you're voting on, changing another article that has nothing to do with that numbering system. In me as a teacher, I would have said, Item 1, or Topic 1, Topic 2, Topic 3, Topic 4, that's what you're voting on, and they refer to the articles in the bigger packet. But when I sat down with this, it took me a few minutes to get it. But we made it through the show. I did it before you do the press release. Are the Towns going to mail out the same thing honestly? They didn't have time really. The ballots just weren't ready in time. They're posted in the usual places. First about the article comment. That's the way the ballots have to be. Article 1, Article 2, Article 3, we don't have a choice. That's the way they have to be. It's just confusing. I have a question about, I don't know which article it is, because I don't have it right in front of me. Added the three people. That's the second Article 2, which is... Why? I think it's within that article. You want co-mingled ballots. Doesn't say that co-mingled ballots in that article. We have to. Okay, why didn't you put in there co-mingling the budget ballots? Because they're not co-mingled. They're not? No. We cannot co-mingle the budget ballot. The individual holding a callus goes into the callus editor, and that result is available. And that result... I think that's in the article. I think that's in the default article. Because we talked about that, how those are not anything... To be co-mingled. Interesting. Because four other disunified districts have changed theirs. They're saying co-mingled... They put a specific line right in there. They don't co-mingle their election. In fact, they don't even hold an election district-wide. They hold it within their own time. But that might be because this is a hybrid model. And in order for each of the times to have the same number of representatives on the new board, you have to have... So that everyone in the district could vote for those representatives from the particular towns. I suspect that those towns that do not have a district-wide meeting for representatives have proportional... More strictly proportional representation so that a larger town would have more representatives than a smaller town. And so by having the same number of representatives in each town and this new entity, in order for that to have a constitutional view, everyone had to be able to vote on the representatives that were on the ballot. Even though they're from different towns than we are. So is there a reason why you didn't put in co-mail the budget? Because I'll tell you one thing that can happen. If the budget fails, we consider ourselves lucky that school's out. Because the reason why your 32 budget is co-mailed is so that if it would fail in one town, nobody would know it. So it didn't come back on the kids later. And that does happen. No matter what anybody says, it does happen. And by co-mailing the budget, nobody knows which town might vote it down. And now we're going to. On Tuesday, we're going to know who votes it down. I serve on the elementary school board back in the early 90s, and it happened to my own job as the budget was going down. So we need to look at that co-mailing of that budget. Because that's really important for the kids. If we're doing this for the kids, let's do it for the kids. And that's one piece we can. Thank you very much for that. So note taken for sure. That was an excellent point. But this is a difficult thing to do. And I don't know if this, 99% of people are not going to be able to understand these articles and what they're voting. So again, they're voting both in America. Is there a way that you as a board, and all of you have worked really hard over the years to do this correctly. A tremendous amount of work's been created today. And if you could write a summary recommendation on how to vote on each of these articles, or something that's really briefly. I mean, this would be, and I know that there's kind of an ethical issue with that. I don't think you can advocate as a board member. You can say get out and vote. This is what it will mean, but I don't think you can say how you can do it that way. Actually, I think Chris has just put his finger on it. If we could do a cheat sheet, like what you're saying, one liner, a yes vote means boom, no boom. And really each one. That's not an advisory but a predictive. This is, then, okay. You were describing what Dave had to do. The people who hate this. But you could go and write something. We could. I don't know these well enough, too. But I need help from Chris, and I want to make friends giving good advice on it. And I've been involved with this, too, for five years now. So it's like, you know, this needs to be right where people are voting and right where they can see it. Because it isn't going to work in this format. I'm worried about the budget. I'm even more worried about these guys. I, too. I'm really worried about them. Especially what's going to confuse them is that there's an A and a B, but they only have one yes and one no. And they're going to want to vote and sort of know on both of them. Right. Those guys can say. No. People are already voting. I can't be voting. It is taking place. Valids have been received back. That's probably going to be some of the strongest part of the voting. Because these votes that have been happening, there just hasn't been a lot of turnout. It's just not happening. If this from Orca is posted by the weekend, there's a chance that a few more people will be able to watch it. You know, but like the next meeting that you have on the 24th, Berlin people have our own local meeting about easements. So people that are inclined to go out to the meeting will have to choose which one to go to. So the address is in a lot of time. Basically anything that isn't getting pushed out before the end of this week isn't doing much very good. Thank you for making me feel very happy. Sorry, but... Yeah. You're right. Scott, the one. You know, I think people vote for against any budget or article of agreement based on two factors. One is their understanding of what is before them. And then second factor is whether they favor whatever that is. I don't feel I have an understanding yet of how the budget works. And the part that I don't understand particularly is the revenue raising part. And that's too, I think it's too difficult a subject to get into tonight. But it would really help, I think, for the next meeting on Monday if there are any of us who show up again to have a better understanding of how the money is being raised. Because I don't know if we're moving to a system like U32 has used for, I think it's in higher existence where schools are billed according to the percentage of students they have at the school. You know, it's essentially a tuition type system. I don't know if we're using that. I don't know if we're using that for the high school but not for the elementary. I don't understand any of the revenue side. And that worries me because I don't like voting for things I don't understand. What do you mean by revenue? You know how deep in the weeks by? Well, you know how right now it's based on equalized people. In the future it's town by town. They're all, they're no longer equalized people. There will be a mass of equalized people with one education spending rate. So it sounds as though somehow the property tax base will then become the maybe, I don't know. This is a very advanced question. What are the best topics in education and finance? Seminar. You know what can be. David. This is actually a tangential question but it should be brief. Does anybody happen to know whether with Act 46 there's anything in there that says that five years from now we'll be able to evaluate whether any of the goals are going to be successful. There's no evaluation. I think that the legislators were sort of talking about but never kind of got about it. They're kind of wondering if five years after we said, yeah, we tried it, it was awful. Let's go back the way it was. There is another thing about the articles you need to understand is that whatever board is in place there is a mechanism for them to change those articles. I think it requires the electorate to vote on the changes but it doesn't mean these are being concrete forever. Forever. So if we didn't have enough votes right now but this is something that we all really believe and we want three members this is an easy, easy but this is something that we all want to work on and there might be more that we want to bring over. We consider these amendments to be protections. Enhanced protections to the extent we can provide them. Scott. Thank you for aligning me with all this confusion but there is something I can look up and thank you to me for, I really like what you call it. It's worth voting on. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad you're voting. I hope that they're more likely out there. Rick? Yeah, I mean, and I appreciate everything and everyone's done in this room more. There's a lot of hard effort that's gone into a situation where we're not fixed. I mean, this is now in the political realm and this means changing legislation. I mean, the only way to fix this problem is to go the way they did. We're just going to have to throw people out and do it legislatively. I mean, that is really the only recourse at this point. I mean, we've been borrowing other arena actually kind of euphemistically putting. Well, this is where we're going to be putting our effort because this is an act of five years of economists and deaf ears and this is very scary with this. It's doing a basic Vermont governance policy and this goes way beyond education. If they're doing it here, they're doing it in other places and this is a very planned, fast way to end up with like in generic suburbia. Right, so it's been very good. Yeah. Thank you. No, thank you. Peter, I would just like to say that this has been a much more interesting and informative in addition to what you've done for whatever you were back here. You made comments where there were questions about that discussion. Without this audience, it wouldn't have been terrible, I can guarantee you. But it's really I appreciate it. I applaud all of them, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. And I feel a lot more anxious because of this. Thank you. You guys have made a very good one. Thank you.