 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Law 30A Section 18, this meeting of the Finance Committee is being conducted by a relevant participation. I just want to share with everybody that at least as of today's meeting that this is a special meeting of the town council. There's no public comment for the public. There's no period for public comment during this meeting. We welcome public comment and at future meetings of the Finance Committee that we're going to be holding remotely, we will have public comment. But this being the first meeting in this format, it was not advisable for us to try and do that today. However, we really welcome your thoughts and questions about anything that the Finance Committee is working on. And you'll see right now on the screen. My address, email address, steinbergatmrsa.gov, and strongly encourage public comment, and it will be shared with the entire committee. So, having said that, I will then go back to where I was before and turn off the shared screen for the moment and we can start working through our way through the agenda. I want to just introduce everybody to make sure that everybody knows who are currently members of the Finance Committee and to allow our minute taker to be able to assure that there is attendance. So I'll just go down the list and Kathy Shane, you're with us. Yes, I am. And Dorothy Pam, just unmute and say and acknowledge your participation. Dorothy, you can do it easy. Just once. Okay. Hold the space bar down. All the space bar down while you're talking. It works the same way. Lynn Griezmer. Lynn, are you with us? Present. I'm here. And I'm Andy Steinberg, chair of the committee. Then we have three members who are resident non voting members Bob Hickner. I'm here. Sharon Povinelli. Sharon. Sharon was here and she can, she may be joining us again in a few minutes. She's here. She just muted. And Mary Lou Tom and. You're participating by phone. Sharon Povinelli is here, but she's. Maybe maybe. Okay. And Mary Lou. Yes. Okay. So everybody is present. So I'm going then on to today's agenda because this is the first meeting. That we've had of the committee in some time. And I really am glad that we're finally. Back to the. What we're, what we're trying to do. And the first agenda item. That you can see on your screen is to review and comment on. A document that was prepared for. For the council meeting. March 30th. In which we tried. The screen is not showing for us. It is not showing. Okay. Well. It should be, but. I'm having trouble with my. Other things on my screen. So let me go back to share if I can, or I'll stop. We'll have. Athena be able to help us out too. I'll try one last time. See if I can. Find word is that going to spend too much time on this for the agenda. Is the agenda now showing or not? No. Okay. Well, I'm going to go, I'm going to go on and I'll tell you. So for Athena's sake, what I want to do is on the next document that I want to get on the screen is actually the item that we're going to be discussing itself, which is the. Standing committees chart the pages that have to do with the. With the finance committee. So let's see if I can. We're up now. Now I'm up. Okay. The agenda is. No, the agenda. I think that. I'm going to put the agenda on. Athena, can you switch it over to the standing committees. Report that was there and then get us down to the page that shows the finance committee. And we'll leave it on the screen as we talk about it so that people from the public can see what we're discussing. And this was a document that is available in the packet from March 30th meeting. And it identifies the goals of the finance committee. As over the next. Couple of months and things that we need to do. And I think that we all recognize that. And I think that we all recognize that. Developing an FY 21 budget. It's going to be a complex and different issue. And I want to make sure that everybody on the committee. Has a chance to ask questions about the goals of the committee. Over the next. Period of. Probably two to three months and disabled to. Find out any information that you need to know. And I think that what we do is we try and develop an FY 21 budget. For which, which is a requirement. Of the committee each year. It is going to be particularly difficult and different from prior years. And I want to. I want to make sure that everybody on the committee. Is aware of the concerns that we're facing. Because of changed circumstances that are. Just as a result of the current financial crisis resulting from. Go void. 19. Budget crisis. So the goals of the committee are up on the screen to discuss. And I know that there's. There's a lot of questions about that. But I'm not going to get to it now. But the five items that are on the screen. I want to just see if there are any questions or thoughts about those items is to. Their importance for the finance committee. Any thoughts. Okay. Just to go on. And then if, and please interrupt if you do. There's one of the things that I wanted to touch on a little bit further. Is the matter and the fourth. Box. Which is the regional school district. Process and how that fits in with the rest of the process. As you recall last year. We talked about what we did in. In conformance with the charter. And just the reality of the timing. Was that the regional budget was being presented before. The finance committee and the council were considering the budget. As a whole for the rest of the town. And I'm not going to talk about the budget process. I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to talk about it. I'm not going to talk about an unknown schedule. Because of the financial circumstances that we're in. The regional school district. The regional school committee is having a meeting tonight. In which they're going to talk about the budget process. But. Do. Does everybody feel comfortable in understanding. The regional school district budget. And our budget process all fit together. If you need to raise your hand, please do. You want us to unmute and just say yes, if we understand. Or if you have any. If you have any thoughts or questions, please. You know, feel free to do that members of the committee. Mary Lou and Dorothy have their hands up. Two hands up. Okay. I'm just curious where you have in notes. On timing for consideration. It says Amherst will need to. And there's nothing after that. Yeah. No, I realize that there's that problem. And that's exactly what I was referring to. I was referring to. Yeah. I'm just curious where you have in notes. On timing for consideration. It says Amherst will need to. And there's nothing after that. Yeah. Yeah. No, I realize that there's that problem. And that's exactly what I was referring to. What we need to do is make adjustments to be prepared to make adjustments to the process. And there are various reasons that we could. Need to adjust the process that being just one of them. One of the town meetings rejects the proposed assessment method. I think that the reason that I listed that one is because. Last year. There was a particular concern that that might happen in one of the towns that did not happen. And we all agreed to. The budget, the regional budget process. What is happening this year is that. The other towns are rescheduling their. Their annual town meetings all are in the process of either one having picked a date and the others. Working towards picking dates, but they are going to be later than usual, which gives the regional school committee extra time. To finally approve its budget, which is why it's only talking about process tonight. And I think that the budget will not be voting on the budget, according to an email I received from the superintendent. And. The budget and very look and give us the full explanation of this. The budget has to be ready. For inclusion in the warrant with the first town meeting that's going to be scheduled. Of the towns that have town meetings. That's because the town finance committees. Need to have that information available needs to be out to the members of the public in those towns who are voters in town meeting. So we, when we know the date, we will then have to decide how we fit. The regional school budget into our process. And then we'll have to go back to the school committee. And then we'll have to go back to the school committee. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. One of the concerns would be, you know, it's all being postponed, but if one of the towns rejects. The budget. Then it has to go back to the school committee. To rethink it. And decide what they're going to do. So I don't know how much latitude you have in time. As you propose these deadlines. Because it, it. It could be a possibility that one of the towns. Would reject the budget. They have. One town rejects. Review it. And then. Start again. That would have to be completed. Otherwise the commissioner. That's the budget monthly. So I don't know how much. Latitude you have in time. As you propose these deadlines. Because it. It could be a possibility that one of the towns. Would reject the budget. Would reject the budget. That would be a good start again. If one town rejects the budget, it still passes because. I'm sorry. I mean. The method. Yeah. But if one town rejects the method. Then the method defaults to the. Statutory method. Okay. So that's already established. Well, isn't that what the standard rule is? I haven't been on that assessment committee. Now for a couple of years. Yeah. And I think that that's the way the statute works. It is. It is a complex. Problem. And see if I can explain it as best possible. Because there is actually a separate states. Statute that is working its way through the legislature. Having to do with what's going to happen in the regional school district. If there's no budget by. July one. And what the legislation that was submitted by the governor is working its way through the joint committee on education provides. Is for the. If there's no budget by July one. That the commissioner can approve. A one 12th budget for each month until. There's a budget that is finally adopted. So if default, it goes to, if that law passes, and I think some version of it. Is likely to pass. For this year only. There is that special provision. Legislature has been working hard on trying to make sure. That there are provisions for each scenario that we might be concerned about. And that's one of them. I think that the concern that I have is that. At least as of this time. The legislation as it's working its way through committee. Is so far silent on the issue of. Assessment methodology. Assessment methodology makes a huge difference for Amherst. Because. When we were looking at the. Four towns meeting results. And the difference for Amherst between the 45%. What was referred as the 45% of. Statutory solution that we all agreed to. And the default methodology, which is 100% of statutory. The difference for Amherst is $180,000 based on the budget amount. That was previously discussed. That's for us, even before. This crisis. His hit us. Is a large difference. Is that answer your questions best I can. Mary Lewis or anything else. That's fine. Thank you. And. I just want to go back and look in the participant list and see if there's anybody else's wants to be recognized at this point. Dorothy, you had your hand up. Kathy. So Dorothy. Now I press the space bar. Keep it, keep it down. Okay. All right. I just wanted to double check the order. Okay. The school committee approves the budget. It comes to the finance committee. We approve the budget. We take it to town council. They approve the budget. Then it goes to the town meetings and they approve the budget, which is separate from the. That we were just talking about, which is the method of payment. Is it not. So aren't there two things. That the other towns have to approve. One is the budget and two is. How we're going to pay for it. So. Mary Lou had chapered us through that. The finance committee of town meetings and. Now it's on us to do that, but they are two separate votes. The budget has to be approved by three towns out of four. And if it's approved by three times out of four, it's binding on all four towns. The assessment method. And it's approved by all four towns. And of course in three of the towns, it is town meetings in our town as the council. Don't forget to press your bid bar space bar. If you want to talk about using that method. So I say, thank you. Okay. So Kathy. Okay. I have two questions. One is the school budget itself. And I know you said they're meeting. Tonight. I had been told that because of the union contract. To the extent there needed to be layoffs, any layoff notice would have to go out by April 1st. And that you. And that's Paula's shaking his head. No. So I don't know whether that's true or not in terms of layoffs for the fall. So that's a, you know, as a potential, rather than we are telling you, we're laying you off. And then it's the second, which would go with that. If, if we run into the issue of statutory budget and Amher says, we can't pay that amount, then does it have to go back to the school and the school has to live with a smaller budget in total. So the two questions. The first is on the. If we needed a smaller staff to live within a smaller budget, did there have to be notices by April 1st? Or is there, was there not a deadline on that? I'm going to answer one question and then get back to the first question about the notice that has to be given to. Teachers on potential layoffs. The. Part that. Is. We don't, we would not have an option to, to say no, once a budget is approved by three towns, it is binding on all four towns. And. If one town is not. Not happy with it. It still has to figure a way to pay it. There is no choice. I think that's a good point. And as far as the other. And I must, and I actually should add to that. Both for the committee and for the public. We have not had that happen in this region. And I don't think ever. And the reason is that all of the towns work together and try and figure out a solution. To. We have four town meetings in which we try and get together and make sure that we have a budget. That is agreeable to the towns. The danger has come up with the assessment method because that has become an issue in one of the towns. And if it was rejected, it has the kind of large effect that we're talking about. So, as far as the other question that you were asking. The. Most union contracts have a provision that if there is a possibility of layoffs, the teachers have to be notified of the possibility of layoffs. Or a date that is established within the agreement between the district and the union. And if the. Financial situation for the district or the town supporting the district is severe enough. It puts the district in a position where it has to. Send that notification to the union. Doesn't mean that they're layoff notices. That's not necessarily, but it's notifying the union of possibility. Paul, you have some expertise in this. Did I state it correctly? Thank you, Andy. You did. So first, I think just want to. Make sure that people aren't sort of seizing the screen. It seems like some people are trying to share screens and shouldn't. So just make a caveat that what you said, Andy is accurate that. I don't know what you're talking about. But we should recognize that they clearly the school administration and the union are in close contact with each other. So they understand what the situation is. Okay. And as I. Anybody for who wants to watch the school committee meeting tonight. They are talking about budget process. I did ask superintendent whether. I think it's a good idea to have a four town meeting either by. A remote meeting such as this or. In in person, if it's a light enough that it's acceptable. To, to do an in person meeting. And it's an unknown. At this point. That's part of the process that they might be discussing later. So. I don't see anyone else's hand up, but I may be missing it. So I just want to make sure before I go on. You said we can get back. Can you take us back to the chart. With the issues that. Are coming before the committee, the delayable. So. You know what I mean. I just want to make sure it's. From the March 30 council meeting. Okay. So we were on this before and. Can you get back to it? Are there any other boxes? People. That any members of the committee wouldn't ask questions about. On this page. I think we're going to have a discussion. On the budget hearings. They are required by the charter. Other factors that are involved is that we need to. Come to a process ourselves. That is essentially going to. Allow us to. Figure out what the revenue likelihood is. And then we can. Go back and restart the process as if necessary. To look at the allocations amongst the various major functional areas. Schools, library and municipal. We don't know that's necessary. We were hoping to get some insight today. I just want to. I just want to give you a few additional reasons to hold the meeting that a lot of us said to hope to attend to it. The. Information that I've been able to get. Is not entirely conclusive because while Tufts University. Did do a fairly good study. On the issue and one that I can add to the packet for this meeting rather than discuss it here. I don't know how much money is going to be available from the federal. Multi trillion dollar package. That would flow to the state. And. So we don't. We. The analysis. Very thorough study of. The amount of lost revenue to the Commonwealth. But it would be offset by that. And it would also be offset by the federal budget. And it would also be offset by any legislative decision to use a portion of its rainy day funds. And those are. Topics that we were hoping for better insight into. And that we need to get into. Get the answers to. So the determination can be made. Of what our likely state aid is going to be under the new circumstances. So are there any questions about the revenue projection. Mary Lou has her hand up. Under. The. The third item consideration for the budget. I'd like to suggest that we give. All of the departments and power to present. So that we get information about the department. Some of their needs or concerns. And I think you were. Part of it when we started giving departments an hour. And it does give us. A great deal of information. And the way you have a three or four weeks. And if you meet. For three hours each of those. Times. Twice a week to. You would have an opportunity to give each of the department. An hour. To present. So that would be under other notes. That's a good question. Paul and Sonia had given some consideration to how to proceed with that. Before this whole crisis came up. And had a schedule set up for the. Finance committee. And we were going to. Have. I think that the goal was to have brief presentations from each of the departments. Paul. Yeah. So we were, we had a consolidated schedule. I mean, all that is out the window now because we don't know what the schedule is going to look like. But we were, it wasn't going to be like it had in the past where they're going to be long and like each department gets an hour or anything like that. Because we did a lot of. Work on the budget. As early on and Sony had done a lot of pre-work with it. All the department heads. So we had, we did have a time schedule from all the major departments to beat me with the finance committee. Okay. Bob has a Santa. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I'm just wondering since I know there's a lot of uncertainty in terms of what the impacts of. The virus will be on the town and state budgets, but is the recession of 08 and 09. A good starting point to sort of say, Hey, let's start here in terms of our thinking. And then, you know, we'll adjust that as we get more information. Welcome Sonia and Paul. Adding to this. Now, having been through the, that experience. And I think that Mary Lou was also involved at that. Time period. We. There were some differences. One was that it worked its way out over a longer period of time. It didn't hit us in March because. The crisis started well before March. We know that I think it was September. Really when the major things began to happen. So the budget year was going on. On a more normal schedule with the uncertainty. Stringing out over a longer period of time. The other. Reality is this recession appears to be a lot deeper. And. We therefore really haven't yet scoped what the. Reality is. So I'm not sure how much the. It matters. Mary Lou, did you have some thought on it? Not particularly no. Dorothy, you had your hand up and then Kathy. So I had a question. If this would be similar to the budget crisis in New York City in the 1970s. I think it's a. Way of boycott. You know, on the whole time when New York City had to just stop everything. It was. It was going to be out of it. But I don't know if you had an experience in the end in New York at that time or we're following it. I did not. So I don't know. I think it's a little bit more recent experience. The most recent experience one is, is the one that. I referred to earlier. Kathy. Did you. I just. Andy Bob had mentioned earlier this tough. Projection and we can send it to you. They did a very simple modeling like you just suggested on. Massachusetts tracks. What happens to national GDP and when GDP goes down, it's going to go down. It's going to go down. And then they put a bunch of revenues. And then they put a bunch of caveats on it. They looked at 2008. Both on how much of a rainy day fund does the state have to not have it. Completely hit the localities. You know, how much do localities have. And that year. And then they put a lot of money in the state. And then they put a lot of money in that act. And that actually put more money into state and local governments than what is allocated right now on the two trillion. Of in terms of a share. So I think we. What is the federal government going to do? How much money does the state have? And then. Paul will talk a little bit about Amherst. And how much money does the state have? And how much money does the state have? And how much money does the state have in place in terms of our own savings than we were in 2008? You know, like. What helps you weather a storm. If there's a storm. So each of those became question marks on. How similar or dissimilar are we on the length of time? And how quickly this is going to hit. And how much can we grow out of it? If we do stimulus quickly. You know, to counteract. What's happening. Andy. I'm going to go back to the question. I'm going to go back to the question. I'm going to go back to the question. And either my town manager reporter last night, the tough study that actually mirrors pretty closely, the mass taxpayers foundation study. They're both in the same ballpark. And that's why with those two studies out there, it was the hearing from this. Ways and means chairs and the. And that's direct. Secretary today was going to be so important. Because they're the ones that should have the biggest insight into where we're headed. Financially. In terms of a state and anything the state does. I mean, it's not the only tool that we have. We also have to look at all of our tools. I think we're not going to know for a while, Bob. I mean, it's. There's so much uncertainty. And we don't know what the markets are going to do. We don't know how much the state, you know, we don't know the posture of the state will take whether they will be. Sort of. You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, You know, We are going to be priced out. Sort of calling back all discretionary funding for all their projects, That are out there. Or if they're going to say we got to be pouring money into the state. You know, Cal ہوine back the money to fill the big hole they have behind them, or if they're going to be trying to pump money into the state, They've bumped the economy going to, We're looking at it both ways. Trying to have things that are shovel ready. So if money is available, recognizing that they might be taking all their, you know, the grants that we have out there, just taking them off the table and putting them back into their own reserves. So, there's so many uncertainties. So, we can spend a lot of time speculating, but until we have a little more clarity, I don't know how wise it is. I think what we can be doing is some scenario planning, like what if, what if, what if, and then start to look at what that does to our budget. I think that's very helpful. It sort of is what, when I did the budget outline that I sent to the committee and of issues that I identified, it was really what we need to know. The problem is, is that it didn't really get into the question of when we were going to know the information. And it's hard to develop budgets and to do planning without it. There's numerous pieces that come into play as we try and figure this out, including what we're going to do about capital, both capital for next year and sort of the longer term capital issues that we've been discussing for so much, so long and now we're facing a crisis and having to rethink the whole thing that we've developed. But we, we're just going to have to go through and try and track that out and come up with an orderly process that allows us to work with Paul and Sonia and other staff and finance to get to where we need to be sizing up what the money is, what the needs is, what our choices are and be prepared to make the decisions. But we know we have a sequence that we have to get through to get to an end result. The other thing that we know is that the timeline has a little bit more flexibility than we think about because we don't really need to have a budget by June 30th. We could go on to one month budgets for up to three months in order to buy us some additional time if that becomes a wise choice to make. I don't think it's anything we'd like to do, but we at least we have, it is another tool. So any thoughts about how we go forward with a budget process itself would you like to just have us continue to have me work with Paul and other staff and come up with an outline of a more detailed process and then present it back to the committee for further discussion? So it seemed like the best process. You want us to nod our heads? I saw a couple of head nods there. Okay, that's very helpful because I think that that's where we will go. There's some hands up, Andy. Yeah, okay. Sharon, Sharon Pevelle, do you have your hand up? Okay, she- Can you hear me? Yes. I was trying to do a thumbs up, but there's only a raised hand. Okay. Sometimes there's a thumbs up as well, so. Okay, I'm going to try and do one last share of work this time. See if I can get it. Great dog picture. We have a beautiful dog. We see your dog. That's strange. Is that what I have on my screen? Now we have budget issues outlined. That sounds like better. So this is the document that I was talking about before. And I didn't know if the committee, this has been sent to you, has had a chance to look at it if there's anything that you would add to this outline. I did the original development, but I haven't had a chance to share it with the committee yet. And if there are things now that you know of that you would like to add to the outline, this would be a good time to speak up and see if we can get this, get it added because I think what I would like to do is make it be a working outline for all of us. Andy, can you scroll down where the outline stops at number two? Yeah. It is, this was in your packet. Earthy has her hand up. Go ahead. Well, I did read it and I took a few notes. The one that I made was on number three, Enterprise Fund Revenues. And I know that we were told, I guess yesterday, that the revenues will go down because the colleges aren't in session. My question was, are there any savings when the colleges aren't in session in terms of water and sewer? Sonya, do you have an answer to that or? I can address that. No, there aren't savings because the staff remains the same, the processing stays the same. All the fixed costs are there, whether there's 1,000 people or 100,000 people. I mean, there's some variability in the cost, but the fixed costs are the fixed costs. So that's what drives that expense. Paul, does that include things like the study that we authorized, the $700,000, $800,000 study, if we decided to postpone that a year as an expense? Well, there are a lot of things that we could postpone. I think you're gonna see a lot of those things as options that cities and towns and the state will be looking at as well. It depends what kind of relief the state provides for a lot of the regulatory decisions that their regulatory postures previously. And I'm guessing we'll see some adjustment in that. But I think that we've looked at or talked about a lot of different things that might impact it. So, yes, there's a lot of variables as you well know. So when you look at the page that's on right now, which is the revenue side of it, that's just maybe easiest to stick with that for a moment. It's noted there's four categories that I put on there. Property tax, we know the amount of property taxes. This is a difficult thing for our residents, but property tax doesn't go down. It is established and we are allowing deferrals and payments. And that was reported last night at the council meeting in legislatures, given authority for cities and towns to do that. And the Paulist town manager has made the decision that we would do that here in Amherst. That changes the time collection, but the money is still due, the taxes are still due. And one of the benefits of having the reserves that we have is that we don't have to worry about having a cash flow problem because we have the cash available. But the one piece of property taxes that I am nervous about and think you mentioned it some last night was the new growth estimates. Because there's always, we build in some estimate of new growth estimates each year, which is the one place above 2.5% that we get increases without going to an override. And so the new growth estimate, something that's gonna have to be redone. And I think our assessor is gonna help us with that. So the second grouping is the stay aid, which we've been talking about some. And I think that there's not a lot that I can add to that. The other local revenue, I think that we do have to be nervous about that aspect of it. It is sort of the third piece, but it's not an insignificant piece. Meals and lodging tax I think is going to be significantly decreased for a while. Certainly it is for this year. And so that's both an FY20 and FY21 issue. Car sales are way off and that's what affects the excise tax because we collect the most excise tax in the first couple of years when cars have the highest value. Building activity and fees that come in with building activity. I think we're assuming that it's an area of concern that the extent of these concern, I don't know that we have an estimate for at this point. And whether there's gonna be problems and payments from other sources, I think that that's another area that we just don't know yet. But, and then the enterprise funds, it's a different piece because it's not the general operating budgets, the enterprise fund budgets, but we've already talked about that. So are there any other questions about the, about the revenues page? Because if not, then I'll go on to this. Bob has a question. Oh, Bob. Yeah, I just wonder if we wanna just put a line in there for anything that's directly from the federal government, not that we necessarily know about that right now, if there are direct grants to local governments or other SBA loan type things that might happen? I can, we can add that under other local revenue. That's probably a good thing to add. And I will make a note of that rather than try and do it on the screen as we speak. But the federal grants that we receive are most of them in public safety right now. I believe Sonia's not- Most of them are in the school. Can you hear me? Yeah. Finally. Yeah, most of them, a lot of federal grants are in school, CDBG and some in public safety. But normally when you get money from the federal government, it goes through the state and it's part of our state income. So it would be there. Otherwise it's reimbursements promoting that we have spent during the emergency. So it wouldn't go in here. So you may have seen some communities are entitled under community development block grants. Some communities are entitlement communities. We are North Hampton is, Amherst is not, we are a mini entitlement community. So our funds flow through the state. So the state gets the money from the federal government and then they have to come up with a process to distribute it to their mini entitlement communities and like us. So it's federal money, but it flows through the state as Sonya said. Rofi has a question. Yes. When you said that in terms of property tax, and we've given deferments, and you said the reserves were a help, I don't remember whether, would these are general reserves or whether there are special reserves connected to property tax? It's just our general reserves. It would be a free cash and stabilization fund? It's a matter of allowing us to continue to operate because if we use free cash to make up for late payments, we've had a very successful collection rate, very good collection rate. We have good taxpayers who care a lot about the town and support what we do, but people are gonna have to make difficult decisions right now for their own personal lives. I think that's what we're recognizing, that it could be the delay. Anything else on the revenue or I'm gonna go on to just talk about the issues and spending is I don't see, well hold off in regional schools. Mary Lou has a question. Yeah, Mary Lou. Delays in paying various taxes that also impacts any interest we make on that money. So I was wondering if Paul could give us an idea of how much we might have to take out of the reserves? And if that's a significant amount, would it be wise now to ask all departments to look at their budgets to see how much they could reduce them by? Multiple questions. So interest rates are abysmally low. So the time value of money is not very significant to us. Cash flow wise, we're in good shape because we have a pretty good collection rate and our reserves are strong. We are looking at all things on the table. That's what we've been telling department heads so until we get a better sense of where we are. Again, it's a fine line between keeping the economy going and keeping our budget balanced. So I think it's just a little premature at that moment in time. And in addition, we will be working closely with the school department because they are such a significant portion of our budget. That's a conversation that the finance people and the superintendent will have with our finance people and me. So I'll point out on that as we're getting into on the spending side for FY 21, municipal department, what we're gonna have to do is figure out whether we need a new guideline amount and what that guideline amount is gonna be and if this can reduce the amount that we tell each of the segments of government, the library, the elementary schools and the municipal departments that is going to be available for expenditure in FY 21. I don't think we know the answer to that until we know what our revenue choices are. And then as we made the comment earlier about the state's gonna have to make a decision as to how much of its rainy day fund it wants to use. We've collected reserves and used reserves for two different purposes. One is to treat it as a local rainy day fund which is how it was used in 2008, 2009 period. And the other is we had built up reserves with the idea that it was gonna help us in figuring out how to fund the major building projects. So we've been talking about, I think, so that's gonna be one of these difficult questions we may have to confront as we go through the, we need to look to reserves as to supplement our operating budgets in FY 21. If so, by how much, what's gonna be the ramification of doing that? And then the other thing, and I'll stop talking to see what other people have to say is that we have to get it and make a decision about whether we stay with 10% of the property tax revenue for capital or whether we have to go back to what we did in the 2008 and subsequent year period and reduce that amount. There are long-term consequences when you start putting off capital because eventually all those needs don't go away. They just get worse. So comments, I don't think I have much choice to add on that. Kathy has a hand up. Paige. Okay, just on the capital and 10%. So people know we postponed the first meeting of, we've postponed the next meeting. It wouldn't be the first meeting of JCPC because of the level of uncertainty on what's total property tax revenue gonna be and is 10% the right number. But I was looking at the projections, the debt service that we're carrying in FY 21 under capital is a clear number. And so it's gonna be whatever other number we come up, we've got slightly under $2 million based on what Sonia and Paula have been giving us in debt service. So at some point we'll have at least a grapple of on the capital side, what do we have to spend? And then what else can we spend would be the second piece. So it's the level of uncertainty when you get down to capital. It's like, if we don't know what the total is, you certainly don't know what 10% is and you don't know whether you can even do 10% of the lower amount. So all of those are contingent. So we're not scheduled to meet until at the earliest the third week in April till we get to finance and fall and everyone get a better grasp on the total budget and projections. Let me know if hands go up because I'm still, I have too many things on my screen as I think what the problem is. I'll do that. So let me know if there are any other hands up. The other thing that comes out of this is because our policy says that capital is measured as a percentage of property tax. You know, since the property tax revenue doesn't go down for the reason that I previously said, while other components of the budget are going down, that's why you have to start looking at that 10% figure because 10% was put on the one piece of the budget that goes up to 1.5% each year without us doing anything unless we decide not to tax to the full amount loud. And it's the other parts of the budget that we're most nervous about right now and we need to do the evaluation and that's why that 10% becomes so important. And I put issues up to deal with the regional schools but I think that we've pretty well discussed that earlier. And that was the question that I put in for enterprise funds and I think Paul had an answer to Kathy's question on that. So if you have additional suggestions on this outline, please let me know, I'm going to use it and continue to use it but try and make it into a group document so that we use it to identify what our choices are. So going back to the agenda, I think that that is the major thing so we need to deal with right now is we've talked about trying to get a budget calendar put together and I think the other thing we'll say on that is that the budget coordinating group will be meeting sometime later in this month and help us to think that through and to assure that we have proper coordination with the schools and the library. And so trying to think if there's anything else I wanna ask today, is there other information that anybody can think of that would be helpful to have to make the decisions that we need about timetable and budget? I would just suggest patience. We're all gonna need that and the ability to deal with ambiguity. Tom, how's the hand? Yeah, Paul, can you give us a sense of the timeline of when you feel you're going to get enough information to start making decisions or start making plans? Well, we're making plans now but I think that the action the state has taken by allowing towns and communities to adopt 112 budgets they think it's gonna be well into June, July, August before there's any kind of clarity on any of this stuff. So if we go through a cycle of trying to come up with a better understanding of what our revenue is and then how we're gonna allocate that revenue amongst the categories including capital and then ask Paul to at that point be ready to submit a budget to us. We really could likely be into the summer. I would expect we'll be into the summer to have the kind of meetings that we expected to have in May. Kathy and Dorothy have a hands up? Kathy. You know, I think I know the answer to this but I'll ask it anyway. A couple, I've heard from a couple of corporations. So REA is one of them on what they're doing looking forward on their revenue and they're for top level people and maybe for more thinking of to avoid layoffs they're doing wage freezes but keeping benefits intact. So keeping the employer contribution to benefits intact. Do we have any flexibility like that? So for the unionized employees versus the nonunion if the town and say you wanted to do it for June, July and August rather than a couple of them were saying for three months rather than for a year. Does a municipality, do we have that ability if we had to use it? There are a lot of different tools out there. Even in a situation like this there's even negotiations with the union. So I think, I'm not gonna go down any individual path on this, but I think there's a lot of tools that we have available to us. I think Dorothy was next. My question is to Paul. Are there areas where we're spending or are going to spend a lot more than we had budgeted to spend? I think that might be more with Sonya. At this point, I think we don't have our March numbers really processed yet. We will have a bit more about that, Sonya. Well, we're gonna be working on the quarterly report next week to get that out to everybody through March. And you're not gonna see much of a difference. It's not really affecting the third quarter. You're gonna see that effect more in the fourth quarter as far as expending. They're spending more for COVID related items. However, all the regular operations haven't been spent. So I think it's kind of zeroing out, netting out that way. So we're watching. We're not spending any, we're not spending any money on any projects of regular operations that we normally have. So there'll be cities that way. So I mean, we are buying more PPE, obviously. Anything we can get our hands on, we've hired five firefighters to put on force from the student force. So they're working so that's at an expense as well. But, yeah. Sharon, did you have a question? You had your hand up. Anything? No other questions. I have one other issue for the committee, but I wanna make sure that we get all of the questions out about either process or budget information that you would like to have to help you do the work as we go forward. The other issue that I wanna make sure that we touch on is the sixth agenda item. And that is that we had talked about our role as the audit committee and starting an audit process of choosing a new audit firm. And that discussion happened sort of before all of this crisis came up. And question is that we're gonna have to confront at some point is whether it is important enough to do that process and go forward with it or whether we should just not try and go out for bid for not this coming year, but the year after in order to preserve the time of our staff and our committee over the next months to concentrate on just getting us through the current budget problem. The disadvantage of this is that we really have been talking about it for a while. Pat, you have your hand up. I do see it. I feel like waiting is for another year to get ourselves through this is a good idea. And I do that because the audit group now Mellons and Heath is very good at shifting who comes in to look at us and what departments they look at. So I feel like we could slide for another year without negative impact. Others. Glenn has a hand. Yeah, I actually agree with Pat. And in addition to that, I think I'd rather not kind of upset yet another business at this point but then be study with us. And in addition to that, knowing our books and then how we proceed through all of this is gonna be important versus somebody coming in in the middle of chaos and trying to break them in. I know the hesitancy from Andy's point is that he is very concerned that, you know, the council would have never then changed auditors I just don't feel like that's a big deal right now. Do you wanna make a motion for the finance committee that we recommend to the council and then just put it out there for the council that under the circumstances that we not do a process? Okay, I move that the finance committee recommend to the full town council that we continue with our present auditor not only through this year, but through the next year. Second. Second. The Angelus seconds. There's been a motion that's made in seconded. Any further discussion on the motion in particular or anything that would like to be offered by the members of the committee who will not then be voting? Bob has a hand up. Bob? Yeah, I agree. I think that's the common sense thing you do right now. Anything else? Cause I am gonna have to take a roll call vote. There's a requirement that any votes that we take. Mary Lou, did you have something? She has a hand up. I support the motion. Okay. And share it to the thumbs up, Andy. Okay, well, thank you. So I'm gonna take a vote on the motion that's on the floor and Kathy? Yes. Dorothy? Yes. Pat? Yes. Lynn? Yes. And I'm voting yes. So it's unanimous. Five to zero and the minutes can reflect that we did have endorsement from all three members of the committee who were unable to vote because of the voting rules. So I think that we probably covered as much as we've gone, it's, it was, I realized somewhat of a disjointed meeting, but it's helpful. I will add that one piece to the packet from Tufts University. I will make that one addition to the outline and keep the outline going as a document, that's a working document for the committee. And try and get it shared to the committee on a regular basis as a working document. And I'm gonna take it, treat it as a committee outline now and not my outline alone. We will start working on a budget calendar for as we get information. And I think that with the BCG meeting once scheduled and then report back, I'm not gonna try and schedule another finance committee meeting right now because I wanna make sure that we have all of the information at hand to use our time well and see if we can start getting some better revenue estimates into the picture. So, and I think that pretty well covers it that there are other comments from members of the committee. Andy, the only one I might make is Paul had given us that link to the state meeting that didn't happen today. So it might be good as you as chair if that is rescheduled to send it out to everyone on the finance committee who wants to tune in to that because it's a round table with addressing what Bob was talking about, whatever projections, whatever best guesses we can be making. And it wasn't a participatory. We were just gonna be watching a live video and then it turned out even the participants couldn't be on the video. They just had a technical, total technical failure. So, but I just think that link for everyone would be a useful thing to have if people wanna tune into that. Yeah, thank you very much. And I've done my best tonight and that was a failure because, but it was actually not much time involved. I think we found out about the meeting yesterday. It was sent as something to the council. And so I went to assure Mary Lou and Bob and Sharon that I'm doing my best every time I spot something that's getting to the council that seems relevant to the committee to make sure that even though it's a repeated thing for committee members that it gets to your attention because otherwise you can't be full participants in the committee. And when that is rescheduled, thank you, Kathy. I will do my best. Mary Lou has a comment and then Dorothy. Mary Lou. Paul and Sonia, at the point they get the format for our finance committee meetings where we look at the whole budget. If we could have the outline or know about that format before those meetings begin so that we have an idea where we're going. I think it would be very helpful to know what that is going to be. What were you thinking? Can you be a little bit more explicit about what meetings here? These were the ones that were to come in May but I guess they're going to be later. But there, cause I had suggested that we meet with departments for an hour and Paul said that he and Sonia were working on a format for those meetings. And I guess I would like to know what that is before those meetings start. There was a plan and you would have been receiving it around now for what was scheduled for each of the dates that were anticipated for May. Had we gone through a normal process and had nothing happened, we would be receiving the town manager's budget on May 1st. And then we would have been engaging in those meetings immediately thereafter. And I think that the plan was to get that scheduled out so that we would actually see what was planned for each of the meetings for that period of time and for that sequence of meetings. And that is indicated if the town manager's budget is not going to be provided until the end of June, it'll be July before we have those meetings. And- Dorothy has her format. Quick a question. I had written down, but it may not be accurate at all, some finance meetings. I did not have one for the 14th, but I did have one for the 21st and the 28th. Is that just me anticipating or are those meetings? I think that we had put those in originally. We're going to have to reassess them because it may be premature to have that those number of meetings. We were trying to make sure that we had time to deal with all of the issues that we saw coming forward prior to May 1st, including the regional schools, which we would be dealing with right now, had we been on a normal schedule, there's nothing normal going on and scheduling. So I will have to just keep you informed. Thank you. So I want to thank everybody, unless there's anything else I have nothing else to add. And I know this has been a difficult meeting, but I hope that it's been helpful to get everybody re-engaged and at least beginning to think about what we have ahead of us because this committee is going to be a very important committee for this community. And I look forward to everyone's participation in trying to help us get through this very difficult budget period with a town with hopes that it turns out to be not as difficult as we fear. Andy, I just want to thank you because I know behind the scenes you've been intensely paying attention but also intensely worrying on behalf of all of us. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Andy. It is my nature, what can I say? Okay, so I want to thank Sean, I want to thank Amherst Media and I want to thank Athena and Sonia and Paul. You've all been great help to the committee, thank you. So with that, I think we'll call the quits and I'll adjourn the meeting. And...