 Well, greetings. I'm going to call the meeting of the finance committee of December 7, 2021 to order. And it's exactly two o'clock, so we're right on time. And see if I can get the agenda available to us and that'll help us to start the meeting so do you have the agenda or shall I I'm getting it right now. Okay. So I think that everyone is here and we're reason I partly needed is just to curb off the notes of what I need to be reminding people of regarding the meeting but I'm going to go ahead right now and take attendance to the committee and make sure that everyone can hear me and be heard and so let's start with Bob Hegner. I'm here. Bernie Kubiak. Here. And Lynn Grusmer. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Dorthy Pam. Dorthy you're here. Here. Yeah, it's hard to unmute. And Matt how all the way. Here present. Okay, so we have everybody here in pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted by a remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so I zoomer by telephone. No interest in attendance to members of the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the meeting in real time by technological issues. I noticed we have some additional people in the room. And Yeah, Andy I invited some additional guests for the reorganization plan their representatives from the implementation team that will help with some of the questions that were asked. Okay. Before we just so I know is everybody for that discussion currently in the room. There was a request to not start that conversation before 230 because there's one member who I think is hoping to join, but can't join before 230. Actually there's a there's two members one staff member and then a member of the implementation team who can't be here till 230. So what I'll do is when we get to that agenda item. I will have you introduce the additional people who are present, but hold it off for now if that's okay. Yep, that sounds good. And so we're going to we're still looking at the agenda that's on here. And so I want to go through the agenda with everybody just to make sure that we understand what we're doing and kind of briefly overview it and then come back and actually turn into it. The budget guideline discussion I'd rather complicated last night because it was not. There were a lot of comments and a lot of suggestions made. And I did receive from Mandy a memo of her comments but I have not had chance to work with them. A lot would be a useful thing for me to be able to do, but I was not able to do it for today's meeting is to go through the current draft as we was submitted and listen to the meeting that section of the meeting again, because I wanted to make sure that when you read manage the meeting was very helpful and that you did it in order of the actual documents so that by listening I can make sure that I capture all comments and not based upon notes that were taken last night during the meeting and what one member sent to me. So, but I do think it's important that we have a discussion about the guidelines discussion from last night, and try and get our own sense of what the highlights were and what our reactions to it were. And how we might want to frame, frame responses on it and I saw come back to that in a minute. The financial policies and objectives, I would propose to put further down on the agenda, because it sounds like we want to try and get to the financial consequences of the two reorganization plans of 230 and I think that that's a high item I would propose for the committee to deal with it has serious financial implications to it. And we know that the deadline is coming up just a couple of days for the public forum so we want to be able to frame the comments so I think that the importance of those two items say that we should move that up and as much as we can. And we'll talk about the work plan. Later in the meeting, I won't say much more about that. All right, with people with everybody on the committee anybody who has questions about it or suggestions for a different approach please just raise your hand. Okay, seeing none. We have two attendees. And I don't know if either one of them has any public comment that they wish to offer. If they do, I asked that they raise their hand, seeing that there's neither of the current attendees has asked to be recognized. Then, let's talk about the guidelines. I think that it's very important that we actually take a couple of minutes as members of the committee, each of us go through and maybe state what we think were the major takeaways in whole that we heard last night. I've been thinking about this all day. So, and I've imagined to some extent that you have to. So, that, I thought that that would be more useful when going through the edit process because the edit process, I'm not sure wouldn't be better done. But the method I talked about. Do you want me to start as somebody else want to start and talk about what they said, Lynn. So, one of the things that I heard was that people wanted some redundancy in terms of things that were stated. And I think that's a stylistic issue. I think it's something that we as a committee can make a decision about, because pulling all into the memo almost creates a new memo. That's one observation. There's others. Okay, Kathy. I think Bob had his hand up first. But that's all right go ahead and then I'll call them Bob. Lynn, I heard that a little bit but I also thought there's an artful way to do it like the first time we mentioned something mentioned it with a full definition and or throw it into a footnote, you know, on the page. You know, you don't do a large thing so even one of them was use the words in one section and say we discussed this more later, you know, so that it's that we don't, we try to minimize the repetition. But it's, you're right, it's a style issue. You're going to get to it later, but I'm going to tell you you're going to get to it later. Anything else that you have any takeaways of your own observations and that I'm going to call Bob. Well, just the one other is that on tone. At least one person but then another wanted us to be stronger, you know, to get rid of start to do something and say we will do something. And to be more explicit. So, and I thought those were good suggestions you know if we're going to do this long a memo, we might as get provided a recommendation to the extent there's consensus about the recommendation. I'm done. Okay. Yeah I just want to echo that. I agree that one of the comments that resonated with me was that the document should be more direct. If we want something to happen, we should say it should happen, rather than kind of being polite. And then the second thing which I think we don't, I don't think we can address it this year. But I think maybe next year we ought to think about it is to make this document shorter and more succinct. One of the comments I heard was it's very long it's very involved. And I can see how, you know, the reader could be lost in in in the document, and maybe if we could be more succinct. And not, you know, maybe if we have to reference things maybe reference them through footnotes or something but I think it might be punchier if we can figure out how to make it more succinct. I heard that too. And I guess, my comment on it was that we tried to do all things tall for all people in one document and I think that we're trying to get caught up in it because we also were trying to use it as a way of providing information about the whole budget process and financial status of the town for new members of the council who are taking office in January. And I think that by making it one document as opposed to doing two different documents. We may have gotten that confusion. Dorothy. I'm not in total agreement with some of the comments. I think clarity is essential. And that is using clear names and using the same names when you refer to things. You might want to do something like, like four bullets at the top of the document that just sum up each section in one sentence. If somebody just wants to know, are we good, is this okay, is this okay, that'll be fine for them. Because we're supposed to be a transparent government, we can't really have exquisitely, finally honed documents that are really understandable by experts. So I mean, I do appreciate what you were doing, Andy, you were trying to explain and give some context for the complex actions that are going on. So I did not have any criticisms on your length. But I think some people, I mean, given that we're just inundated with documents might want like an abstract, you know, academic articles often have an abstract. This could just be a series of bullets summing up each of the points, each of the sections to let people know more needed to be done here or whatever. But I thought if you were communicating. And some of the suggestions were to do with just simple noun naming, which I agreed with. And sometimes that means a little repetition. And truthfully, I think the fewer the footnotes the better, but if you have a chart, you can have an appendix. I see an appendix. Better than footnotes. I mean, people academia is getting rid of footnotes, pretty much, or just put them at a section at the end notes, because I know a lot of people just don't want to go into that detail. I mean, given the fact that we have a lot of new people coming on the council if they want to try to read one of the finest committees documents. I think they'd rather read something along the order that you wrote, because it does give them some information. That that's my response really as an English teacher. Okay, well, no, that's helpful. Kathy did have earlier in the process suggestions about using bullets. And we ended up moving the bullets into a different document that was went to the council at the same time, which was the committee report, Pat. I agree with a lot of the comments about things possibly being shorter and more direct. But for me, the biggest takeaways were the emphasis on developing, you know, really developing strategic partnerships and things like that. So I'm less concerned because I with the with the structure of the document and much more concerned about the content and substance of it. Okay. In my observation that I'm going to share and then go back to Lynn. It's a little bit on a different side. I was struck by the fact that we had a message in there about limitation of resources. And I think that the limitation of resources message didn't get through. Which is in a way, okay, but not okay. The way it was okay is that people were willing to put forth what they saw as the needs to be that they would like to see in the budget. But they didn't do it wasn't structured in a way that they recognize the choices had to be made by adding things you have to figure out how you're going to pay for them. And so there was a little bit of a loss of the ability to focus on that question. And, you know, there was a suggestion of a very large capital purchase, but no discussion of, well, if you do that large purchase what large capital need or you're not going to address. And I think that was what I found for me most difficult. Because I think it was important that the council actually provide that guidance that's what guidelines are for, but it needs to be framed in a different way in order to do that and it's not going to happen. In the rewrite of this particular document because we're part of the process already. Yeah. Along the lines of the idea of introducing something once or speaking about it and then referring later. I also think that to the extent we can use the same labels that are used in the town managers goals. For example, climate action for four major capital investments. That that then relates back to that other document. But my reason for now wanting to speak was there were two specific recommendations that I heard one was to strengthen the paragraph about the ladder truck. And the other one at which I totally agree with but also don't want to ignore the role of JCPC in making recommendations about financial investments. The other one that I heard was the one that Darcy sent to Andy to you and I in advance, and that was to double the amount of money for the climate action from 100,000 to 200,000 in this year's budget. Both of those are much more directive than we tend to be in this memo. And so I think it, it's worth discussing, if that's something we want to do. And it gets back to what I was just saying when I was commenting, which is if we are more directive. We also need to be providing help to how the choice is being made and where the resources are coming from to pay for that. Bernie. I'm in agreement with a lot of what's been said so far. I did. There was some concern raised about the, the goals that are set for the town manager versus the content of this document and how there might be some conflict of that confusion between the two. And I do, I did notice that, well, we tried to provide some examples and be somewhat directive. It's like the latter truck people did then came back and said, Well, if you're going to add that add more and more and more. So, I also agree with Andy that there wasn't sufficient emphasis put on difficult choice making difficult choices. I mean there's always greater need than there is money. And that's what makes this, this whole process so interesting and troublesome at the same time. I also think the document probably be made shorter and focus more on taking a look again at the town manager's goals and maybe focus in a bit more on that so that we're in sync with town managers goals and we're giving some direction around that. Getting the goals sufficiently in advance of doing the guidelines in order to be able to do that. And is that something we need to be thinking about as holistically as a council. Kathy. You know, I think all these comments are in line with the goals, Andy, so I don't think we have to. For example, on the strategic partnership, the goal wording is now execute rather than investigate or explore. So if we can borrow those words here. Explicitly not just you mess but also embers college and Hampshire college. And in our document I think it should be in the context of revenue. You know, said that it helps us pay for the town services so it felt to me, you know climate action is a central goal that we've separate. So I think I love Kathy's frozen. Yeah. Not a paragraph. Oh, he's back. Kathy can you. Oh, was I was lost you. Oh, sorry. I didn't lose myself. I, I can see everyone. I just said, okay. Tell me if this is repetitive. What, what I said is I think the comments last night and some of these are aligning it with the goals, we were explicit in the goals this year about execute strategic partnerships. So if we strengthen the language here and put it in the context that it's revenues from the town and we need the revenues to pay for services. Climate action is a clear goal, and we were weaker here and I think it's just adding a sentence we were weaker than we were last year. But I, I do want to go back to, I don't know whether there are maybe four bullets up at top, but in the context of limited resources we have to make choices. We need revenues, you know, augmenting revenues is important. But if we could come up with four or five, it's a reader's guide to the big messages in this long document, so they don't get lost. I just want to mention in relationship to do we have the goals. It's a much larger discussion the next council needs to get more realistic about timing of different things for the next step. So we have the evaluation goals. Now we do fiscal guidelines. Thank you. Yeah, which is a something we can suggest that it really is a matter that gets back to the president vice president is our agenda setters. Because you guys manage the process and we need to fit into the process. I don't know if it is a charter but that's something that you would be considering. Yeah, I. So I guess the question is, is it really possible for us to do an edit today or do we need to come up with another process and look at our meeting schedule I think that to my sense is to try and do another today is not a good use of our collective time but I'm willing to hear from others. Yeah, I, I totally agree. I think if you send the document to us again, maybe even the word document we could make some suggestions, but Andy, we've got the two reorganization plans and a transition memo even, even, although for the finance committee, a transition memo is a much different thing than the other committees, because the council is not going to be able to vote. Oh, we're not going to pass a budget next year. As part of its decisions on what not to do. So I think we should move on. If we're done with this conversation and take advantage of the fact that we have this growing group of guests. I want to agree with Lynn and I took quite good notes last night, Andy so if you send us the word document and we, and I mark it up and send it just back to you, you could, and then I know Bob, it sounds like Bob was taking notes. I can be pretty specific on where I thought what needed to be changed, and you got things directly from two people so I think we could come together with a marked up copy that could then be discussed if we have meeting time but I wouldn't do I don't think we can do it here. Yeah. The two classes of things because one was is there was some very specific requests, and then there was some global requests like make it shorter make it more succinct. You know, be willing to repeat but those kinds of things which are more large writing kinds of questions so it really fell into two different pieces. But to conclude this. So the plan is I will send out to the entire committee document that as it was finally in his final version in the word format version. We're trying to avoid doing that. When I don't want to this, but this time we do want that it's. And, you know, use your markup provision ability is going to be difficult for us to go through assembling all of the different pieces but I think we'll try to do the best we can. We have to take charge of that I guess, because we need to. We can't do it other than you sending things to me and be sending things back to the entire committee, but we're not creating. Otherwise we'd have to do it. We'll go through another open meeting which we will may have to schedule. We'll talk about that and at the end of the meeting as to whether we ought to be scheduling another meeting. So if it is okay with everybody else. Then I want to ask Sean to introduce everybody and to make a suggestion I assume we want to do the Crest program first. Thanks Andy. So I'll introduce everybody and then I think what I was, if you're okay doing this was I was going to go through the questions that have been were sent ahead of time. And just sort of let speak who wants, who wants to speak on each question. Is that okay. Yes. Okay. So we have several members of the implementation team that are here with us or people have been supporting the implementation team so we have Brianna all in who you all know and was on the community safety working group same with Russ Vernon Jones. Chief Nelson has been part of the implementation team along with Jennifer moist and and Mike curtain has been supporting that effort as well. And Jennifer I think Alicia is planning to join as well from the from the implementation team those are the two co-chairs of the community safety working group. And then last person who will probably join in a few minutes is our HR director, Donna Ray can nearly to weigh in on some of the questions on staffing, or on how, how different salaries were determined. So, the first question we received was has the town considered a contracted out model. In addition to the development of an in house model. So, I guess I'll look to Jen to sort of maybe delegate who would be best to respond to these has the has the implementation team Jen looked at a contracted out model or or has it only been focused on sort of the in house program. So, we used leap had suggested that we were recommended that we use in in house, as opposed to out, contracted out model, mainly for several reasons, the existing programs that have several existing programs have stated that hiring as city employees improves retention and relationships within the city agencies. The town employment is more stable and likely to retain good employees and other reason was the team would include both behavioral health and mediation responders. And there aren't there aren't any local organizations that would be able to cover both of those things and then the town would also be able to control hiring. And this allows the town to appropriately appropriately value the diversity of responders. It also creates a better relationship between the departments that exist already within the town the police department dispatch public works fire. And then I would just say Russ Brianna Mike or Chief Nelson do you have anything to add to that. No, and Russ. I would say that the community safety working group felt very strongly that they wanted the crest responders to be town employees for many of the reasons that leap cited. And it was our understanding that that was what we recommended, and what the town manager budget and then the town council approved. Okay, I will go on to the, do you want me to see if there's any follow up questions from committee members Andy before I go on to the next question. Or just keep going. Why don't we do this for this and future ones. If questions arise in your mind as you're hearing the reports and each question. Raise your hand and then Sean will know that you have a question. And I will give about 15 seconds to see if anyone raises their hand and if not just go ahead and go to the next one. Okay, for future use the raise hand function please and that'll help to let everybody let Sean know you have a question. Okay, that sounds good. So the second question. Oh, Bernie. We got lots of questions. Bernie. Yeah, well no I just, I understand some of the rationale behind having the having the community responders be direct, direct hires, but the Department of Revenue recommends when you do something like this that you look at maker by. And so there should be some, I think, attempt to look at buying the service rather than simply making it. The other thing that happens, and cahoots gets to be the model for just about everybody in this stuff is good as a private clinic. And you lose, or you don't have rather you need to gain those variety of clinical resources and connections that having a vendor operated program may be able to bring in. So you have, you have the opportunity to do respite, you have the opportunity to detox, you have the opportunity to do information referral. There's all important components to making this thing work. And it just, you know, it becomes, it becomes important over time to see how this operates, and how you have those, those clinical and social connections made between the team and various providers in the area. Most of them are all of them will be tax exempt or not for not for profit organizations. So one thing I would say in response to that is, I don't think there's necessarily a good by example of an agency after that's doing exactly what the implementation team is is focused on. I think mental health programming is part of it, but you know what I've read it goes much, it goes beyond mental health programming that's not just mental health programming. And I think that's part of why the buy might not be as much a viable option here is that we're really creating a program that's sort of brand new. There's not necessarily a model out there in the area that can come in and say we've got this here you go. A lot of it's going to have to be developed here either way. No doubt that whoever does this is going to have to develop it because this is not something that comes off the shelf. And using in contrast the Northampton report, which covered the same ground, but was much less prescriptive and prescriptive and coming up with a solution to this. So Northampton is taking a more open ended approach in fact, the Northampton report encourages the city to look to the various organizations that operate in it and that it may have relationships with it. And I understand this is new. And I understand that anybody would have to build this from scratch, but that that's still, it still leaves the option of, you know, it still has the option of a purchase is still out there now we're headed in this direction this is something I'm something I'm very supportive of. I just want to make sure that we've covered all the bases and this thing really works. Thank you. Thank you, Bernie. And the other thing I'll just add quickly is, I think most of you have seen we do have a DPH grants for the mental health side of this program. Sort of the clinical portion of where referrals can be made we have a DPH grant that we're working with a partner from Springfield who will set up offices here and then referrals can be made to that to that group. And at some point we'll bring that group in to talk with you all I imagine. Dorothy. I'm assuming that if they're hired by the town, that means they'll be bound by the same policies that other town workers are and get the same benefits or, you know, however they're paraded or whatever. And I think that to my mind is you're doing this because you get more control and perhaps better relationship of these new people with existing town workers is that part of the rationale. I don't want to speak for the town manager but I think that again that the recommendation from the CSWG was an in-house program. And again those like as you said Dorothy those employees will be the same as all the other employees in town in terms of benefits so I think it does give you more control when it's an in-house program you can make adjustments to the program more easily than if it was an agency that have their own policies and procedures. Lynn. Yeah, I'd like you to think about it's not an all or nothing. It might be that we hire a lot of the same types of people, but then we contract with maybe this group in Springfield that gives us a broader range of say mental health services that we can hot then we can hire in any one individual. So we would still have a lot of town employees, but we would have an agency that gives us breadth that we can't get in any one individual. Kathy. I'm looking at the budget that have been presented to us so I agree with what Lynn just said as an approach. So, as this is evolving, would we have a fund that allowed for that kind of flexibility to be purchasing a referral, you know, so right now we're going to get that line items for people health insurance pension vehicles. So you for to do what Lynn just said, in any given year you would have to have resources somewhere in the town that allowed, allowed for that kind of. You know, you would have to go forward specialized purchases because you could imagine over time you would know roughly what you would need and you would need you had a referral agency and it was a steady flow with a partner, you know, rather than, rather than this year we would have, you know, so you'd like to develop, you know, I long term relationships with entities that you would like to be in a long term relationship for for these wraparound services extra services whether. So it's a question of the financing of all of this which is, I didn't send my questions in because I forgot, but I'll ask them as we go along. Other good comments I think again the DPH grant is sort of bringing that initial presence of a mental health provider group that the town can work with. And then the other piece to that is we still have significant funds in ARPA that are intended to build out a more robust mental health network in town. So we're going to get this first group in to see how to transition them in and then our next step would be to look at those funds and plan for the long term. But those funds were intended to incentivize mental health providers to come in here and develop a sustainable model for how they would continue beyond the grant. So, so I do think we're allocating those resources to the grants that we have to try to build out that network, just for the town in general but also for the community responder program or for the Crest program to have as a referral service. So I will go to the next question so is the leap report available so I think I don't know Jen is it public public yet I know it's almost ready to be posted I imagine. So both leap reports there was one that was done specifically for the CSWG on policy on the police policies and then there was one that was the leap report for Crest programming, and both of those are found on the CSWG website at the bottom of the page under resources. Good. And I read through the latest one and somebody from the implementation team can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it reinforces the number that was added to the budget, or that we're proposing to add to the budget in terms of the staffing level. I believe it recommends at least staffing for teams of two responders is that correct Jen or anybody from the implementation team. I read through the executive summary and I thought I saw that Russ. I'm not sure how we should should say that I think we've used those numbers because they understood that was the current reality and Amherst. I don't think that they were making an independent recommendation. If everybody else then you can read the report and make your own, your own judgment on how to read that report. Thanks. I believe I sent the report to Athena as well so that it could be added to a packet if needed, or forwarded to the finance committee members. Good. So the next question is what is the proposed staffing pattern, how many teams per shift, and is there any planned reduction for the police department budget for the year upcoming. I'll start with the last one and then the turn to the implementation team for the first two so in terms of the planned reductions for the police department budget. There's nothing planned at this time for the police department budget, or for any budget for that matter we're still developing the budget proposal for next year so. In terms of the proposed staffing pattern and the teams per shift for the crests program to somebody from the implementation team on a way in on that. Russ. Yeah, we're looking at having one team on duty, probably 17 hours a day. In other words, you know, two different teams, but there will never be more than one team on duty, but we're aiming for 24 seven response. Although some of the wee hours of the night that will be on an on call basis rather than on site basis. Is there a correct rest that the model you're looking at right now as a for on to off schedule. Yes, in terms of the days okay like similar to the police department or police officer schedule or to the police. Okay, exactly. Jen did you want to add to that. No I was just going to include that it was four days on two days of rotating. Okay. So the staffing pattern is the proposal includes a director and administrative position and then eight community responders at the present time. And then we will because of the BPH grant that we, we received again we'll have this mental health support but we will also have a program implementation position that specifically on helping implement this department and adhere to the requirements of the department. And that'll be a temporary position that that second one. Kathy. As, as you think of the two people that are on in any given shift. If a call comes in where the response isn't by phone, you really want to go out and it looks like it's uncertain. The responder could handle it by themselves because an uncertainty of what the situation is. Is there a vision that you would in the first year or so be trying out. One police person going out with one Crest person, or would it be two teams of each going out what what's the thinking is when I'm looking at what some of the other programs have evolved over time and it's not instant it's it's the judgment calls on this case it should be pulling one from each side, because of the likelihood of eating it, but you don't necessarily know that right at the beginning so what's the thinking of, you know, learning over time shared the shared with us. And I don't know whether EMT would ever be part of this too so I'm just thinking you know that, you know, the, the situation seems to need a combination of skills. Why don't we start with Mike and then go to Russ for that one. Mike. Thank you. So there's a lot in that question. I think it's been decided on is all the calls will be originating out of the dispatch center. So there won't be a whole lot of calls that are go to the Crest group to start with. So that office in the Crest they won't be picking up too many calls they may be there for us to transfer a call to it's not an emergent call. In the whole circle here we need to decide what type of calls Crest is ultimately going to be going to in the beginning. And that's something we've been working through Leap had some recommendations, but that's going to come down from the town manager's office in the department head's office, what type of calls Crest will be going to. So originally any calls that Crest is going to are going to be of the nonviolent no weapons involved. So history of violence, most type of things so they'll be fairly the safest calls that we can determine the communication center through our protocols. There's always a chance that we may send a Crest team to a call and they may have to call for some backup or call for police officer when they get out there. We've discussed some code issues with the fire department and Crest showing up and there might be some code violations it's a fire department needs to know about so we'd have to send the police and the fire department over. Those are things that we're working through, but to start the way that at least I believe the program will work is the Crest team will be going to the safest possible calls that we can send them to and see if they can expand their role from there. I'm not sure if I got all your questions in there but I mean I follow up with just one example. That was, to me, it made sense answer. Thinking through aside from some kinds of community issues that will come up. One in neighborhoods that may have loud parties at night working with students we have one. We have a community liaison police officer, would there. These are not necessarily violent, but you need to be able to speak with an authority have we talked about potentially using Crest staffing for that so it's, it's, it would usually be student in a neighborhood noise trash, working with mediation, or would that remain only a police function. So noise complaints are something that have come up and the chief was mentioning one of our last meetings that he's actually getting a lot of feedback that the police aren't going far enough in terms of arrest and citations and things like that and that's something Crest wouldn't be doing on the included noise complaints in their study, but that still hasn't been decided I and again I don't want to speak for the police chief but I believe that he's leaning, at least to start that noise complaints would not be something that Crest went to originally, but it may be something that they would follow up with as our community liaison officer officer Laramie is doing now he'll go out after the fact and talk to the party houses and try to get a little bit of behavior. So that may be something that Crest could play a role in moving forward whether, and we still have, there's some things going on a little bit of rub with what we refer to as a co response meaning Crest responding with police officers. So it might be something like follow ups and noise complaints maybe we get a little bit more collaboration there with Officer Laramie going out with Crest members, kind of showing what he does when he talks to the students. Maybe Crest will come up with some new ideas what they do when they talk to the students. But right now noise complaints we're going to, as far as I know we're going to remain with the police department to start. And also it's going to take Crest members away if they're chasing around noise complaints on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night. We get a noise complaint and we get another call that's a mental health issue or a low priority somebody needs to talk to somebody about a resource. The Crest members are unavailable, we can either hold the call till they are available, or it might be type of call we should send somebody over right away. So an officer goes to a call at Crest could probably handle better and vice versa. Russ. We've talked about noise complaints and we are not yet in agreement on the implementation team about how they'll be handled. And some of that, I think probably needs to wait until we get a Crest director hired and let the Crest director do some ride alongs with the police department and get a better picture of, you know what what are the issues and what's it take to handle a noise complaint. So some of this we're going to develop as we go. So in response to your initial question, whether calls come in through 911 or whether they come in through a dedicated Crest line that gets answered in Mike's communication center. We expect to have them responded to either by the Crest team and it would always be to two team members would stay together, or by the APD. So we're working on protocols that would sort out which calls are safe for Crest to handle and which would be police. Thanks Russ. Bernie. Yeah, just, I'm the memo that gone to the council makes reference to the police department. I'm glad to hear in terms of this conversation that we're, we're bringing chief Nelson and chief Nelson and literally, and because this will have an impact on EMS as well. And that needs to be, I think that needs to be noted. One alternative, which is being trialed in New York City is to have a mental health worker right along with a paramedic. Which is also basically what, what cohoots does in the, if there's no I don't know that there's any really good data on this but one reference was made in terms of cohoots that the police department responds needs to respond to about 11% of the calls the codes team initiates. So, so there will be some police involvement and that's going to get figured out over time. I'm also happy to know that our, our communication center is managing this because with these incidents use frequently get multiple, multiple reports. And having it go to one source gives the communication center the opportunity to sort things out and make sure that things are being, things are being properly direct. Chief Nelson. Good afternoon. To Kathy's question about noise, noise complaints, all the, all, all, all speak speak, speak for the police, please. So one of the issues and it's been a con con conflict within the group with press response responded to noise complaints is that it's going to take about five minutes or five seconds for the students to realize that press has no authority to do anything at all, that they, they, they, no crest does not have to have the power to find don't have the power to, or if they don't have the power to be for authority to, to, to, to arrest. Steny crest on noise, noise complaints, we, I, both, both myself and, and hopefully she showed it, but that, that, that's not going to work. It's, it's, for me, it's a non non non non non star, star, star starter and and not a good use of source sources because the kids are going to read or read realize that anyone is going to read realize, well, you can't do what can you do to me. Okay, fine. So then, so then, then, then you, you know, you kind of kick kick that can down, down, down the road. And the other the other piece where we're still going back, well I, you know, it's just like going back back and forth with that is the code is the code code corresponder model going to burn it was just for referring to our his his history and experience has shown that my department is going to be involved, most, most, most of the time in some way shape or form. And I think paring, I'm a mental health worker with it, any of the NS provider with with with with the correct training training training is the way to go. I think in here here really we start out from a good good good place there's a lot a lot of trust from from the public with with in the trust in the fight for personnel. And we do this type type to work and have been doing this type type of work on an ad hoc they basis for many years. So, I mean from my my sense of I think the same safe be the more efficient effective and safe safe safe way is that fire base, not not fire fire base with the code code. model where you use a mental health provider, and any day in this person, and that's, you know, I brought brought up and time and time and I don't, and it. A lot of Bob Bob Bob is made that we haven't looked at that in a deep, deep, deep matter it seemed that model model seems to work wherever wherever you you look. And it's worth a deep, deep, deeper look so. Andy. Actually, I'm glad that I follow immediately after chief Nelson because he addressed some of the things that I've been thinking about. One is about the students and noise complaint. I have the experience from having been on the select board. I mean, the select board representative to the campus and community coalition to really have observed how the response goes on noise complaints and attempts that we have made through our partnership with the university in the campus and community coalition to address noise complaints and the off campus student housing office has several programs that have really tried to address that issue. The best known his new name and I can't remember what it is currently but it was party smart. And the idea was is that students would be encouraged to register their parties in advance and give a cell phone number. If a noise complaint came in that the dispatch calls and police call and say to the person who's hosting the party. We're going to just break it up and we won't come to your house and there also have with essentially your ambassador programs to work with students also. So off campus housing is doing so much. And if they can't be successful, then I'm not sure how we expect essentially the student crests to be any more successful than what is essentially a student crest program that's run by the off campus housing office. So I'm really skeptical that a noise complaint that doesn't get resolved in early stage is going to be resolved without police response. What I'm thinking about it is, I want to tie us back in the end to financial which is why I'm going to make the next point. I do think that the co responder model that was discussed is something that is worth thinking about for quality of response. I think about domestic violence and domestic violence can be very threatening and need police presence. It also can be that there's a victim that can be best served by somebody with kind of expertise so we think that crest is going to bring to the table with this. But every time we talk about co responder, we're actually adding cost we're not subtracting costs and in the end, what we're supposed to be doing is providing information and our thoughts back to the public process through the before the public forum and about what the financial implications of this proposal are. And so anything that we're where we're seeing that the costs are going to increase in total. We at least have to say it upfront because that is the financial consequence piece that we're being asked to look at. Hi, so I have a couple of points and they're a little bit because everyone has spoken and then I have to add something else to it so they're a little bit off topic will not off topic but perhaps not in the order as they originally started. So, one I just want to say the noise complaints are very broad and topic and they're very, and they range right so while they might, while the crest responders might not respond to the college parties. They could respond to other things because if we have two people who are having a mental health, or who are having a crisis in the middle of town they're two individuals and they're suffering from mental health illness. They can respond to that perhaps right so we can't just quite close off noise complaints and only associate it with the college students. Originally, the Crest program is to help the BIPOC and other marginalized community members feel safer and Amherst it's not necessarily to use with specific only to the college students. Another part of all of this is training everybody has to be trained the dispatch will have to be trained on how to understand the right calls to direct where what questions to ask. If it's a if they're able to ask additional questions that crest responders will have to be trained to deescalate they have to be trained to know when there's a crime. They'll have to know when there's too much violence I mean there's a lot of training that has to happen before we even get to the point of sending out to calls. I believe that Russ Vernon Jones mentioned sending the crest director out for ride alongs which is very important for them for the crest director to understand how what they can respond to because we can all sit here and say that they can respond to something the crest director can go out and then do a ride along and say there's no way that they can respond to these or they absolutely should be responding to these. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff that we're talking about there we haven't really finalized and it's just kind of moving us off topic I do know that the crest and the police are going to have to work together. This is going to be a little more dependent on the police department and we had anticipated or that the community might have would have liked. But again, the community is asked for this and for so that the BIPOC community could feel a little could feel safer right so we're I just feel like we've kind of shifted off of where we were supposed to be with it in under the noise complaint right and so again I just wanted to remember that the noise complaint is a very broad topic and so there's lots of different calls that can fall underneath that. And that was really all I wanted to add. Yeah, thanks Jen and I'll just back you up and and that as much as we can focus on the reorg plan that the town manager has proposed which has the crest program. As we've discussed in terms of organization, we have a lot of other stuff to get through in terms of other questions so Dorothy. And I have a couple of comments. One, these are financial. Right now, there's been many people suggested that the rental registration fee be per unit not per dwelling. And that would increase funds and that thus allow us to hire a second worker to respond to the student parties. I mentioned this to me lately because the parties are bad. And there have also been some and I've got some incredible pictures I've got to send on to the town manager of trashing all over the place done just this week. And a suggestion that landlords be fine in such cases so there's a there's a great desire coming from the groundswell that maybe the parties are wilder and messier and maybe we had need a stronger response. Right now, when police go out in a call. I thought they went in pairs they don't go alone do they. So, I mean the fact that it would be a policeman and a press worker. That's not doubling the number of people going on a call. Is it I mean this is, this is a real question I'm not being rhetorical. Mike, do you want to answer that. That's correct they go in pairs. Always send two offices to analyze complaint. So whatever kind of thing it is going to where you might send a press worker, you might send one police person and one press worker. I mean I don't see how it necessarily has to raise the costs, is what I'm saying. I think the program is very important and I do think Jennifer made a really good point about is a broad range of noise complaints. I really talked about the ones that aren't students, the ones that result in in violence. We haven't really talked about that very much, but that's part of what the press program I believe is intended to help with. Jennifer one second I know we don't want to get in the weeds about noise complaints but a, a disturbance between two people in mental health, help in the center town would not be coded as noise complaint that wouldn't go hardest noise complaint. So noise complaints are pretty much when somebody's hearing something or they can specifically tell us this is what's going on other things fall into unknown suspicious disturbance. No they're again we're coming back to the type of calls the crest we trained in the type of calls the crest is going to go into. I think we're getting too far into the noise complaints like other people commented there's a lot tools. And did you want to say anything out your hands still raised I didn't know if it was just. Yeah, I just wanted to add perhaps that the two mental health peak example in the center of town wasn't the best example to use for saying that that was something that could come in as a noise complaint and then be seen but I think that you folks understand what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't have to be related to students and it can be something from my understanding that the calls coming in many different ways to find out that there's different factors but again I think also we are moving way too far deep as Mike just said into the leads of noise complaints when we don't have it all figured out either yet right and so we should probably move on to the. Before we go to the next question Brianna or Alicia so you both had your hand raised the other of you want to say anything. I think Jen said exactly what I wanted to say thank you for calling on me though. Okay, so the next question is how will the, how will the town handle future year equipment and vehicle costs. So the initial equipment cost and vehicle costs were anticipating using the ARPA money for that will get us whatever the, you know whatever's worked out with the implementation team and what the department needs are future years after that it'll be part of our annual planning process it'll be part of the cyclical or annual process where we look at the needs and and when it's time to replace those vehicles they'll they'll be proposed for replacement so that they'll be handled like any other department. I don't see any hands up so and Donna raise here so this next one maybe Donna Ray wants to start with what are the proposed salaries and how are they determined. And you're muted down right. I'm so sorry for that I always mean to not do that and, and it happens so for the we're speaking specifically about Cress and not about the office of the right. Maybe, if you, if you have both maybe do both, I think this question. For the Cress program the implementation project manager non union, the salary range is 61 865 to 83 141. I'll name the salaries and then I'll give you the thinking behind them is that okay. The Cress director that it's a non union position as well and the salary range could be from 74 895 to 100,652 dollars annual. And then the program assistant position will be part of the SEI union, and that position. The range is 48 993 through 65 842. And those are all ranges that come out of our pay classification system so the town of Amherst has a longstanding compensation and pay system in place it's based on the position of the positions and the review includes the essential functions of the position the requirements for the position. The pay classification system includes seniority steps there's a longevity reward for a certain length of service. So, and also in addition with that every year for the past 12 years, non union and unions have had a cost of living increase so that's, that is something to for me to make sure that you understand as well. So the way we. So first we job descriptions were presented developed reviewed. We went back and forth Jen Boyston kind of collaborated with the community safety working group and we came to kind of decisions on the job descriptions and then based on those we came up with those ratings. Whether they're a level five or level seven or in the SEI level G, and I have all the job descriptions that I am happy to share out and our pay classification system if anyone is interested in looking at it. And we have a municipal rating scale that we put each job description through to come up with the, to come up with the rate. Thanks down right Matt or Jen were you going to add to that or. Yeah, I just wanted to add that you know there's a small presentation that kind of walks through the steps of how we classify. That's a public document. And I'm just trying to think of. It's the project overview for the personnel board I believe that's a public document. On the town website. Yeah, maybe we can send that out down or if you can, or Jen either one of you if you can send a copy we could send that to the committee so people have it. Absolutely. Do you want me to send that along with the job descriptions and our pay classification systems for non union and SEI you. Yeah, yeah sure anything the reference would be great. All right. Matt, do you have a question. Yeah, I do. Thanks Sean, and thank you all so much for this. I mean this is a really exciting. Super complicated but it's a really exciting project and I think something that you know we can be really proud of someday, but I get this, I live in this world of you know staffing highly skilled mental health clinicians. And I look at some of the job descriptions for these folks. Yeah, and I'm just curious in terms of the salary lines. I mean obviously I'm appreciative of the town's salary schedule SEI you and then all that but I'm just wondering if the CSWG or others did any kind of a staffing study and Sean I sent you obviously kind of last minute but I'm sure you saw my questions but this is one of this is probably my biggest question on the crest team is you know putting together this group of 10 responders with this level of expertise and there is a part of me that that thinks that Bernie sort of buy or build question is also relevant here in terms of finding, you know 10 people with this level of skill and background, but I guess my simple question is, was there a salary analysis done in particular, you know, functions in other towns. I can say that when we went through the municipal rating system that we use that's our system but we also look to other towns it was difficult and we went out to, you know, Colorado to a very different, you know, because they have different costs of living as well and we tried to take those into consider in fact we did take those into consideration as well when we were on rating. So, maybe not that so we didn't hire a consultant to do that we did it ourselves but we did take, you know the market into consideration, but there's not much of a market map that we're kind of a little bit new in this field. I would think of things like CSO and other sort of organizations that have adult mental health service clinicians, you know who go out on on this mobile crisis that sort of thing I mean those are those are the. That's the that's the labor market I would think here. Yeah. Kathy. You're muted Kathy. I lowered my hand and unfail and then muted myself. Not, not quite what I meant to do. This is a little bit out of the field of the specific jobs we're talking about here. But in my prior life working with healthcare organizations. There's often an ability to quickly learn on the job if there was some mentoring so that people, particularly in community health centers community mental health centers primary care clinics to people who had had some basics and and they moved them up and there's actually an SCI you local out in Cape Cod that did it with moving from aid up to nurse, you know but really thinking that you didn't necessarily come in with everything you ultimately had so I don't know the extent we can be doing that here but because we're some of these jobs will be unique. They're not going to be exactly what they were in other organizations. If we can think of ways to do that on the job mentoring shadowing. If there's something similar. So, so that's, I'm, as I said, I'm just jumping in, trying to think of because they one group in particular it was in high risk communities that weren't even responsive to medical personnel, they took their members and train them, and they went out and they were the primary care people that went to people's homes to deal with asthmatic kids, or kids who were at behavioral risk but the parents trusted them so it's it's a slightly more accessible than towns typically use where you try to find the person who has everything you want on day one, as opposed to a training track. So I don't know whether we could set up something like that, or whether for years from now we could be thinking that way as we learn. Jen did you want to respond to that. I did I just wanted to respond to counselor Shane so that is something that we have thought about and we have talked about, because there's something nice about having people that we see in the community every day. We, there's already an establishment of trust there, try to come so it's kind of more fitting like could that possibly be, could we hire a clinician and then a community member to train further but again, not all of that has been decided yet. But it is something that we have thought about, because there's something to be said there and also empowers the community members which empowers the responder so there's an all around circle of empowerment that occurs when we, when you do something like that but we still have to further discuss that out. Along that line, you know what when I'm talking about the primary care clinic sometimes what they found is the community member had worked as a nurses aid in a home health care center. You know so they, they already had, they knew they had people skills, you know they had a desire to work with us, but they were. Sometimes, you know, basically a high school education, not necessarily junior college, but it was really trying to think of that you could learn your way to higher levels that we undervalue people's native skills, and people are capable of learning from the opportunity to learn. So there was a been a lot of success in this outside the United States, as well as the tribes up in Alaska did a huge amount of this, even around dental care. So I'm just thinking that maybe we can think creatively, as we find our way through this program. Thanks Kathy, Dorothy. I want to remind people that our community colleges are set up to do this, and that there are many many programs that HCC and at Greenfield, which have been specially specially created to solve a local need. For example, their students now studying marijuana trade at HCC because that program is set up because of the towns around here that have started the legalized marijuana and of course we have many nursing and human services program so I would really strongly urge that the committee to talk with one or both of our local community colleges, and you could you could help design with them, a program that would do exactly what you want, which we bring in local people, at least from the area. And of course, people in our community could go to the community college, the tuition could be paid by, you know, by us if need be. But as you know the tuition is quite low. It is quite low, and some of these programs, there is no tuition because the state has seen to value it and the state pays it. So, I think that's a good way to go. Yeah, echo Dorothy's comments real quickly. The schools we work with GCC to create a program from scratch, a dual enrollment program and they came and worked with us and gave us what we needed and allow kids to take courses at the school, which gave them new programs. They definitely are flexible in that way where they let us design what we need so. All right, the next question, does the town manager have sufficient flexibility to supervise another direct report, and he's not here but I think the answer. He better because he proposed it so he does and he should have let us know before he proposed it. I absolutely believe that Paul has exceeded his span of control and I've told him that he's has too many direct reports, and he needs to seriously look at how to change that so that people can be properly mentored along the way. Yeah, I'm, I raise this question, and my concern is that of lens I've, it's not a, not a critique of Paul's abilities or his, his willingness to do work he's a very very capable guy, and he's demonstrated that repeatedly. But I think what we're doing is we're building up a system that's going to require some additional managerial assistance in there. As far as I know he still needs to sleep at least four to six hours a day. I may not be doing that now, but I do think that we've overextended the manager's position, regardless of who's in it. Alicia. I just have a follow up question proposed to I think I think it would be Bernie or whoever pose this question in the first place is that what information would you be looking for to be in another direct report. Alicia are you saying what information would the need to know whether he Paul has the ability to handle another position overseeing another position. Yeah. Okay. I mean probably the best thing would be to hear from Paul at some point I imagine I know we had a conflict for today but Paul's probably the best to speak to the committee about that. Bernie, did you have any additional that would be required of him for in order for this to move forward or why I'm trying to understand why exactly we're asking this question right now. So, I believe he's going to be at the TSO committee on Thursday so that would be opportunity where that question could be addressed as well if it comes up. We're actually we're actually adding to two direct reports to the manager's workload. We have this and we have the DI person and our department that's coming on. And I'm not saying that that's something that keeps us from going forward. It is a concern about sustainability. It's also a concern that at some point in time, we're going to have to replace Paul. Because he ain't always going to be with us. And we don't want to set up a set of conditions where things get dropped because well meaning person is overworked. We don't want to set up conditions where we won't be able to find any adequate replacement because the job seems overwhelming. And like I said that's not a knock on anyone. We all, you know, we're all humans. And we all have our limits. And it's not a. It's not, it's not, it's not intended to be an impediment to put this this program or any other program in place. It is a concern that we might at some point need to consider a public safety director. We may need to look at, you know, I'm looking at the Charter Commission's final report organizational chart. There looks like there's a, you know, we don't have a real good to you all for the town, but it looks like there's lots of direct reports to, to, to the, to the manager, and that's a concern. Alicia, I want to be very clear. This is not a showstopper for going forward with this program, or with the DEI program. It is not a showstopper. It is a question that comes out of, in my case, years of running organizations and being an organizational development consultant. And I just look at this and I say, too many direct reports you got to figure out a way because what it means then is all of those people who are direct reports are not getting as much from Paul, as he should and should be giving them in terms of his mentoring and guidance in terms of helping them grow. And that is particularly important when you have a town manager who has many years of experience under his belt as Paul does. So it doesn't stop me from saying go ahead. It just stops me from saying it just brings up for me the big picture, how that big picture is resolved. I have nothing to do where Cress is reporting, but it's something that has to be looked at, and I think sooner rather than later. Matt. I think it's just a good question in terms of how many people directly report to the town manager. So it's not a written report. It's how many individuals directly reported that kind of that's a good question. Just to follow up on what I was asking previously, I guess there may be more detail in the, in the working group proposal itself and I can go back and look at that and you all know I'm so new. But I would be curious if there is a a level of credential that we're specifically trying to hire for with these responders I do appreciate, you know, the grow your own and mentoring and things like that but, you know, if we're thinking about mental health emergency situations I would be interested in knowing what what the credential is is mandatory for staffing this. And then a related question I have, it's kind of relates this kind of the same theme as a lot of our funding with with ARPA and other things but a related question I have is, how would this group function with less than 10 you know, let's say that we would make, we're able to make four initial hires, and then we kind of hit a wall in terms of finding folks so you know, are there interim plans that I don't mean as a cost saving measure I mean as a, as a hiring, you know, just a hiring reality measure. I'm just curious, you know, if there is an interim thing around that but I would definitely like to see the detail on what level of credential these folks are expected to have to do this work. Alicia. Thank you. I just wanted to go back. Sorry to my original question and Lynn's answer which thank you and was very helpful. But so just to make sure that I'm understanding is that we're talking about the reporting requirements in general, and not specifically because there are two additional reports do for the Crest department, and for the DEI department of the town manager. And we'll want to be thinking about alternative requirements for the town manager, or figuring out in which instances it's absolutely necessary for him to have a direct report, and that this might not necessarily be one of those incident incidences where it's absolutely necessary. And if that is what we're talking about. I'm also just slightly confused, would we just remove it as a requirement needed to move forward and we would move forward or I'm trying to figure out why exactly that question holds significance at a meeting specifically for the Crest department and the DEI department. So I just wanted to make sure it has nothing to do with this specific program. And it, and that larger picture by the way could have financial implications. Thank you, Lynn. I think we kind of touch base or to speak on what Mr. Holloway has spoken on in regards to the credentials. So they would have to be, I think we're looking at clinicians licensed clinicians licensed social workers to be at least one of the responders at minimum, if not both people are responders on a team depending on the day. You know, so one person absolutely has to either be a licensed clinician or social worker. Like, so just fall. So just following up on what Jim was saying. All that stuff is going to go into a job description we've talked a little bit in the implementation group about the job qualifications qualifications as a candidate. So our is starting out with less than eight or less than 10. I imagine that's going to happen I imagine that is this program starts to get four or five really qualified candidates we can move forward. The elite study actually kind of picks out the areas of highest activity. So I'd imagine that the director would say okay we're going to start out in the first two teams will work. We're going to be at the end 11pm or something like that on a rotating basis so the elite study did kind of look at the areas high activity in the best ways to staff. So we're talking earlier if we just had eight staff that there's probably going to be a block start out, they won't be covered by any Crest members it'll be non call type situation, or a responder sitting at the Crest office or something like that. For those things. So Andy the last major question is on the sort of the fiscal sustainability so I've got a, I was going to share my screen and just go over some charts and some some assumptions and things like that is that okay. So can everybody see this is this large enough for everybody to say. Okay, good. Thank you. This is a work in progress it's developed enough that talk to Paul I feel comfortable sort of sharing with this committee and getting your feedback on it. But it's something that's still being worked on but I think this will give you a sense of the direction and the magnitude of what we're thinking in terms of the impact of adding these two departments on the finances going forward. Just a couple of general things to go over so in terms of timing of costs, we're assume right now this model that you'll see in a second. We're assuming that Crest and DEI will be fully phased into the operating budget and FY 23. In terms of their, their staffing costs and their health insurance costs. The pension costs would hit an FY 24, and that's just based on the timing of how the pension, how the town gets assessed for pension costs. So the four new firefighters so we've folded that into this, this analysis because that was also discussed so we wanted you to see the full picture of sort of these new positions that have been discussed so the four new firefighters that are being funded through ARPA they would be folded into the operating budget and FY 25. In terms of how we're using grants and as of this point to support the implementation of these two departments. The Department of Public Health grant which is 450,000 that's helping support implementation of the Crest program and the mental health services that will support the Crest program. We're using ARPA for startup costs for Crest which will include equipment, outfitting space, training any of those really large upfront costs to create a new department. We're also funding part of a DEI position FY 22, and that that part will be folded into the FY 23 operating budget and ARPA is funding the four additional firefighters and FY 22 through FY 24, and then in FY 25, they would, they would be folded into the operating budget. We also have a state earmark for the community responder program to help fund the additional positions and FY 22 is about 90,000. That's all we have funding in the budget for depending on the length of time and when the program started somewhere between four to six positions for the Crest program. And then there were four additional that the council had said we should fill. And so this funding is going to make sure that we can fund that full program this year. Other sources of funds going forward for Crest. I was on a webinar, a couple weeks ago about the possibility of federal funding, sort of like how an EMTs go out and provide a service we can bill insurance depending on what they provide. There may be similar revenue streams for the Crest response a lot of it will come down to, is it a mental health, a credential mental health provider who is providing a service that we could then potentially bill insurance for. And Medicaid is there's a new program related to this alternative police response in Medicaid that's going to be starting soon that will explore as this program rolls out. So in terms of forecasting the impact on the budget sort of a two step approach so the first chart you're going to see is the high level budget. So we're going to look at our overall revenues and our overall expenses, and then trying to drill down and see can we afford a two and a half percent increase each year going forward for the town municipal budget. And then the second analysis is going to be right so if we can do a two and a half percent increase to the town municipal budget. If we look at our municipal expenses and project those out forward, can you know are we in balance or will that part of the budget be stressed. So the first piece here is that that higher level that you're more used to seeing. I've consolidated a little bit here to for simplicity but we've taken our revenues here at the top. And we've got the FY 22 budget, what we had projected for FY 23 during the financial indicators report. The one exception is we put in an assumption for state aid increase here that we didn't have during the financial indicators report so this is a little bit higher. And then we've projected out the next four years. And you'll see the assumptions on the on the next page but for property taxes we've assumed the two and a half percent increase plus an estimate for new growth. For local receipts, we've projected continued recovery and FY 24 sort of a larger than normal growth for FY 23 and FY 24 as we get back to where we were before the pandemic. And then it sort of flattens out into smaller recovery steps each year after that. For state aid we've projected about 2% increase that it really fluctuates year to year depending on what our charter and choices funds are. Chapter 70 doesn't grow much but we've projected 2% increase and and all these assumptions can be tweaked so again that's where if there's feedback, if you want to see assumptions run differently we can. And then other financing sources, the big things in there are ambulance fund that took a hit during the pandemic so we have that projected recovery projected there. And then we also have our enterprise fund reimbursements that we have a recovery projected there so revenues going up somewhere between two and a half $3 million a year, which you can see is in line with what we're projecting for FY 23 as well. On the expenditure side. We have the operating budgets being having two and a half percent increases each year going forward other than FY 23, where we have the two and a half percent increase for the town plus the $300,000 that we talked about during financial indicators so it's a little bit more for the town and FY 23. The capital budget I want to get too worried about the numbers in terms of the, the death service and things like that that's all always sorted in flux. The most important piece here is that our assumption is we're going to be at 10% of the levy for FY 23 and then 10 and a half percent and FY 24 and beyond, and that's a major assumption of the plan to fund the four capital projects. So the four capital projects they're not in here in terms of their projected debt and things like that but the major assumption was we need to get to 10 and a half percent for capital spending if we want to stick to that plan. And then we have our retirement system where we have 7% increases, except for there's two years where the new departments the assessment related to those two departments hits. So an FY 24 there's a larger than normal increase when the crescent di positions hit, and then an FY 25 there's a larger than normal increase when the fire department positions hit. The next step stays the same. We have a 2% increase, estimated for state assessments again that fluctuates based on charter and choice tuition so some years it's flat some years it goes down some years it grows so a lot of that again it's just an assumption or a point. So the, the net result is that we've got about a $300 to $400,000 deficit. I think my main takeaway from this is that if that is not overly concerning at this point we're very early in the budget process. So our conservative estimates hopefully between new growth and state aid increases coming in a little bit better than what we're, we're, we're budgeting for that some of the best gap will be closed so the other positive thing looking at this is that the gap isn't growing over time I think that's probably the most important thing is staying about flat. So if we close this gap for FY 23 that will help close the gap in all these future years, going out. So my takeaway from this is that we can do the two and a half percent increases to operating budgets that we've been planning on. Any questions on this first piece before I go to the more detailed or the more the department level projection. I can't see anybody so if there is just call out. Yeah. I know people have their hands up and throwing one question right off the bat and then I'm going to go to the other two people and come back if they don't ask in my additional questions. This year. I have created some discomfort in our relationship with some members of the school committee because we proposed disproportionate share of $300,000 additional from municipal plus we have all of the art and other funds is that $300,000 then the base some which you're adding to have percentage Yep. Yeah, that would be a that would be a permanent increase to the base for the town. Okay. So we know that there's going to be some tensions around that, but we won't go further than that right now. I've had some other questions but I don't want to hog so I'm going to see Brianna. Hi. Hi, thank you Andy. Sean my question to you is I'm just, thank you so much for walking us through this and explaining it. I'm wondering where the 130,000 from the frozen police positions fall in, in regards to the press program and the budget for the program. Well, that's a good question, Brianna, I will identify that and the next chart so this is. This is sort of the high level full view of the budget, the police department and the Crest program all those smaller level budgets they're all within this town line under operating budget in this words 26 million for a point 23 in the blue, the shaded blue, all those numbers are that 26 million. And then the next slide I'll show you a little bit more detailed breakout of the departments that make that number up. Awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And Andy just quickly following up on your point and for the finance committee to know we have scheduled a BCG, a budget coordinating group meeting for next week, where representatives of the council, the school committee and the library trustees will meet. We haven't had one of these in a little while separate one of these in a little while but we're going to talk about some of these issues because this is a different type of budget year from what we've done in the past. Kathy. I know you're going to show us the what lies underneath these on your next chart, Sean so I just want to make sure I heard correctly. This, the line called town has all the new positions in it. At some point in FY 2526 27. Yeah, so you haven't so let me just clarify so you haven't seen the impact of that yet so what this is showing is the funding side of it. This is how much funding is going to be available to the town. The next chart I'm going to show you in a second is all right well that's our funding, how do our expenses compare to that funding how do our actual expenses when we add these two new departments to it. So what you're seeing here is just the, the two and a half percent each year, but you're not seeing the comparison that comparison yeah you'll you'll get that in one second. No I didn't mean on the revenue line I was going to cross on the timeline so no even on the even on the timeline again the expense. So this is an expense for the town budget but what that means is all right, the town budget gets this much money and then we have to fit our expenses within that allocation. And same thing with the schools just the schools get so much. Maybe it will become clearer because if we're adding a million dollars in spending. Yes, it will be you'll see it you'll see that in one second. Okay, any other brand I don't know if you had another question your hand was still raised. Now that that is, I want to see how you're doing that and then what your sources. Thank you for that's my concern is that we've got an unfunded obligation. It's funded fine to start out with because we've got our money we've got some state allocations and others but I'm worried about what happens three years out. Sure. No, I think, I think you're, you're right to that that's the right question. Andy. The other thing is, I was curious whether you looked at either coots or star this programs has been around the longest and have any observations from looking at those programs as to how those communities have been able to sustain it over time. I mean, I've looked at them a little bit. I think, again, we're sort of beyond the town exploring those models. At this point it seems like based on the what's been proposed for reorganization plan. Again, those are very different. It's a very different model than what we're proposing here so, but if we want to come if we want to make that a future agenda and I'm happy to bring more information back on that. So, I'll know other hands are as I'll keep going so again, this shows a deficit but again the deficit to me is stable. If our numbers come in better enough like 23 it's going to close that. So I'm not overly concerned at this point looking at this. This is just some of the assumptions I talked about some of the what we're estimating going forward in terms of increases again these chains and then the numbers change but these are reasonable at this time. So this is the second piece of this. So Kathy your question so this gray bar at the top. This is the municipal operating budget allocation so this gray bar is how much money is being allocated to the municipal budget so this these numbers tie to that town line on the prior, the prior chart. So you'll see the larger increase for a point 23 and then two and a half percent increases each year for a point 24 through 27. And then what we've done is we've taken our expenditures, and we have increased them each year, and we focus on sort of the two major categories. We know there's other things that will will go up and down but we focused on two major categories for now payroll and health insurance. That's, you know, 80 to 90% of our budget or payroll and health insurance. We've taken our baseline staffing budget and we've increased it and I'll show you what we've increased it by, and then we've included an estimate of increases for health insurance. And then we've done that each year going forward through FY 27. We've also in FY 23 we've added the Crest program. In FY 25, we've added the additional firefighters. So those years you'll see that there's been additional expenditures added in each of those years in addition to the regular increases. So for payroll and health insurance for payroll we've done is all of our sort of standard payroll lines we've increased three and a half percent roughly. This is based on our general generally we do about a 2% COLA that will fluctuate year to year but generally about a 2% COLA. And then I looked at the, what the average steps are for each union or group we have and then how many people are lined up to get a step to kind of get down to the next step that we would see on the whole. And so that that number will change as younger people come in or newer people come in and people at the top of the step go out. That will change over time. So, again, this is something we can play around with but this is roughly what I use that the schools to was about three and a half percent. And again, it will change as your workforce turns over. So, applying that to each of these sections. You can see what the increases are. So for a point 24. It's going to increase about 785,000. That gives us a gap of 111,000 between the funding we have available and what our sort of level services expenses would be with these new departments. So we're waiting for a point 25 that starts to grow FY26 continues and so on until 27. So, we do have issue, we do have challenges that we're going to have to figure out, because you can see this is a gap that's growing it's not staying the same. So we expect it I don't think any of us expected that we would be able to add these two new departments and it would just all fit and fall into place without having to make any other adjustments so the things will have to explore as we go forward in order to make this all work or what everybody's already said already one would be to increase revenues. We can look to fee increases I know that's been talked about several times is looking at our fees and how those might be increased. So we're going to look at the fee program and how that might be able to provide some funding for this. And then we also have the strategic agreements that need to be worked out in the coming year that might be able to provide some funding so so one option to address this gap is to increase revenues. And then the other option is to read to adjust expenses to reduce expenses, shift them to to close this gap. I have a question so right now, and this will change before the official budget is voted. But right now the crest program is still in community services, because that's where we had put it last year before we really knew what format was going to take. This community service line you can see it's a big bump from FY 22 to FY 23. That's because that's where the staffing for the crest program is is going. And that 130,000 from the police department is in that as part of that line. Going forward when. So one thing we're going to do is this model that we're projecting as we move into the budget process and we get state aid numbers and things like that we will refine this and this will probably be some former fashion be part of the budget document that we bring forward for FY 23, and we'll have more accurate numbers at that point because of just more recent information. But by that time we will have moved crests up into the public safety section of this budget so we do intend on moving crests up to public safety, and that will shift these expenses accordingly. Any questions on that. The shifting doesn't affect the bottom line. I just wanted, yeah, people to be aware that it will change a little bit. Sean, just on the, when you went up above, this is constantly putting 10% into capital. This is putting 10 and a half percent into capital. Yeah, for FY 24 and beyond it's getting it's putting 10 and a half percent to capital because that's what we had projected in our plan for the four building projects. Okay, thank you. One last question. Oh, sorry. Yeah, let me ask some, since you're on capital and go to Bob and Dorothy. The vehicle needs for for crest responders. I don't know how many vehicles you put forward in the first year in which your capital needs are going out. So my original estimates were two. So thinking there'd be two teams at one time possibly on I think that might, I think the implementation team needs to, and the director that's hired will ultimately need to weigh in on what the right vehicle level is. But I think in the New York plan, I think we had assumed to. Okay, Bob. The question I have Sean is, does this, this projection assume the same number of crest responders every year, or is there any increase over time. In terms of the number of responders. No, this, this keeps the number of respond. This keeps the department size at 10. Okay, that keeps it at eight responders with a director and an administrative position. Okay, so if there are, if there is any growth in that, then that would throw things off even further. Is that correct. Yeah, that number would have to be added in him. Yep. Okay. Thanks. Dorothy. I remember the fire department hired some people, and we were told no, no, no, those are not considered new places. They're there to float to cover sick days and holidays and that kind of thing. I don't think the crest program has any personnel to do that. So it, that seems a problem to me. But the other thing is, your, your performance of this budget suggests that you are not disturbed, you are not worried that this financing is actually reasonable. And that we should not be concerned because this is how budgets go. And as long as I apologize if that's how it came off, I think the higher level one, I'm not as concerned about, I think these numbers are concerning. I'm not a, I'm not a, I don't get super. I try not to be very one sided I guess on either of these things I tried to just lay it out that we will have to, we will have to make increase revenues or decrease expenses. The gap of 666,000. In particular for just the town budget is a significant gap. Okay. And I think the other thing that I mentioned, Dorothy, that's a good point that you raised. The concern that I have looking at this is that there's lots of other things that we that the town council wants to do. And the town manager want to do everybody wants to do in terms of sustainability improvements housing initiatives, there's there's lots of other things we want to do. This leaves, as you can see zero flexibility to do anything else. You know, we have to make adjustments just to get to hit these numbers. It's going to really limit flexibility going forward, or it's going to limit flexibility going forward until we figure out where those additional revenues are going to come from and what expenses are going to be adjusted. So I did not mean it as a criticism so so as I understand this. You're saying this is how it could be done. These are how the numbers could go. But I think the statement you said there is, it removes flexibility is very important. So just comparing this when you did the four capital projects, you know with the quote unquote tool. There, you were convincing us that we could do it. Yeah, I think the difference here is, we don't have a plan yet for how to do this, I think is the. So this is sort of our first analysis of our if we're going to move forward with these two new departments and the four additional projects, what is our challenge or a problem that we're going to have to address. We at this currently don't have the solution I guess with the four building projects we had a plan that we felt was at this time that will be our next step is to work on this plan how we're going to do this each year. Thank you very much. Yeah. You're muted still burning. My screen is telling me I'm muted. I think your, your 5% increase in health insurance is optimistic. Yeah, it may be it's it's higher than what we've seen historically. You know, actually, I'm thinking it's conservative based on our actual. But I also plan on that including if new plans get added retirees, you know, we're going to retiree pool is going to increase but our experience the last several years has been pretty, pretty good. Right. Anything could happen with health insurance there could be some sort of fee where it goes up. We have we being municipalities have been pretty lucky in terms of health insurance over the last few years. The other thing is there was mention of using reserves to cover some of these costs and start up costs. Which is would be somewhat of a departure from the town's standard practice. I don't know that that's horrible thing but that's one way of covering some of these gaps until somebody waves the magic wand and more money. Yeah, we may need to use reserves for FY 23 depending on how state aid comes in so state aid comes in really well and new growth comes in better than expected. We may not need to use reserves. But if it doesn't come in as well as we might hope then this gap here of 383. This is with an increase in state aid so we still have this gap we have to, we have to close before we bring the budget back. Dorothy I don't know if your hand is still raised Dorothy. Kathy. Well, contrary to Dorothy listening to your convoy saying all as well I looked at the numbers that all all is not well. We have a really big hole so I have a couple questions you're not showing us the pension side of this. So you said health insurance is in this we start taking on the pension. So, the pensions up here in this retirement system, right miscellaneous it's it's not in our smaller operating budgets it's we do pensions before we divvy up the funds to the operating budgets. So this pension assessment is for everybody. Schools. Yep. Can you explain to me how on the aggregate page. The whole is 345,000 and on the town side, it's 600,000. Yes, because aggregate has the magic that nobody goes up by more than two and a half percent. So it's sort of you're looking at two different things so that. Think about this one that you're looking at right now the 345. This is the budget the council votes and includes the schools and includes the library it's you know whether you whether the town can afford that budget that we're going to bring to you for everybody. And so that's all revenue all general fund revenues all general fund expenses. And so we have a gap of 345 so that's 345 a much bigger number so our budgets, 88 million or if you go up to fyi 27 it's 99 million. So, as a percentage of that overall budgets a relatively small percentage deficit that we've got to we've got to figure out the $600,000 here is this is just within so again this line item here is 28 million 729 859 if you're looking at fyi 27. That is right here on the town line. This deficit is whether the town can actually stick within that two and a half percent that's allocated to just the municipal operation. And so, the, the, so the outcome there is that we have a $666,000. Again, I don't want to get stuck on the specific numbers I would say this is to give you the ballpark and the direction of what we're dealing with. Again, the assumptions could be better sometimes could get a little worse. There's some things that this isn't again this is just payroll and health insurance is other things that could go up and down in the budget. So this is just to give you a sense of the magnitude that there is likely going to be a significant deficit that we'll have to deal with, and that the two ways we're going to have to tackle that as to revenues and expenses. Right, because what I can see here is if you're flipping back and forth with top line and bottom line, the town line when you add up the new people comes up to 29.4 million versus you were only on page one saying 28.7. Yeah, this, this gray line compared to this green, this green shading versus the gray shading. So that's the, that's the concern I think you know when we, when we're talking about multiple year budgets like what's the pressure underneath, unless something magic happens with staffing. And so that was just thank you for flipping back and forth because we couldn't see the 29 versus the 28, which is where the differences. So Bernie's piece on reserves my memory of the magic you did with the four capital projects was to first we assume some decent fire and DPW and we were going to see whether we can even come down with them. And then you started pulling down on reserves for a few years to tide us over. So at the point we were taking on debt for those projects. We were using it over on the capital side to do the debt servicing so I think we need to be super careful. And just as in people know I'm, I'm headed the school building committee and it's, and as Sean's on it also it's become I'm becoming increasingly aware of, aside from our share of the building that MSBA is not paying for. So what parts of the total cost will they not be willing to pay for they, they have a cap that's artificially low on construction costs. They do not cover solar and some of the things we're going to. So, so, so I, I don't, I want to stay flexible on those reserves side for one of the projects that may need to tap into it more than we're thinking. So it's just so I think this is a fairly, it's not scary, but it's, it's, it's a realistic picture of not just has flexibility disappeared in the budget, but that we have a hole that we need to figure out how we're going to fill if we're, if we're going to do continue service levels, unless there's some magic that robots start doing a lot of our jobs. Right. And hopefully, you know, when I looked at this to me again this makes sense if we're adding, we're adding 15 to 16 positions, again between the Crest Department, the I am the fire department position so if you add that many positions. I think it's inevitable that we're going to, we're going to have to deal with something like this. Andy. Yes, there are a couple things one is that you said something a couple minutes ago that sort of harkens back to the discussion I had about yesterday's guideline discussion that the Council meeting and that is that the Council didn't really come to grips with the number of new programs that have been talked about and that it is interested in as a matter of sort of policy development going forward, of which we're talking about to today but there's also reparations is also ECAC which you mentioned in housing which you mentioned so that it's not that, you know, I worry about that because if those programs get funded in any significant way, each one has a little bit of an effect on that but the bottom line shortfall doesn't close it and enlarges it. The other thing, though on the, on the other side of it is that, you know, as I've looked at, you know, I thought about this question of reserves. It isn't a question just of using reserves but it's a question of how much we add to reserves at the end of each year and over a course of time we've been building reserves purposefully because of the building projects but at some point. We may not need to do that quite as much and we might be able to take that free cash money each year and use a certain amount of free cash money to bring back to the budget and help reduce that bottom line. So I was wondering what your comments were on that. So we thought about that a lot too I think you know I think generally we don't advise doing that for operating costs, building it into supporting these operating costs. I think it is worth a discussion about doing it for capital. For some years maybe using some free cash to help maybe get done more capital to sort of to reduce the overall need for capital spending. Because, you know, if that if for whatever reason we don't have free cash in one particular year. That doesn't have the sort of immediate impact that if it was funding operate operations that it would, if you don't have that revenue source anymore so I think it's worth the conversation. I think that we should see how the four building projects sort of pan out before we make any major changes to how we treat reserves but once we have a better sense of where those four building projects are and their costs. So if we feel like our reserves are still ample and above the sort of our guidelines, then I think it probably is worth the conversation about using them to support maybe contributions to OPEB or contributions to capital. I just want to add that that what Sean is showing us is that it's a it's a challenging problem. It can be done. There are things that are worrisome and that have to be watched carefully and closely, but I just wanted to mention that this is actually some exciting proposals and Amherst is again leading the way. I'm sure the road will be bumpy I'm sure we'll have to we'll find out things are not exactly as predicted, but I think that we should be proud that we are attempting this in the attempted to have a more equitable way of doing business and reaching out to people in the community so if it presents serious problems we will have to deal with it and we'll have to make some hard choices there's no doubt about that, but I think that it's exciting that we're starting it and trying to do it, and we'll watch it carefully and try to make it work. Okay, so other comments, just looking at the entire group and seeing enough for their hands going up. So, what are we going to report back to the, you know, we were supposed to be able to report to through TSO back to the council, and to just begin that process with the forum a few nights from now. So, I think it's important that we at least know what our major conclusions or statements are, and it may be that it is just the sort of what we've been talking about most recently looking at multi year projections. We recognize that there is a deficit that continues to grow. That we don't know if adjustments are going to have to be made that are going to be either significantly revenue or making additional budget cuts. We need to just go forward and make the best effort we can to achieve those results, because this is the right thing to do. And that's one way to conclusion that we could drop from this. And I think that that's, I mean the other is to just sort of continue to make the point that we do have to look at not enlarging the budget, or at least recognizing that further enlarging the budget is going to exacerbate the problem just described. Lynn. I'd like to begin whatever statement we send to TSO with very positive support for these two proposals, and then recognize the challenge. But I want to make sure that we send that first message. I think that's what Dorothy was saying too. Is there anybody from the finance committee that is willing to take a stab at writing this because I can't do both it and the guidelines. I think my wavelength will be beyond the limit. I could work with someone on it. Yeah, I agree with that Dorothy. Just say, I'm going to take a stab at it. Okay, I'm kind of a bit overloaded at this time that's that's the challenge, but I know the problem is this is that you are jumping fully. We have a time limit on this. This is for Thursday this Thursday Thursday. I'll volunteer. I'll volunteer. You and I can talk about it. Kathy is to other guidelines for that. Yeah, no, I can, you know, it's just as Lynn said, the, the wording and tone is important. It's not just the information and I guess my question is, are we talking about kind of a one pager. I don't think I don't think what Sean has just shown us, or maybe I'll ask it as a question. I don't. Are we going to show what Sean has just showed us, or are we going to stay within the FY 23 FY 24 world. That's a question. I have my opinion about that but I want to hear other people's opinion about that before I say what mine is. And then I go to Jennifer. Well, so I'll venture. I'll venture a daring. I think that projecting out, maybe more general terms than Sean shared would be would be good for that document but I do think showing that there is significant amount of thought into the long term. Sustainability is an important part of this and I was also going to volunteer Andy I don't know if this is allowable but I would be more than happy to help I almost volunteered to help but being so new I'm not comfortable, but I don't know if that's allowable for anybody to help. Yeah, we have to be very careful because you ran into a problem with the prior time we tried to do this and we found out that if we agree during the meeting to avoid more than one person that it is a subcommittee. And I have to, I don't want to get into that. Okay. Yeah, I thought so. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Jennifer, did you have some thought. I just kind of wanted to follow up on the end on my end and say that I'm similar to what Dorothy Pam had said is that we have an opportunity here to be a leader in our local community or or in the pioneer valley and moving forward with this and I think that Kathy Shane and both Lynn both, you know, stated that the importance of it having a positive attitude so I do hope that you either reach out to some of the CSWG members if you have time or look at the reports to get some of that pull some of that information out into what you write up to your recommendations just so that it keeps that tone of positivity and let's remember that we have to prioritize our community at some point, right, because the way that the government is running and working is one is that I don't want to say one sided but it, it fits a different way but there's a, there's other communities that all of the rules and policies that are made are that communities affected by it and there's no understanding of how it affects them why it affects them and it's these small initiatives, although they're expensive initiatives that make all the difference and I just really hope that you guys understand the prior that we have to prioritize. At some point, the BIPOC and other marginalized community members that reside here in Amherst. Again, to start out with the positive and yet not acknowledge that with this and other demands on our budget. We see challenges down the road I don't want to whitewash it. I just want to make sure that we're clear that this is still a priority. Yeah, the, the, the old human services worker in me really sees the value in this in the old town manager worker in me sees the value in this and I think we need to that's important that we emphasize that going in I think lens point get these point. This is a great one that that you know, the positive nature of this. We should stress that there are going to be challenges long term that we're going to have to be inventive in terms of identifying new revenue sources to sustain this and other things that we find valuable. So we have to make the point that there's additive power and small numbers. So when you sit sit there and debate and say well this is only $50,000. Well, yes, it's going to have to get weighed against far and away more important things and some of the smaller stuff may have to get set aside for the greater good in the larger hole here. So I think the other hands up. I mean I think I'm in agreement with everything that has been said. And Sean's going to have to advise us to whether he thinks that what he showed us can be shared with the larger world and how large a world but the other thing that I would like to do is to thank make sure that in the report that we recognize and thank the implementation team for coming up with a plan that at the inception is economically feasible without out and addressing the goals that were set out by the working group in a responsible manner and also recognizing that it's going to take additional experience in order to really find out what level is needed. And that's what they have given the community in taking the working group report and crafting a real program should be recognized and we should be thank thank all of you and the entire implementation team for its efforts to do that and you know, the other thing I guess that I still feel strongly about is that we this may or may have to be made we don't have to say we'll have to be made. There's some insidious to that but if the, as Sean has pointed out, if those deficits continue then choice then we either have to be successful in raising the revenue, which we hope is the way we go or we're going to have to be making specific choices on expenses and the more additional expenses that we take on for other causes that have been identified by the Council are going to add to it they're not going to subtract from it. So I guess those from those are my thoughts about it. Kathy this is. So I agree with being more general I think it's, I don't think we want to get the numbers. I have to talk to Paul we may share something along these lines on Thursday night I'm not sure yet again still working on working on it a little bit more but but I think commenting generally on the sort of long range forecast is fine. So Kathy you okay with that. I am okay. I'm writing myself little notes, and it will. It's one of these that will require a few drafts before I get my sentences to say all of this well, but I'm not trying to write very long so I can do it. And I just have to Jennifer and everyone else. It's a totally exciting program so I'm just. It's the awesome reality that we are this small town and when I first ran for council I said, I'd be independent on a property tax is about the worst box you can be in. And we are so just when I look at the other budgets, Sean, you kept them all at two and a half percent. So they just where you showed us the town can't be at two and a half percent all the way through, unless we something, you know, that's that's that gap. And the schools are feeling when they, when they say, who do we have working here. So I just, I can do this, and I, it is exciting, launching something new like this. It's a statement of our values, and that's important. I just would like to make sure that in the process of the report we recognize the outstanding work of CSWG, the research they've done, the work that they've done in collaboration with leap and getting us to this point. Okay. So, are we done with this section and just spend a couple minutes on other finance committee matters is there anybody from the implementation team would like to make final comments certainly appreciate your being here and I really thank you all of you for your time and invite any of you who have any last comments to feel free. If not, then thank you very much and I really appreciate your time in this entire process as well as your time this afternoon. And we will move it along in the process we've described so thank you. So, Sean, see if we can get back to the other things. As far as the, I see your hand up Dorothy so come back to it in a second. So, some Excel spreadsheets there that you've created. You Sean. Bottom right. Or is that mine. Yeah, it's yours. Yeah, I didn't know they're not anything useful for right now Dorothy, your hand is up. Where is I'm looking around the screen. Matt Holloway. Okay, I know Matt is a resident member of the committee. I don't know his credentials. It sounded very interesting that he is knowledgeable in this area and I guess I would. I understand why he can't co author this paper I'm just wondering if he could just add some comments, because it sounds like you may have something of interest to say. Oh, thanks Dorothy. It's rare that anybody actually asked me to provide additional comments. I'm going to bask in this moment for a second. But I work in special education and obviously this year is a crisis year for, well, maybe it's not obvious everybody I think that this working group certainly reflects an understanding of the current mental health crisis that we're in. And the specific staffing challenges that come up when you're looking for, for, you know, on the ground workers who are responding to crisis situations are are really difficult and I'm familiar with the temptations of sort of lowering your standards to fill slots. And that's why I just, I feel like it's important. And I, but I, you know, as members of the working group have said, you know, the job description will be specific and it will set specific thresholds for credentials and experience. And I would encourage creativity in terms of, you know, if you're going to create a team, you know, maybe these working teams, you know, maybe you set different thresholds for half your members and a different, you know, one set are licensed mental health counselors, you know, which is kind of one of the higher level credentials and another set might be a bachelor degree level, you know, social or credential or however you want it to, you know, so you had a team of one person with high clinical expertise. The other person was just sort of a, or, you know, orientation and junior members, so to speak, I mean, I think there's a lot of ways to cut that I just would, I think just to echo what Kathy said a moment ago I mean it is a really exciting time and and we should be proud of doing this work because it is the kind of work that, you know, and extends beyond just sort of that initial incident reporting I mean, I know that counseling for individuals who are brought in by the PD, you know, as oftentimes a really important service that can be offered to folks in mental health crisis so you know, I think that'll be something that that develops over time with the crest group, you know the full range of their functions. I think there is there is risk, you know, if we fully fund 10 slots for FY 23. You know, I say that the quality or quantity is just like my one walking away note in terms of staffing this especially because it is a new thing and it's a new service so you know the need for this service is going to be defined over time. The need is not immediately the meeting the need is immediate I don't mean to say it's not but but understanding it is going to be refined over time. So, but thank you very much, counselor Pam for your. Thank you. Interesting. I'm glad that we still have Breonna and Alicia here and Jennifer because, and I don't have found a raise left or not but we really didn't have any significant discussion about DEI and I don't know if Sean, if you want to say anything about that because that's really more straight a salary it's not at large complex. Yeah, so. So the DEI in terms of the long term financial picture that was included so. So that part is sort of already addressed. The funding for the two positions. On behalf of the positions are already in the town budget so it's really just adding half a position that's currently grant funded which was in that forecast. There were some questions that came in related to yeah if you want me to ask those questions some of them I think I've already been discussed but but I think in terms of a lot of the responses we had for the for the Crest program a lot of it's similar to for the financial piece of it. Right. I guess I just want to open up for questions. The job description game it as with the Crest department the job description came to the town we reviewed it we had some back and forth with recommendations questions concerns. And then we finalized it at a non union level seven, which is the salary of 74 895 as the minimum and the maximum at 106 52. And again when I say the maximum don't forget that that can increase by 2% with cost of living there's longevity but that's the salary range right now for a level seven and we did. We were thinking and we did look not only at our internal system and the essential functions and use the municipal rating system but we also looked externally because they're there are a lot of positions that we could look at in the local market to see what you know what the rates were so. I think that's how we came up with that and then there's an assistant director position and we have not finalized the job description on that so I do not have exactly the salary range yet. And then there was a question. Oh sorry. So again, Andy. Was it was the position for which a job description has not been developed yet included in your budget calculations. And is that that right is that the director position. The assistant the assistant director the second person. Okay, well the two both positions are in the what was projected so there's two positions and they were both projected. So John already took a guess at the salary without my final approval or the town managers. No, that's a good point I think again that's another reason why a lot of this is, you know, a lot of this will be fine tuned and sharpened as we go forward when the implementation team and some of these other things are decided and when we actually get people, obviously. There was another question sort of related to that which is, is the ADA coordinator role, or taken over the, the accessibility coordinator role is a big responsibility, who currently holds this. And are we confident that we can find somebody in the DEI director that can also take on the accessibility coordinator role. Yeah, the ADA has a lot of different titles, a lot of different sections and so I'm responsible for the one that has to do with employment accommodations and I handle those right now, and I would be very happy and willing to. I plan on being a partner to the director of DEI so if that was a deficit, I wouldn't see it as a giant problem because I could help them with that I'm kind of an expert in that for the kind of accessibility for, you know, municipal buildings and other areas that is currently being handled in the planning office. And so I had imagined they would be kind of the same kind of partner, but I do agree I mean it's a big responsibility but when you think about diversity, equity and inclusion you do have to think about ability and it seemed to be in line with what we're trying to accomplish that's why it's in the job description. Thank you. And then there was another question about. So the DEI director is being funded out of the economic development director money. But that position was eliminated if it was eliminated how does the money still exist. And so just to clarify so that the economic director position. It wasn't vacant for several years but it wasn't eliminated, it was just vacant and the money was still there. And then as part of the FY 22 budget process the decision was made to move that money that was already there to the DEI program and so it wasn't really limiting that position was reallocating those funding for this new purpose. I think the last question. Maybe that's more related to not DEI so I guess I'll, I guess if there's any other questions we're happy to discuss them or answer them. I did have one other question, but it may not be a financial one so it may be a TS when we come on Thursday for my role as a TSO member. But I am curious as to why the decision was made to have this position also be directly supervised by the town manager as opposed to supervised elsewhere, including through Donna right by Donna right. Yeah, I think that's, that's a good question for Paul I think Paul did. He did think through whether it be within the town manager's office whether it be within the human resources office or whether it be a standalone department. And I think the decision he came to is that he valued it being a standalone department. Over those other two options so but he would have to weigh in more on his rationale. So I think the questions from the committee. You have, you said you have none left on your list. I think those, I think I've covered. I mean that one, there was a question that was along those same lines about why could DEI and human resources eventually become sort of one joint office. So I think that question was related but other than that I think that's it. So I'll look into the committee then. There are other questions. I'm not sure it's a question. It's, well it is a question. But in trying to think through the organizational chart. I'd love to know and it doesn't need to be answered it all now. How do other organizations handle this because the small organizations I've been did combine it with HR. I don't really want to know where it's coming from. I'm not to fragment. So I understand why one might or one, and I don't really want to know org charts. I'm going to know places where they think the DEI person officer. Has added value in a really meaningful way. It's working well. What did they do. It's adhering in some places at UMass. It's an extra layer that has not produced what people had hoped for. And so it's an administrative cost without a lot of, but not necessarily in all places. So I would just like to know in small, relatively small towns, some sense on, and I realize wherever we start, we can shift over time. I wanted to think of how it's in a way we said with climate change, we wanted it to be a lens of sustainability everywhere. So this is an idea of diversity equity and conclusion is everybody's lens what we're looking at so how do we best build that in so I think there's a little bit of work on outreach on working well not working well to get people to give you give us some feedback over the next year or so. So not even on day one. So that's my thinking on it in relatively small organizations, not trying to splinter too much or fragment too much. And then he was any thoughts on that from. Yeah, I'll just weigh in real quickly. I'll give a plug to my school days. The schools have done it multiple ways. The way they've done it recently is they did combine it with human resources. And it's worked really well from what I can tell when they decided to combine it with human resources it sort of puts it into every personnel decision that's made. So the important thing I think is this is a really good first step and then as others have said I think we'll learn and evolve as we go forward and maybe it stays a standalone department maybe other decisions are made but I think but the schools have done a good job with it and I'm sure there's places that have done really good job with it as a standalone department as well. I've gone back and forth as to whether I thought this should be reporting to the town manager, or to HR. And a part of my issue is reporting to the town manager is what I said earlier he's got too many direct reports. But at the same time, there's also this perception, and I want to just be very clear. There's a very commonly held perception that if you don't report to the top, you don't have influence, and that is absolutely a mistake. There are people, literally, the custodian in the town hall has a lot of influence on certain things that happen in our lives, including getting us out of the town hall, when it's 1130 at night, and she wants to clean. I just want to be clear this somehow or another, we need to help people understand that influence is not based on position, it's based on action. Jennifer. Well, I just, I wasn't quite sure if the town manager has the flexibility to change his direct report I mean if it was too much for him at any point when he be able to designate someone else to report to. And then to counselor Shane, I'm always really it's UMass is so big, and I think that at UMass there are DI directors that work effectively. But, you know, I have a lot of friends who work in administrative positions that like director positions and it seems like they hire layer on top of layer on top of layer anyway so it's hard to use that as a comparable to anything. And that's actually something I told the CSWG members not to do like don't compare us to UMass we're not comparable in those, and you know, so I would I would just be careful with that and then I just there's that part of me of course that has to say like, again, this is about about priorities and I'm not saying that anybody is against it because I don't think that that's the case here I'm just it's just, you know, my position on it is that and working with human resources I think would work equally too but DEI needs to flow throughout every department. Right, so in theory, you know, each department could have somebody who was the DI rep I mean it just really the, it needs to be embedded in everything policy procedure who we hire to who we contract. So all of that needs to end and that DEI structure is that important and it needs to be embedded in everything that we do here. And then it needs to spread out to the community to help them feel more included and welcome here in in our town spaces. Matt. So I confess to being one of the people who immediately just sort of asked well, is there any future of merging this into HR kind of thing. You know, you know, I don't really believe that I kind of, I kind of believe that when I look at the overall charge from the working group and and from the discussion, just in general, that there is a much broader vision for this office that will lead to guide HR and hiring and and when I look through the document, you know, I do see that there are a lot of references to sort of, you know, helping to guide strategy helping to craft policy reviewing, you know, the chart or things like that that that reflect beyond the hiring practices. I would encourage Sean I would encourage you guys to come back to this document and insert a couple of concrete examples of the kind not not just simply to review to consider, but the concrete examples of things that this work that this would do like Jennifer we've actually had conversations about some of the you know community ambassadors and some of the not not making a commitment to this is what we're going to do, but a couple for examples because I think the public messaging of department like this. It is a little bit abstract, you know, in the charge as written here. And I think a few concrete examples of the kinds of things we would hope this group does would really make it go down more smoothly and you'd stop having people say, I just put it in HR, you know what I mean. I think Jen wants to weigh in on that I think Jen started a lot of this work already so she may want to weigh in on this. I mean, go ahead. No, I was just saying I wanted to hear from you and if you wish or Brianna have anything to say. I welcome their comments to the go ahead Jennifer. So there is a lot of overlap in what happens with DTI and HR but there is a separate component in the same way that HR itself is not just limited to recruitment I mean the HR department charge itself is so big behind the scenes with union contracts and associations and FMLA and so the same thing happens for DEI. I also want to just throw in there that you know a good DEI director or or good DEI department is can work as your economic development director in the same manner, which is something that I've been meaning to say for a while because I know that that's been, you know, at some point it seemed like the two positions were a little bit competitive within each other. You know, some good DEI department will have that knowledge that that different BIPOC or other marginally business owners need to come into the town and helping them get, you know, licensed and working with the different businesses so I just wanted to add that piece on there too. Alicia Brianna do you have anything to add. I just wanted to say that Paul definitely thought through this a lot and I think I definitely will be a partner with the, the DEI director because they're going to want to look at our employment practices are recruitment practices. Hopefully will be an expert in identifying bias where we haven't, you know, figure that out yet and so we are definitely going to be a partner but Paul definitely envisions that they're going to be reaching to out to every service we offer our citizens and you know, are we are we offering recreation services in in in the best way and so I think that's so I think it would have been probably easier for him to have DEI report to me certainly and I think that you know I'm not I'm not saying that he won't change that actually but I think that there's just a lot of work to be done initially and I think that's probably why he made this decision but maybe he, you know, he could probably answer better for you but I didn't, I didn't want to say, nothing, double negative, but thank you. Yeah, I just want to sort of second Jennifer has been saying about the kind of overall outreach and the need to have this position be flexible and be available throughout and I particularly appreciate her point about bringing in new businesses, because that's an area that I've seen repeatedly. And so having someone who can do that outreach and and help attract people attract new businesses in is particularly valuable. That said I'm going to ask a very present question. Is there a need to make up the half time position that the town administrators office is losing. I mean, Bernie, do you mean the clerical position or the administrative position that is losing. Yeah, yeah, I understand what Paul's doing here I mean he's moved stuff around and move positions around and it's, that's okay but again the concern is, you know, he's he's got another direct report it's important position. And on top of that, there's 3020 25 hours of staff time that's leaving his office. So, Paul will have to weigh in on that I think again he feels comfortable at this point, making that decision. And I think he's been considering other structures for how to absorb that loss. I know as a town we're working with Brianna Sunrid and our communications manager to really think about how communication flows and other town to do it the best, the best way we can. But yeah Paul will have to ultimately weigh in on his vision for how that'll be handled. I just want to say to us that's you know, from sitting in this there's also there's things. You know when we changed government that kind of came over to the town manager's office there's a lot of shifting and in the administrative tasks or administrative driven tasks that occurred and so some of those can be moved like the town manager's office is responsible for the reservations of Kendrick Park, DPWs responsible for the reservations on the common LSSE or sorry Amherst rec is responsible for the reservations at the parks right and so it could be that someone takes on all of those. I mean there's just, there's certain tasks that can be spread out to help this move further and not to spread myself so thin but I'm always here I'll be on this floor to to help in the interim right like I won't be able to do it forever but I, you know, I would never leave my coworkers in my, in my floor, you know, struggling. So, to draw conclusions so we can because it is getting late. These are agreement that this just gets combined with the other report that's being provided for Thursday and sort of just the financials are the same, because it was all written as a piece. So we don't really have to rediscuss that and the question of enthusiastically saying that this was recommendation of CSWG and that it's an exciting addition to the staff and move forward. So, I think where we're at. I don't think we need to really talk too much more about it and have a couple of we have two things left on the agenda and I think I can dispose of them with the suggestion fairly quickly Jennifer your hand is still upside enough you had anything Okay. What one additional item on the agenda that we were was the transition plan and I had asked that everybody think about a sort of a question of what are the issues that we want to alert the finance committee beyond the just regular annual cycle and I had thrown out. One very specific one which I guess that Paul's going to be reporting back to the council on soon anyway, which was the one that Kathy and Bernie had been working on about water rate structure and but what would be what I could do is if people just emailed any ideas that they have that they would like to throw into that work plan. And we can see if that'll work or people have something that they'd like to say really quickly now. Please do so. But seeing nobody raise Lynn and Bob. The only thing I get just because I just don't see us getting to the fiscal policy manual is that perhaps that's a way to help introduce the new council and the new finance committee so that we just do that as a transition. And other than that, I really think we do them the best service by saying, you know, here are the main fiscal events of the year and how they feed into each other bone calendar. Bob. Yeah, I was going to, I would agree with that I was going to sort of as part of that. I think it's important to let especially the new council members understand all the different organizations that are involved in putting together the budgets. I mean, because you've got the schools, you got the regional budget you've got the town, you got the library and they all all affect, you know, the town budget writ large, but all have different pieces and, you know, the finance has more input into the town than to some of these other other budgets so I think that's important for the, the, the new council members to know. Okay. Dorothy. One area that I found very interesting when we first came on was the infrastructure that the public doesn't think about. The systems, the sewage, all those basic systems that are necessary for a civilized town. So, I think that should be included in some of the orientation. Okay. So we're trying to make sure that we're getting our work plan. I think the questions of parking and the financial side of parking is definitely one that I would include along with that. And Kathy. Sean, Sean will know where, where his opus is, but we started I sent a memo in in May on different kinds of fees trying to rethink some of the parking permits and I know you had an internal group and you said it was near ready but then we got bogged down. So it might, he, he, show him will be the best to know but it might be good to put it on the list of something we're going to be able to take a look at. Yeah, we're ready to move on parking I think we're waiting probably till the next council takes over to start those more in depth discussions but in terms of being ready to go I think we're ready to go. And Andy the other thing that maybe just to put on the radar or something the committee should be thinking about is the cannabis impact fees and how those are allocated. So we can allocate those in some form or fashion and the FY 23 budget because right now they're just accumulating. And so I think again that's probably another January topic or January February topic but something that the next finance committee may want to weigh in on. Okay, and another one that I had was looking at the rental registration programs. It was mentioned last night. The fees and what the expectations are from that. Luna Jennifer Jennifer's had her hand up for a while. She should go ahead. Um, it has been a pleasure and I would love to stay but I'm just curious to know what do you have more questions in regards to the finance for CSWG or DI and if you're all right with. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. I don't think that I think we're I think we're done with last piece and I think we're ready to adjourn. Okay. Thank you everybody. I'll head out to thank you. Thank you. So, I do think it would be useful for to mention the need to review and if needed update the financial model and also understand the whole nuances around doing a prop two and a half override. Since that's probably one of the big financial decisions this council will have to make this next council. Are you thinking of the question of the debt exclusion for the school or other override. No, that exclusion to the school. And it's good timing because Kathy and I, we have new information on timing of the school so we'll be able to be more. Yeah, better information on that. Okay, anything else. And as I say, if you send me an email. Next few days because I'm going to work on the guidelines first and so this will be my second item to work on while Kathy's working on today's discussion. If there's anything else, otherwise, I think that the point that I was going to come to in the end is we don't really have the wavelength or energy any longer to talk about the financial policy manual. Is that okay Sean. That's okay I got it if anybody has comments or questions on it gives you more time to send those in so. I need to leave I have to go pick up someone at a bus stop. So, yeah, and if not we'll do the caregiver. So I think actually we're ready to adjourn and Kathy is giving us there. So, anything else that people that anyone wants to bring up from the committee is on anticipated business. Andy, do we have another meeting scheduled or not. We do not at this point. And I will send out when I do a draft of the guideline or vision to give you a chance to comment on it, but I don't anticipate a meeting because we could schedule one but I'm not really anxious to ask everybody to meet again. That's fine. I mean, it can wait till after the new year but I mean that we don't know what I don't know what the committee is going to look like. Can I can I answer that question. So, on the third the new council seated. Once the new council seated they elect their sworn in they elect a president vice president, the president immediately moves to ask who wants to be on which committees and makes those appointments those do not have to be approved by the council. And since right now the way the calendar stands, there will be a large gap between January 3 and January 24, which will be the next official meeting of the full council. Most of that time will be spent on convening the each of the committees, and the first thing that they do is elect their chair and vice chair. And you will be on the finance committee automatically you're the only known people. I suspect you might see some of the same faces back again, however, I hope so. Anyone hopes. So is there anything else. Otherwise, I want to thank everybody for really a very good meeting and I look forward to wherever we go in the future but we shall. Happy holidays and I will try and get a date proposed and at least the people coming onto the committee as well as resident members have an idea of a date proposed to think that it's, we're going to get back to meeting twice a month. But the, we can't really commit to a time until we make a determination of who's on the committee whether in what their time availability is and what their desire is after the first meeting, whether we're meeting. Still on daytime hours or whether they want to add whether there's going to be a request from committee to do something different. And the other thing that we're going to have to to deal with as we move for the long is as a council question is whether we're going to continue zoom meetings or whether we're going back to required in person meetings. And I think that's being left to the next council to make its own decision on that. Is that correct Lynn. Yes. Yes. So, it's kind of where we're at Matt. I just want to clarify so we will not meet any further in December is that right. I don't anticipate another need for another December meeting and everybody's been working really hard. So I think that what I will be doing is just sending out guideline revisions and anybody who was take the time to comment, certainly will appreciate it, but I don't think we need to actually schedule a meeting. Everything else. Seeing that, but I guess we can declare ourselves adjourned. Happy holidays everyone. Thanks. Thanks everybody.