 Okay. So welcome everybody. I'm going to call this meeting of the budget coordinating to order. We'll start with a roll calls. See who can be heard. So Andy Steinberg. Yes, I'm here. Lynn Griezmer. Present. Elsa McDonald. Present. Pam. Here. Mani Johanaki. Present. Peter Demling. Peter present. And Lynn Griezmer. I'm still present. So then we have our staff here. Thank you, everybody. Yeah, we're down one library trustee. I want the front. If we do another meeting. Okay. And Sean, do you want to show the agenda? Can you share the. Yes, I can. If you give me one second. So the goal of today's meeting is to share information. Update you on where we are on some of the. Our financial situation and review the calendar. That we're, that we're proposing to do. For the, for the coming budget season. And now that you've shared the agenda, I found it. It's good to share anyway. Do you see it on the screen? It's coming. Yes. Actually, this is not, this is not through anyone's. So I think. That was an old agenda. Sorry. Yeah. That was from last year. Do we have to select a new chair? Or just run. Here it is. Here it is. Sorry. What's the. We decided your chair under the charter, Paul. Okay, good. Okay. So the first thing we will do is ask for public comment. I see no one in the audience or in attendees. So seeing that we will move on from public comment. And we'll go to charter tuition adjustment. And then the other things we'll talk about as the budget, as I said before. So Sean, you want to talk about the. Charter. Yeah, I mean, I think Peter, if you want to. So I'll just get a really, really quick overview in the turnover. Peter. So the schools. I believe had a public conversation last. Last spring, maybe about the, the charter tuition adjustment and Peter did some exploration into what other communities do. And so with that, I'll turn it over to Peter. Yeah, thanks. So I will try to keep this brief in light of the rest of the agenda so we can get out in reasonable time. So yeah, so this is something I looked at over the course of last year and it took me a while to fully understand it. So thank you to both Doug and Sean for meeting with me multiple times to understand all the, the machinations. But basically, you know, this is looking at the idea of, could we look at changing how the charter, the town's charter costs are accounted for with the town budget and the school budget. So just as a very brief overview without going into every detail, but we can go into them if we want to be the state charges the town for any charter tuition of residents to go to charter budgets. The state reimburses the town directly for some of that annual increase, it's pretty small at this point. It's also subject to appropriation. Just to give you an idea of order of magnitude, it's about 1.6 million, the tuition bill. These days and, and you get reimbursed for about 5% of that. So, so it's most of that is charged. And then the, during the budget process cycle, which is why we're talking about here, when the guidance first comes out the school budget is then reimbursed for down based on the difference of the net charter cost from the previous budget cycle. So if, if the tuition minus reimbursement one year was 1.5 million and then it was 1.6 million the next year, then it, then it goes down 100,000 and whatnot. So this is why you see, instead of say a year where the guidance is two and a half, the schools are 2.32 or 2.61 or, or whatnot. So the, the, the choice out and in also factors into this, I'm going to put that in hold for a moment because just so we've talked about the charter stuff. So, so this is actually the jumping off point for wanting to explore it because I've always found it very difficult to understand and explain. And I found it a constant point of confusion where people are asking why aren't the schools getting as much as everybody else or why are they getting more than. And, and, you know, it's, it's, it's not the case. It's made further complicated by the fact that when you run the schools, you need to use two years prior. So, because the numbers aren't final. So, for example, on the FY 23 budget process where we were using FY 21 numbers. And so it further disconnects you from the, from the current. So this, this all seemed kind of difficult and complex to me. And so I wanted to understand how other communities do it. So I reached out to as many districts as I could and finance directors, superintendents and whatnot. And so I was able to get here back definitively from 25 school districts, mostly from our area. And it turns out most of them don't do it the way we do most of them. The town budget absorbs the cost and then whatever guidance the schools are going to get the schools are going to get. So I heard back from 25 districts and of those 20. Just absorb the cost and then do the, the guidance. So these are. These are the towns like Belcher town, North Hampton, Sunderland, your field East Hampton, a lot of the communities to directly around us. So, so, so the, the impact of doing it one way or the other. You know, this might be obvious to you, but this is kind of the idea is that if, if there's an increase in charter costs, then the, the schools absorb the cost fully in the current model. If the town just pays for it directly, like, like most communities do, then the whole town absorbs the cost. And so all the town departments, including the schools absorb that cost, but in a lesser degree, right? And then conversely, if we're doing better on charter schools, intuition and the current model of the town, the school budget benefits directly. Whereas if it was a town cost all town departments, including the schools would benefit more from, from a, to a lesser degree. So, so in addition to the trans, when I say transparency, just until like it being simpler and clearer to communicate to the public about what the school's budget actually is in the context of the town, that that's, this is another benefit from, from switching that I was interested in and exploring this is, is just the decreased volatility for the school budget. You know, where we've absorbed 1.6 million about directly which works out to about 6% of our net school spending. And so there's, there's a cap on statewide 9% of net school spending. So, you know, it could go up, it could go down in future, you know, who knows who knows what tomorrow will bring. But the, the idea of getting that smoothing out projection for the schools really appealed to me. I also really like the idea of, of increasing the working in partnership between the town and the schools and, and you know, seeing, seeing the fact that providing a quality public service like the schools is really a shared responsibility between the town and the schools and one can't function without the other right people move to town because of the schools but you don't do that unless the town also has other excellent services and, you know, people and so you know one one helps out the other and whatnot and so yeah so that was, that was really the basis for wanting to explore this and, and thank you to Sean and Paul for helping me understand the details in last reading. Yeah, so, so just to summarize the request I think the request is to stop a modifying the allocation to the schools by any changes in charter each year right that's sort of the, the specific request for the town manager to consider for the budget. Yeah, and to be clear, no one, no one on school committee has expressed any desire to completely reverse and revert history so no, we're not asking for a $1.6 million credit to schools next fiscal year I think that would be very one could argue that on pure principle I suppose but it's I think that's in my view unreasonable and impractical to the request but from this point onwards you know we start with what the, what the school budget is now and just you know go forward with whatever the guidance is. Chair Backelman is it okay if I. Yeah, please. So, so, you know, I was aware that the school committee was discussing this. We've had conversations about this in the past I think. Two reasons to consider it are one is super complicated it's something we have to explain every single year and some people remember going as far back to Sandy pooler in front of town meeting doing a little skit to try to explain it to 300 town meeting members. But it's always been very confusing to explain why this elementary schools get either more or less in the given year because of this change. And then the other thing that I can put the back up on the screen if anyone doesn't want to see it again but charter enrollment has sort of stabilized at least at the elementary level. And so the last five years there's been up years and then there's been down years. So, some years the assessment is the allocation to the schools is reduced some years it's increased but they're relatively small adjustments and it's you know is it really worth the confusion to you know to people looking at it to make those small adjustments. Mandy. Thanks. I have two questions. The first one is about the history of how this happened into the budget which is I could be wrong but I remember at some point that didn't we remove all charter tuition costs from the school budget and put them on a different line within the whole sort of budget. In the town at some point and then reduced the school. I guess budget operating budget by that same amount and the I'm not sure the reason behind that but when we did that didn't that actually make this more complicated that now we're seeking another solution for and what was the reasoning behind that. And then I'll ask my second question. So Sonya will want to jump in on this but yeah the charter and choice used to be in the school budget and it was in the town budget it was in both places and what the school would have it in their budget based on a couple years prior because we wanted it to show up in the educational budget back then somehow. And Sonya can speak to I don't know if it was our auditors or the department of revenue that basically said you can't have it in two places and it's a really complicated it was a even more complicated mechanism back then I think it's less complicated now but we're not all the way towards you know very simple but Sonya if you wanted what did the DOR say about that. Well I don't particularly understand it well myself either but this was an attempt by Nancy Maguire and she was a finance director to show the true cost of education. So she was booking all of the the budgets for the school for the chair sheet receipts that came in and chair sheet charges so we would adjust our chair sheet figures when we were selling the tax rate we are netting the difference for the tax rate and then we were appropriating the true cost of the school and the school operating budget and it was a nightmare to figure out every year to explain it to people. At one point the department of revenue said no you can't do this you know you booked the chair sheet the way the chair sheet comes in and you internally somehow figure out the true cost of education so we had to do that but this was left over from that with the chair sheet where we would adjust the difference in choice and charter from the base we always increase their base we always kept that at two and a half percent and then the adjustment after the fact but I agree this is something that should just be straightforward. And there are other ways now to get the true cost of education that the desi reports they fold in charter tuition into per pupil costs for example when you look at that so there are there may not have been ways back then to see the total cost of education but the reports that are out there now do that. My second one might go beyond this particular group but and goes beyond whatever we feel individually about the benefit or not benefit of charter schools but the original my understanding the original impetus behind charter schools was to improve all public school education including the potentially creation of new programs within public schools and that's why they have this coming out of public school budgets and I could have some of this information be wrong but and so my question is if the whole town and takes on the burden of charter school tuition instead of just the schools does that decrease the impetus for our school committee and our school department to improve the schooling and quote compete and I know Peter hates the word compete but compete with the charter schools that for example had the schools not had that burden of it coming out of their budget would we have been thinking about creating say common nontes to compete with the chart the Chinese charter school so I don't know if that's a conversation for today but you know the library department the DPW can do really nothing to bring students back into our schools from charter schools but the elementary school can but if you know the school department does that change the considerations there Peter I think it's really appropriate question for this scope of discussion I mean my short feeling on it is no it doesn't decrease the school's motivation well so one just for common nontes yes it is a nice side benefit that we have that we have a dual language immersion here for somebody who was considering the single language immersion of Chinese at the charter and that may well be true that that bears out as a benefit however the primary motivation for common nontes is to really is to reach Spanish native Spanish speaking English language learners because research bears out that that's the most effective intervention approach and I know it gets confused sometimes because it has these other side benefits right there's another side benefit which is huge about embracing different cultures and values and which is amazing and there's a great video out by the way that ARPS just put up today that we should share that really highlights common nontes in a super joyous way because of sidebar so that so I think common nontes still would have existed but but in the in the more general question of you know does it put the schools on a less concerned level? I don't think so and I say this based on my last six year plus years of fighting charter schools for lack of better term locally and statewide in that like when I my first foray into this when I was fighting the first expansion back in 2017 I had no idea how this was accounted for so it didn't factor into my equation and you know over the years the community has been the most passionate about this who do the most for at least the ones I've run into like Mike Nap in Belcher town, Laura Fallon Northampton, Andrew Lipsett and Wuburn these these communities they all have the accounting in which it comes into the town budget so and and there's and there's towns that don't do it who where you don't have that and that might be different if if if we were talking if we turned the way back machine in 2007 and we had zero charter cost right now and we were talking about you know differences of potentially you know hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions you know year to year or year to a couple years but at this point you know we've absorbed we know two we're two thirds the way to our net school spending right we've absorbed 1.6 million so I think to advocate for charter school reform will be there in in the hearts and minds and to do lists of the public servants and community members who who are passionate about it and you know I think I think it helps to to promote this as as a it's a civic funding reform that needs to happen right I mean this is a state charge to the town and so it affects however you want account for it it affects the town and schools affect the town so um yeah but it's just that's just my my take from my experience thanks Peter Andy Yeah it would seem to me and but I want to see what Allison Peter and Doug have to say about this that because the regional schools still absorb all of the consequences of charter that there's a real motivation amongst our school committee members who all serve on the regional school committee to try and encourage participation in public schools because once you lose kids at the beginning you might you know whether you get them back at the end this question Mark and so I would hope that there's an incentive amongst school committee to continue to try and keep kids in our public schools elementary because that sets them on a track that also affects the region so I think it's a dual Thanks Allison Yeah I haven't talked about the impact on the region as well but I think building on something that Peter said about understanding the cost calculation and sort of how that funding works I think I don't know that I'm speaking out of school to say that I don't think a lot of new members on the school committee are completely aware of how that funding mechanism works and it takes time before we do and yet the impact of charter schools on our elementary schools is multi-layered it's not this funding the tuition it's also the enrollment numbers which impact our chapter 70 funding and other sort of enrollment driven funding mechanisms and I think that's something that as a school committee member and I do see that in our conversations over the years in school committee we do talk about that and that is sort of that's sort of the easy mnemonic for us to understand really sort of keep track of the competition if you will that we're getting from charters and then the tuition cost is just sort of the thing that we can point to to say how that's impacting and that doesn't go away whether it's absorbed by the town or the schools directly because we get impacted on a couple different levels when a student chooses a charter school over our own elementary schools so yeah that's I have more but not sort of directly and it's not really well formed at this point so I'll stop now Lynn yeah are there any other kinds of charges or payments like excuse me like this that would also that we're opening the door to that's my first question my second question is in a next budget of FY24 what how much are we talking about in terms of the shift so so again looking back at the shift is almost nothing if we were to our net cost was 1.538,000 in FY21 our cost in FY22 is 1.536,000 so it's about $2,000 shift if we stick with sort of the historical look back so it's a good year to make that shift because it's a very negligible adjustment and we don't know what FY23 looks like we won't have FY23 actuals when we finalize the budget so that's a good it's a minor adjustment and then in terms of other things there's nothing else like this where in the Sonya correct me if I'm wrong there's nothing else like this where we go back and look at historical costs and then I mean you can just look at our operating budgets with the schools the region the library and the town there's no other adjustments made to those other operating budgets this is the only adjustment we make and besides the auditor's advice to not book a number twice thank you very much the is there have they ever given us any other thoughts or advice with regard to this based on their experience with other towns Sonya my knowledge Sonya no this adjustment really they would they wouldn't see that because it's just our increase in the budget over the year so they wouldn't look at that but when we were adjusting the actual charity sheet receipts that was right in their face so that's why they question that okay and I guess my other thought was that if we did this is there suppose we start having some wild swings and we had a couple of those at the regional level particularly because of COVID and maybe even some at the elementary level is there a point where we say you know we'll absorb it up to X or something like that you mean guardrails yeah that is what I would mean like if a new school opened up like that and like all of a sudden you know we have some serious payment out or we have some other change even the other way I guess yeah I mean it could go the other way there's a lot of effort out there and we have a new governor coming in to increase reimbursements for Charter Charter tuition reimbursements are pretty minimal at this point so it could certainly go the other way too where there's more revenue coming in but I think if there is a new school or a significant expansion we would need to get all hands on deck to see how that would impact the town last time it happened it had a really significant impact on the budgets Peter yeah I mean I think I mean two thoughts I mean one you know if there was ever an extraordinary unanticipated situation you know obviously that would be part of that fiscal year's discussion between you know the town and the schools about you know the schools going to get a different increase substantially up or down from that you know so I mean that's a conversation I guess for the future people who sit at these meetings you know more generally though I mean I would think my feeling is that one of the benefits of it is that that volatility and that sort of benefit and the cost of the volatility up or down is shared across the departments and is a shared responsibility of the town and the school which I see is a good thing you know like the town is doing an unbelievable job at supporting and promoting the new building project and residents are obviously going to vote and having this amazing new building is clearly going to be an enrollment draw for some families you know it's going to factor into the equation I don't know exactly how much but you know one would expect a positive impact on enrollment for that so I don't think that the school budget should be the sole direct beneficiary of that because you know it's a combination the school committee has to do a good job overseeing the schools and spending the money that we have wisely and the town has to do a good job funding the schools at a level I think it's appropriate so I feel like you know all ships together on the rising or trafing seas is the way to go which is like one of the appeals for me about this but obviously you know if there's some 10 orders of magnitude situations in one way or the other that would be a discussion for a future future body so it seems like we should plan on doing this for this year I think that could always be brought up for discussion during the the trafing seas so unless there's objection I think we should just plan this is a perfect year to do it that's what our conclusion has been so and we may find out that it's a bad decision I don't think we will but I think going forward this is the way we should be accounting and projecting okay just one more question where does it does it just show up in the cherry sheet now in the budget and then those adjustments with the school such that if we go to this new method like how does that ensure it's across all the departments since general government gets its two and a half is it in general government is it somewhere else like where is it right now it's in the state assessments and the state aid that we had in a second so I can show you kind of where they show up but the assessments and the reimbursement show up there the difference would be whether it was an increase or decrease to the schools that would have been more in that general pot to divvy up for other things that just won't happen because we won't make that adjustment okay thanks Bob you muted Bob it may be improper for me to ask a question about the school budget but during the period of construction which is likely to go on for two years that will have some impact on people's decisions about where they're going and if that means that some percentage of kids will will be shifted out and you're telling me that that is likely to have longer term impacts on whether they come back I'm just wondering about has some thought been given to that question yeah I mean I can start I mean the nice thing about the school construction project or the nice thing about Fort River being the site is that it's not from what I can tell so far from what I've seen is it's going to have one of the reasons Fort River was chosen is because it has a smaller impact on kids in Fort River school there's more space to work with they can keep some fields it's not like you know if it was that wildwood the construction was going to be right on the back of the school you know potentially that could have been a you know deterrent for some families to stay in but with Fort River again what I've seen so far is there's you can maintain a pretty good degree of separation between the existing Fort River school and where the new school will go in the construction area so our hope is that I mean you know Peter and Allison I would hope that the goal is to not lose any students because of construction right Peter Yeah I mean just real briefly exactly what Sean said not to open up the can of worms of site selection but one of the main benefits was a significant difference in the transition impact to students if anything I would imagine over the construction period we might see an increase in enrollment as families move in and anticipate their students being able to have some number of years in the future. Yeah Allison Yeah what he said but also but also we just had our school committee meeting last night and learned of a significant increase in well significant isn't the right word an increase or unexpectedly larger enrollment at Fort River than originally anticipated in our budget and part of that is due to coming on this and coming on this is going to stay in Fort River even during construction so as coming on this sort of moves up I think it's the oldest grade is fourth grade right now we'll have fifth grade next year so it's there's enough going on and to Peter's point the construction is not going to impact that school merely as much as it might it could have in other situations so I don't see it really having a such a substantial impact that it would be people would be chart moving to charter simply because of that construction we're not seeing it right now and at least historically it may be different now the charter schools typically have entry points you know whether it be kindergarten sixth grade points where that makes more sense and the elementary school in our area has like has a specific program where I don't think it's one where you kind of hop in hop out it's you know it's a language type program so could it be with school choice change potentially but I think the charter tuition one is the charter enrollment is probably less likely to fluctuate wildly construction yeah okay let's move on to our next topic which is the if I 23 budget right yeah so I'm going to share my screen so one thing we said during the budget process was that we would come back and talk about operating budgets in the fall especially with final state aid numbers of final state aid figures came in higher this was part of the conversation around the schools and the arts and rich position they were looking at but also just we we knew that there was this wide range between the governor's proposal for state aid and what the house and senate were looking at for state aid there was a pretty big gap and so we went the conservative route but we did sort of commit to coming back and looking at this again with final state aid numbers so what I want to run you through is our sort of comparison of what we voted to what potentially could be a supplemental appropriation given the new state aid figures this is for the first time we're discussing this so we wanted to get this group's input before we would potentially bring this to the council so nothing so on the left side you got the voted and then the supplemental not much has changed for the property taxes we're not looking to make any adjustments right now to anything there but again state aid we've updated so the big changes were in the unrestricted government aid I think it would end up being a we budgeted somewhere around 2.9 or 3% increase and end up being in the 5 so it was a pretty significant increase to unrestricted government aid chapter 70 we've changed a little bit for the positive they did some these are all final cherry sheet figures they made some final adjustments to charter assessment there was also a pretty big increase to state owned land again it's nowhere near reflecting what we we all think we should get for state owned land but it was a 28% increase from where it was before so the final state aid figures have been put in here and you can see it increased our state aid revenue by about 2.9% from aga and state owned land in the libraries as well right you'll see in the offset receipts so offset receipts means money that flows into the town that we then turn over and give to either the schools at the library so in this case school choice tuition that's based on how many kids choose to come into the into our elementary school district that increase from the original estimate so we end up giving them the actual amount that comes in so if it changes again it changes but and then public libraries that amount increased quite a bit relative to where it was so those amounts would come in and go straight to the library or straight to the schools and they have revolving funds that they use to manage that so on the revenue side the change is just in state aid on the expense side I'll come back to operating budget in a second on the expense side the first thing we do is we increase the assessment so the aid went up the assessments went up a little bit too so we've put in that new number and then the cherry sheet offsets which is a wash with up above it comes in and then it goes out we've updated that to reflect the new figure so when we did that what was left over we've determined that we can get pretty close we have to make one other little adjustment but we can do a half percentage point increase to the operating budgets based on the the higher state aid which the new single state aid is it's a relatively full recurring revenue source even during the pandemic it stayed flat and obviously revenues in the state have done much much better than what was expected so few of the reasons why we're proposing this for consideration is one we all know how inflation has impacted sort of everyone's world you know whether you're paying for gasoline or utilities things are harder to get whether you're paying for construction everything is more expensive nowadays and we sort of recognize that our original budget you know we didn't we reflected inflation on the capital side we didn't do anything additional for the operating side around inflation the second another reason would be the schools and the town all are funding you know I'll have federal grants at this point that are funding some level of recurring expenses that we hope to transition back into the operating budget and increasing the operating base now kind of sets that base higher and allows us to more easily fold that full of expenses back in in the future so for our for the town the primary expense that we're looking to fold back in over time would be the additional four firefighters that we're funding through ARPA and then the last reason to consider this is that we took a zero operating budgets took a zero percent increase in FY 21 due to covid we never made up for that you know salaries went up you know we still honored all the CPAs price costs still went up they went up a lot but we never went back and did any extra increase for operating budgets they just that base kind of carried forward and so this wouldn't totally make up for that but it would help it would take a chunk out of that year where we saw no increases to operating budgets and that's it so again when plugging that half percent you know there's a little bit of a variance here on that I would work with Sony to figure out how we would close that but we could do a half percentage point and the reason why we're talking about this now is there's going to be some financial orders that will go to the council in the fall we do free cash transfers and there's some other orders that will be considered and so the time if we are going to do a supplemental appropriation and increase the operating budget the time to do it is now before we set the tax rate because if we want to if we're going to do it we build it into what we into our recap for when we set the tax rate so that's why we're bringing it to now I'll leave this up on the screen if anyone wants to look at anything in particular comments or questions so ultimately it's up to the council to appropriate the funds to make this happen Mandy yeah just two questions the first one it relates to almost FY 24 which is some of these big increases in state aid do we expect those same numbers to sort of come in next year or is this just a one-off in terms of the UGA increase such that we'd be then adjusting our budgets down because we'd have even less state aid next year that's question one and question two I see that on this list the region district is on it we have an assessment how does that work given that you know would we just be handing money to the region that the other region participants may not be doing how does that work Doug do you want to answer the latter and then I can do the I'll take that second question we sort of pose that question I think it would because it's outside the assessment and to actually increase the overall budget for the regional schools would require action by not only the council but all three town meetings of the smaller towns that would happen because they're going to meet until next May April and May the other option would be for the Amherst which would appropriate another you know 85 845 you know to 85,000 dollars to the regional schools they could do it as a gift or donation they would have to detail the constraints they'd want to put on that gift or donation in other words for what purpose and then we would be able to spend it on that donation form in the current fiscal year so if the council were to do that they would have to give it to the regional schools as gifts it'd have to be accepted by the school committee and of course the intent or purpose of that would be identified when the donation is made so just following up on your other so many Joe based on what Doug said for this current fiscal year it would be the form of a gift or a donation but then for the following year we would build it in the first quarter to be the current fiscal year so that would be the first increase plus whatever increase was given to operating departments would be part of the assessment that would trickle to the other towns as well so it would be a one-year temporary thing with the region if this is approved then your other question about the state aid so I don't know anyone who anticipates stated will go down the increase will likely not be as large of an increase The revenues exceeded the budget. I think it was like 20% that revenues exceeded the budget. Well, we all know we all seen the news about the surplus money is going back to going back to taxpayer. So, so we don't anticipate stated to go down again during the pandemic state. They didn't go down. The worst they did was keep it flat. And so, again, the increase won't be 5.9%, but this should be in our base for state aid. And that being said, if there's a recession, you know, anything could happen. So I just, you know, I do want to caveat that. Andy. Yeah, on the last point. Next week we have the MMA financial policy committee and I think this will probably be a topic of discussion at that meeting so I may have additional insight. Unfortunately, I do get any additional side is after the fact of this meeting. As far as the first question that was asked. I thought about it and wondered whether the appropriate whether an appropriate thing to do and I wanted to get feedback from everybody here is to have that additional money allocated is towards the athletic fields that we're trying to make donations to the athletics fields are trying to make it for January. I think that it makes it a attractive reason to make that recommendation without having to get into the question of making a donation above and beyond the assessment and the whole politics with the other counts. And are you saying the whole amount or just the amount for the region. Just the amount for the region. Okay. Lynn. My, actually, I was wondering the same thing as Andy has just suggested, and the only thing that gives me pause is as with everything else we may find out that the cost is going to increase. And if the cost increases this may end up being about the amount that we're going to have to pay to pay our share anyway. So I, if we're going to make it as a gift, and we're, and if we designated for that. I want to make sure that we say it anticipate with with the possibility that it would cover any increases. Is there any anybody objecting to this or seen any problems with using this increased state aid in this manner. Peter. No objection. I mean, I think it's, I think it's, I think it'd be, it should be received very well. I mean, an unexpected increase to our budgets when you know we've all departments have had tough choices recently I think be very welcome and appreciate a very positive act by by the town government I don't see a lot of downside, you know it's clearly coming in the FY 23, you know line and so. Yeah, thank you. Don't thank anybody yet. I'm grateful for the, I'm grateful for the consideration. Mandy. Yeah, I, I'm with Peter on that I think the only question is how what to do about the region because it's not simple. But my understanding is even if I just want to clarify, even if the council should decide to do instead of a gift and allocation towards the athletic field the intention would still be to base whatever increase in FY 24 in the budgets would be based off the supplemental or even if that 85 goes to the athletic fields. Yeah, absolutely. So that so that it gets folded into their base going forward and then and so also the other member towns can kind of maintain a contribution in proportion to what Amherst so. So yeah, I would for the region would have to be a quirky one time thing for FY 23 but then we would catch it up for that that additional amount in FY 24. Okay. So the next steps on this is that we would prepare we have to do a forum public forum for the council, and then have proposed orders to the council which would be automatically referred to the finance committee for its consideration with the recommendation to the council for its appropriation. So there's more steps to be involved but we want to preview it with this group first. Okay, next topic is this budget schedule for FY 24. Yeah, so it's the last topic it's really just to I think kind of coordinate calendars, and maybe when you may have this off the top of your head the date for the financial indicators meeting. Actually I think there were two things so I lens looking that up and there's there's two pieces I think one piece was just to make sure this group is aware that we have had a initial meeting with the regional school district a working group around the assessment method for going forward. Doug gave us some good information to consider that we don't I guess the update here is that there's still more to be done around what the regional assessment will look like for FY 24. And just a heads up that that could impact. Hopefully it doesn't but that could impact just sort of how things play out in FY 24. So we'll keep this group will keep this group posted if there's any more there. I think what we've communicated to the regions that we want to stick to the guidance that the town gives every year. And, and hope that the region will work within that amount. But just to, again, if people aren't aware we are having conversations around the assessment method. The point the financial indicators meeting is at seven o'clock on November 7. So that meeting will be that's technically a BCG meeting to I believe. So we'll, we'll go through all the financial indicators like we do every year some of the what people are used to see in terms of metrics, and then we'll have some sort of forecast for what we expect FY 24 to look like from a revenue perspective. And that will kick off the budget guidance sort of discussion with the finance committee in the council. I don't know if there's any input from library trustees school committee, you know, it's a good time to provide that. And the public forum on the budget will not happen until November 21, which is two weeks later. An additional additional opportunity to weigh in on on the priorities for the council as well. Doug, are there any, are there any other regional meetings scheduled at this point for there's no date for four town meeting yet I imagine right. No, not yet. And, and I do want to have another guardrail meeting I got a check on, I think I sent a doodle pull up, but I haven't gotten any responses so I get the feeling that maybe I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to sort of double check to make sure that went out so if you didn't see one or fall didn't see one and then I'll have to check to see if it actually emailed what it was supposed to so. I think or so we'll do that kind of follow up meeting from from the earlier one. And then, you know, fairly soon knowing those dates that you guys have for those those meetings on your on your public forum and the indicators of the November 7. That'll help us I mean, traditionally we've had sort of the first Saturday and in December is typically when we have first four towns meeting that'll probably be when we do it again but I'll get more calm. Okay. Any agenda, Sean. I'll double check but I think that is it. That's it. Okay so the next time this group will meet will be at the financial indicators meeting on November 7. Nelson, please. Sorry related to that. Will that be virtual meeting or in person. The council will be in person, although people will be allowed to attend virtually, and I pulled the council in advance. We also now have audience in the room are loud in the room. And we will actually be starting at seven o'clock because that's, I mean at five o'clock that's our reading night for the town managers evaluation. Some will be in person some will be virtual, you're all welcome to attend virtually, but if someone want to be in the room you can certainly be in the room. The room does have a capacity women on it. And we'll want to know that because we'll want to set it up so that you know you're sitting with mics and you're sitting so that you can also you have to bring your laptops with you. And you have to be able to zoom in. Okay. Sorry, just so is the whole town council at at the beat at that financial indicators meeting or the whole town council attends, and we'll already be attending, but I mean it just depends on which night it is how many are actually in the room and how many are virtual. Yes, so anybody can attend it's a public meeting, obviously. Okay. Anything else Sonia or Sean. Anything. Okay, so I will adjourn this meeting at four 20 or five 23. Thank you everybody. Bye everyone. Thanks.