 Okay, I'm going to call the meeting if you don't mind. Finance committee to order. The first thing is the minutes. Do I have a motion? Second. Second. Okay. Any corrections, comments? Alan? I think in the CPA article, we recommend the 1.5. That's 1.5 percent. That's what I had in my notes, Jim. Yeah. I had 1 percent. I thought it was 100. I thought it was 100. It was 1.5. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? I will go confused by the sentence. This is in the middle of the second paragraph on the CPA. It says the committee formed to recommend the distribution of funds would not be trusted. I don't understand anything like that. Nobody would not be trusted. By who? By the speaker, I guess. Anybody else have a problem with that? The way it's working? I'd delete the whole line. I would delete the whole line. Okay. I'd also tip my half to the secretary probably recorded exactly what he said by some point. Yeah. Yeah, why don't we delete the line? It just... Despite your amazing accuracy. The last... Second to the last line in that same paragraph. I just think it would be a little cleaner if we say the state could change the CPA legislation at any time making it instead of more unattractive. I was thinking of less attractive. Seems to flow better. I don't have anything else. Anybody else? On the rink enterprise fund, due to a lot change, unexpected expenses about a lot change. I just thought it was more different, unexpected interpretation of the funds the state would collect or something. It wasn't really a change in the law. Yeah, exactly. I just decided to collect it. Yeah. Unexpected expenses include famously, DCR now being... I'll say collected. Collected. I guess it's what it was able to do. They weren't expecting it to be retroactive but it was actually retroactive. How about changing a lot of policy? Okay. Due to department policy or something. Changing policy. That's a good idea. Anybody else? Okay. All those in favor? That one sentence appeared. Unexpected expenses include payments that DCR now being collected due to a policy change. No longer allowing? Is that what you mean there? No. It's allowed. I just have one question whether Somerville has approved the CPA. Does anybody know? It doesn't strike me as Somerville will do. Okay. Do you wish to go on the Somerville webpage and just check that out? Sure. I know Cambridge has but the others are fine. I just don't think Somerville would have done it to me. We'll check that. Okay. All those in favor of approving the minutes as modified? Please say aye. Aye. Photos? Okay. And we are back to electronic voting. We have some additional information for us. Yes. I guess right there would be fine. Right? Okay. I have a document for you. I apologize that you may have to share and ran out of paper. So thank you for having us back. You had asked last time I informed the decision about what to recommend. So I took the opportunity to give a call to our vendor who is doing the rented system for the trial this spring and realizing that if we move forward with another rental purchase we would go through the full proposal and bidding, open bidding process. So they're not guaranteed. For convenience, since they are the leading system we chose I got more updated pricing information from them and I also updated some of the costs. So what you're going to see before you is a very inexpert breakdown of some annualized costs of some average price for purchasing a system. The figure that would cost to continue to rent a system as we are now with the vendor providing support the best working figure I came up with is about $1,300 per session. So that's kind of one to keep in mind as you compare these annual costs. So really briefly in year one is the projected cost for your purchase and the first group is what we would pay the vendor for. That comes to a little less than $32,000 for the hardware, for the first year of a software license and some startup support that we would need from them. The second grouping under personnel is Dave Good's best estimate of what he would need to pay one of his department members to operate the system and take care of the ancestors to support Tom Meading for however many average periods of time. The third category maintenance costs they recommend the batteries should last every two or three years depending on use. This is a very conservative cost that we might need to buy batteries every couple of years. And then another guess about handset replacement it really depends on how good town meeting members are about not losing them or stepping on them. But I thought it would be prudent to have a generous estimate maybe for replacing a few handsets. Would you anticipate that they would turn them in at the end of each boundary? Yes, each night. That's part of that process. I asked the vendor about the expected lifespan of the product and he recommended about five years not that the hardware would be expected to fail necessarily by then but with respect to that possibility and also upgrades to technology in about five years we might want to use it in the system. So they recommended five years and that's what I did. A few small nodes at the bottom you can see about certain assumptions that we did admit that we just don't know. In my calculation this comes out to around ten grand a year for a five year period if this is correct. The break even point for a rental at 1,300 anidas about eight sessions. Now the one new piece of information that I want to tell you about is that we could use if we buy a system we could use this for more than just town meeting. For example, I've had some interest expressed to me from Carol Kowalski's department in planning that if we had this kind of system could we use this in a public meeting about zoning or parking or master planning to get audience response hoping that we go up on the screen. And the answer is yes. The vendors told me that there would be no additional software costs to use the system for that purpose. So I think that's something for the town to think about if town meeting decides to move forward and decides to invest some money in renting or purchasing I think that one of the decision points for rent versus purchase would be would we use this in other town meetings or not because that could argue for a purchase because it's then your cost per use goes down. We could also, if we bought it and we have special in the fall we know we don't have that many years, but we have special we would have a system where if we rented we would have a special meeting. Well we could, but then it would be an additional cost we have to be rented out from the company. Purchasing it seems personally to me seems to be a better option because we don't know how long town meetings last. We've gone last year six meetings to ten meetings. I personally like the six meetings but we can all know some of the future years we've made longer. And it just seems to me the systems and the thing is, as you see it's pretty robust pretty substantial. It seems all of that can break pretty easily. The only really moving part is the screw in the back to the bathroom. So if you want to buy it you can get a lot more use out of it and I think five years. Because that's the vendor telling us that's how long they last and they're not going to tell us in the last three years but we can't guarantee that. Okay, any questions? I was going to say in the meeting in our meeting we took a straw poll and our committee we all thought purchasing was the better way to go. Just because we would own it we would have if we could have our guys run it and use it as we want for whatever purposes we want as long as we save it. For this preparation article too this is certainly a decision for you about what to recommend. I think our thought isn't that we're asking somebody whether the rent-and-buy system I think the real question is what's the maximum amount that would be appropriate and it's obviously if we want to purchase we want to make sure that that amount is high. And I don't know if this needs to be the decision point for rent versus buy. I think I just outlined what some of those are. I think the the finance committee has already voted a favorable action with a zero dollar in so that it could take up the space in other words there's a positive motion there. And then the finance committee will like everybody else see how it goes and then sometime before we get to this article we'll make a recommendation and plug in an amount. So we haven't decided either. And I think the wording will be you know to when lease or purchase or whatever lease or purchase and then let the town manager probably in consultation with the capital budget committee let them figure it out. That's fine with us. And I think that like I said we you know decide whether we make a recommendation or what recommendation we make we hopefully you know neither to before this and then it's up to town meetings. One way or the other. The only thing I think you need to be understanding is the resolution is designed to give town meeting that specific force that will happen after you have the meeting to decide. But there will be the opportunity to say do we want to do this moving forward and I follow by the opportunity to vote on resolution. I was almost thinking we could have got by with just the appropriation article. Well, yeah. I put the resolution in sort of a something disgusting. Yeah. Because if we decided to like it in the appropriation article shouldn't we? Sure. And then they have questions and they can ask their questions and get up and speak to their minds the reason I want to put the resolution was someone could get up and say it's a scope. Whether or not we like it that doesn't matter about the dollars. Yeah. So I don't want to give them really a chance to discuss pros and cons if they like it. Sounds good. Questions, Joe? Could you highlight the efficiencies of having it? Where do we pick up the efficiency? Well, the only efficiency is in frankly the way we we approach it, sorry, was in voter accountability. Right now we don't know how our representative votes unless there's a roll call which in my time we've had two. Every vote is now going to be essentially a roll call vote. It won't show on every single vote on the screen. It's just going to show yes, 50, no, 500. But the next day you and I are going on the website which I hope we're working with them to set it up so we can see how everybody voted on every article because we are a representative and I should know how my recent members vote. That's the real key here. It's not going to speed up the meeting at all except on a roll call. It'll make the standing votes instantly aggregate and we don't have to do two or three votes to get the same results. We'll just have one vote and it can show the tally how everybody voted so if someone questions it we don't have to pull the curtain back from the areas on the screen. So it's not going to be efficient in time. It's going to be efficient in voter accountability letting the populists know how people vote. That's our main frustrations, accountability. Okay. Sorry, Joe. And the second question, who surrounding communities have done it? Franny has been doing it. Brookline does it. He's bought a system. Whalen does it. He's done it. Chumser does it. I think Chumser doesn't do it. It's also a lot of the towns are on the moderator list. We all talk to each other for moderator stuff but electronic voting is being studied just like we did by at least it doesn't include other communities right now. And it's mostly the larger communities that represent the town meetings. It's the little towns out west. They don't care. They can show up at the town meeting and they can see 50 people show up. They know who everyone is. If a person decides they don't want to use his hand how would you take the vote for them? They have to do it. They don't have to. They're going to have to go back to the room and tell someone how they voted and that person's going to press the button for them. It's there'll be no opportunity to record their vote. I guess they can stand up and say Mr. Leone, I vote yes. So, well the procedure from the provision for it, the handset fails. There'll be procedures in place that we'll be borrowing from other towns. The mayor of trouble operating handset are seeing the results and we're consulting with the disability commission on that. But I think we're really we need to ask a question now. We didn't anticipate that anybody would refuse to use it. Well, if I could, we did ask the first community that is now in this fifth year and they have a town meeting that's about our size and it looks a lot like ours and there's a diversity of folks there. And they have not had any issues and no one has ever refused. So which isn't to say that biology couldn't be unique. It couldn't be first. It couldn't be first, yeah. And we'll we'll set up a procedure for that. That's actually the other point. That'll be the moderate risk problem. You mentioned the useful life of it which is the only thing I'm concerned about at $10,000 a year I would have thought that I would have thought it would have either been cheaper for a year or maybe last longer. I just want to, I understand that the vendor is saying this. My question is what is the anticipation in, because it's either going to work or not in the sense of the software. It's not something you're we're going to have to reprogram unless we change the number of town meeting numbers I would presume. Something along those lines. No, the software would pay the annual fees for the software here. It's just ease and the space station to talk about this is the hardware of the person. So, even how long does it need to be for the last year? Well, your team would assume it's being used a lot more often. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Over 10 nights it's maybe going to get 10 nights of use a year. 30 hours a year. Plus, in slurry use maybe another 15 hours. Each of them. I keep my cars until they fall apart. If you're asking about your instinct designing, you didn't build it. My personal expectations based on looking at this is that we could get a lot more out of it if you were happy with the functionality. And I'm not a hardware expert in technology. I work with other kinds of tech and I think that where you really start to see end of life is that when you realize there's something new or shiny on the market that you think about and you want them. But that's a different decision. But that's when a vendor asks that and I think as the moderator said too no vendor is going to tell you what the last 10 or 15 years because why would you go back? I have a second question which is sort of piggybacks. I don't anticipate somebody not voting because they could not vote now. They could just sit down and never get up. But I guess what I would worry about and I'm against is there a provision where the body could say we don't want that vote posted with that? Well what I've seen is we might as well end up doing it but not have it recorded. That's what I'm going to do. Because that's what we're doing now. If we take a roll call we can't represent the town meetings unless there will be all sorts of procedures. Well not secret. Just not on this. Well we changed the bylaw to allow them to speak. So they agreed to change the bylaw. Now I think it's great. And I'm all for it. They don't get it back until they want it. We know what's going on. That's a good question. Last year when we presented this to the town meeting in the wall with the bylaw amendment the town discussed and debated the expectation. And the real reason for doing this is the committee strongly felt accountability was the selling point. So we actually suggested to improve the bylaw that required any vote using these devices to be published. The decision to use the devices we left in the hands of the moderator because there can be a number of technical and other situations in the room that we might need to go back to the old style. No way. Just no action was too quick by the blue base in 30 seconds to do this. No action if anyone wants to slow down those. Well the controversy was that we already just did it. Exactly. And there's also a provision for the members to require any time for that very reason as well as the progress of the bylaw. Thank you. You'll still see using a lot of voice votes. I think this year frankly it's going to kind of go half and half. So people get used to this and when they get used to it they just might say, count your speakers all the time. And I don't have a problem with that because we're anticipating the appointment. The station takes essentially 15 seconds to do good poll in the room. Two and a half times takes 15 seconds. So we thought 15 seconds voting window. And whatever the last pressed one or two, yes or no, the very last one you press the machine reads is going to be your vote. So with that 15 seconds you can change your mind 100 times until that very last second whatever the last one you press is it. So you have an option to waffle back and forth until you're 30 times up. So instead of all of the no action move on 15 seconds. So frankly I don't want to use them for no actions. I don't want to use them for the little $5 million for the parade. People just vote those every time you demand and see the light slow down. Any sense to me Charlie? Yes, John I don't remember the bylaw I don't remember the town manager act to change the last year but it seems to me that it has always taken an action by town meeting members to have their vote recorded. And that there are provisions for voice votes and standing votes in the body of the law, whatever that law is. Now when we made this change here did we eliminate that consideration? No, the way it was before was the bylaw essentially in the first instance all voices would be taken by voice. Five members stand standing vote. 30 members would be challenged. It would be a bylaw analysis in the first instance. It's voice or clicker. If five members stand to change it, it will reveal to show everybody voted. Or if the spread of the vote is within the change we want to change that to make it better this year because we had a bylaw. If it's within five or six votes it will automatically show. So it will eliminate the people to challenge the vote to get out. But at 30 if 30 people still rise it will force the screen to be shown. My question though is are you thinking the moderator? Are you going to change the nature of the voice vote to a roll call vote by using this information? You may be interested in transparency but maybe the body is not. Well, on the votes unless it's a vote that requires two thirds or if it's challenged or if it's extremely close it's just going to show a talent. The background data will be saved. How you and I vote will be available the next day. Then we can get it out. But isn't that a change in the voice vote rule? That's the bylaw we voted last year but it is changing the names for the meeting. That's one of the things. My question is did we change that to make that information public? Did we change that last year? And that's going to be one of the things I anticipate Tom leading to debate during that resolution. Do they like it? Do they want that? Or do they want to go back and speak the way it was? Because it will change the nature of the meeting. My point is that you can have the electronic voting but not report the votes unless the former procedure is carried through. My response is we Brooklight has a provision for that where they have some kind of procedure on the floor that they call a recorded vote and it triggers that threshold and I think that our committee considered that and recommended Tom leading that we just do what John said that if we're going to use these and encourage our convictions that was our thought and Tom leading voted but we're not going to show it why we're all spending the money just keep it the way we do it and if people are really concerned to have a vote we'll do it and everybody voices it vote but the rationale for doing it is to show how people vote it. Okay, are there any other questions? Paul? It will change the nature of the meeting. The $1,200 that the doctor voted is his estimate. Do you know how many sessions of town meeting he was basing that on? If we can take it 8 to 10 there's something between 8 to 10. He said I can do it for $1,500 putting one of his employees in there because Dave right now does he controls a lot of things on the street so I don't think he's there as a town meeting member so I don't actually need another person on board. We need somebody besides him to run the voting. He'll do the video switch between the two and this year we'll have the vendor supply operated. Okay, any other questions? How do you change your vote? You can change your vote but one is yes, two is no. Up until the time 15 seconds is up you can change it by just pressing 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 and 2. Once the voting comes down though and if the street shows and it's a huge claim that you voted yes and it's showing no, you have to get up. We haven't quite figured out how to do it. But because it pulls your hands three or four times you need to be pretty high to prove that you're wrong. The biggest problem is people turning these off. They get the off switch and turn them off. My clicker isn't working and it's like oh you turned it off. That's the biggest problem. We're already a procedure from I think framing came in both Brooklyn and you have good provisions in places. Someone just says you know what, this is just not how I voted and I'm the floor voting administrator to make the adjustment in the computer. That's a question of floor procedures that the moderator had before. We're working on these procedures but I think sensitivity to that is important. It's not huge to be a practical problem in the town that we've talked to so far. Okay Paul. Is there a way to abstain? Three. Yes. Three is abstain. As now an abstention won't get counted towards the majority of the minority. You were there, you just chose not to vote. Okay, Brian. I assume by defacto we'll have attendance as to who's attending and who's not. We'll know who's going to pull out at the end of that when we vote until you're in my final voting. I assume you'll have a list of rules or something like that. Yeah, we're going to come up with the whole procedures and I will combine those with what I send out with this election's package. So you can send that and get ready to go. Okay, Charles. Yes, one other question about changing the vote John, and that is in roll call votes I have seen in the past and this is a parliamentary procedure that's used personally in any voting body that I know of that follows Robert's rules and certainly in the U.S. Congress that when the voters see that the vote is going in a certain direction and the early voter might change his vote in order to be on the prevailing side so he could make a motion for reconsideration. This procedure that you're describing that we're contemplating here will eliminate that possibility. Well, first we follow time meeting time Robert's rules. So you can still there will still be a motion for reconsideration again tonight. But you can only move reconsideration if you voted on the prevailing side. And in roll call votes many times I've seen a time meeting a member will stand up before the vote is complete while maybe you're taking the roll call from 200 people it takes a while to consider vote. Mr. Moner, I'd like to change my vote and it's been recorded as changed. If this process takes 13 seconds that that is an option that's removed from the members. Yeah. Because we're not going to have the second vote we're not going to have the third vote we're going to have one vote and we're done. Okay. So you're not going to be able to stand and see how your neighbors are voting he's going to have to just vote your Okay, anybody else? John anybody else? Gentlemen, thank you very much. So I think this hand up should be very interesting. You know you're constantly sort of it's going to cost me 10,000 a year is it worth the process that we're going through so be an interesting debate. Thank you very much for coming. Okay, and now the issue we've been all waiting for Minuteman Okay, you're going to see it someplace. Article 34 Minuteman, Mr. Boccon Right there is fine. Anything to introduce colleagues? Ramon is our Assistant Superintendent of Finance. I'm going to just as I do every year just go through some slides in here. There are slides that are not part of this agenda but I will be able to answer questions and I'm sure there may be questions about some of the things that Minuteman is involved in but I'll go briefly through these and then answer questions for the chair as the chair recognizes those. On page 2 of slide 4 you see on the budget drivers for FY 15 we're expecting another increase in enrollment, a smaller increase in the experience this year and that of course drives up costs in direct support special ed and others we also have some unfunded mandates that all schools are dealing with the educator evaluation system the park testing our collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of this fiscal year and we're in negotiations now for the next three years our health insurance we have pegged at about a 10% increase this year and then our capital costs we have a bridge projects which is really a bridge to a renovated building or a new building overall on page 3 slide 5 let's just take it one at a time do you have any questions so far? the health are you in the GIC? no we're in a health trust with five other regional vocational technical schools and at different points in time we're in the GIC right now there's more discussion about it because one of our members is merging with another school district and they're forming a new regional school that's the Essex Aggie North Shore Regional and I think Peabody Vocational School District so there is some more discussion about Kevin sits on the health trust for the district and could answer more specific questions about it so we're only going up 1% this year anybody else? overall our budget for proposed for FY15 is 19.6 million although it's an overall increase of 5.9% because of increases in revenue our increase to our member towns the assessments up only 3.8% and if you looked at the assessments to our member towns over the last five years they've averaged about 1% a year for the last five years the enrollment chart on slide 6 you can see we've had about a 23% increase in enrollment over the last five years and we're expecting that to go up slightly again next year overall on page 4 slide 7 on a total of one there are about 796 students that's including our post graduate students as well as the high school you can see member town enrollment is up about 440 and then the other non-member communities and you recall that the big three non-members that's Watertown Waltham and Medford are currently sending 165 students and all other communities about 191 and up that 191 I believe 60, 65 so Boston Public Schools coming to me page 5 slide 9 is just a graphic representation of what I mentioned earlier you can see for FY15 our assessments to member communities is $10.2 million it's about $300,000 more than it was six budgets ago or five budgets ago our revenue plan if you can see that in the second column from the left is $10.2 million as the assessments to our member towns and then chapter 78 we're expecting a slight increase of $2.1 million we're expecting a somewhat larger increase in our regional transportation aid and our tuition is up again this year the tuition we're collecting from non-member communities this year is about 5.9 million which will be applying to next year's budget that's known as prior year tuition and then we're using $382,000 of our anticipated tuition which is described as current year tuition in this budget and then $100,000 out of excess and deficiency and that brings us to the 19.6 million why is the postgraduate school tuition zeroed out we've applied that postgraduate tuition into the revolving account where the expenditures are occurring we had always been I think that's the finance committee made that change this year because it was taking administrative costs for the postgraduate programs and putting them in the revolving account but we weren't counting all the revenue for the postgraduates in the correct place so I assume if we went to a place with the expenses in the budget for the postgraduate we'd see a concurrent $100,000 drop in expenses okay Paul, General Charlie Dean I believe I heard today that the senate and the house maybe the committee members have promised to increase in state aid of some level is this consistent with the level of basic green promising today? well we would be quite valued in our predictive abilities if it was this was based upon the governor's budget and no adjustments have been made at this time the resolution that came through today was had an increase in but no increase in Chapter 70 so transportation reimbursement who do you get reimbursement from? the state all regional schools get reimbursed I think it's 58% it varies by year but it runs roughly 55 to 58% based upon cost incurred we spend about $1.2 million on transportation overall and this goes to offset that expense okay Charlie how much tuition do we get per tuition student? well the commissioner has set that this year at 18,300 and change 309 is that down from last year? it's down about 8% from last year the commissioner's intention is to continue to lower that rate for all non resident tuition rates across the state until we get about 125% of foundation which would be a total reduction in our per pupil tuition rate of about 25% when he's all finished doing that so he's been under I assume this is because of pressure from the sending districts and towns pressure from traditional supertenants okay Charlie okay, Dean on the prior year tuition going back a few years you guys were you had made a decision to do this shift in how you treated the prior year in the current year tuition at the time hurt us but if I look at it here I think that shift is over at this point is that fair to say? pretty much to take three fiscal years to reduce our reliance on what is known as current year tuition to zero so that we'd be relying on prior year tuition going forward probably around the FY17 budget yeah that's kind of what I'm looking at so that 382 is just going to tail to nothing okay is the 965 the total you collected last year we're collecting it now as we speak okay, so 15 uses this fiscal 14 so that's your projection for this year? yes, and we're pretty close to projections we're not, we bill in November and March may so we don't collect the money until pretty much the end of this fiscal year which is one of the problems with relying a lot on current year tuition if there was a blip you'd be in a revenue shortfall and you refuse to pay which one tried to do okay now just further talent question is in the actual collections the 5.9 plus what we projected for current year tuition fiscal 14 so it's about 6.5, 6.6 million our total total tuition collected would be that 595 or 596 plus 600,000 of current year tuition within the FY14 okay, and then I just have a question on the percentage of foundation you said that the goal is if it comes to fruition in the future it would be about 125% what does the 18309 represent if you know? 150 minus 8% okay, so there's another 17% if this yes anybody else? okay, sir out of district tuition revenue we see on slide 11 the Arlington Historical enrollment that's driving assessment increases the last couple of years enrollment is up to 165 that includes about a dozen postgraduate students that's the highest we've seen in a few years on page 13 the Arlington assessment is up by 15 to be 3.7 million that's up about 13% or so even though your enrollments up about 22% and then on page slide 14 we're just showing the overall budget based upon the general account function codes provided by the state is there any reason can you think of any reason why for example you would jump all of a sudden so very dramatically an enrollment you know I think there's a couple of driving factors this year, the last couple of years I think one is as parents are telling us the anticipated enrollment in Audison has they want to go to a school that may not be as crowded or there's some concern about that whether it's a wrap, reality or not we've also had a lot of great support from parents in Arlington giving us access to talking to parents more this year we've changed our recruitment and marketing strategies a little bit we have we start earlier in the school year as early as October our Arlington students go to Audison Middle School we talked to Arlington students about Manitoba so I think there's been also sort of a broader based increase in the interest in the value add of vocational technical education across the commonwealth given the performance of our schools overall that one? I think that's also part of the validation of the curriculum which is more relevant to perform more attractive okay, Carolyn did you say that he does about 12 approach factors 12 post-grad students how would it break down otherwise? he had about the same level of post-grad students as you did not do you mean overall? it's been about the same we had about 26 post-grad students back in 2012 and our overall post-graduate student enrollment has gradually declined during the recession I think people were having trouble paying almost $3,000 for tuition that students from member communities were paying $6,000 that was a factor okay, anybody else? are we on slide 13 14? I believe so so if I look at your proposed budget by function I think I did this correctly I might not have if I take out it's really three components in this budget if I look at the schedule you have an operating budget a capital budget and a debt service so I said well let's just forget the capital and debt service because those have no correlations to the kids in the building but the operating budget does but I have this right the operating budget is going up over 8% in terms of what we provide for direct services to students well no, I just added up your account code 1,000 well I just added up account code 1,000 through 5,000 I actually was 17.2 million this year it's 18.6 so you're going up about 8.3% you're going to be about 8.3% I haven't looked at it quite that way but I believe you right and then when you have two drivers you have administration and student instructional services so I'm just messing around with the student instructional if you had a 2.5% cost of living adjustment plus a 6% enrollment maybe you could absorb some of it maybe you can't but then you have this big 30-something percent increase over the last 4 or 5 years we've made some reorganization and putting positions in the administrative function code that we're really administrative an example of that would be marketing and recruitment prior to FY 12 that function was in guidance which would have come under the 2,000 student instructional and 2,000 and 3,000 so we moved that into administration because we have a dedicated administrative assistant and a dedicated administrator who just works on recruitment so that was one we did restructure the business office so when you say that though that means the instructional project actually went up more yeah over the last two years this year that we're in right now we had an increase of about 85 students post the 15 or 16% and our as you remember half of our students about 47% this year on IEP so there was a corresponding increase in the special ed services budget as well as in the academic side to keep vocational academic class sizes reasonable and then we also converted a number of shop areas that had been reduced to one teacher departments back to two teacher vocational departments and we did that by shifting a technical and we hired three or four of them that could be licensed as full vocational technical teachers and they were able to do that last year and to an extent this year so you know I mean I get it and I say this is I think maybe your most unabashed cheerleader on this finance committee over the years seemed like it seemed like we're going up pretty high on an operating budget I mean you get a 6.3% increase in students and an 8.2% increase in cost and you think there'd be some degree of absorption of additional students into the cost structure that's just my observation it feels like it's off yeah I think if you look back to what we did in 2011 where we cut the budgets of you know 7. I think it was 7% we laid off close to 23 people we've been growing slowly and strategically where we need people we're hiring them so that could be having an impact right now being able to provide staffing in the areas that we really need and it's become somewhat critical in some areas but this overall budget is up only 2.5 FTE I think one math teacher a communications director and then a part-time maintenance person good we're trying to invest a lot in technology as well with the preparing for the park assessment we're going to increase our infrastructure we committed to that in the current fiscal year and we're continuing that process in the second phase in the next fiscal year some of that investment is changed right I think good so Dr. McCrullin in your budget book there's a student-teacher ratio table and it looks to me like Minuteman is between 1 and 2 let's see if I can say this right units of student-teacher ratio below three of the other four comparative districts which would be driving your cost up right yes so why why is that because our special ed population is significantly higher than those other vocational are you looking at the vocational medical school comparison yes I am and what do you think it's going to be it says here that 14 numbers aren't out our teacher-student ratio I think it would be higher and a little closer to the comparable schools thank you okay Paul so what was the collective bargaining salary increase it hasn't been determined it's in negotiations right now what is it for the current year current year is two percent we're ending a three-year contract where it was zero percent one percent and two percent so that of course the student increase would be some of the collective bargaining money is buried in there someplace how many years over the last say since 2008 have you had zeroes just that one year of this contract which is expiring okay don't forget to tell your units are on it it's been two years anybody else John in public schools for many years it disturbed me a lot that you were paying for transportation things like that to other schools in order to be able to some of the special school requirements control that pretty carefully do the special education within the public schools and the question I guess I have for you is do you have very much in that kind of thing or do all your sort of schools stay right in virtually all of our special ed students receive their services very very rarely maybe once in the last seven or eight years that we had to place the student outside okay okay slide 14 the admin costs 28% do you elaborate on this? I was trying to get it some of the technology infrastructure upgrades that we kind of refer to are within that function code we also restructured some of the functions prior to this and put it in the administration where they have been in student services before but that would have been this year's increase right you fully see it in the FY 14 and 15 budget there okay Charlie in the detail in your budget book it has personal benefits it's showing a 226% increase yeah age 20 in the budget book you can view the detail by line what's the change that makes up the 28% Superintendent mentioned early on we were dealing with some of the unfunded mandates in the state one of those is the educated evaluations and when you look at the line with the challenge referring to the first down the path what we did was re-organize the business office decreased the $39,000 staffing cost and we were able to apply some of that savings towards moving forward with the human resource director we had that position in the past but we kind of their last fiscal year we were bringing that back and we also re-assigned the supervisor evaluation position and one of our longtime staff members applied for the position and we hired her for that job so we basically the transferring salary that we had in teaching services and moving that into the administration to support that position the other investment as I mentioned earlier was the technology investment and we're trying to staff up to that as well so that's the detailing against the study of the issue any other questions okay that's that's the budget overview any other further questions or there's a few slides there I don't know if you want me to go through briefly where we're at feasibility study there's a couple slides in there you'll see slide 16 MSDA has extended our feasibility study contract to reflect the work of the regional amendment agreement also to give I think the department of education time to solidify the intergovernmental agreement concept so I just wanted to make people aware that if Minuteman is successful in completing the feasibility study and if we're successful in moving forward through schematic design we wouldn't be coming to any communities for two more years with any kind of a capital project reflecting either a renovation or a new building or some combination of new and renovated from the viewpoint of our we have Skanska owners project manager and Castle Boos architects are the design team in the preliminary design program we submitted to the MSDA back in November there were six models there's been first work on those models based upon some direction from the school committee and I'm calling it the worst case scenario of a project of $120 million with only 40% reimbursement which is what we're guaranteed as a minimum from MSDA in a 30-year bond and no facility fee collected the range that it would have on a median homeowner's tax bill would be between $18 and $93 a year in Arlington based upon the calculations done by our financing consultant from the Unifunded Arlington would be about $75 a year the intergovernmental agreements would be a really critical component in Minuteman's future to be honest with you historically as you know 45% to 55% some years of our enrollments come from outside the district and by law we're not able to assess them any kind of additional fees for facility use or capital project the Department of Ed has approved the idea of an intergovernmental agreement between the school district of Minuteman and the school committee of ascending district that is not a member and the facility fee is being formula is being developed as we speak by the Department of Ed and that facility fee would be triggered when an intergovernmental agreement is in effect and there's an MSBA project in effect as well and that facility fee would be applied directly to reduce the capital costs apportioned as the Department of Ed will tell us soon I hope to non-member communities so that would be a really huge benefit to any kind of a capital project being approved by our member communities and I think it might also depending on how the facility fee gets calculated be attractive for non-members to join the region we'll require a change in our admissions policy which we're working on right now and I've been promised by the Department of Ed that we'll have this intergovernmental agreement in writing prior to the Lincoln town meeting which is our first town meeting which is two weeks from Saturday what is the nature of the change in district admissions policy that's required? we have to have three categories of students we have all our applications are treated the same whether they're from member communities or non-member communities it's been like that for a number of years it is legal to, for lack of a better word discriminate against applications based upon where the student lives so member district applications would have first priority intergovernmental applications would have second and then if there was still room in the school and we were considering applications from individual students in individual towns that are not part of the intergovernmental agreement they would have third last priority in program selection so if you look at what happens to the enrollment trends of newly built vocational technical schools my doubt that that third category of student would have room in the school Carol? so as the provision a facility we will see some of the that's the notion and you know when we first started the regional agreement task force four years ago that was not even an option on the table and now it is Charles? I'd like to go back to the MSBA feasibility study I think two questions comments one is I had seen some information that indicated that the project might be as much as $160 million that's been pretty much taken off the table yes that was a very conservative estimate we've had some other information come to us about the site itself we've also had some encouraging interest if we were to build a new building and repurposing the existing building which would generate some savings in a construction project that would be applied directly to the overall project and the second question is there was recently a vote by the building committee regarding 435 versus 800 the school building committee and then the school committee both voted to instruct the design team to spend the limited funds that are left within the feasibility setting not limited, there's still 70% of the funds there but to look at a design enrollment of not to exceed 800 students the feedback that we got from the design team was and I should just back up a bit to remind folks that we're one of the few projects that were given two enrollment design numbers by the MSBA to plan for two, basically two schools and for each one you have to do three models plus a repair model of your existing so we did that for our preliminary design review and came up with six models including a repair model and then as we looked at the projecting out a couple years what would happen if we had a 435 model and then you realized you needed 600 it would be more expensive to design to a larger school and take a look an 800 school and pare it down and as the design team is going forward they're been instructed to look at designs where you could lock off parts of an existing building should the school committee finalize the design enrollment figure at something less than 800 right now we have less than 400 I think 400 member 430 430 member towns contributing students so if we were to be going towards 800 students how do you envision that we will get to that number I think two ways because of all the wheels in motion I think the intergovernmental agreement and the new regional agreement would be attractive to communities joining I also if you look at the enrollment percentage of 8th graders applying to vocational technical schools across the commonwealth if it's a city vocational school you get 25 to 30% of the 8th graders are applying as freshmen into that in rural areas it's about 13 to 15% in suburban areas which I would call men and men a suburban 7% men and men for the last 10 years has averaged about between 3.5 to 4% so if we were able to just increase the applications from 8th graders just to the average of suburban schools we'd be about 625 students from in district and if one or two of the larger cities that have been sending us a large number of students for a long time joined the region we'd be at 800 $120 million worst cases for the 800 students if you have a worst case for the smaller it was it was about 113 million how many students? 435 the detailed models that we gave to MSBA with all 6 models at that time in November are on our website under the building project link on the website I think the repair option just the repair alone was close to 80 million when was the last time we had 600 in district kids in the school system it was back in probably the early 90s and perhaps in the early 2000s there might have been a year or two there I think in the budget book there's actually a historical enrollment could they answer that better page 11 page 11 we've hardly touched about 500 and does this can include postgraduate? no I think it's the next page yes but there weren't that many postgraduates in those periods of time so I think you'd have to go back to the early 90s excuse me I'm just wondering whether it's realistic to have 600 in district I think it's a stretch but if you look at the enrollment trends of new vocational schools schools that have been through a renovation their enrollment trends have all hit that average and beyond in some districts I guess I'm confused October 1st 13th or 796 including out of district when you say planning for 800 is that planning for 800 in district planning for 800 we don't know who's going to be in or out so we have 796 total right now why would that go down I guess I'm confused why we're talking about having a hard time hitting 800 well I'm talking district kids who's paying capital cost I understand but as far as planning for the size of the school there's 800 now so don't you have to plan for the school for both district and out of district or are you saying there wouldn't be any out of districts out of district kids can come and go well fam builds a new school there they might pull back some of theirs you know Medford decides to build a new program for a collaborative with Melrose and Malden and all of a sudden you lose a bunch of kids there the only ones we can depend on is the kids from the district and so we built a smaller school we're sort of saying out of district going well if you go for a 600 pick a number out of the air if you go for 600 kids then we know we can fill 2 thirds of it and probably be able to pull in another 200 you know and if you look at that timeline that's a decision the school committee is going to need to make in the next year is what if we get approval and go to final schematic that's when you have to have one number you can't get too far into that and not know exactly what you're going to be building so the next year is critical when it comes to the intergovernmental agreement it's important that the regional amendment agreement gets passed and so we can have something solid for them to reflect on and that we can do calculations with them being a member okay anybody else on this the regional agreement has made a number of adjustments slide 21 it's just an overview and then on the next two slides there's a bit more detail on the current agreement versus the proposed the assessment about annual and capital costs would be utilizing a four year rolling average which in Arlington's case would probably have been beneficial this year to have a four year rolling average because it takes the spikes out there's a weighted vote where the school committee voted last evening to amend this I know it's quite controversial especially in Arlington but Arlington still has a weighted vote that's almost six times greater than the smallest community and three times greater than the average community vote it's based upon enrollment as well as an equal share I should mention the capital costs which are now based solely on enrollment are going to be based upon 50% enrollment 1% for each member district and the remaining third will be based on wealth or ability to pay factors that are calculated by the Department of Education Revenue in their chapter 78 formulas the admission of new members the school committee has an opportunity to negotiate admission of new members so it's a transition into a full pledged member right now if a community wants to withdraw it's virtually impossible it's possible but all 16 communities would have to approve that the new agreement allows for a simple majority to approve it authorization for new debt is similar to what it is now however the district commits to what's known as chapter 7116D where it would seek a unanimous vote from all member towns on a authorization for new debt if there was one or two communities that did not authorize that debt the school district would then go to a district-wide ballot where voters would be deciding on the debt authorization and it would be a simple majority however at that point in time if one of the communities that didn't vote for the debt they would have the option to withdraw so it allows for a lot of flexibility that's currently simply not there amendments to a new agreement although I can't imagine amending this agreement again in my lifetime would still require unanimous vote by all the member communities I'm sorry did you hear the voting structure with change last night? it was tweaked, the weighted voting was tweaked to provide a little bit more weight to the smallest communities minivan communities there's sort of three categories of communities there's tiny towns that send five or less students then there's larger towns like Arlington, Lexington, Belmont and then there's the median towns for instance I've been at Lincoln select board meeting and Fincom's meetings the last few weeks and their vote under the previously revised weighted vote would have had 85 times less the power of the Arlington vote for them to have a new school or have part of a district in their town because if a new school was built it would primarily be in Lincoln they found that to be a difficult portion of this revised regional agreement to live with and given that they're the first community that votes on it and also in the we had a municipal breakfast on Friday where we discussed this with about 45 select men and Fincom members and the smaller communities were very pleased with the adjustment I know I have full responsibility for that because even though no one really started to do testing of this until this past couple of weeks after this finalized when we did for testing we went to the store to look at all roll call votes we don't have very many most of our votes are not very close but we looked at all the roll call votes and with the current with the previously revised weighted voting nothing would have changed but then we started to project different kinds of votes and there were a couple of instances depending who shows up at the table where 11 towns could have voted yes Arlington could have voted no and it would have been a no vote it was just a little pause when we look at the practicality of implementing it and this is a compromise which I agree is unfortunately late in the process but to me it appeared that it needed to be made in order to get 16 towns to approve a new agreement because we still need all 16 towns to approve it and as someone said a long time ago there's enough in this agreement that's equally distasteful for different reasons and I think it has a great opportunity to pass and I think there's a general consensus that it's better than what we have So Arlington we need to work again? He said 50% everybody has right now every vote is worth 6.25% In the revision everybody gets half of that and then the remaining half is assigned by enrollment so Arlington has about 19% a share and the smallest community has like 4% John? With all due respect we didn't vote this in our committee as it stood at the time so I find this a little bit frustrating until I see what the real document is going to look like so I have to say I would like to work again We will have another discussion Now is that the only change? Yes Any other questions? Okay, any questions at all on the budget? How the hockey team did? My basketball team won the vocational championship that's why my head is shaved We have this I guess it's a fort it's a tradition or any time one of our sports teams wins a championship the seniors get the shave the superintendents at I figured it was a safe bet for 30 years we won basically nothing and this is the third time in three years No, no, no we have professionals watching over this although one student wanted to do some things up there So thank you If your next superintendent is female I'll be here She better get some money Alright, thanks a lot Okay, thank you very much for coming We appreciate your time We have a little scratch about that if you want to have it Sure Okay Okay Okay, why don't we start working on our budgets So everybody can grab their budget book This committee is done Board of Select is done It's not elections Elections Okay Let's go to Board of Select on elections Okay Okay, elections This is page 26 25 I'm sorry, 25 It's the glasses Okay, David They have presented a budget 131,005 for 2015 At the last meeting I also passed out a breakdown of what they say is a breakdown of the cost of each election Starting with the town election which includes the annual town meeting cost and also the special town meeting cost and then if we had additional elections the county would have the state primary as well as the regular election So I passed that out last week In addition it was brought to my attention that the the state on a reimbursement sent to the town treasurer a total of 17,736 That goes back into the general fund for the special state town special state elections For those elections, 17,736 Okay, so we've received that state Okay And that was received on 12, 16, 13 Okay, so are you moving the budget as printed? Yes, I am So how many elections do we have next year? We have the town election We have the town in primary and state and primary final So you've got three Hopefully that's it PD-1 Yeah, I want somebody else This is 121.543 Yes This is the third time that they gave this I think They've got a new one that adds up to the budget Right Okay, so it's 121.005 Yes Any questions? Because looking at the election officer's salaries and what's on the handout from last week I don't see how it adds up to 69,900 with three elections What they did here was these are only actually two elections Right, but for one election it says 15,960 under the election officer's 151.55 on three is only 1,700 Like I said, this is the third time they gave me this one This is done in their office We were going to We were going to check with Vita Recommended to check with the control Okay, how many elections did we have this year? This past year Yeah, the year we're in Well, right, how many regular elections? We didn't have any state elections except for the specials And we just had the town election Didn't we have my memory Did we have another special election? Yeah Well, I'm not counting the state elections The budgeted number of elections was one but then we had to go back and we had so many elections Did we not have that special election last year I'm not counting the special elections Just the regular elections, we just had a town election Okay So that budgeted for 23 this year we'll have three, at least from a budget point of view That's where it's coming from It seems to make sense So that's how they're doing it Yeah, this is called the final time This doesn't mean a whole lot That's an estimate We asked just to give an overview of what some things cost that people have asked in the past I don't think some people realize that they have to rent a building as well a private custodian for that building I never realized that they had to rent tables and chairs We had enough tables and chairs We just for example the election office was lying Paul pointed out shouldn't we reduce this to 49,000 because that's what this says I don't think so because again, as I say I asked this three times and it was revised three times and this is the one they gave me when I went in Right, so it's such a big difference just in that line And Dave, the easier way I think to look at it my true sense is 2013 is your benchmark because every other year we have a statewide primary and a statewide election right, so the offices this year I think we might have a senate election we might not, we might have a governor's election right, in 2012 presidential election but it was the same September, November format so if you look at 13 in 13 we told 148.161 so as a sort of SNP test as long as 15 is not greater than 13 you're starting in the right direction It just seems more like a swag than based on the actual analysis I don't know how about some people do it I don't know Alan the handout doesn't have a breakdown according to the codes their personnel costs spread through this under, you know service and so forth it's almost like we should just get off of by code it would be a lot easier to deal with okay, any other questions like James says the 131 as well as 148 okay, do I have a motion? okay, second okay, motion made seconded for 131.005 all those in favor please say aye opposed unanimous 312.14 okay, let's town manager is done human resources is done information technology I'm done and we're not ready yet there's a discrepancy and some money that I still haven't resolved I'm sorry okay controller I'd like to do two budgets before because it sort of rolls into it we'll do it as well but before we do that can we do postage which is on page 51 okay there's nothing significant here except for the increase in the postage which is basically the so I would move that we accept it as is okay, so 174.960 and you just have the one worker okay, so is that your motion 174.960 yes second okay, is there any questions okay, okay, motion has been made seconded for 174.960 for increase of 2.61% all those in favor please say aye aye opposed unanimous 312.14 okay the next budget that rolls through the treasurer's office is on page 71 which is the parking budget and there's basically nothing here except for the wage increase that we accept this, I would move that we accept this as filed in the budget book. Okay, so 115,166 for parking. All on, Paul? Just one note on the salary detail page. It indicates that parking clerk is a one person full time with football. It works really hard if he's full time with COVID to a job. I believe there's multiple people there. Hang on, that's 71? 72. 72, right there, I'm sorry. I'm sure. Question, question, question. Mr. Gilligan is listed as a full time equivalent for a parking clerk. It's the only position in town with two full time equivalent. Yeah, but the race is not a full time equivalent. Right, right, right. It doesn't get twice as many as the benefit of time, I don't think it works. It's just, I think it's probably more of a space. I think you would like to have more hats, maybe. My one question, I have no idea if this conversation, if this came up in your conversation, is there any movement to replace the parking meters? Yes. Yes. They're still studying it at their, they would like, I think to, well, at some point, and I believe it'll have to go through the Capital Budget Committee, but they're, they would like to, and they have to wait to see what happens with the parking situation that goes on in town as well. So they're gonna piggyback on it, but they're screaming about the fact that the meter never works as well. They have issues. Okay, you're gonna sit in the budget? It's the Capital Plan. And they're zeroing in on equipment. I mean, I have, you know, discussions about, I mean, this has to be coordinated as Brian said with the Town Manager. We've had some discussions about credit card payments, and I actually went to a trade show, the EMA trade show I saw, systems that will send you a text message if you're in a restaurant, and your meter's about to expire, and then you can pay by your telephone, and I don't know if we'll get to that stage of flexibility, but they are focused on replacing that. And also to add to that, the parking clerk also added that the same text message goes out to meter made vener man, that that's about to expire, and he also could rush to that spot tonight in the town. That's the message that goes out, the application just copies that message. Yeah. That should be interesting. Are there any other questions on the parking budget? I think each year we get the revenues. Do you have the revenues by chance? It's in the management report, yes. Right. Okay, so are there any other questions on this budget? Okay, all motions have been made. The seconded, all those in favor of 115, 166, we say aye. Aye. Opposed? The unanimous. Okay, now we go back. Yeah, now we'll go back to the Treasury's budget, and the reason is, is that this keeps it all within three and a half. Send this around that way, send those around that way. Now, if I remember correctly, last time we kept them under three and a half by including the postage and the parking. And the parking. So we just, and we kept the selection under budget under three and a half by including all there with a little budget. So we've got to be consistent from year to year. So the year that the postage skyrockets, that's got to be absorbed also, okay? Okay, it's, hang on, what page in the budget book, and you don't even need to look in the budget book, because these numbers have been revised. Also, if you look at the highlighted numbers, the lines, those are the. I don't show up. I'm sorry, that's on my copy, I apologize, because I didn't take that one. I'll tell you which lines it is. It's the salary and wages of account number 5100. It's been reduced to the correct, the number of front of U581 349 is correct. There was an error on the step on one of the steps. The overtime, they are pushing, they pushed for substantial more overtime. They had a vacant position in the past. I believe their overtime right now is at $15,000. But they said they, that they might have more this year, but that remains to be seen. So they said that they could live within this. And also the longevity is down because of the, there's a new person coming in, which is why the step is lower. So there's no longevity, so that was reduced. You might have, on the overtime, we had some fairly extensive discussions about their overtime requirements this year and next year. And one source of the overtime is the quarterly billing that the town has introduced on the water and sewer. The other is they just had a retirement and the person's name is McLean, assistant collector. And they haven't been replaced in any way so they've got to train that person. And then we assume that they're going to hire sometime soon for a deputy treasurer. They have selected the candidate, the town manager, and the human resources director. And whoever, there are a number of people on the search committee have approved. This designated person, I think they may have actually negotiated an offer. But it has to be approved by the Board of Selectment. And I don't know whether that's happening or when it will happen, if it happens. And the point was, that new, even the deputy treasurer is going to have to be trained just to learn the systems and the way things are done, so it's going to have two new people on next year, plus the quarterly tax bill. Do you have another copy of the breakdown? This just has the front page. The salary breakdown? Oh, no, I don't. Look, you can look at the roll call. If you look at the old one. Look at the page, the old. Page 48, page 48, page 48, page 48, page 48, yeah. Oh, you're right, it won't happen. Right, the new numbers are set. I can tell you that the over time when the $15,000 was cut from, the request they had in there was $20,000, something another on the day before. So that was reduced by about $7,000. And the replacement person for the claim is in here in the original book at 49,913, sorry, 49,913, including longevity. There's no longevity in the new person and I think it was $6,207. They had 41,029. It's the new salary. Okay. And they weren't sure of the new deputy treasurer salary, but it would be somewhere between the men and the max. Yeah, so we just left it as is at this point until we have any other information. And then the expenses were reduced. How much did they reduce it to? I'm sorry, how much did they reduce it to? About 4,000. Yeah, I think so, I think that's probably right. 28 to 24. The only supply is back to 25. Right, and then the other expense line, general expense line was reduced by 1,000. Right. But there's, but part of what I have to talk to IT about is there's a $25,000 amount that needs to be accounted for in either treasury or IT. That's a good point. So there's another, so I don't know that we can actually vote on this tonight. We can vote on our amended or. We can amend it later. Well, it's not in here, so I think we should vote on this budget. Yeah. The issue is that the IT department has been printing bills and stuffing envelopes in a machine and then it goes out and gets mailed. And they want to outsource it. And so they will save some money by outsourcing it, but the outsourcing bill is still going to be $25,000. And it turns out that it's not in the IT budget. Right, it's not in this budget. And it's not here. So. Where was it before? IT budget. IT. So that's what, so I think I would recommend that we vote this budget and put the 25 back in the IT budget. Oh, okay. Okay, as long as it gets put someplace. Okay, so your recommendation is for 675, 035. Correct. Which represents 4% as modified by the other two budgets. Is that a motion? Yes. I'm just looking at, she says 4%. Oh, 3.5%. Yeah, in total. Yeah. Okay, so that's a motion? Yes. Second? Second. Okay, questions? Dean. If I look at 2014 budget line 5290 tax picking expense, is this the one we, did we have a reserve fund transfer for this line during the year? Yes. So this, just till I got my own notes correct, this number is higher by whatever that was. And that sort of. This year. Right, and that's sort of the Evan flow we talked about where some years it's low and some years it's high and got it. Thank you. Okay, any others, Allen? Thank you. So the over time was related to the new quarterly bill. What are insurers that make bill quarterly? Right. Eventually they take it out over time and then put it into the regular? Well, I guess they don't tend to do that. It varies, I mean. And they have assistant clerks doing it. It's the account, it's, I mean, if it gets put in the regular budget, that means you're hiring in person and you have to look at benefits and other costs. Okay, so going to quarterly doesn't require a whole FDA just some extra hours, I guess. That's right. Well, is that covered by the, should that be covered by the offsets from water and sewer? It's a lot higher. I don't, I don't. It should be something that- There are offsets from water and sewer. I mean, basically the argument that the Treasury Department made, which I have to say I was personally involved in, so I have some empathy for, is that they have traditionally had between $12,000 and $15,000 worth of overtime a year. And a couple of years ago when the budget was tight, the Finance Committee assisted them in reducing that budget and taking whatever they could transfer out of expenses, whatever. But they're still, you know, they have increased, I mean, this overtime is really counter-service. And reconciling, you know, the more activity they have, the more errors there are and the more reconciliations they have to do. And they expect more this year because of the new billing. So that may, in the future, that may go down a little bit, but- All I'm saying is that any extra expenses that the Treasury Office has because of the quarterly water billing should eventually be offset with- Eventually, but not this year. Yeah, maybe not this year, but that should be taken into account in a higher offset from water and sewer. So, okay, is there any other questions or comments? Carolyn? It's just that they've been covering their overtime through the vacant positions. So that's why we're suddenly seeing it again. Okay, anybody else? Grant? What's the increase in the banking services? It's a contract. Yeah, correct. It was, and it's correct. Okay. They did remark that it, I think they said next year, this is the third year in a three-year contract that was back-loaded. Oh, that's right. And that, I don't know if it's next year or the year after, but there's a renegotiation coming up. You know, they may get a better deal and it'll go down or it'll make a lot of money. I would think for their budgeting purposes it'd be better if they could have it fairly level. Except that, you know, when the last contract came out, it was in the bad time. So the focus was meet the constraints. Yeah. Anybody else? Okay, the budget recommendation is for 675,035. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Favorite collection? Okay. Opposed to just obviously done. Ancestric? Okay. Legal. Oh, it's done first. It's done. Done. Okay. Channel 4, done. That's done. Parking is done. Planning is done. Development is done. Zoning. See, this gives us some exercise as we're going through public works. Start with natural resources on page 91. Natural resources division, they're responsible for all the open spaces, the gardens, the bike path, the trees, all of the grounds in the town. The budget as a whole for natural resources is up 2.13%. There aren't any surprises in salaries. There is an increase in one expense line item. Just in terms of background, I'll explain what these expense lines mean. Maintenance 5202 is actually contract services. That's mowing, grounds keeping, turf enhancement, things like that. Training is self-explanatory. Other supplies is actually materials. And traditionally in this part of the budget as well as the rest of the DPW budget, materials are always, always seem to be under budgeted. So it's, I think it's a good thing that the expense for materials has been increased, albeit slightly. The line item 5236, other purchase services, that is the line item for holiday lights. We had a discussion with Mike Rademacher about the Uncle Sam holiday lights. This is the budget that would cover it and there's, as you can see, there's enough money to cover any additional lights for the Uncle Sam Plaza. Incidentally, the Uncle Sam community did not approach public works saying that they needed to go on with it. But in any event, the money's there, he's going to do it. We did have a discussion about the Uncle Sam site. We talked about the tourism shed and the historical signs. And there is no provision in the DPW budget for maintenance of either. So we should keep that in mind. Public works understands that the historical signs should be good for about five years. So there may be five years worth of use of the signs before any maintenance would be needed. And they are willing to, as I understand, they intend to install the signs at the Uncle Sam Plaza, but the tourism board is going to handle installation of all the other signs. I don't know if they know that, but as far as DPW is concerned, that's what they think. Uniforms, badges, and gloves, self-planetory. You can see that we have a budget of $40,000 like we did last year for a tree replacement. That reflects the renewed commitment of the town to replace some of our tree canopy. You'll see the last two items. They give you a report like how many trees have then gone in, like there are a lot more trees going in this spring. There's more, they're not up and running yet. They intend to install the trees coming in in the springtime, primarily. And they're gonna be placed based on two criteria. One, resident requests and proceed need. And what they would like to do is those parts of the town that they feel need trees they're gonna try to match them with residents who have evidence of desire to have trees so that there is somebody who can take ownership and take care of these trees so they won't just be planted and die. They'll probably have a couple questions on that issue at town meeting. And the last two expense items for the 2013 budget, otherwise unclassified and five, two, nine, nine, zero, one expense. These are unexpected expenses that we had to pay in relationship to the microburst of Hurricane Sandy. So again, the only major change and it's a minor one is an increase of $1,250 in materials. And I recommend that we approve the National Resources Budget for $1,262,341. Second? Second. Any questions or discussion? About the budget, no, but I have a topic I wanna bring up in relation to water bodies and natural resources. Do you wanna finish this first and then we can do that? What does it do with this budget? It's not related to the budget, but it's related to this department. Okay. This probably is related to any, what's your question or issue? We have these committees that we give money to that when I listened the last three years, each time the assistant director, assistant director of DPW shows up, she clearly knows what she's talking about. She's clearly interested in natural resources and water bodies and whatnot. She's clearly interested in what the latest expertise is around these areas. And this was not the case when I was a teenager and a 20-something in town. It was not the case in terms of the town manager as well, which is why we have these different committees to get these amounts of money. And I'm wondering if it's becoming time to move that money and those decision-making issues back into the DPW budget. I'm not suggesting we do this here and nor do I think we can, but I think as a committee, we should at some point discuss that because it involves money. Go ahead. So that was one of the, I remember when I first joined the finance committee, that was one of my very first questions and thoughts and I convinced myself that that was the right answer. And then when I was talking at one of our meetings to the BIPON people, I called them, I know that's a more formal name, so I apologize. They kindly pointed out to me that general fund money can't roll over from year to year and that the whole management mechanism that we use with the water bodies can't occur if it's in the DPW budget because you can't roll the money from year to year. And they were trying to sort of separate it. Now, I'm not saying that that's the best answer. I'm not saying that that's the right answer. I'm just bringing up that when I brought it up, that was the answer. Peter? The water bodies fund is maybe what you're talking about. Vision 20 subcommittee works on it, works with it. But that fund is a town fund is the manager's responsible for it through the public works department. And that's why the system public works director knows all about it. The function of the volunteer committee is to encourage her to do it and to assist it. And you're absolutely right. It was not very many years ago when the capital of town pretended there wasn't any water body. That's changed. Right. Charlie? Peter, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the other things that the way it's handled now accomplishes is that it allows the town to collect volunteer contributions as well as... That's true. So that the town can spend, I don't exactly know the mechanism, but both source, both appropriated money and volunteer donations go into the fund and are used when it flows. Christian? I've heard the arguments as to why we need a separate fund. But I look here at our tree replacement fund that we've created. And we created that, the 40,000 this year and for 2015 and 2014 because we wanted to protect that money so that we don't give up trees of any particular time in order to pay for something else. And second, we wanted to... And I also look at this and I see this is a... A contractor. I think a lot of this, and certainly in maintenance, there are contract services that we enter into a contract that may span two different fiscal years, but the payment, we work out the payment. So I see this as... I see this, and I continue to question why we should continue to have to have an operating budget and then a separate water advice fund. And I think we should continue to debate that issue and maybe do it again next year. Okay, is there any discussion on the natural resources budget? As presented. Any questions? Okay, all of the motion seconded for 1,262-331. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? The next budget is the maintenance of the town fields. We budget $40,000 each year. It's an arrangement that we have with Parks and Rec. The DPW picks up the first $40,000 and Parks and Rec pays the rest for taking care of the town planning fields. So I recommend that we approve this budget item for $40,000. Second. Now, so Parks and Rec, where the enterprise fund picks up. Yeah. Now how about the private... How does it work with the private parties? The leagues and all. They contribute some too, don't they? I think they pay fees to protect those. That's where the Parks and Rec picks the money. Yeah, right. Okay. Okay, so the motion has been made and seconded for $40,000 for maintenance of town's fields. Any other questions or? All those in favor of $40,000, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? One number. Okay, unanimous. 93. Thanks. 12th of June. The next budget is town engineer, prime engineer. This is the division that provides all engineering services to the rest of the DPW, the rest of the town. It provides technical assistance, overseas construction, things like that. In all, the budget is going up 0.90%. There isn't any change really from last year's budget, except that uniforms and badges are going down and salaries are going up 1.33%. In the expense, line items, five, two, zero, two, maintenance is again, professional services and that encompasses any surveying or mapping or things like that that the town needs to contract for. I assume by badges you mean it's ID cards. It's a phrase from the police. Yeah. It's an old phrase. But you're right, not now, you need ID cards. Okay, so is your motion for 1.38 and 6.85? It is. Second? Second. Okay, are there any questions? Okay, all those in favor, can we say aye? Aye. Opposed? Adanimous, B-1214. The next budget is public works administration and that provides the oversight for all the other divisions in DPW. There is a change from the budget book and that is in the longevity, line item 5156. Longevity should be $4,729 and that will give a bottom line salary number of $241,421. That's our 241. 241, 421 and a bottom line figure of 264821. 241, 264821. Where's the change in the longevity? It is in the director's longevity. Okay. His longevity, the director of public works, should be $1,229. Okay, so your motion is 264821. Yes, it is. Second? Second. Any questions? Okay, so we got a. The, there's an increase in salaries and there are two drivers in that. One is that we filled the position of energy manager this year and the budget requested in 2015 will be, is higher than what was budgeted for that vacant position in 2014. The energy manager is a shared position with Bedford. We have her for two thirds of the time and Bedford has her for one third of the time. Bedford also pays one third of her salary and benefits. And you can see that in the offset on the salary detail page. The second change in salaries is that our recycling coordinator is going from half time to almost full time. And there is also a use of the recycling revolving fund to offset part of that increase. And again, that's reflected on the salary detail. The reason for the increase in hours for the recycling coordinator is primarily to, well, one of the major hopes of the DPW is that she will be auditing our recycling compliance. As you know, you're only supposed to put out a certain amount of trash and you have to have recycling out with it. And that's not being done. And the trash collector shouldn't be picking up trash if there's no recycling with it. And one of her jobs will be to go out and audit our collector to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do so that our recycling goals can be met. So with those, again, those are the two major changes or increases in the big salary expense line. Okay, so any questions or discussion, Charlie? Resign the coordinator. Wasn't a condition supposed to be paid for by white goods fees or something like that? I don't know if it was supposed to be paid for but in prior years, we had the recycling fund that was used to fray part of it, at least. Now the recycling revolving fund doesn't include white goods because our trash contract includes that, but we now have scrap metal that the town collects and sells and gets some money to put into the revolving fund. My question is really that this position was created under the stated policy of the town that it wasn't gonna have any incremental costs in the department. And at the certain, I think it was the white goods collection process where certain fees were gonna be paid was gonna cover the costs. I was just curious as to whether we've lost track of that goal or whatever. Well, I certainly moved from it because we don't get fees anymore because now they are handled staff. So why do we need to do it? We need, well, the DPW says we need the position to make sure that people do recycle and that our collector doesn't pick up trash when there is a recycling also at the curb. Shouldn't he, I mean, that's their problem to monitor, who, that's the problem they're not monitoring. So we need someone to monitor them to get them to comply with their obligations to either their contract. So a lot of cheaper recycling has been taken to the health. Just frustrated that this is something gone awry. Allen? I guess related to that, I guess I would like the finance committee to request our analyst, Mike Loden to look at those, to just bring some, put some numbers behind the cost effectiveness of that position and possibly a new position to see what the return is. I think he's had a good position to do that independent of DPW. I should also point out that the hope is that we have a new disposal contract that will kick in 2016. And the hope and the expectation is that the savings from that can be used to offset this position. What a motion to request. The question that Mike put in you. Okay, are you making a motion? I would like to, if it's proper, I would like to move that the finance committee requests an analysis from the town manager's office on the cost effectiveness of the recycling coordinator. Okay, is there a second to that? Second. Okay. Then answer Charlie's question. Yeah. Paul, if this audit determines that JRM is not appropriately refusing to pick up items, is there any penalty to JRM in your contract or not doing what they're contractor to do? I don't know, I don't know. But I know that they're, I know that DPW is incentivized to have this audit. So I would expect that there is some recourse in the contract. Otherwise, why bother? Something to add to that. Okay, great. I believe, Mike, last evening, one of the things that you mentioned about this was, it's kind of an opposite effect because if somebody's dropped, regardless of whether JRM is supposed to pick them up or not, if you throw out paper instead of recycling paper, it costs more for the dumping and we see less for recycling it. So I think Mike and I have been going on that and is that it's being improperly disclosed on that thing. That make any sense? That it's withdrawing 10 pounds of paper on the trash, it costs more to haul trash in it. Then you can put it in properly and recycle it where you're getting more of it directly. Believe that's what you meant. Okay, Alan and then Joe. Well, I guess that's certainly true. Anecdotally, by direct observation, you can see that there are violations both by residency and by JRM. I just don't really understand how a person can go around town watching the trash collection. That's part of my question. To see whether it's being done. So again, I want to get some numbers behind it. Behind these assumptions. The first question I have is the position that was supposed to be paid for by a certain process. If that process is gone, then we don't need the position. I mean, somebody asked this question the other day, actually at the Capitol Plain presentation about something we introduced an efficiency into the system and suppose it was the water for meter readers. Supposing that more meter readers go away. They did say that at one time. Or that we no longer need that. But somehow they migrated to some other role. So my concern here, only because this is one that happened to pop up in my mind from the primary situation, is that A, the position was supposed to be paid for by some sort of fees that this job was going to generate. And if the new contract is cheaper and better without that fee collection, why do we have the position? And then secondly, if it's repurposed, what is the repurposed, how is it working? Okay, I'm sure we don't know the whole story, but we have an end list that's outside of DPW. I think you get the answer, so put it up. John? Christine, do you know what the rule is right now? You're supposed to have one recycled barrel for every barrel of rubbish. No, you need to have your recycling bin out with something in it, and they'll pick up your trash. If you don't have some recycling at the curb, no trash should be picked. They'll put a sticker on your trip that I've seen it. They'll put a sticker on your trash can and your trash isn't picked up. But there's a limit on trash. There's three barrels per household. And of course, then the problem is when your recycling gets picked up first, you bring in the barrels, there's nothing down to the button. Okay, we'll have a vote on that. David? I just put, if you bear with me, my police mind is working here. I don't know how they can enforce that. Let's use a hypothetical. Today is rubbish day. I put my recycle out, I put my regular rubbish out. The recycle truck comes first, takes my recycle, I go out, it's windy, I take my barrel in, I put it away. Now comes the rubbish truck. Oh, he didn't have his recycle out. Therefore, we don't pick up this rubbish. Or vice versa. I don't think the law says you have to keep an empty container out there that would recycle bin. You see, it's well intended, but I think it's tremendously hard to enforce. Here we got to say, who's monitoring it? It's an exercise. Okay, Paul. When this program was introduced, and I know they sent out notices on the Arlington Notice set up, and I think it was in the paper also, they asked people to leave their recycling bins out until the rubbish was picked up. I understand that, Paul. I agree 100%. My point is, on a windy day, your barrel or your container is four houses down or four houses up. The easiest thing to do, I'll run over, bring it back in. Because we are through with that. I mean, we don't live in a perfect place. Okay, well, all good points. We can make a request to the town manager to provide a cost-beneanalysis of the recycling coordinator. It depends on the effectiveness of enforcement and anything else that, I mean, are we saving my original money? I just put some numbers behind it, so I'm good at this. Okay, I believe we had a motion and a second. What's voted on that first? All those in favor of asking for the cost-beneanalysis at this position, we say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. So I'll make that request verbally to the manager tomorrow. Okay, meanwhile, getting back to the public works budget. Do you want to hold on this, or do you want to just get it voted and then we could always come back to it? Voted. Okay. I had a question for moving on from the recycling. I had another question. Sure. Going back a couple of years, I think it was, and Minuteman and the pensions, does the contribution from Bedford for the energy manager take into account for the pensions? Yes, it does. Thank you. Okay, Charles. I think we should put the slides on hold until we get the analysis from the manager's department because otherwise they don't have to send it to do the analysis and get back to us. Okay, well, a motion to table would be in order if that's what you want to do. Second. Okay, motion to table is without debate usually. All those in favor of tabling this budget, will you say aye? Aye. Opposed? No, no. Okay, all those in favor of tabling the budget, please raise your hand. Two, ten. Opposed? One, two, one, two, three, four, five, six. Okay, the budget is tabled. Okay, next? Okay, next is highway. This is the budget that pays for the streets, the sidewalks, intensive drains, culverts, sweeping, things like that. Their salaries are going up 2.03%. There's nothing of note in this highway. There's highway salaries, expenses, they're the same as the year before this 2014 budget. A lot of fuel is going down 10,000 and pavement markings, that's the five to seven zero expense line marking highways. That is going up $10,000. The reasoning for a $10,000 increase in pavement markings or highway markings is that there are essentially two different types of line markings that can be used. One is longer lasting but more expensive. And that is the one that they intend to use in 2015 for Mass Ave. So they are expecting, DPW is expecting that line on it will be cost a little bit more in 2015. And everything else stays the same. And I recommend that we approve the highway budget of $1,635,413. In a second. Okay, Helen? Regarding the Mass Ave. pavement markings, is that not, East Harlem's Mass Ave. pavement markings, I wouldn't think would be done in this fiscal year. And also, I would think would be covered in the whole rebuild budget. I took it to mean other portions of Mass Ave. Right? Yeah, the other portions, yeah. So at some point, the thermoplastic is like three times more expensive than supposed to last five times as long. The idea, again, being a reduction in the budget over time would be increased. So I think we should try to anticipate a reduction in the leveling off of the budget, but an increase would be that reason. There might be an initial investment that's almost like a capital investment, but it shouldn't be. We also have to take in consideration that this line item, as well as the top item called maintenance, it seems like there's an expense item called maintenance in all of these budgets and they're not maintenance. The 5202 includes dumpsters for construction debris, police details, equipment rentals, things like that. That line item and pavement markings, they're also affected by the weather. So that goes can go up and down depending on what's happening as well. So it's not simply, we can just look at a piece of paper and say, this is undumped. Right, but we can't predict the weather. What's that? We can't budget for changes over time. Right, right. Paul? On the overtime budget, this is one minute. And we'll be under budgetation and make up for it next week. I was looking at the actuals from 12.113. The actuals for 13. Did that include the storm? Yeah. You could see there was a reduction from 12 to 13 in the seasonal workers and increase in the overtime. And that was to deal with the storms. Storms. Chuck? Christine, the capital planning committee follows the, they follow the Department of Public Works to higher department, has a pavement road plan and all the things that they go through every year. And we actually heard them and sort of finalized that back in December. And I've been noticing since then the weather hasn't been pretty good. The roads are in terrible shape. I was wondering if you had any conversation with them. They had a plan that they've got money for that was made before this winter. And if you look, almost every street has got potholes that can hide an automobile. And I'm wondering where they're gonna get the money to do this and if you had any conversation with my grandma or my family. I haven't. So I'm just wondering how they gonna get these potholes and rows back to some sort of condition. Good question. Well, if there'd be a, ask the manager. Yeah, I'm gonna, it's a decision. Al, if I could, if we're doing that, I'd like to ask, I have heard that there's a state grant to apply to repay the length of Gray Street, which could save a lot of money because it's a mess that we spent a lot of money on. So I guess I would ask, is that, is what I heard true with the year? Okay, so I would pass that on to the manager and ask that we're interested in just getting some feedback on how it's all these streets gonna be repaired. There was another one on the list today that referenced between Mystic Street, between Mass Ave, and it's pretty bad. If the winter never ends, then we'll have a chance to fix it. Okay, are there any other questions on this budget? As I would know. Okay, all those in favor of $1,635,413, we say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, favorable action. The animals, 3-12. The next is the snow budget. The 2015 budget request is the same amount that we budgeted for 2014. I, this $724,000 amount is about 71% of our actual 10-year average cost, not including current year away, we're in, just so that you have some idea of what that will typically buy us. Our actual snow budget for the last 10 years, six of those 10 years have surpassed $724,000. I think we bandied about a target of some kind. I think we used 75% at one point, we used 80% at one point that we want to try to get to. Now the manager's probably pretty close to his 3.5% increase, so it's, I'd like to see this increased if at all possible, even if it's, you know, whatever we can, but I think we'll have to wait and see what we find out. We'll do that at the last minute. Yeah. 3.5%. Sure. My suggestion would be that minimum, that we do increase the money. I also think we should be planning increasing the reserve of $1. We just built six at last year. I don't see any reason why the person in charge of the budget doesn't recommend that increase it now. What would it be if we went to 75,000, that's an extra 4%. It would be $766,887, giving it to 75%. So, so, so. Okay, I'm sorry, 700. 766, 887. I'm at 800,000. Well, I mean, if we use a, if we have a target of 75%, then we're based on some kind of a logical number. Obviously then, for that, you'd have to figure out where to get another 25, 35, 36,000. Or if we got 800,000, another 71,000. 76,000. Just so I can remember the mechanics. So when we were allowed under state law to overspend the snow and ice budget, if we need certain criteria. And then that goes into the following year. And we raise that, we raise money to pay for that through taxes above the, it doesn't go into the next year's budget, it goes above. It goes to the next year's tax rate. It goes on top of it on the tax rate. Right. But it doesn't go over a proposition. It's not a solution. It doesn't go up proposition to it. It's excluded from zoning. No, it's not. It's not excluded. Yeah. So in other words, that's why the budget is a five year plan. Well, he has $500,000 sitting there under sort of other, so we have this budget plus the $500,000. This year, we're another $200,000 above that. So that is, but the reason I like to see that we've been increasing this budget sort of every year is because it's a rolling deficit. We shouldn't have, to the degree we can, we shouldn't have that. Right, so he'll be my comment though, right? Because we're talking about the 3.5%. But if the mechanics, as we just review the mechanics, we just said, it makes no sense to not increase it. Because if you think about it, so I'm just gonna, I'd have to look at it, right? So the current year, if we go to the current year that we're in, right? We don't really have a $724,000 snow and ice budget. We more likely have a, well, at the end of our year, we have a $1.4 million snow and ice budget. Because we have $724,000 plus the 700 that we're rolling from 13. And so next year, we're gonna end up doing the exact same mechanic. So it seems like we're one of these situations where we're sort of feeling like we're staying within the parameters of the 3.5% because we keep it at $724 or something like that, but we're not keeping in the parameters of the 3.5% we're spending what we need to spend. So the budget always has another number to it. So even if we, I mean, I'd have to schedule an outtip for it to make more sense, but even if we increase this budget, $500,000, right? Assuming that your run rate would be with 1.2 million. And you got it to like, it said they're $1.2 million run rate. After next year, all evens out and normalizes on the five year model. It would just be a one, you know, so whether you do it, whether you move it up to 1.2, you keep it at $724,000, it really doesn't matter in the end. You still end up with the exact same numbers. So really what you're doing is getting like, for lack of a truth in budgeting. Except that we get... I have a legal question. If you have a winner with very little snow and you have a lot in the snow and ice budget, can that money be spent on, say, buying more trees? No. So by having a high snow and ice budget, you've sort of encumbered and all you can do is buy mountains of salt or not spend it. Until the next year, until the next year, whereas if it's low and you overspend it, then you have some flexibility. I can either buy more salt in a bad weather or I can plant more trees, but it gives you some flexibility that you don't have if you just keep it high. I'm not really... Is that reasoning correct? I mean, we usually give the DPW director the flexibility to transfer money within his budget. Could he move from snow and ice to trees? Yes. I suppose he could. Okay, then if they have that flexibility, then I agree with you. Okay. Bob, Caroline and then Mary and then Dick. Isn't there a penalty if we over budget one year with snow and ice? You cannot... We can't. You only have the ability to overspend as long as you appropriate at least what you've appropriated last year. So we can never bring it back down. Oh, we can never lower it. Okay. That's why a lot of towns, they never change their budget. You know, you see Somerville who spends a million and a half dollars, but every year they appropriate 300,000 or something like that. It was sort of a... And what you built in is structural deficit. That's why our budget used to be a few years ago, $359,000. Right, very recently. Yes. And we've been bumping it up every year with money we have. But when that budget goes to town meeting, then the energy can only go up 3.5%. That's why, you know, if he's got an extra 10, he'll throw it in. Unless you want to go back to the manager and say, we're increasing the budget by $50,000, tell us where you're going to cut it. What? But we're increasing other budgets by more than 3.5%. I'm sorry? We're increasing other budgets by more than 3.5%. That will score a three-year plan which we're now passed. I think pretty much it's sort of rolled over. There's a couple of items that we allow elections reserve fund has never been included in that. But like the schools, they've had two modifications. One was for special act we made. And this year, you know, we haven't heard the school budget, but to allow for enrollment increases. But generally, I think it's expected. And I think that's so I kind of the manager expected he has to hold his budgets to 3.5%. Mary? I'll make a motion re-aduring. So, good for you. It's 10 o'clock. We could continue this discussion at the next meeting. But we have time at the next meeting. Okay, well the next meeting is going to be the school committee meeting. Let me talk to the manager of it on what flexibility you might have in other places. Think about how you want to handle it. I think the idea of doing something like 75% of the last 10 years average. And that's going to keep going up. And doing it that way would be a reasonable thing to do. So why don't we vote this next time we have the opportunity? Next Monday is the school budget. That usually takes a good part of it. You've got the budgets on it. So be prepared with your questions. And so, we need you to turn it over. Second. Just a note on the high school. There was a walkthrough tour this Saturday, March 15th, nine from nine to 1030. Is another walkthrough if you want to go Tuesday night on the 18th at four o'clock. And on Thursday the 20th you can go at four o'clock. So there are three walkthroughs coming in. I would encourage every member of the finance committee to take a walkthrough. To really get a sense because this is going to be a big one. Okay, thank you.