 All right so let's start because I think we have a lot on our plates. First I just want to we have three members of our delegation in the room and I believe Senator Antwatson is on Zoom so thank you for coming and we have Senator Fertlick, Senator Cummings and Senator Casey to really appreciate you being part of this discussion. We were originally planning to have this be kind of a more of a talk about what's going on the legislature but the legislature is moving so we're talking about what the legislature has put on our plates tonight and definitely welcome your participation as we move forward and thanks again for being here. We're going to get into this later but as people who've been following the legislature know the budget that we passed the law that we were grappling with when we passed the original budget it looks like it is going to be changed in a way that we are going to have to talk substantially about this evening. That is going to be the main focus of this evening. I mean we are going to add a second public comment after that discussion so we can get you know further input from the public after they've kind of heard how we're processing it. And the other thing I want to acknowledge is this is Emma Vahanson's last night as a board member. It's going to be a fun one but I really appreciate all the the fantastic work you've done on the board. Your leadership, your work on the policy committee and really kind of your unwavering voice for doing what's best for students and best for community members. So I really appreciate your service and we're going to miss you going forward. After tonight you may not miss us but we certainly will miss this year so thank you. And we welcome you back anytime. So with that the first order of business is is public comment and again I do want to state we're going to have a second public comment. Public comment particularly at night like tonight is very important for our decision making process you know obviously the budget is going to be front and center tonight but particularly for this first public comment you know we welcome any any any feedback you have. We do not respond live in public comment although I'm guessing the second part we may open it up for some discussion because this is going to be a continuing discussion but just because we do not answer in real time does not mean that we're not hearing you. We take all this feedback you know very seriously as part of our decision making process and again appreciate the courage it sometimes takes to get up and speak in front of a deliberative body. I just want to say because we have a slightly different Zoom protocol so for attendees who wish to make a public comment please introduce yourself to the public record use the raise hand feature to indicate if you would like to speak it's if you look at the bottom of your screen there's a reactions button the reactions button is where you can find the the raise hand function you will be called on and then you'll be prompted to unmute yourself and please note that attendees only have the audio feature no video if you are speaking and would like to be on video please say so at the start of your comments and the host will temporarily convert you to a panelist you'll be able to share your video as a panelist and once your public comment is over you will be converted back to an attendee and we put this in place because we got kind of zoom bombed a few weeks ago in a way that was not really productive. So if anyone in the room would like to to public comment now before we have the discussion again there will be a second opportunity afterwards please feel free to come to the the front of the room. No one great thank you and online if anyone either raise raise hand function I think because we can't see you anymore we don't have the animals in control and I can see them oh and I can see them yeah so if you if you don't have okay it looks like we have one uh uh John go ahead and even though I know who you are please introduce yourself as well for the record absolutely can you hear me well very well yes thank you excellent I will be brief and to the point my name is John Guifre I was the chair of the Rocksbury school board before the merger and chaired the merger committee I helped architect and orchestrate one of the more successful mergers in the state during act 46's impact period uh I am now the select board chair in Rocksbury and uh with the lackluster results of act 46 the legislature has now come up with yet another twist to try to tweak the original axis 60 and its impact uh despite my vigorous objections to its aims and assertions it still went through and here we are again six years later I spoke at the ed committee hearings during act 153 883 the lead into 46 I consistently urged the legislature to stop tinkering with a broken system my comments and urging were not listened to and not surprisingly none of the efforts of the legislature have actually solved the problems 153 didn't 46 didn't and 127 won't either it's no surprise that the most recent hair on fire moment by our legislature was in response to once again poorly crafted legislation and this most recent adjustment is in response to a local response which one could see from a mile away but our legislatures legislators didn't once again proving with continued inconsistent evidence our legislator legislature is not up to the task of solving this problem in the state I don't have the time nor is this the venue to provide the prescription but 127 definitely is not that it that fact is already that it's already a disaster before it's even implemented is irrefutable proof that of that and their tone deaf lack of understanding of trying to change things at a date in the budget cycle when budgets have already been approved and things have gone to the printer for town meeting only further shows evidence of this incompetence so my criticism aside what am I advocating for firstly to the school board I urge you in the strongest possible manner to do nothing with the budget you approved already do not capitulate to the pressure being placed on our school system by poor legislation and legislators that do not have the backbone to admit failure and go back to the drawing board if they are so entrenched and blind to continue to try to make a fatally flawed system work then they will face the wrath of the taxpayers at election time they have failed to serve send the budget through and see where it may fall this will force them our legislature to address it as I spoke at an earlier board meeting you can't pull this volume of funding out of a budget and expect it to function do not bow to this pressure because if you do you will make cuts and changes that can never be recovered from this is an existential crisis for our district and many others facing these similar absurd requirements that our legislators imposed on us when you make these type of cuts they aren't slicing superfluous programs or pencil budgets these are structural things that will create catastrophic and unrecoverable tailspin for our district if you close a building for instance to try to meet some of these cuts which only a portion of them a small portion of them will be realized that's a 75 to 100 year impact made in the heat of the moment under a cartoon like mandate imposed by poorly conceived legislation don't do it and don't give in I urge you to take a stand and be the leaders our community and our state needs right now because we aren't getting that from our governor or our legislature if you want change you need to be that change and capitulation will only reinforce this 20-year pattern of ill-conceived attempts at solving a problem that is much deeper than funding formulas secondly to our legislators in attendance tonight I haven't had the time to look into where you stand individually on 127 but it is my expectation as your constituent that you are not only opposed to this legislation and its impacts but that you will actively stand up against it and get it put on hold or modified for reduced impact until such a time a better idea is in place 127 is not going to solve it and it will irreparably harm not only our school systems but our communities if you don't stop this you will be responsible for decades of decline in our communities by eviscerating our school district your legacy will be the destruction of the very system you are trying to save I urge everyone listening to hold these legislatures to these standards and expectations again if we want change we have to be the ones that institute that change these legislatures were part of the legislatures were part of the group that made the rules and they are the ones who can change them if they don't they should be voted out at the next opportunity thirdly I implore all of those listening not to bow to this absurd legislation legislation and encourage the board to stick with their budget support your school board in this fight and support your teachers and school systems they are the beating heart of any successful community all around our state and country successful communities are inexorably linked to the successful school system it is worth your money fight back with your dollars and forget giving them to some national election race this year and put them towards your tax dollars this is a fight right in front of your face in your backyard we all may need to take a hit on this this year financially to make the point this legislation can't last and if we hold out long enough something will change if we want long-term solutions that work for that work for families districts and communities we need better from our legislature and leadership we need real solutions and not some half-baked funding formula tweak that as mentioned previously has already proven its lack of foresight as they scramble to adjust it now before it ever was even implemented the fight only ends when the one being harmed gives up we are the harmed your community's long-term well-being is at stake do not lose sight of the big picture in an effort to solve the fly annoying you on the tip of your nose at the moment we have to be bigger than this and we have to find better solutions that is a future conversation but the time for immediate action on this is now thank you and i appreciate your time thanks john uh this is we have three more people in the queue it just might have a leg and i have to switch yeah um fill that yes thank you can you hear me yes great i've been reading about this and writing about this topic recently but i'm here here tonight i'm not covering this meeting i just want to offer some personal perspective you know for the school board i did i just want to say that the the new transition plan being discussed in the legislature would give montelio roxbury an 11 cent reduction in its tax rate for f y 2025 a nice gesture but one that is less generous than the five percent equalized tax rate cap the legislature is now getting rid of i don't know yet what that will mean for the district in terms of a tax rate change but i fear it will be no better than the 19.2 percent increase we are looking at now and could well be worse for the district given the additional fact that we don't know if the new plan might change in some way before it is signed into law i would urge the school board to cancel the march fifth budget vote consider further cuts to the budget and wait for more information voters should have the best understanding of the budget and taxes possible before they vote and the situation now is confused to say the least the new transition plan would create a closer connection between budget cuts and tax rates any budget cuts you make from here on will reduce the tax rate unlike the situation with a five percent cap delaying the vote will give you more time to look more closely at the budget the severe tax pressures facing montelio roxbury probably means you should seriously consider closing the roxbury school in f y 2026 and shifting students to union school where enrollment is projected to decline the new situation also means the district should reopen discussion with u 32 about a possible merger just an additional message for our legislators thank you very much for attending my belief is act 127 is placed an unfair burden on districts like montelio roxbury when major changes to the education finance system were made in the past more revenue sources were added to the ed fund this time the changes are taking place at a time when the surpluses of recent years are gone and no new revenues are being added rather than helping our out districts that need more aid and also maintaining quality education where it already exists act 127 is a zero sum game in which our better school districts are being made to suffer big budget cuts or huge tax increases montelio is now seen as a gold town in light of that at least the proposed transition plan should provide more aid to districts who are seeing their tax capacity shrink due to the new weights like montelio roxbury the proposed plan reduces tax rates in advantage districts by one cent for every one percent drop in tax capacity giving us the 11 cent tax reduction for next year i suggest pushing for a more generous transition of a two cent tax rate reduction for every one percent drop in tax capacity which would translate to a 22 cent tax reduction for montelio roxbury in f y 2025 thank you for listening to me thank you phil looks like we have jim i can bury next and even though i just introduced you please introduce yourself as well hey folks this is jim did it worked on you yes yep we can hear you great uh sorry i couldn't be there in person thanks our legislators for being there um i want to say first to the board um thank you so much for all your hard work i feel like it's four or five or even more months that um i've been attending some of your meetings working on this budget i feel like we really worked hard and listened to people and found a budget that would work for our school without adding superfluous things so i think we need to stick with the budget i think it's good for our school and um i really don't like the idea of suddenly trying to hatch it away at it because at that point it's going to be really just detrimental to our students and to our community um to the legislators in attendance as you know from the other speakers and everything else you're experiencing without 127 going into place yet it's already causing some chaos it was super well intended and we all want to have equity throughout the state and to make sure that each student is getting what they need regardless of where they are in vermont um clearly the situation is dire right now i think it's irresponsible to suddenly change it and remove the five you know percent cap and throw something else in there um i just think that that's uh beyond irresponsible when you think about the time and resources that all these folks have put in and all these districts to work on these budgets for months now um i think you either need to put a pause on act 127 and have it you know not start this year but give it another year to to give yourself time to really think through what needs to happen and go back to the old per pupil formula or just deal with it 127 as it is stick with the five percent cap trust that everybody did the best they could with that and then take the lumps to the education fund um and do it as it may changing midstream i really think is um going to have a negative impact on the students and on our communities so just urge you to consider that and again to the board thank you for all your hard work i think the budget we have in place is a good one and i really don't want to see changes made to it thanks thanks general uh and we have uh one more speaker who um uh please go ahead i could see her first name but not gonna last hi everyone this is joe can you hear me yeah joe hi i think y'all know me president of the m rea our local teachers union zooming in from independence green um i had two things to speak on tonight uh the first actually isn't around the budget it's around a bill in the state senate s 284 and it essentially proposes a cell phone ban in schools and i think the bill thoughtfully places technology use in the context of students mental health and you know students right to an education without data collection and monetized distraction of many social media platforms but i don't really want to talk about the merits right now i think that's between schools caregivers teachers students etc i i want only to advocate that wherever that bill or a sort of mr ps version of it lands we don't put the burden of it on individual teachers to enforce it i think it would be a much more helpful and systematic uh way to view this as a community or a district-wide project where administrators students parents caregivers we all agree on norms together and then we enforce them at the door not in individual classrooms in other words what i'm saying is if we move in that direction either by legal requirement or by community discussion and consensus i'd like to advocate that we take care of it when students enter the building and not require teachers sort of every day in every class to have to spend learning and community time reminding students and sort of debating the merits of cell phone use they can kind of really tax our ability to teach the kids and then secondly as for the unfortunate certainty surrounding budgets across the state and in our district i want to thank the board for being so careful throughout the process i've been there for a few meetings in a row and i just i'm really impressed by the thoughtfulness that y'all bring to this process but i would also advocate for the board to keep the budget as is and send it forward to the community on town meeting day rather than restart the process and potentially open up painful conversations about educators futures in our district and i say that as somebody who lives in and loves this community and i just hope that my fellow voters will ultimately decide to fund the schools despite the increased tax burden and i also hope that in the coming years the legislature will develop a better and more progressive way to fund the schools in vermont uh so thank you for listening and have a good meeting appreciate it thank you do you mind just giving like another prompt to the audience that's in the room if they have public comment now yes and yeah there's also the yeah we might have it yeah one later but if anyone else wants to speak in the room please do say all right thank you um this is the consent agenda and then we can get you of our agenda uh we do have a motion to approve the consent agenda i will be approved the consent agenda uh do you have a second second any discussion all those in favor any opposed nay or say that's what we could say again um i'm not opposed just for the record uh so consent agenda passes um can i can i put emma's hat on for just one second to ask you to remind folks for anybody who's brand new to a meeting is the consent agenda what did we just do we just approved a bunch of stuff that is kind of non-controversial like minutes of meetings and um trapped agendas the superintendent's reports uh you know we had some uh personnel stuff that was just performed up so that's what we approved so thank you thank you mia for the reminder um how do we want to do this do we want to do the presentation first so then the legislatures can be part of the discussion uh that's nodding you see andy nodding i'm waiting to see what and and seems to think about that i'm just ready sorry senator commons i should be much more professional sorry sorry so sound good for the board yes and for you all yeah yeah so let's pull up the presentation for today and i think i've said this now a few times um this is hard stuff that we're going to be talking about today and we are going to try to show it as non-judgmentally as we can and christina i'll call you up too if you want to take the hot seat here or come up closer just in case we have questions for you as we go okay so as most people in the room and online are aware there has been potential changes to act 127 it is not written in law as of yet um but my understanding is that it will be um and it definitely influences the budget that was approved in january on the 17th so just as a little refresher act 127 and there's a link to the original act there begins in f y 25 which is the budget that was just approved by the board for next school year it's related to improving student equity by adjusting the school funding formula for mont has a rather complicated school funding formula for education finance and this influences one piece of it which in turn uh secondarily influences other pieces of it so it influences the way students are weighted as most of us know by now who have been following the budget process our student count for educational finance is not kids in seats individual kids in seats but each child is weighted in a different way um a concern and the weights are based on student needs for education so secondary students have more teachers involved in their world and so therefore they are weighted heavier than an elementary school student um students who come to our school district to our need of learning english have significant needs that a student who already knows english is not so they are weighted heavily students from poverty are weighted more heavily so different weights are attached to students identities based on based on what they come to us with with the idea that more those weights come with more dollars to help educate those students this is a good thing this this isn't this is a good thing in our education law um the original law so the original 127 when i say that um included a tax rate review at 10 per weighted pupil increase the board grappled with that for a while we came in below the 10 per cent per people we are still there that is not on the table for discussion tonight um and it's still a part of the law and the and there was a five percent cap on the equalized tax rate which is our tax rate prior to the common level of appraisal being factored in um and the actually the CLA is what ultimately comes on our tax bills um the CLA is not something the school district or school board has any control over that's a factor that we received from the tax department this was the legislation as written here in a really short summary that the MRPS board and administration had when creating and approving the budget for FY 25 so this was our understanding that we were working under for um that budget process and our our former discussions there is trouble with that five percent cap and this is how we got there in a broad summary so first when the modeling was done for act 127 which were which was several years ago now um the statewide salary and benefits that they used to do those models were much lower than they are now so there were several negotiation rounds i'd say at least one major as negotiation round with unions um and in that negotiation round statewide salaries increased increased considerably it was after covid there's a lot of bargaining power there's a teacher shortage across the state so those salaries were much greater the increase was much greater statewide um including MRPS than they had been previously and what was being used to model in addition to that healthcare benefits which is not something the school board or administration have any control over it's a statewide negotiation those continue to increase every year so the savings that were hoped to be realized when that law was passed several years ago now yeah um have not been realized so this year's increase in healthcare benefits benefits was a 16.4 percent increase which was considerable that was not part of the model when our joint fiscal office colleagues were doing that for act 27 before it was passed so that's one piece the second piece is that we had federal funding in terms of ESSER and school districts across the state used those for different reasons some were for positions for needed services for students as our students had some challenges through covid as we all know um some of that money was used for one-time funds the needs of our students across the state including at MRPS have not gone away just because the ESSER funds have gone away um so those aren't extra positions those are needed positions and I can speak personally for MRPS we've designed systems um with and we're able to do those systems faster because of the ESSER funding however what MRPS I will say has done for this little piece is for every position from that was funded through ESSER funds that we've brought into local funds we had an equal reduction and we didn't just do that this year we did that in past years as well number three so several districts um added in costs that for this budget cycle for developing their FY 25 budget um that they believe because they believe their taxpayers were protected by this 5 cap and I say that with no judgment whatsoever under the first law under the fur way at 127 was crafted originally they were protected by a 5 cap um we did not add in additional costs in our original budget um in the way that that other districts did however there was considerable costs added to district budgets because that was the way the law was written and and they were they were told they were never told not to do that so so that was something that they did number four and for my rather unprofessional language I really kind of figure out a way to say this it tanked the dollar yield so all of this money that was being stressed upon the education fund or predicted anticipated to to be pulled out of the education fund without a revenue source in tax taxes because of that cap completely tanked the dollar yield and it's my understanding the dollar yield was around seven thousand last week last year it was at or above fifteen thousand to give you a sense the budget we developed was based on a nine thousand one hundred seventy one dollar dollar yield so in from the time we passed our budget or approved our budget the dollar yield had sank two thousand dollars more when that dollar yield sinks taxes increase the only districts who could increase their taxes were those not capped and so because of that because of that tanking of the dollar yield every district even the most advantage districts under 127 were pushed into the cap thereby eliminating any sort of revenue source into the education fund which can't happen right so we don't have a leveling source for the education fund now if every district is capped that's a problem so that's how we got here and why the legislature needs to act around the five percent cap it's unfortunate timing and it also is necessary at the same time because of these factors here so the legislature's reaction potential reaction i should say always potential reaction because it's not written in law yet is to eliminate the cap and have a different transition mechanism so the five percent cap was meant as a transition mechanism for districts like ours who lost weighted pupils so that you know we've heard the land softly over the next five years for more information on this Christina and I sat through the ways and means committee yesterday and Julie Richter of the Joint Fiscal Office had an excellent slideshow to explain both 127 and why we needed a different transition model the link to the youtube video is there and also Julia's slideshow is there so just if anybody wants more information and wants to nerd out on this a little bit more you are welcome to click on those links you can also find it on the houseways and means committee youtube channel so there's a revision in the house right now it's still in the house correct hasn't gone anywhere else okay introduced in the house today uh for revision to the transition mechanism in act 127 only the transition mechanism so only that five percent cap and the the suggestion is to change it to a scent reduction for districts who were disadvantaged by 127 so people who followed act 46 with the merger and districts who merged willingly got a I don't know what it was a sixth reduction one year or four cent reduction the next year a two six eight six four two so it's a similar mechanism as that however it's not a universal piece like that so the amount of the reduction and this is directly from Julia's slideshow so I apologize for the jargon is based on the district share of the statewide pupil count so there's a pupil count for the whole district which went up because we're counting more pupils under the new weights and our share of that is what matters right so the percentage is decided by the relative change in the district share of statewide pupils from FY 24 to FY 25 so when MRPS is looking at that our share in FY 24 was larger in the statewide pupil count than it is with the new weighting system that's smaller which is why we're considered a disadvantaged district of those law disadvantage is keeping in mind means that we either have to significantly raise our tax taxes in order to keep the same programming or we have to eliminate programming in order to or eliminate things in our budget in order to bring down our taxes so our tax capacity has gotten smaller so the percentage that that is determined was determined by the agency of education based on our long-term weighted average daily membership which is this kind of the same thing as equalized people would equal the cent decrease for year one it is your it is your five-year thing that I'll get to later and only disadvantaged districts would receive this transition mechanism that was another piece of the original act 127 with the 5 cap any district could access it so including districts who are advantaged by act 127 could access that 5 cap this eliminates that so there's approximately 30 to 40 districts who now qualify for this MRPS is number 14 on that list so we're right smack dab in the middle just for just for the the board and community's knowledge only three districts in central vermont will qualify for this discount essentially so MRPS and harwood and those are the relative percentages so under this proposal from the house MRPS would essentially an FY 25 get an 11 cent discount on our taxes which is what one of the which was what phil dad was referencing in his public comment the 11 cents do you have a question right there do you know where that those figures in the right hand column came from yeah there are share of the there the change in our share of the people count the middle column yeah what but the right hand column they just made here's your percentage yeah here's your sense so that that that's my understanding of it okay thank you yeah it's not exact okay so what does this mean for MRPS and FY 25 instead of the 5 cap on the equalized rate MRPS should possibly if the law goes through receive an 11 cent decrease on our equalized tax rate so up here this chart is a board is something the board has seen quite a bit so on the left hand column is the mathematical equation it's a little tough to see on the screen for the board I understand that but it's a mathematical equation of how education finance works the gray column on the left is the the budget that was approved January 7 teeth the budget on the right is where we would stand with the 11 when the cap has gone away in the 11 cent decrease comes in the thing to note here is that there are two changes on the column on the right one is the dollar yield so it's anticipated with this new transition mechanism that the dollar yield will increase the reason why that's anticipated is because the 5 cap was very helpful for a lot of districts and it's it's it's anticipated that districts will open up some districts will open up their budget to to eliminate some of that funding and so when there's not such a strain on the education fund the dollar yield can come up again Jake would you add anything to that I'm going to try not to put you on the spot but would you add anything that was good okay all right so the dollar yield um is now anticipated to be 9775 I'll remind you that that's not set into law until May May there's so many experts in the room it's a little intimidating I have to say and and it's it's fluid it's yeah the dollar yield has has done a lot of things in the last yes it has so if it stays at that it'll it'll be pretty amazing so our equal under the new 11 cent discount I'll call it our equalized tax rate is coming in at a dollar and the new dollar yield is coming in at a dollar 49 1 minus 11 cents so the adjusted equalized tax rate which is the tax rate before the CLA is factored in is a dollar 38 1 this is higher than it was for the 5 percent cap for the 5 percent cap it was a dollar 33 7 in Montpelier with the month with the CLA staying at 100.18 percent that makes the residential tax rate with CLA for Montpelier at a dollar 379 and the residential tax rate with CLA for Roxbury at a dollar 461 so keep on going what does this mean in what does this new tax rate mean in dollars so you can see this is the board has seen a chart like this before um this is what that means actually for a person for a homestead who is not protected by the sensitive sensitivity homestead sensitivity what that translates to I think it's important to know that two thirds of Vermont Montpelier residents receive income sensitivity and roughly two thirds of Roxbury and so this is only for one third of the taxpayers but even those two thirds they will see an increase they're not sure proportional they'll see a proportional they'll see a proportional and before the board asks there's no way we can tell you what that looks like because it's individualized for people and I think it's also worth pointing out that a lot of those two thirds people are already on fixed income budgets which is why they receive that and right even proportional increases are increases increases yeah okay so what's projected to happen in the next five years and I'm gonna I'm the board's not gonna like this but we're not gonna be able to give you a whole lot of information on this um this is what's projected based on the fact sheet that we got from the agency of education in the ways and means committee you can see it yourself online um we're not positive how this was figured out other than it's just a decrease each year we're like we're just not positive how to explain this or why Jake's like I can't it's 11 cents in the first year 20 of that would be 2.2 cents there's a missing decimal on on that table so the next year would be 11 cents minus 2.2 cents would be 8.8 cents the year after that would be 6.6 I think Nicole rounded them 4.4 2.2 then 0 so it's a 20 reduction each year five years 20 down each year in the original law the cap is supposed to be in place for five years and so ways and means were were pretty adamant about keeping that five year some sort of protection for the five years but all those charts we did about predictions throw those out the window board throw them out the window don't think about it we got glad I spent time all right so what would more decreases to the FY 25 budget look like so what do we got here the first row there the 32 million 316 that's your approved budget that is what is in the budget right now that has been approved so there's no decrease um talking about that those are the two tax rates for the two towns that equal a 23.07 increase for Montpelier and approximately a 12 increase for Roxbury as is what what the budget has been approved which the board could decide to keep if we have these numbers um Kristen pointed this out to me earlier these these decreased numbers are arbitrary I was just we were pulling out numbers in order to show how much money we're talking about to get a significant decrease in the in the tax rate so if we were to decrease 1.5 million then that makes Montpelier's tax rate with the discount and an assumed dollar yield of 9,775 to be a dollar 295 and that's a 15.63 increase and in Roxbury it would be a dollar 373 with a 5.22 increase over last year if we were to further cut that budget three three million dollars then we could get it to an 8.2 percent increase in Montpelier and the Roxbury tax rate would decrease by 1.55 percent if we were to make that many cuts so we've got some urgent decisions to make as a school board tonight and I want to stress these this decision needs to be made tonight with the understanding that this legislative action will most likely be reality does the school board want to reopen the budget and decrease the total district budget in order to lower the tax impact or leave the budget as is so what happens if you open the budget just so you have all the information here we talked to both town clerks today at length John Odom is my best friend today so number one school budget will not be voted on as part of town meeting day the ballots have already been printed I believe in both towns and so essentially we'll have a a Sharpie party and and just cross out the school board budget if we if you decide to open it up that won't matter even if people vote on it it won't matter if you've decided to open this up the school board will need to approve a new budget by February 15th for a vote to occur on March 14th eight days away those are not typos the reason for that is because we have a contract and in our contract the RIF the reduction in force deadline for a past budget on the first vote is March 15th the town clerks need approximately four weeks before the schedule vote to appropriately warn and print ballots for a first vote which is why we need to have decisions made to send to the town clerks by February 15th a separate election for just school budgets would occur on March 14th should the budget fail to pass on the first vote there would need to be an immediate turnaround for a revote by law the earliest the board could reissue a revote is seven days after the failed vote and the the reduction in force deadline for a failed budget is March 31st so essentially if the vote if the if we decide to reopen the budget and we vote on March 14th and that goes down we have seven days to to get a new budget out there and because we have to meet the second RIF deadline by March 31st if we don't do that then there's some dire things that we have to do that I'd rather not talk about just know what they are but I have a clarifying question on this slide which is if town clerks need four weeks before the scheduled vote to appropriately warn let's say these things happen we have a vote on the 14th the budget goes down that actually doesn't give us the four weeks there's not four weeks in there so the revote is different okay it's the initial vote I see okay and that's all done by statute and that kind of thing yeah okay the RIF deadline that you're referring to there that's per the MREA contract that's not part of any legislation that's just a constraint we have at MRPS based on our contractual language that's the last line for a failed budget I'm sorry say it again is it the last line that he's referring to or is that the both of 15th and the 31st the 15th is for a first vote in our contract there's no language of a first vote on town meeting day it's just first vote so that's so that vote has to occur prior to the March 15th date because if the board needs to do more reductions in force you need to be able to do it by the contract at deadlines so I think he answered my question but I'm just going to double check so the RIF deadline for a failed budget regardless of when that failed budget vote happened is the 31st correct so having our vote on town meeting day gives us the most amount of time between the vote and the RIF deadline if you have the if you have the vote on town meeting day so that means you're keeping the budget as is right you're not changing it and that vote passes that's great if it fails then you have until March 31st 30th really right yeah really so my league team my administration team when we were going through this day had a lot of funny gifts to put in this around like questions like of course there's signs of them probably um but we did not we declined to send them yeah and before I open it up to board discussion um we'd love to give the legislators a chance to talk I also just want to make a couple a couple comments about act 127 I mean I think we can't forget that we endorsed the concept and I think we support the concept and I think we do not have issues with the weights I think everyone agrees that the the five percent cap was was poorly designed um I'm personally going to kind of applaud the legislator for attempting to fix it I think the damage to the ad fund of the cap was significant and long lasting and while this puts us on the bind I think there's a very good argument that it does a lot to stabilize the ad fund long term and I think that's good for education even if it puts us in a bind tonight um so I thank you for for your hard work on that even though with the first the first attempt had some some notable flaws um but if you have anything you want to add about you know what we can expect I know that you know it has not passed and been signed into law yet um so just any any observations on on your part before we we delve in it would be helpful but no need to if you if you don't feel and you want to come up to the seat or move up just because of the microphone. Okay. Good job then I could explain what's going on um I went to my first group meeting on Monday um it's a revenue bill it starts in the house um the five percent cap was used to the senate um so we're working to read do exactly what you said reduce the cap an awful lot of districts seem to feel that if they were capped at five and it's only their residential so their businesses and apartments are going to take in second homes are going to take a real hit they're going to absorb everything over five percent and I don't think anyone registered that um so we we're we're going back and we're going to phase it in which was the original kind of concept that we had that you know you can't accept that large a loss 11 percent and and it's unfortunately it went through and some of the real winning schools have already up their spending so we've lost that balance where we could you know phase in what they get and phase out what you lose and have some balance in the fund and we don't we may have to raise some extra money thinking things like in sales tax uh good luck that's I know um but that's the main input into the end of the entire sales tax so I think the bill has till March 15 past your budgets it has five hundred thousand dollars in it to compensate the cost you know you're at least going to have to repurchase your budget balance and there'll be costs that wouldn't try to cover those um the appropriations you just heard about that this afternoon but they'll do it um and we're trying you know we understand the mess this is cost um and we're doing our best to fix it and what you know what you do with your budget is your decision um it will impact the tax rate it will impact my tax rate plus I'm anticipating the city's going to get me a pretty good increase um and that's our concern nobody could afford a 20 percent increase in their property tax and it was probably going to be more than that because school spending went up 20 or 40 million dollars between the amount they had for the December 1st letter and as of last week so this a lot of districts seemed to think that they were capped at five or at least their residents were mostly the people that voted for them and it's debatable if you covered the um income sensitized people they may have had to pay the full share it would be determined either way and um I'm trying to talk but that they could spend up to 9.9 so they spent that a lot of it was on school maintenance deferred maintenance um we've got the task force um school construction task force back um there's some recommendations for funding um at this point it's bonding but joint fiscal know that if schools could bond to fix things they would have done it before and just pooling them together and putting them through the bond bank probably wouldn't reduce it enough to help but so it kind of come up with some money to do that because that seemed to be what a lot of people were doing you know free money we can do capital improvements um that's where we are and the riff they did not come up and I'm pretty sure I know what you're all trying to fix which is impressive um and I will it would the plan is I believe it was introduced in ways and means today I have not seen the final bill they're hoping to get it out they're going to get it off the house floor on Wednesday to Thursday it will come to my committee we're having um everybody in Julia and uh representative cornheiser tomorrow so my committee will be up and ready that we're going to get this out as fast as we can this we've decided it was not a partisan issue um the tax commission represents the governor in some ways it's been part and parcel okay it's been part and parcel we've all you know just been trying to work on this together and hopefully we'll get it into one two three weeks hopefully two so that's that just a process question for you Jim we do have our legislators here but should we stay focused on our district budget for now we should we should I just give them a chance to talk about this process because I think it's good to know if there is just anything that I just hope on the yep the budget process and that was on my ability to hear what we're doing how it impacts you so absolutely that bill comes to my committee I have some ability to know what you know if you need to have something done yep but never hesitate to call me and that timing that you just gave us that timing which means that if we were to open up the budget we should do it provisionally we can't open up the budget there's a there's an act that's uh hasn't sunset yet from covid that allows school boards to move their budget vote back so we're pretty positive that we can act under that law okay if the board decides to do it so we have people who can power apparently I guess I guess my question is if we do if we act in the eight days and for some reason the five percent cap stays the five percent cap stays the five percent cap would be applied to whatever new budget we would have approved right which would be a decreased budget which would be a decreased budget with no tax decrease with no tax decrease unless we were to cut three and a half million dollars as we say from the budget which I doubt so I don't think the five percent cap will stay because that's the unfortunate and I apologize for it I think that we've messed up that when we look at the mistake now we see basically we wanted to have our kid can eat it too we wanted to have the communities that we're going to get the more students that we're going to get money for waiting to get that right away but we also wanted to prevent the disadvantaged school communities not to have that so we kind of wanted to have both ways we should have seen that we couldn't have done both but we didn't we didn't I apologize because you guys have done a lot of work and happened to redo it and it's been hard on not only you guys we're in the watery Harwood community they were not happy with us uh I was in stow on Monday they were not happy with us uh and that's why I understand a little bit because I haven't actually done it like you did but I wanted to say we understand the difficulty that it's caused and how much work that it's caused and how much it's just got extra stress it's caused another community I want to acknowledge that that said I think the first commenter was like well where was your position on this but every I think it was a unanimous stuff like we did not have anybody I get a lot of emails on every little thing that we do and there's always somebody that doesn't like it likes it I don't remember single persons that don't support that 27 no superintendents the principals the school board associations everybody was thought it was the right thing to do we just really miss this thing about the cap and to defend the senate we did have this kind of scaling thing as the first priority what was that so you're talking in that you have senator coming to as the chair of finance so anything that passes has to go to our committee so you do have that advantage to that we can there are other tweaks that we can make we have that as to our advantage and there's there's not a lot of time but there's still some time to make this change it's you know I'm not on on the finance committee I've been following as much as I can because I so I can answer questions but I'm on appropriations and what we're trying to do is help the municipal tax not go up with all the flooded damage so try to get as much money as we can to Montculier and Berry and other communities as we can to help with the municipal side of things so that's I'm going to focus on that so I don't really have anything to add other than thanks for the presentation I thought that was great I do recommend Julie Richter's slides presentation she's great on this issue as well just wanted to thank you for your time yeah great thank you oh gosh I also want to acknowledge that this has been incredibly stressful for you all and I was also in those meetings with these other districts that are also having a really difficult time with this so I have a question I mean it's it's also like I I appreciate that we are working on a potential solution you know in terms of like removing the cap in this graduated you know percentage decrease but it sounds like the situation is actually worse for Montculier Roxbury if like under the conditions of this this proposed change um and so that's that's also concerning that that this proposed change may not be the fix that we're hoping for and so I question for you all it was because one one of the other options that I see I don't know how realistic this is but you know in in the spirit of like yes we we all were for the goals of act 127 but the the the transition into it has not played out the way we had hoped the thing that I have in my head is like can we just repeal act 127 give it some more time let's rework the formula you know let's figure out how we implement this because clearly where we're at right now is not sufficient and so I'm not sure if I saw this in your presentation I was trying to take as much notes as I could on this if we if we were to repeal act 127 um the budget increase do you do you have what the budget increase would be in the absence of act 127 um I had thought maybe I saw it it was like something like um more than 20 but I'm not sure if that was accurate we don't have those numbers because we would have a different pupil count we'd have a different dollar yield we'd have we'd have a lot of different factors so we never did that math okay and would that would that be more stressful I assume to try to come up with that or do you think that would be an option worth looking into I think it would be much more stressful for the state and and I will say too and that that question was asked of representative cornhizer in the superintendent's meeting not by me but another superintendent and she said she said that was not a possibility okay in no uncertain terms okay all right all right well it feels like there are just no good solutions here I am very like very interested in finding what a better solution might be and it feels I'll just say from from my perspective it feels like we haven't found a good solution but we are also running out of time um it also seems like if we if we make any changes uh to act 127 then and I think this is something that we have talked about um and I'm looking to senator perchwick and senator comings to confirm this but if we were to make any changes that we would have to also build into that express permission to go beyond potentially even you know um some of the provisions that may already exist um in terms of timing and deadlines and and whatnot um I'm not sure if that's something that that they've considered of something that that you all would need or want beyond what is already in statute um anyway so that's something that's on my mind as well sort of that point with senator hotz and that I didn't say before is that what we could do is just try to help put the yield right because we don't set that till later once we have everything we just found out on appropriations last week that we're going to refer six million dollars because the universal meals was under under spent you know so there are other ways to draw money into the education fund that will help with the yield which helps with the tax rate so right that is something we can do long term that because it doesn't you won't know what it is you have to do your budget anyway but we as legislators can say how can we help all towns by getting just more money into the education fund that could be a new tax I know ways and means is talking about that not always popular but that's an option or just one other five ten million dollars here there can we pull into the education fund to help with the yield right and representative cornheiser announced at the last meeting that this was the first of three education bills she's planning the second one will be a yield bill I have no idea of what's going in it but there is a recognition that once we come out of this if the yield is down then your tax rates are going up and I'm not sure what the third one is it may well be putting more money into the right now everybody needs to go out and buy stuff because say stacks is what's going in there great well thank you that happy to pop up so thank you thanks very much everybody Connor Casey Kate McCann is the other representative of Montpelier she had a medical issue tonight so apologies for her not joining us but I'd echo what my colleagues say I wasn't here for the vote of 127 but I'm not going to throw them under the bus because I probably voted for it though so but interested in finding some solutions both the senator Watson said I think in the short term like what do we need to do tomorrow but also is it time to push like the reset button a little bit and look at what this looks like going forward I'll say my short time in the legislature the education financing system as a whole is completely incomprehensible to most people whose door you knock on in Montpelier and I think if you ask most of our colleagues up there to explain it they'd have a tough time too so when you have a system that's so inaccessible to folks right what it does is I think it creates a bit of a disparity there and that's not right so I'm really interested in looking at ways we can simplify the system so that we can actually have a conversation with taxpayers in a meaningful fashion and move the ball forward here so again I think we're at a bit of a mess here and it's sort of the last thing our community needs after what we've gone through over the past six months here it's I was talking to somebody the other day I used to think somebody who had like a $250,000 house was rich right and not my tiny condo is worth that and you know we're really hitting working people and it doesn't matter how you reconcile it you know with the two-thirds at the end it's still hidden people right so I really would like to take an organic look at this going forward here and do what we can in the meantime to try to fix this but I want to give a good shout out to you know center comings and representative cornhizer because you know we went up there we we listened to the school board and we kind of blew the alarm right we said we have to fix something and it's not easy to stop midstream on this and it's not going to be perfect solutions but I think people are trying their best here so we'll see what we can do but it's tremendously educational being at the school board here I thought the city council was a horror show the other day but it's pretty rough decisions everybody's making right now and to the extent we can all stay in touch and try to get over the finish line on some of the stuff that'd be great so thanks so much great thank you and I uh I heard this day was pretty good the the um education funding formula is Byzantine to the Middle East yeah yeah I've been doing a lot of thinking about that I've been here since the beginning and the reason the formula is so complicated is unlike most if not all other states we are trying to respect local control the local people vote their budget we then have the brigham decision which says we have to equalize it so a penny here is the same if and that makes a very complicated system if we did like most states and it's been coming up more and more we the state would say to you this is how much money you can spend on education this year do your best with it and any simplification is going to be you know confining of local control and it is terribly frustrating to us to be told that we are planning to raise property taxes 20 percent when the local voters vote much to spend we set the rate necessary to raise it after sales and all other revenues out but it's local control that makes it complicated should I do a public comment now or would you like to report the discussion now could I ask a question of our because one of the things that we that might help us is a little bit more time as you saw in one of the final slides from Libby's presentation we essentially have a week if we were to decide tonight to open our budget back up and revisit it which as she also said we could decide not to do that and that is because of the understandable constraints in our teacher contract is that something that you could put into like a reprieve on those kinds of deadlines could you work that into this piece of legislation you know I haven't seen exactly that deadlines I know that you have till April 15th to get your school budget done and I know you've got warning times that you have to go through what we could do with that I can try if email me what would work and I will when the bill comes to me and I'll talk to Representative Kornhizer um and see if we can do you know because we what we can we wrote the public meeting warning notices I suppose we can not withstand them um I think what he is asking though I don't know if the legislature can override a teacher's contract right oh no that's not okay could they could they override it but can we do it fast enough because we could but like can we do it pass a bill through both chambers into the governor in time to where it really helps because by the time we get the bill passed you're already being it's our February 15 deadline well is yeah it has already passed yeah but the yeah that is what I was asking the deadline we have is it has to be done by March 15th right and in order and under current law we need four weeks of warning to get on the bell what if we needed two weeks of warning oh that's something that they could that that is not current law that is how much time the town clerks need I'm not positive what's in statute um section three of that of the bill in ways of means has um some details on the budget vote um a district that cancels the vote um shall amend the warning for its annual district vote to state that the budget vote is cancelled and shall move the date of the budget vote to a date on or before April 15th 2024 right that's not the constraint the constraint is our teacher's contract March 15th yes and that's specific to us only that everybody has that in their everybody has some date in their contract it may be different it's well it is different by districts but I know I was in a I was in a conversation with with like five other superintendents two of them had our same dates a couple I had a couple like a week later but that's the there's a contractual obligation that we have to our teachers that we have to abide by well I mean we don't if we decide to reduce our budget in different ways but we will not be able to reduce our budget enough to make a difference in the tax rate without having the option of a reduction in force does that make sense thank you unless we take a hundred one and a half million dollars from our savings account that is the only I am not advocating for I'm just saying it is yes the only way yeah and or transportation getting rid of all transportation or getting rid of all facilities worker you know like that kind of thing that doesn't involve staff can we ask her union to change that doesn't it can why would they can they can say no yeah they might have an incentive if they're looking at a lot of lost FTEs that could potentially be avoided if there's more time to figure out strategies that don't harm those I would say that the board cannot delay their decision tonight yeah on that I I would agree with that and but I got the answer I was looking for from our legislators they're not going to tinker with that's all I wanted to know I don't know if there are power right thank you that's all right um shall we dive in I'm not quite sure how to start do you want to hear public comment first do we want to like do we want to hear public comment first or do we want to dive in and and kind of get our thinking and then get reactions to our thinking or do we want to get reactions to the Tino Tino wants to dive in I don't know how do other people feel about okay I would move that we do not reopen the budget tonight I have a couple reasons for that motion which I realize may not have any support we still don't know what the yield will be it could change again and reopening our budget and re-closing it tonight is about as rushed as I feel like we could possibly be when we spent months and months even with all of these crazy variables we put a lot of thought I meant to say by the way this is a fantastic presentation this is incredibly complicated and you you actually maybe us understand thanks really truly statewide this is a very valuable I think I'm going to share this with other people I we spent a lot of time on our budget we also know that there are a lot of pieces the vast majority of our budget frankly that we don't have a lot of control over and if we are going to make huge cuts that still result in some sort of a tax increase that feels like a terrible way to make decisions and harmful to our students and our staff and our buildings I I would rather we go with what we have done knowing that next week maybe it's a different incentive maybe next week the yield is something different because things have changed so much even within seven days and then we immediately pick up the conversation the hard conversation about what we need to do for our budget for the coming year I for our lawmakers I do think I don't I don't know exactly how the health insurance piece works but that really did hit every district I'm sure you've heard totally out of our control I don't know if there is something that can be done but that is that is legitimate I also happen to know that the state does do a lot of property tax exemptions so if there are certain sacred cows as I've heard like current use which I happen to know a lot about in my day job I think the ed fund and educating our students is also a sacred cow and I think anything that is a property tax exemption that is millions of dollars should be looked at even if it's a moratorium on some of these things there's tax increment financing there's current use there's property tax exemptions there's all kinds of other ways that the ed fund doesn't get property tax dollars and julia uses that great analogy of a balloon if you squeeze the balloon this way the other balloon right so we're the balloon like property taxpayers in vermont are that balloon that like there's only so many of us to divvy up that responsibility so on the one hand while we're talking about not only not increasing any of our services or increasing any of the good things our district are doing but actually continuing to cut away at it and hatch it away at it there are other ends of that balloon that I think need attention it can't just be we have to find more revenue like we've got it we've got to figure out ways that we can treat the education fund as the sacred cow as well I do think we there are so many pieces that could still change I personally don't feel comfortable voting another budget tonight that then in seven days might look different again and we did spend a lot of time looking at I mean if we were really going to be cutting over a million dollars or more we're talking not getting kids safely to school on school buses we're talking losing direct instruction for students we don't have like freely things that we can take out of our budget and that makes me really that makes me really sad and I'd rather we try to hang on for this year to get through whatever ends up happening over the next month and then very strategically look at our overall long-term plan for our district because hopefully by then some of these moving pieces will have firmed up that's right thanks are you making an official motion if anyone wants to second it it'll be out there but I move that we don't reopen the budget tonight just to get that on there okay so I just want to say well we should discussion but I also wouldn't want us to vote on that motion I'm fine with the motion I wouldn't want to some vote on that motion without doing the public but not only the discussion obviously but also the public comment period that we promised the people who are here tonight that's just that's all yeah in my mind I'm just gonna watch into it this is very difficult for me to say I I think we do have a very viable budget cutting option that that is hard that does not have I think and I think if I asked Libby she would say that does not have educational detriment for kids it has huge detriment for I think a town and a town that we care about in the town it's part of our district the Roxbury Village school is about 1.5 million it is it is a great school when we merged four years ago or when we merged in 2018 both towns knew that that school was a model that is hard to sustain and we put in the merger agreement that we would give it four years and see how it was doing and if yeah and the board was that empowered to close that school if it was not sustainable and I know we haven't had some of the discussions that I think we'd love to have but it's a size that's not sustainable and it's not growing very hard to keep a school under 100 students much less a school of 36 students it's been hard to staff the academic performances there have been consistently below what they've been at UES those students can be absorbed at UES where they likely get services that they don't get at RVS it's very hard to make an argument that there is going to be an educational detriment to the kids I know it's a half hour bus ride kindergarten students at Rumney and are in middle sex spend 45 50 minutes on the bus depending on where they live in middle sex same with East Montpelier same with Calis same with Worcester and it would make a substantial difference in taxes we are at a point where our community members are being squeezed we've had two or three years of very high inflation and when we're not just talking about you know our you know lower income people we're talking to a people who have six seven years of postgraduate experience who struggled to get into their family home or struggling to stay in this is it's dance money it's you know it's money from music lessons it's it's you know money to help with you know medicine I have a friend who you know has a son with with asthma and insurance isn't covering the prescription and that's that's you know that's money out of pockets these you know people people are being squeezed a lot of directions and I think we could have a conversation about RBS I think we all know what the the answer to that conversation is I mean maybe not but I think we've we've been watching that school for for a while and it's a wonderful school and it's it's a it's a centerpiece of that community and it's very hard for me to say this but there are just so many things that are not working and not sustainable and the path forward is really hard to articulate and I think one of the reasons honestly that we haven't had a direct conversation about it is because we've been a little unwilling to confront the fact that that those paths forward aren't there and to get to that place but I think I I hate to propose closing that school on this quick a notice but I also feel that given what I know I am I'm inclined to not vote for anything where I have to go to my residence in Montpelier and justify why they have to pay a significant amount more per year next year to keep the school open I just don't think it's a responsible financial choice and I hate to say that but it's I think it's I think it's our reality I'm gonna try to thread a few needles here it's possible I might miss some of the eyes of the needles completely um uh first thing is um I don't uh think we should reopen the budget I I think it would be too disruptive and I personally don't don't want to cause the community any stress especially the teachers that's the first thing the second thing is um that it was talked about very quickly a second ago I'm not sure if people caught it but our our taxes are not based on our budget our taxes are based on our education spending which is a lower number between the budget and education spending is offsetting what's called offsetting revenues um we this board made the very smart decision to take some of the track money that we had set aside which was 1.4 million um and we used uh or we're planning to use about 400,000 to to just update the track to be safe but the remaining million was kept for the time basically when the 5% uh protection would expire the 5% protection is expiring right now I would recommend applying that 1 million dollars um to lower our education spending and I think that should bring us actually a little bit below what we were projecting for a tax increase and if the yield continues to go up it'll our taxes will go down further that's I think I think we should go forward for for Roxbury I don't recommend doing anything this year I think it's too disruptive and and don't want to do it but I want to point out that the the the waves of trying to change public education in Vermont are too much Act 46 said these small rural schools you know are inefficient and expensive we need to merge them into bigger districts that was in 2015 2022 seven years later you have a totally different legislation that says these small rural schools need more resources so there's weights for there's new weights in the system for rural rural places and in small schools but the irony here and I was about to get to that as my last needle thank you um is that Roxbury is losing out on those weights by being with Montpelier um so if they if they weren't in a group with us they would have 33 percent more students I calculated I think it's right I'm sure it is so so the and and it's this is not our fault or anybody's fault but like the constant trying to revolutionize education to try and make it more whatever is is too much for school boards and voters um and and yeah the Roxbury conversation should be had later on um and I and we should talk about like you know what if they were on their own such as like Lincoln did um they would I think their taxes actually would be better off and they'd have their own school and school choice for for middle school and high school I don't think it's now it's the time to really get into that but that's how I feel about the things we're talking about Jim I just wanted to thank you for putting that up on the board I just wanted to point out the um what Jake was just talking about so that anybody who has not been in every single meeting since the beginning of November with us the non-tax revenues is this line right now we've got five and a half million going there from a lot of different sources he's saying make that six million that's what you were just advocating for whatever we didn't do for the track what you think was about a million wasn't it it's actually we unencumbered a million four yeah a million five from the track and left four there was 1.9 originally that was okay we unencumbered a million five and left 400,000 there so maybe a million five or a million I'm not I'm not sure exactly but something like that I just wanted so that everybody can follow along at home that's what he needs that's all I'm gonna put that in an actual accessory to like David well I wouldn't advocate for a different path forward which is I do think it's worth opening the budget back up again and looking at various different options including and maybe this means maybe the non-tax revenues doesn't actually mean opening the budget back up again but I do think there were I agree with you Jill that we don't have like a whole lot of fluff but I do think that there were things that we considered two months ago maybe of course we lose track of time that we didn't actually end up applying as far as cuts go because we didn't think we had to as the numbers we thought were becoming more clear that I think we could apply and bring our tax rate down even a little bit I I think while this was not a situation of our making I feel like it's not totally fair of us to say well we did the best that we could which I do believe we did and even though we have this new information we're just going to let the voters decide that doesn't feel totally fair to me and if we can do some things that will bring the tax rate down even a little bit this year I would not advocate for making the decision within eight days that would result in closing the school I just I don't think that makes a ton of sense I do think that we definitely need to have that conversation and we should have it soon in time for FY26 for just determining the FY26 budget but I do think that there are other things we could find that would bring our tax rate down even a little bit and it would make I think that is a responsible thing for us as people who have some decision-making power within this messy situation to at least say well on January 17th we thought we had done the best we could and now we're actually going to try and do even better that's where how I feel I'm having a lot of feelings right now about what's been discussed but I still agree with Jill that I would lean towards continuing with the budget that we've already been discussing I wanted to clarify on slide six where it shows like the value of your house and the amount of taxes that you would have to the tax increase the tax you would have to pay for a $400,000 house and maybe this is pristine but we're not showing the difference there between the 5 cap and the new 11 cent can the most recent one number that I could come up with was $869 that was with the 5 cap that was on a $400,000 house an $869 increase does that sound right with the five percent you want to know what it was so yeah like basically I'm trying to find out what is the dollar difference that a taxpayer now is on the hook for with this new version of Act 127 right it was a 5% increase that showed us you know on on December 13th you showed us that that would be an $869 increase from the prior year now it looks like it's going to be a $1034 increase I'm looking at a $400,000 house because I sort of agree with what Representative Casey said about houses I think you'd be hard pressed to find a $200,000 house amount failure so I think $400,000 house is more realistic to talk about but still that's only what so you're the $165 difference from the 5 cap to the 11 cent so it was $860 on a $400,000 house with a 5% cap and it's $1,034 in which equals out I think we figured out in our our administrative team meeting today is about $85 a month so so we figured out earlier so it's an $85 increase a month's a month failure annual increase over the 5% we don't have a math question here because basically what I'm getting at is this doesn't seem substantively different from the 5% I mean I agree with what Jim's saying is that $135 in a year can really go a long way to support people's family budget but I'm also leaning more towards what Scott said about this is going to have the heaviest impact on the one third of people that live in month failure that most likely can absorb that difference so I don't think if we're not talking about a huge difference here in an annual tax rate I don't see why we wouldn't just move forward because we already basically voted the budget through I think one of the things that one of the things I would point out with that logic is that the the 19% increase that was the 5% cap you all approved it but the voters didn't so there's a there's a good chance that could have that could short so let's put it to the voters and see what they think and if they don't agree with this budget then they can vote it down and then we'll be in a position to have to re-examine the budget and I think that will buy us a lot of time I think they're huge for this for us and actually in the state as a whole is that in many places school boards have no ability to change their their voters taxes at all right they were capped to 5% and then the cli and that there's nothing they could do and that's that's the situation that we were in unless we close main street middle school or something crazy right um but now we actually are in a situation where we can lower taxes if we wanted to um and the question is do we want to yeah like we could have caught we wouldn't do exactly like we would have kind of cut something like 3.4 million from the other one to have an impact so so we could say incredibly that you know yes like there may be worse and more things we could pull for the budget but it's not going to affect your tax right now we can say that I just want to go back to Jake's idea of putting fund balance and what's on the ballot that is going to the that has already been printed from the approved is 32046 114 which is our general budget 32 million 32 million million sorry million we're not in like 1792 comma there so i have Christina with me so that's our general budget now number not our education spending so i understand what you're saying is that we could put 1 million into our revenue sources from our fund balance and that would decrease the ultimate taxes that's not what's written on the ballot written on the ballot is the general budget and so that number wouldn't change if we did that right that would stay the same voters would vote it in or not and so we'd be in the position on a revote if it didn't pass you know like that the voters the board would have to decide that am I making sense like that revenue source wouldn't change the number on the ballot so i don't think it would influence a voters decision because that's not information they would have yeah it would be kind of like a promise to the voters right in that case like if they rejected that um budget number then we would have to go and change it but yeah so what i'm proposing is to leave the budget the same but try to lower their taxes yeah i think i just want to point out that that may not influence voter decisions and also knock on doors yeah because they may not know it right they may not be aware and that would be a one-hand injection we wouldn't get back yeah yeah that's a conversation i would like to have if we're going to actually do that i don't want to just decide let's use a million dollars for that i don't know if that's got a right right um we were under the impression that the five percent cap would go away in 2019 and there would be a cliff 29 29 and there would be a cliff and that's why we were wanted to take that money away from the track and and try to keep as much money in that general fund as we could there's no cliff now so we're hitting it now it's right it's now so it's it's right so it's no longer whatever you know the mindset that we had right trying to sustain that general fund so that we could avoid this cliff is now so that's a change i also want to speak to the idea of the lincoln situation and this is going to take a minute um as i've been going through this process it's been a grieving process i was in denial because of the school board wanted to close rbs it is not a sustainable model i fully appreciate that and then i was angry and then i was doing the bargaining thing and i was blaming people in my head um some things i said out loud um but um you know right now the families in roxbury that are part of the school system are having really great experience they're really having a great experience and some of them um and i will never vote to close rbs but some of them are saying it's a it's the best opportunity around for our kids and some of those folks are teachers in randolph and they've been teachers in northfield and a lot of people that have been in central randolph advisory union um i don't know exactly what the best thing for roxbury is if the roxbury village school is closed at some point whether it's through this budget process or a future budget process um but i know that this what the work that we're doing is to try to make this district the best that it can possibly be um there are a lot of questions about that long term this the partnership is different than it was when it started because whatever value roxbury brought there were two there were two different sets of values the first one was that there are weights associated with rural families and families under the percentage of poverty and all of these things free and reduced lunch a lot of that it's gone away um the other thing that roxbury brought from montpelier was montpelier is extremely progressive and it doesn't want the influence of less progressive communities as a partnership and the idea was if we get if we take roxbury roxbury is going to do as little because it's going to do very little to change our values and it's going to act as a shield so that no so that the agency of education doesn't force montpelier to merge with other towns that have very different values when lincoln left liby wrote a letter that talked about how difficult it is to have roxbury and that's we already have our problems so don't push lincoln on us because there was some idea that lincoln could potentially end up being forced to merge with us it was floated there was an idea that was floated um i i as i was freaking out i started dialing numbers at the agency of education i called probably 20 numbers before somebody picked up the phone i i did um and they connected me with the right person and then i was talking to people you know the secretary of state's office the withdrawal process is extremely complicated extremely complicated and what it would take and i'm going to say this is three people from roxbury who are committed and capable to form a withdrawal committee um that's not going to be me and it's not going to be christen because we don't have the time and we're committed to where our kids are now whether they wherever they end up as long as they're in this district um the process of withdrawal also involves asking a lot of questions what are the values what are the benefits and the costs financially of withdrawal or stay what are the benefits or the costs and from an educational perspective whether the a district remains intact or separates i feel like those questions need to be part of this board's mindset no matter what happens because there's been so many changes to the weights i don't know if anyone in roxbury can step up and create that committee but i feel like whether roxbury village school continues to operate or not and i hope it does obviously um i feel like there are a lot of concerns about the viability of this partnership in general for many people many people in roxbury are very conservative and didn't necessarily support it most things go right down the center in roxbury we had a junk ordinance vote and it was like 177 or 172 it's that's what i think about when i think about roxbury it's just like warring factions that can't work together um but we're trying we are trying we are trying so i i guess the point is like the people the kids the families that are part of more more peculiar in the middle school and high school are having incredible experiences i don't know that you know i don't know what would happen to roxbury if rbs was no longer rbs i and i understand it's not a sustainable model um i think that this is too fast obviously um you know there's a lot of there's a lot of homes in roxbury that don't have families in them because they're not suitable um and so when a town falls apart this is what you get you get a school that doesn't have many kids in it and that's nobody's fault here you know it's a long process there's so many factors i've gone through blaming every single group i can think of and i'm sorry i passed through the other side so i don't know what the point of that is but i think that we need to really figure out what are the values in our communities need to know what the values of what the benefits are of this partnership um because i think there are many i also think it's hard um transportation is hard um and i hope we don't open the budget i know scott you were gonna go sometimes ret and i are each of our half boats we have to sit together here on the board um i think i want to speak to the legislators right now and i think you can probably tell that we um this has just been whiplash you know i think what you're you're like having front row seats to the whiplash that we are experiencing um out of 127 and i think it does create a loss in faith and unsteadiness in terms of the future picture of what uh the education funding system looks like in vermont um you know this kind of fumble with 127 what we're hearing is that you know one option and it's been put on the table tonight is to close a school in the matter of eight days to reduce a budget by 1.5 million dollars the most likely place to achieve that is by the closure of a rural school that was to be supported in 46 that has been undone by 127 and as red has said does our community have its challenges absolutely there's a lot of really positive things happening in our community where people are trying to come together and change the future of our town okay this school is part and parcel of that if it remains a school it remains a school that is to be determined and the board has the purview to make that decision um should it become something else i ideally you know our community is ready and poised to have that discussion so coming back to we haven't had that discussion and i will say that the merger is still young this was 2018 that 46 happened it was it was several years of just kind of seismic activity of getting 140 getting 46 past landing and then we had covid okay which was a huge blip in progress i am i am so impressed with this district and how it is rebounded you know it was hell in that time these board members out here were cleaning schools that was one of their primary board functions okay our superintendent unbelievable helming of the ship through that storm and so here we are we're we're just starting to get you know some some homeostasis and then bam you know the meteor of 127 comes in i know i'm like it's a little bit of a retrospective but i feel like it's important for y'all to hear this because i feel like one of the best things that you could do for us right now is to work on the yield and the revenues you can see the stress that this is like this is one story and i gather you're you're collecting other stories but please do what you can to to get the yield to a place that it can bring down our tax rates so that we have the time to have the respectful compassionate um thorough conversation warranted about the future of the rocksbury village school okay if you drive into our town you can you know it is the heartbeat of our town the the the community connections the relationships that happen by way of the school are essential even to the student's success as they move into the middle school and high school if the parents aren't connecting there and they aren't creating those relationships i don't know how the kid gets home from like the tennis match or the soccer game because the facts are you know you're 35 to 40 minutes away so we need to think about what becomes of that building and the idea of fast-tracking that in a matter of of likely eight days i mean let's be real one point five million dollars the quickest way we're going to achieve that is the elimination of rbs and it's been talked about and i appreciate jim it is a really hard conversation to have and somebody did need to be brave i mean i said in an email today we cannot speak in big terms in this moment we have no time for that so but i am asking us to move forward with the budget and for the legislature to hear please do something about the yield get the yield to a place where we where all of our districts have a little time this has been pure absolute complete chaos of hours of lack of sleep and tears tough you know i like we are working really really hard out here and yes i'm rps is in this funky position we're like we're right in the middle um i would i would ask you to work on that second um i just they're like just based on what i'm hearing tonight it does feel like there's like the left hand is not talking to the right on these things in the state house and these are huge things and i know it's a big system you know it's an ecosystem and so all the pieces and parts do need to be working with one another to get us to this place where we have workable uh programs that are completely interrelated housing healthcare and none of these things can be separated from one another um so i i just feel that i i am i am inclined to continue with our budget the way that it is and to really message to the legislators please do something about the yield i do not feel that we have adequate time to do when uh mount mansfield decided to close the school um i mean it was a nine i was like a year long process to get to that to do the analysis to close a school it should be ample it should be significant and we should have the time and we should as a board commit to it and i'm like first to sign up to be on that committee and it's my community and it sucks and it hurts and like we're ready but let's take the time i think i'm done for now um i'll be i'll be just saying um for the same reasons that kristin and ret and emma and jake and jill and john before us um said i yeah i i am definitely not in favor of reopening the budget conversation um i think everything that you said jim i appreciate that you that you um had the courage to just start that conversation um but like ret and kristin and many others are thinking that decision that conversation doesn't happen in in a week's time and jake rightly pointed out that we have we have we have more money in our reserve account than we would save by closing rossberg i'm not available to us at all the board has 1.5 million in the fund balance available to them to hit the policy limit and that leaves the board $500,000 in their in their fund balance and i just also want to add i mean we did save that for the cliff which you thought was coming that looks like it's going to be a billy we have pcb testing going on u32 just has pcb problems like just because we have a million you know we abandoned a track project that that track did not that you've got a facilities report coming in in june about this building which we which came with an eight inches of basically being inoperable and unable to open eight inches of water just because we have $1.5 million doesn't mean we should just spend i'm just going to put it on there yeah i was just going to say if we reopen the budget we don't have to find a million and a half worth of cuts we could find a million or 500,000 i just wanted to reiterate even if we can do a little for our taxpayers i think we should um well i want to speak i know yeah well i i think we should consider using some of the reserve fund i think we need to take a really good look at roxbury but the time we have is not adequate to do that but i think we seriously have to examine that for next year's budget um year and um so if that means reopening it i guess we have to i feel like we worked really hard on this budget we cut everything we thought we could cut and i don't know that there's much more to take out of it um so i don't expect the line items in it to change a whole lot but maybe our revenue input can change a little bit by using some of the fund balance match set for public transparency too you know i the roxbury question has has been put out there and Mia and i have been reaching out to the rimondale school district right yes um who's recently closed to school we are looking to learn from them to see what community engagement that they um that they did you know we are looking at a report from mount nansill that closed to school uh years ago it's not we are not sitting on our hands on this we are giving attention to this um so just for public transparency i'm looking for us to know that five one other point to make too and that is um you know other schools are in the same boat that we are including u32 and we've talked and danced around actually in a different boat than we are a worse way there's they have bigger holes right they're not getting a discount um and um you know we've danced around this issue i think from way before when i was on the board about looking at combining and this may be a good incentive and we're both having building studies done by the same firm and i think you know this year would give us an opportunity to really have a lot more information and maybe a lot more motivation to explore that so i think that kind of a year's uh reprieve here to do more investigation would be helpful and there's no guarantee that that that merger would result in any sort of tax decrease for either community so no not to say that we shouldn't have the conversation but what we might find at the end of the discovery process and conversation is oh we actually wouldn't save any money by doing this but but i think it would be i i think we're at a point in time where i'm very interested in learning to answer these questions and i hope Washington Central is as well and we will you know as as you know liby and i started a conversation with with florin mega and i know my goodness going to say mics next year they'll be a new superintendent but we certainly intend to reach out in spring and and see where they're at and hopefully they're very interested in that conversation so i'm really interested in hearing from the rest of our community there's two things that i wanted to ask of our legislators potential fixes i asked the question about that the table right there was a convenient 11 percent effect on the change in pupils and 11 cents um why couldn't it be 22 cents or 17 cents right so so maybe that the the um the adjustment to some of the districts is tweaked slightly um from what it is presented um in in the current state um and then the other is i i still don't understand the change in 127 that doesn't allow for us to get the benefit from a rural school could that not be a legislative fix it it costs more money to educate students in rural districts we have a rural component to our district it seems like that could also be a potential legislative component we have like one of the we have like the fifth smallest school in the state and we don't get the small school incentive because we get the murder grant wasn't that because it's because we wanted to encourage people to merge and not discuss schools but i think we're going to do everything we can but the ed fund is a finite amount of money and unless we find something else to tax um and i'm going to look at j because we just we're always looking at that balance the state's budget is tight this year and we'll do what we can and we'll also be hit by the other side of town that needs a lot of flood relief and we had a hundred million dollars worth of damage too we have to cover um so we'll do our best but i think i would point out to and i'll say it so jake doesn't have to is that if you if you add more to the discount that's more pressure on the education fund and so there needs to be a revenue source to make up that pressure so if there's more pressure on the education fund the dollar yield is less likely to increase significantly or at pace i'm really trying not to put jake on the spot because i want him to be a school board member tonight but that has impact right so it's not while i understand what you're saying and i understand the intent of what you're saying it does impact other things that also influence our tax rate so it's it's not quite as simple the numbers that we're being thrown at us by representative cornhizer and representative conlan who's the chair of the house education committee was that they're there they were anticipating a hundred million dollar deficit by the budgets that were approved already and they were trying to make up about 50 million of that through the through changing the cap in the hopes that districts some districts who added additional monies would get rid of would open their budgets and get rid of that right and so now julia said the other day in the presentation that this center reduction mechanism costs the education fund 30 million dollars in order to um in order to happen first 100 something that the cap cost no the cap didn't cost 100 million that was just the deficit that they had that they are working with um i don't know if deficit sorry word but that was the anticipated pressure on the ed fund that was not anticipated at the passage of 127 okay it is it is 830 we have a very patient audience uh let's hear from you okay in the room and online in the room oh wait we have mariam come here yes sir okay last comment um i'm not usually a fan of process for the sake of process but i do feel like given our commitment to transparency and our commitment to our taxpayers we just need more than eight days to make a thoughtful decision about rvs i know my own opinions on the matter but i just can't stomach making a decision that big for students and a community in like barely a week i can't wrap my head around that um also i would support using the fund balance to lessen the burden on taxpayers but i would suggest that we reserve some of that money because we've just had such a chaotic past couple of years there's been a pandemic there's been a flood and not to disrespect the i'm sure completely good intentions of our legislators but i have no idea what next legislative session will bring just just mention pieces um and i really as to reopening the budget i really don't know and maybe i'll have an opinion by next meeting but i just i hear both sides of the argument i have no idea which one is better for the students yep um so whoever would like to speak uh come on up uh i'm not gonna keep strict time okay thank you um please please try not to to to make to blither on to say any more than you need to say sorry could we also ask the folks online to do their raise hand now if they intend to speak of course they can always change their minds as you say but then at least Anna can let Libby know how many folks are in the queue oh and you can see too okay that would help thank you go for it Tina uh Tina Muncie i live in Montilier and uh thank you for your thoughtful discussions for all of this um i have to say a 19 percent increase in my taxes on a fixed income is ridiculous and you did not see me or very much of me during the budget process and actually it's because i think you did a great job given the budgets we've had before and given the new law you did the best that you could with what you had in this budget so i don't know what you're going to decide to do with it but i'm going to ask you and i'm sorry to do this at this point because you have so many other things to think about but i think it's really important that you think about the future because it doesn't sort of matter what these people do it's it's not looking good for us no matter how it is and even though there's no longer a cliff uh i can't afford double digit increases for the next five years and i'm sorry to say that the only way i see to make a dent in this is to bring the students from Roxbury into Montilier and i believe that should take time discussion and good planning but here's what i'd ask you in the last couple weeks some several people have come to me and said you know i'm voting no on the school budget now why they tell me i'm not too sure but they do and um i don't know what to say to them and i'd like you whatever you decide tonight to to start now with that discussion to now when i say now i mean like next board meeting set up you were saying you've been doing things and that's great but let's set up the process what are we going to do so i can say to somebody who comes to me i get it i don't like the 19 percent or whatever it's going to be either but here's their process they're looking at it they're trying to figure out something to do next right because i have to tell you i don't know what to say to them and if you don't start a process i'm not sure i can vote for your budget next year so just think about that and before i go back to my seat i want to give you two facts fact number one is i was on the merger committee and the merger committee never promised rocksbury that we wouldn't eventually bring the students back in as a matter of fact we said if it's financially a problem we'll need to bring them back in the second fact is that despite that questionnaire the education department sends you at the beginning of the year which i thought had every question in existence nobody keeps track of busing i i called the department of ed and actually got somebody to answer well respond i didn't answer but they did respond and i went to the vermont principles association nobody keeps track of it so i called the five closest districts in our area and the average bus time for a kindergartner from home to school was between 40 and 45 minutes and some of them are on the bus for close to an hour so rocksbury falls even below the average for getting students from there to here thank you very much for all you do for our kids thank you i'm with dal and i think you guys need microphones either i'm getting old because it's very hard to hear you back there i wanted to thank you all for your work i think it's quite amazing that you're all serving and trying to do your best with everything i'm with me i love to see you open the budget again just as to tell taxpayer taxpayers i'm from montpelier and it's a lot of money that you're suddenly asked me to produce that would be a really good idea just to look at it also i don't think you have enough information right now because of what's happening in the legislature so you do need more time so i would really vote for opening the budget again and looking at things i also feel it is definitely time to have the rocksbury conversation it's time to bring the students to montpelier i think that i just i feel like that would save us a good chunk of money which would be which would be also important i also think the kids would get a better education being in the district with the services that we have also you know i agree with phil dodd we really need to look at you 32 there's a question of money but also the bigger question is what's the best education that we can offer our kids and that's something that really needs to be thought but i wholeheartedly want you to have the rocksbury discussion like tina said soon very soon because it's it's been lingering all over the place and i'm the can coordinator for the colonial drive neighborhood and you wouldn't believe how many people have talked to me about this budget and how horrified they are about what's coming down the line so i want you to know that anyway thank you for letting me speak you would go ahead i'll be quick i think i'm morgan loyde i live in montpelier i have two kids at the high school i'm a property taxpayer and a teacher at the elementary school i'm a little worried that i'm not going to speak well but i'm going to try to our board i just want to thank you for the really lengthy and thoughtful process that you engaged in to pass a budget or approve a budget to pass along to the voters i think it was a difficult process but i really believe that you did a good job uh it was hard but i want you to stick with it and stand by that budget um i think to our legislative representatives i really feel like there has to be a legislative fix to this problem that we're in it's not about how much money the schools are spending it this problem really stems from other issues like the cost of health care um you know i i think i'll i'll just come back to the the timeline that liby shared um eight days is really not enough time to do any kind of thoughtful process that impacts real people and by those real people i'm also talking about the hundreds of students in our district as well as the adults who serve them um we all sat through i sat through all of those budget meetings not the behind closed doors ones but eight days is not enough uh it scares me to think what we might do rapidly to cut some money from the budget our district will never recover from cuts that we make in the next eight days like closing a school that's not a that's not something that a community recovers from or a district and so i encourage us to take a longer view with this problem see what the legislature is able to do to help address the yield or the funding the ed fund um and i guess to the legislature i just i don't know a lot about this so i may be um oversimplifying but i see this impact on our community the balloon analogy is sticking with me but as taxes go up as a teacher i'm very gladly going to fork over the small raise that i get this year to fund property taxes and uh support my school budget that's where that money is going just to be transparent but i i think there are others in our community like tina who spoke um the impact on other families is that their rent goes up they families can't afford to come to school in this district anymore families who really would like to stay here and so i i think that taxes tax revenue comes from a healthy economy and a healthy community and i i see this sort of i don't understand how to say it but like as we destroy our schools by gutting them or raise taxes so high um i think we destroy the ability for our community to be a strong economy and i don't know how to fix it um but i hope someone in the legislature does so don't think we can cut our way out of this problem thank you thanks for it thanks for it i was here this i'm tom frazier i'm from rocksbury i was here when we first started this process and objected to the idea of closing rocksbury and i wasn't going to say anything tonight until that's the first thing that came out of your mouth about about solving the budget problem it doesn't solve the budget problem you still have that cost of rocksbury you have the busing you know i don't know how much it costs for busing but i saw a figure of 600 000 i don't know if that's for the whole system or just for rocksbury but it's the whole system well how much is it for rocksbury so you have to you have that you have the building to maintain you have a public water and a public sewer system that you have to maintain you know if you're not going to just walk away from this free you're going to have you know you're going to have to buy out out of our contract i guess it's what i'm thinking about but anyway the other thing is that after all this machinations about tax rates it's time for the legislature to finally take education funding off of the most regressive tax that's known to man and put it on the income tax and do away with all of this system and all this complicated stuff that you've got you guys you don't even know yourself how it works i mean it's just it it just boggles the mind you put a system in place with a five percent cap and then ten districts or however many districts not ten but you know a large number of districts take advantage of that and put the screws to the small to the ten communities that are really hard and what do you do you can the whole system you don't penalize the people that played the system you penalize everybody you know i just i don't understand why the legislature can't get their act together they've got the huge education department they've got all these superintendents all over the state and you just can't get it together here we are you think you're going to close a school in eight days i mean it's just unbelievable to me that you would even even say that let alone you know i know you think it but um but my my main point is it it's time to get away from the property tax everybody suffers under property tax you know two-thirds of the people are paying based on their income anyway so it's not that big a change and it's just time and it's just time that we get away from such a progressive taxes property tax i mean my my taxes on my house small house and center of the village five thousand dollars no fifty two hundred dollars last year i mean come on so thanks for what you do but not really uh i'm nathan suitor i'm a resident of montpiler and parent of two and i'm internally grateful to the school board and i'm turning this desk because i'm talking to you all um i'm pretty angry the fiction the trick that's being played on us is that the education fund is a finite number i don't think it's true it's only finite if you don't create new revenue for it right couldn't have said it better myself tom i found something on the uh department taxes website i might not have the figures correctly because i'm new to reading these things but uh in 2022 we had 382,000 people in vermont pay taxes obviously that's distributed depending upon how much you earn the looked like the total tax revenue 222 was one trillion one hundred million thousand one hundred million dollars if it's true that the projected deficit on the education fund was a hundred million dollars based on this cluster of 127 uh you divide that by 382,000 people that's 261 piece of income tax which of course would be distributed depending upon what you earn to tina's point so i'm working iron money tax me on that leave tina alone right and we tried to do that it sounds simple but we ended up there's no way we could tax the top bracket and not have impact while we try to keep it so we did we have studied that and we have tried it it does sound simple but it isn't when we start i don't wish to imply that it is simple neither is the property tax situation um i don't mind paying the property taxes either but i think that uh i am for a progressive distribution of the costs of raising all of our children when my children are out of schools i hope to pay taxes to educate other people's children that is the vermont way it's beautiful i think we could simplify it i think that uh approach to miss as though the education fund is inflexible is uh a mistake and i'm glad to hear that you have tried to take action on it push harder don't be bullied by our governor who is an austerity governor um the 261 per taxpayer has less than a dollar a day right obviously it's not a flat tax i think it can be done i think the pressure is on you all i think that in situations like this legislators from our pillar and from central vermont can lead the state by being visionary and being more progressive and i want you to play that role um thank you to the district and to the school board for all the work you do um keep working folks thank you i do want to interrupt him slow yeah and it just uh on you it looks like stand uh it's on the top of the list so uh yeah go ahead all right jem can you hear me okay yes thank you all right first of all i have three quick points um thank you all i haven't followed along very very detailed until five percent became 19 percent became 21 percent i have no idea how you adequately budget when numbers change that wildly i believe this group has done the best they can with what they have but also pushing a budget forward with the knowledge of the large increase um i think the community looks at this group as a leadership group and i don't know how you balance you know not taking action on that huge number when so many things have changed without some kind of messaging without letting the community know i mean do we want more time through voting this down is that the recommendation of the school board i i don't know how you've balanced that right but i think in inaction here not opening the budget back up or not signaling in some way that there's a concern here right they're not complacent with that number i think it it doesn't reflect well on the leadership group um that i think has done an immense amount of work rates it's hard to water down all that work to a single number on a on a budget and say i'm voting this down and i don't believe they did a good job right that's kind of Tina's point i think is that's how simple these this comes sometimes um um i so that's the first point the second point is i i've heard 66 come up a couple times in terms of income sensitivity on homeownership um there's there's two concerns that i have with that one i i think it represents homeowners which represent 55 percent of mob players residents uh 45 percent are renters right so you start doing numbers and it's not 66 percent of people mob player aren't going to pay more it's a much larger number um mob player by statistics is becoming a naturally occurring retirement community people are moving here and potentially having lower incomes or or no income i'm not sure how social security factors into that but we're we're driving out folks who have children i have three kids in the school system um these taxes impact me the income cap is not a lot for a household i know 120 000 sounds like a lot um with with two parents working you know the average cost for a mortgage of a home of my player is now 45 000 a year taxes are six or seven thousand dollars daycare is uh exorbitant right these these numbers add up and for folks who might want to come to mob player with children and grow our schools they're burdening that cost more more than anyone else and i think we're we're risking continued low enrollments by by driving the taxes up and i don't think that the school board issue uh i think others have done a better job addressing the legislature and the funding but i do think it's a reality that we're going to continue to see homes and mob players sold to older families who move here from massachusetts it's from you know places that are impacting through climate change and enrollment drop and tax revenue drop on those who are potentially more able to afford it so i i i don't like that 66 number i don't think it represents our community i would just ask that you consider what that actually means when we put it on you know the screen shots with the powerpoint slides or say it out loud um and and lastly to the folks you know legislators or folks who are suggesting more taxes um vermont is already the 47th highest taxed state in the nation um i think new york and connecticut potentially are higher than we are um these aren't all tax or revenue side problems and that's not to say that the school board isn't doing a good job or there's money to be saved someplace um it's just an observation that raising taxes to solve our problems all the time um again it's hard for us who are working with families so thank you again school board for all you're doing thank you legislators who have attended this um i appreciate it thank you thank you let me have uh it fills on again bill hi i'll i'll try and be brief this time first to comment for the legislators the figures where income sensitized uh payment of taxes kick in were set quite a few years ago i think it's 90 000 on the school side where you get full income sensitivity uh we've had a lot of inflation since then it might be time for the legislature to consider raising that level i think the the number on the super circuit breaker the 47 000 dollars in income which can help with municipal taxes is very old these numbers ought to be brought up to today's uh reflect their inflation and and make them accurate again i just have two other questions beyond that was the number you said liby the tax rate would go up 23.07 was that the number just want to get it right double check it for you so and and i'm also correct that the income sensitized rate would go up the same amount 23.07 it's in Montpelier the the budget as is with the 11 cent decrease in the assumed dollar yielded 9 7 7 5 is a 23.07 increase in Montpelier yes and that's the same for the income sensitized rate would go up the same uh yeah uh those those are big increases okay to be determined around the home income sensitivity yeah my my reading of the ways and means thing was that it was covering both but at any rate it's going to be a big increase for everybody we'll see what happens if this goes up on march 5th uh but could you just uh my final question could you explain again the timing if the budget is defeated sure if if we vote on town meeting day yes and so if we vote on town meeting day and the budget is defeated then the board has the seven days after the failed vote and the we would need to have a second vote we would hope to have a budget passed by march 30th at the latest that may look different in stat sorry i'm losing my voice that may look different in statute however march 30th is our ripped deadline in our contract so we would want to have an approved budget i'm sorry march 31st is so we want to have an approved budget by march 30th so you only have a few days whether you reopen now or have to reopen after defeat correct thank you anyone else online anyone else in the room just going to get another opportunity yeah um i guess our education spending number need to be finalized by i don't i just need to leave for childcare reasons and i'm not positive the answer to that so i i can't answer that i'm sorry back to the board right well if the cliff was going to be in 2029 and it's now then what we were we're keeping in our reserve um if it's 1.5 million is is is there a way to estimate how much using half of what is available to us outside of the policy requirement $750,000 is that gonna make a difference in anybody's tax rates i mean small chunks now whereas before little chunks weren't going to get us very far because of the parameters that we were under whereas now a lot of stuff we sort of said well that's not really going to get us anywhere and you know the community does deserve us to attempt to bring down the rate as honestly and fairly as we can and well i'm really i didn't want to open the budget because i didn't know whether there was an appetite on the board to close rvs in eight days but if there's not an appetite to do that then i want to help with people's tax rates and have a really robust and you know involved conversation about that second question over the next year um because everybody deserves that conversation um so i i'm wondering what $750,000 from the general fund would do to the tax rate i would get you back to where you were with a five percent cap i'm getting um so you know under our previous budget um and all the five percent cap we were expecting a dollar 34 tax rate um if we applied a million dollars of the uh fund balance our tax rate would be like a dollar 32 and not failure so it would be down two cents from what we were telling the community a couple weeks ago two cents is 60 bucks a year on a $300,000 house so i have a couple of really quick um process questions one is do we don't need to reopen the budget to change our mind on how much we take from the fund balance is that correct that's a communication challenge yeah not a reopening the budget challenge and i believe our parliamentarian made a motion at the beginning of this conversation i still do we need to have a motion to not do something that's a very proper question so we can let it we can um let it lie we can take a quick vote and let it not pass basically the board would have to make a motion to commit that amount of money from the fund balance the board does not need to do that tonight because it does not change the number that's on the ballot thank you it's a but like i said it's a communication dilemma but we really right it's a commitment to the community but what were you just saying your motion is to not i made a motion to not open the budget and it was seconded right yes and we're not allowed to make motions to not do something well we just can challenge that you don't need to it's a good point how about so there was something said during public comment um about facing a 20 increase every year for the next five years and i haven't had enough time to sit with this new version of act 127 and what it how it will likely impact our taxes but it sounds like basically we're hitting the cliff now and likely the tax increase will be much less in the following four years it depends on what we decide to do with our budget yeah our budget if you folks can remember we are increasing our overall spending by three and a half million dollars from f y 24 to f y 25 so i think it's more about that number that will impact the tax rate for the next few years kind of like going back to regular times yeah where if our budget increases if health insurance cost increase if we give a raise to the teachers like those factors will either raise or lower the budget but we're not facing this sort of inevitable five percent increase towards a cliff that's likely to be some insane number that was my understanding the only thing i add to what you just said is that for the next five years if this law passes that amends the transition period we would get that decreasing discount yeah it is really hard to anticipate what the dollar yield will do right which is a factor we can't control yeah it's also really hard to anticipate quite honestly what the what will happen at with our colleagues at the legislature over the next five years uh you know so is facing a 38 percent increase i heard from ryan today around that cold chester's at 24 percent increase like there there's significant increases across the board like they don't open it back up right yeah so um so there's i don't know how that's going to play out over the next few years because it's not like your budget goes back down right it's it's gonna stay at a higher rate and add from there or decrease from there so but it's not gonna last year it was 1.12 it was a dollar 12 it's not gonna go back down to a dollar 12 would be my that that historical number is no longer uh going to be a landmark for us right and sort of the reason why we support this legislation in the first place is that we're trying to equalize you know education around the state and so this this initial bump in taxes is hopefully going to go a long way towards doing that i mean i i think that would be the hope i mean so to me i i still feel like i i just don't feel like we have enough time i mean it's one thing to say eight days to make a decision on closing roxbury i think that's absurd but it's it's also fairly absurd to say that in the next eight days we as a board will have enough time to really make thoughtful decisions around other big cuts um so i i don't see and and then when you're talking of um two cent decrease with a one million dollar cut or influx of money wait wait can i just be clear on that yeah he said a two cent decrease from what we originally promised them not a two cent decrease from what we're looking at right now it's it's actually a bigger decrease from what we're looking at right now yeah right and six cents is how much for 300 180 a year 180 so yeah i i just don't feel like the numbers i'm feeling like the numbers aren't big enough to make dramatic changes in what we've already been discussing and and based on what we were presented with in terms of what could be cut it already feels like these are dramatic cuts basically like the budget that we're presenting is i mean i was starting to get very depressed about what education was going to look like in five years based on cutting that much out of the budget every year so i i don't see you know coming back to the voters with a dramatically different budget and in our budget discussions i don't really remember any you know low hanging fruit no that were of consequence dollar wise so and i don't i just don't know the value and going back to it unless you guys know of something that in your minds is is you know would be of consequence but i don't remember anything i think it's a board the board goes with the budget as approved and it goes down when you have we have more time slightly not a lot of time but more time and the administration is ready with ideas of what we could do for those decreases so there there are places that we could look that we would have to look quite honestly you have you have to change your first second vote you have to change your budget by at least a dollar right so i think we would need to change it more and the administration has had that conversation and will continue to have that conversation through town meeting day to make sure we're ready for that conversation what that discussion with the board in the community because it will have to happen quickly and so we're not going to come in blind you know like blind on that so i i would just say i don't recall any low hanging fruit but i do think back to the meeting that we had i think it was the first one in december when liby maybe was the last one in november liby presented those options to us those three options that had some you know different scenarios of what could be cut out to get us i think to 800 000 at that point was the number we were aiming for and there were a number of things in those options that wouldn't have a significant impact on our children's education and we didn't do because in the end we didn't think we had to so i wouldn't necessarily call them low hanging fruit but i that's the reason that i am in favor of reopening our budget is i think we could go back to those things and maybe that's what liby talking about when she says the administration team has stuff in mind um that i think i think it's worth looking at yeah and i i speak to harvard rbs and i totally understand that these days is a ridiculous amount of time to close the school i'm also very cognizant that in 2019 before covid we started working with a consultant about talking about the future of that school we kicked that conversation down the road it's now 2024 we have not had that conversation even if we absorb this cliff and as it takes pairs taxpayers to absorb this cliff we have to ask whether that continued expense given the expense of this district is taking on and passing along to our taxpayers for equity which i think is worth it but it is a real expense for taxpayers we have to have that conversation we cannot delay that conversation anymore the conversation has to start now it has to start seriously we can't just say oh all is fine we passed a budget we're not having this conversation i do not want to harm that town but it is a 36 person school that needs a real deep dive into whether it is the best expenditure for our taxpayers money that we keep asking is like well it's another 180 dollars what's a big deal an 180 dollars it adds up for people and it's adding up for people and we really we if we don't do anything if we don't open the budget we have to start that discussion and if the answer is that there's a viable sustainable path for that school great i am all for it but we have to ask we have to answer that question and if we are sitting here next year saying oh my god we can't close rocks where we haven't had the conversation it's our own fault we we need to start that discussion now if we're going to kick the cam down the road like we can blame the legislature for a bad law we can blame a Byzantine system but we owe a responsibility as leaders as elected leaders to not just do the best we could for kids for education but also to be responsible for our taxpayers and make sure that we we should be concerned about a 23 percent tax increase it's big it hits people in the pockets and i absolutely support education but we have a role in being responsible and eight days is a ridiculous amount of time i think we should do all we can in the next eight days if the idea is not to reopen the budget i am i'm okay with that but for next year we should be cognizant not just of the baseline where we are here but really looking at everything we spend and see if we can give the kids the education that they can have and perhaps maybe even a better education by looking at some of our our systems and making some big hard decisions if we have i haven't heard a civil war member either in public meeting or outside just one-on-one conversations ever say that they don't want to have the rocks very conversation so from what i have ascertained from my fellow board members everyone is ready and willing including public public meeting tonight our two rocks bring members raising their hands and saying i'll be on that committee so i i don't think that the inference that people are resistant to having that conversation is accurate um i i don't think people are actively resistant to it i think when i when when this board has has when when we've got up to it and sometimes it's actually happened before you you were on the board there's not there's not there's not a there's not a resistance and oh i won't do it it's a well before i have that conversation we need a deep dive into our values before we have this conversation we need acts there have been and i don't think it's intentional but there has been a reluctance to just dive in because that does that not true living i would agree with that when the facilities consultant report due may is that a i mean we could start soon we should we can certainly start sooner but we are 21st at least at least getting because that's that's a type of reluctance i've seen well we want to have the conversation but we've got this facilities report coming out in cheer let's wait till that and then the facilities report comes out it's like well boy would be really be great to get this study done too that's the reluctance it's not an active i don't want to start an rbs i would i would totally entertain that motion something i would make a motion that we start the committee to uh to explore the question of bringing rbs students to ues and starting the year 25 that was second i'll say that any discussion i just think it might as well start the committee and then that way when the new board members arrive after town meeting day we can assign committee members and and my strongest feeling is that this needs this committee needs to have um representation of roxbury like the roxbury community needs to be the ones driving the conversation around what happens to their school and if that is you know like ret sort of infer there's some people in that community that want to bust their kids to us you know those voices need to be heard i don't want to make a decision you know at this table with only two one-half votes from roxbury i think there needs to be like a long thoughtful process that include is inclusive of roxbury the roxbury community so i'm in favor of the committee being formed and can we ask for the company's charge to be a little bit broader um and not just be you know bringing roxbury students to union elementary school but um i don't know how to word it but what i'm thinking is like you know to help roxbury you know make a decision regarding your school and their participation in this district because um i think you know i think there are options especially with the new weights for them and i personally would like to help them and understand what's available um so yeah i would like i would be on the committee if it had a little bit of a broader scope yeah and i was paying attention to the roxbury conversation way back when we first merged with them and there was all this like excitement about the possibility that that space held at that time and it was like we could do a early language learner school we could do a nature-based program out there that would be for the whole district so i think i agree with jake just sort of like a broad sort of future use of roxbury and with the the question mark of like does it make sense to start busing those kids to ues so i will amend my my motion to that we started to explore the future of roxbury village school i mean i i think whether roxbury is a town participates in the district is a question for roxbury not the district i think we can examine the future use of the school including the possibility of moving because i wanted to be as close as moving possibility of moving rvs students to ues and refurbishing that building in a way that is most reasonably better for for yeah i think that's the participation of district through their call yeah but yeah and based on the the law the way to initiate that is for three roxbury community members to form a withdrawal committee then the district the board forms a a subcommittee that teams up with that withdrawal committee um and like i said it seems like people really are getting a great experience and we're hearing 50 minute bus time it's a you know everybody throws their hands up so i just i think that it's a really the law is is very calm makes it very very difficult for a withdrawal to happen once the withdrawal happens then you have to have the select board become essentially like a de facto school board for the town and then you have to petition to other town to other districts and then every town in those districts has to have a vote to accept roxbury so based on the law it's almost impossible to separate here um because you have what do you do while you're waiting for other towns to have the vote to see if they would accept you or not but once i got into it i was like oh jesus this is really hard like and i think it's designed that way because it's not designed for a tiny little town that makes up 10 percent of the population of a district it's designed for towns that are 30 percent of a district whereas if you pull out 30 percent you destroy what's left whereas in this case you pull out 10 percent and it's not going to have a big a big impact but that's the way the law is written it makes it really difficult i imagine that's probably pretty complicated but i know that there's precedent um lincoln just withdrew very similar situations um so i think it's possible i'd like to learn more about it um and you know the the thing is like about the student experience if roxbury did have its own district then the middle and high school students could go to the schools that they wanted which would include Montpelier so you know that's true there's no there's choice there is a choice only and we're going out of radical here but only if roxbury is its own district in which case they need to hire a superintendent they need to hire a special edu a special education director they need to have a central office running their finances with a business manager and that that that expense is a lot or they have to join a different district and if they joined a different district then their students would be going to that high school i would be happy to talk with you offline but i mean i've paid attention to lincoln and kind of some of that dynamics and how to sit out and give you some perspective on just you know how some rocks roxbury folks who've been very engaged with us over you know a good decade and how they kind of thought about these things so i'd be happy you know cup of coffee or two um so we have a new motion it needs a second i would like to add just to a discussion when it's time okay would you please clarify the amended motion now that to have a discussion about the future of the roxbury village school including exploring the option of moving rbs elementary students to us in the year 2026 and repurposing that building in a manner that is most beneficial for the roxbury i'll second that discussion and i just would like to say that i am very motivated to have this conversation on behalf of my community members and the parents of young people you know young young children who have no idea what their fate is and they are really wondering you know how this is going to play out for them and where their kid is going to go to to school and if they're going to be bused and what it's going to look like and they too you know as as as does not feel you're deserve a discussion and a decision so i just would like to say it's both of our communities that absolutely uh that we need to do this wayfinding on behalf of both both communities does it make sense to write the charge in the committee composition before having a vote or that could happen after it might it might sound better after okay um me yet i don't know if we can me wants to talk for it she does i'm just texting anna to me we're about to get you you go ahead me up there you can hear me yep great i just wanted to say i am also in favor of creating the committee that's all any further discussion and jill just for the record did you officially withdraw your previous motion i can't i think i can't even though the second right yeah you can't okay i'll i'll hold it for a second i'll withdraw my motion to not be something okay whatever that was i just wanted to be clear for the record that was withdrawn uh so uh all those in favor of the motion i just proposed i any any nays any abstentions thank you now and and i just i i'm glad i'm glad we got here i really believe that community deserves well more than eight days but i think our taxpayers really deserve uh with the numbers deserve us to make sure that doing all we can not just provide the best for kids but to do so in a way that's that's financially responsible um i think we're a motion you know do we have sort of motion to adjourn are we yep my understanding is we're keeping the budget the way it is the way it is john autumn we'll be very happy yes uh so what do you guys the clerk so jake were you saying that if we didn't add like took a million of our fund balance towards the overall budget it would reduce the tax rate but by two cents which didn't seem to be by more than four cents so with the new transition mechanism yeah we went up four cents from what we were expecting and if we did the one million dollars we would go down six cents so we'd be two cents under what we had been telling the community a couple weeks ago i i suggest a lot of the 21st because i suggest we hold off on that discussion until we see what the voters do because as you stated earlier there are some significant expenses that could be coming our way and i would be very nervous if we used our entire fund balance now without knowing what our voters are going to do without knowing what the dollar yield is going to do with all these unknowns i would like to have that shored up a little bit prior to spending significant amounts of our fund balance because of really a prospect of peace and peace in this building quite honestly and just i think i've asked it twice there's no reason we need to do anything the ballot language would not change yes the tax rate would change but the tax rate could change for the dollar yield too um in terms of the dollar yield it's going to have a bigger impact on yes and it sounds like our legislators are open so i say the board keeps it as is doesn't make any decision now and wait if the budget fails then we'll have to make some decisions but we're not in that position right now well if the budget fails you know we can't address it with fund balance it would have to be actual changes to the budget yeah um but we could do both i mean we could we could make some small changes to the budget i mean you know this is you know we have to cut at least a dollar and add fund balance and communicate the community that you know that we have added fund balance to change the tax yes i just wouldn't want the budget to fail and then to be faced with closing rbs and a really dramatic and drastic speedy process so now i agree that and you know one of the reasons that i wanted to sound record is having an rbs process so that's part of yeah so we can respond to this to a failed budget is that we're established to draw a rbs future committee yeah the vr even before a failed budget yeah i think before a failed budget i think they tell them i don't know i like that sunny disposition yes yeah how about before a budget folks so that we voters are informed that we are being brought be brought even worse even worse okay well before adjourn thank you so much for um for all your work i know that you've probably gotten beat up a little the last few weeks um but uh yeah we certainly supported the law that you said behind the law was the right thing to do and we thank you for it and we know the mechanism was wrong but um we are very thankful for your attempts to fix it uh and i i think we will be thankful of those next year when hopefully the you know the ed fund is on a more sustainable path than it was with the cap so we really appreciate you coming and uh sticking with us for three hours because i know you've had probably a long week already uh so so thank you thank you very much um and and thank you for sticking through i saw you you do some some parenting as well i'm sure you're tired also so uh thank you all uh and amma again uh thank you so much for all your service at the board take your name plate and your bedroom door now your service has been tremendous uh including tonight so thank you very much and you want to make the final motion to adjourn i move to adjourn second second uh all is in favor great thank you