 All right, we're recording, go ahead. Okay. It's committee for May 4, 2021 to order at one o'clock. And this is a meeting that is being held is a virtual meeting pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter mass general law chapter 30 a section 18. Since we're doing this by remote participation, I'm going to check with each member of the committee to make sure that they can hear me. And by their response that we can hear them. So start with Kathy Shane vice chair. Yes. Here and I can hear. Lynn Guzmer. Present and I can hear. I can hear. Bernie Kubiack. Present. I can hear everyone. Dorothy P. M. Yes, yes. Pat Angeles. Yes. Yes. Bob Hegner. Yep. And Jane Scherfler's. You're here. Okay. So. The agenda for today's meeting starts with after the cult order, which we just did to go to an overview of the town manager budget. And I don't know if you wanted us to wait if Paul is joining us, Sean, or if you're going to do the introduction. So I haven't heard that he's not joining us, but why don't I start and then if when he hops on, we can see if he has anything else to add. I wanted to say one thing before we start off is that last night of course I didn't say anything because we had just received the budget that I spent several hours going over it this morning and it really is an impressive document and together the goals that we're trying to achieve and is a really well designed friendly document. Obviously it was a tremendous amount of work and I want to thank all of the staff for pressing on this. I saw Holly if you was here previously, I'm not sure she'd signed off. See Sonya, I know you're here. But I really want anybody who I've missed I just want to thank everybody for a tremendous effort to do that. So Sean. Yeah, thank you Andy it was Holly Sonya lots of department heads. Paul others, you know it's easy putting together the document it's hard. Then going through and checking everything to make sure it all reference you know goes back and forth because there's so many, so many figures in the document but but thank you. I'm going to share my screen in a second pull up the document and just do a quick walkthrough of some of the how it's organized and some of the key pages. Before I do I just wanted to check and see has everyone been to the engage Amherst pages before. Is there anyone that hasn't been that wants a quick overview of what's on there. Are you okay if I share my screen and go there real quick and just show people what's available on that page. Sure. Dorothy did you have something you were trying to say or I can't hear you because you muted. No I had not engaged engage Amherst yet. Oh you definitely should so let me share my screen and let's see screen one. Hopefully you see it on your screen and maybe a little funky looking because I have wide screens but if you go to engage Amherst org. It'll bring you here. And if you scroll down to there's multiple initiatives that are going to keep coming up on here so it's good to get comfortable with this page. The budget is the featured one right now. So you just click on learn more. Hopefully you all see it switch over to the FY 22 budget. And there's a little bit of a sort of a greeting, and there's lots of different tools that people that we can put on this but they're the two that we've selected for this process is a q amp a, which allows any people to submit a question, and that question will come to us we can review it make sure you know there's no nothing problematic in the question in terms of language or anything like that. And it'll create a running list here of the questions and the answers. And it will also send an email directly back to the person who submitted the question with the answer. So it's a really nice tool, and anybody who's listed on this who's listening over here on the right. Right now it's myself and communications manager Brianna sundred gets that email. So, so keeps so we can add as many people over there as we want. And there's another tool here that's feedback and if you click the feedback button, you can submit feedback as well I'm not going to do it right now but give let you submit an open ended response and it also lets you we put the goals that the town managers goals there, so that people could kind of weigh in on what ones they feel are most important to them. Sean a question. Is there something that the user can make the type bigger. Yeah, this looks sorry this looks really again small because I can't really control it because it's a web page but I'll make my other bigger when I go to the how would how would a user do that. So when you go here it'll be much bigger than what you see on your screen, I think, unless you're, did you go to it on your computer. Yeah, and Dorothy on your computer you can just enlarge what you're looking at a computer I can. Here's on the screen on the pad, you can always make the image bigger so I can. Sometimes some images allow you to do that and some don't. Yeah, on your keypad you can actually just expand it, even if the it's not built in you can make the picture bigger. So I need to do that a lot. And the last thing I'll just point out is on the side here, the other nice thing about this page is that kind of links to all the main things you need to go to so it's got links on the right to the, the budget document the capital improvement program. This, the presentation from last night, the budget calendar Town Council goals there's an FAQs there, and we're going to add key dates to it as well as meetings come up so. So there's, it worked pretty well for some projects so far so we're going to keep trying it. Yeah. I just have a quick question, not. I mean I think this is great but a year from now or at some point in the future. Are you and beyond are going to be able to assess the payoff to the extra time this took, you know in terms of users comments because I'm assuming this feature, as opposed to the book that you put up, took a fair amount of time, somebody's time. Yeah, I mean, so it's actually not as bad as you would think because they're sort of, you know, templates and so it's really just updating the template with some of the information that's already in the budget document but at your point it is more time than if we just didn't do anything. And we just relied on sort of meetings to facilitate some of this back and forth so there is more time there. The nice thing about this tool is it has a lot of data analytics that you can see of how many people visit the page. There's also like deeper levels of data like how many people actually engage with the page. So not just visit it but actually like use one of the tools. That's one of actually the strengths of this program is that you can see a lot of behind the scenes stuff that Brianna can analyze is really useful to see, you know what people are doing. I might just to follow up because what I might do at a district meeting is demo it and ask people to have who have always wondered about it to try to go on it and see and ask them just to then submit comments on, you know, going the normal way to look at the budget versus could they find things more easily. If you want maybe if you're okay with it maybe I'll just email Brianna and Paul and just let them know that you're thinking of that and Brianna can probably reach out to you she's she's the expert on this. So she can probably reach out and let you know the best way to do that. Okay, great. I had a question. Oh policy. So we would really appreciate you doing that to Kathy so thank you for thinking of that. Here's my question we have, let's just say, a constituent who wants to know lots of answers and hasn't really been following the meetings and doesn't know how to find them. So, and for example if they wanted questions answers about the library. Could I say, go to engage amherd as.com or.org which is it. It's.org. That org. And then how would they find library. The library I don't believe is a project specifically on here and I don't want to take up too much time on this but I'll just show one thing real quick. Let me just go back to the main page. There's a four building projects one that has some Q&A on there. I'm really so financing the future. So we set this up for the four building project plan. And so the really nice feature that we've heard in the past of like questions get asked and then they get asked again and again and again and so it'd be nice to kind of catalog them. That's one reason why we try to direct people to use this tool because so this is all the questions that have been asked are right here. So you can see again this is really small so I apologize you probably can't see the actual question but there's a question and then there's a response and then there's a question and there's a response and so you can see everything that's been asked so far and the response. And that may, you know, kind of build an FAQ document or a question document for people to review. So if they, they can't use this then for the library, they would go to some other place to find that the budget and the plan or whatever. So I think so the library project itself yeah I think because that's kind of already comes up to the council for a vote, it would be sort of too late for something like this. So we count the library's webpage has a lot of information as well. That might be a good place to start is to go to the project page that the Jones library setup. Okay. Oh yeah, and there is that there's that very long question document that we know we all spent a lot of time on that, you know, they probably should start there. I think that is, and that I'll send you the link after Dorothy that is posted on our website. So I'll send you the link to where that long question document is for the library. This is really great stuff. So, so congratulations to everybody who put this together I think this is really very helpful I've enjoyed looking at the, at the engage site. I'll log on at midnight and you're asking me anything. Yeah, I think I got one last year that was sort of off hours but otherwise most of the questions were fine. All right, I'm going to switch over to the budget document. And this is just going to be a high level overview for those who haven't had a chance to really kind of dig into it yet. Is the size okay or is this small on your screen. It works for me. It's okay for you. Okay. So I'm just going to go through. So one of the new features we added this year and a lot of the stuff we added was, it's related to the, the GFO a which is the governmental finance financial officers Association. It's, they have a sort of best practice listing of things and so a lot of stuff we added is related to that. So one of the things is sort of a really brief summary that if somebody just wanted the highlights of the budget this year. They could go to one single page so that's what this is meant to be. And we know that this isn't perfect this year that we added a lot of new stuff and we'll refine it based on the feedback we get. But that's what this page is meant to be what's the budget, how's it allocated. What are some of the highlights where some of the key dates that kind of thing. Table of contents if you haven't tried it yet the nice thing with table content is you can click on the number and it'll bring you directly to the page so you don't have to do a lot of scrolling so, you know, if you want to go to what's new you can click the little 14 and it'll bring you to that section in the budget document. So, it'll, it's a long budget document like this it's nice to have that. And let's go back. So the, it's organized into five major sections executive summary which has time address budget message has the goals of the of the Council and how the budget supports those goals. And really baseline financial information. I think we're going to take that section and probably create a separate document on the, on the web to put on our website. And so it can be like a standalone little executive summary people want a shorter document to navigate that kind of gives them the complete picture but not with too much detail. The second section is organizational so that's sort of high level planning challenges are staffing or charts things like that. And you get into stuff that is very similar to how it's been done the past maybe with a little bit different coloring and pictures and things like that but the financial section has a lot of the same departmental information that you're used to seeing in the past and I imagine will be able to guide us through our, our department meetings with the coming up in the next few meetings. And then informational section has things like the indicators report on our policies OPEB, there's a link to the capital improvement program because we didn't want, we're trying to standard 300 pages and didn't want to, didn't want to break that barrier so we just linked to some of these documents instead of putting them in the, in the whole thing. And the last thing that you know we heard some feedback last year that I don't know if people have seen yet but we put the anticipated appropriation orders related to the FY 22 budget at the very end. So if you go to that page, you scroll down and I want to thank Sonya because she does a really good job of staying on top of all the votes we have to take it's not easy to figure out all the votes, not just the votes but where the votes are coming from because it's not always intuitive and tie nicely. But on that last page you'll see all the FY 22 votes what they are, you know, where they're the funding sources. And this is this will help keep us on track as we go through the process to make sure that we hit all these different things. And then the only other thing I'll point out right now and see if there's any questions is, we've talked about this a little bit already so the, you know, this page right here is consolidated spending summary sort of gives you the complete view of the budget has the general fund budget which includes the capital improvement program. And then it also gives you the enterprise funds. So if you wanted the one place to go to see sort of the full picture that that's projected right now for FY 22, you would probably be this page on page 27. That should be familiar to you in terms of how it's arranged it's consistent with how we do our financial indicators report and things like that. Anything else Sonya Holly Paul you think we should highlight in this or is that an okay overview. I think it's a lot. It's different than last year are. So, one of the things I think Sean said but we're really eager to hear your feedback because, you know, we work through this and there's a lot of things to put together as it was outside our comfort zone for a lot of us and. So I think we can do better next year. We know even after last night there are things that we would do differently. So, we want to hear all those things from you as we go through this process. Paul you came on late so I'll just tell you that it right at the beginning. I just wanted to tell you that I spent a couple hours going working just with the document this morning, and really appreciated how it's set up how it's organized. It seems daunting at first but it really is not when you spend a little bit of time with it and I just was expressing my appreciation to all of the people, but you weren't there. And I'm happy to be on it because it really was a tremendous effort. I realized and, you know, I for one appreciate it very much and I think the problem the rest of the committee does to. And one other page I'll just point out real quick that might be helpful for some people to go to, if they're not, you know, first would be this section we added on goals so it lays out the council's goals. It lays out the specific initiatives or the highlights of the initiatives that are in this budget plan for next year so you can see how the budget sort of supports the different goals. You know the challenge this year is that we're still coming out of the pandemic, we still are not doing a two and a half percent increase so, and a lot of ways we're not all the way back clearly. So it was not an easy budget year by any means in terms of the money available and we heard from the schools. One of the challenges this year but so that this will, I think, start to look better as we go forward with the things we can do. So I will stop sharing and if there's any other questions if not we can switch over to the capital improvement program. Yeah, I mean my one question comment is that it seems that a lot of the likely expenditures that we're going to be able to make during the year because the American Recovery Act. Ernest said, in essence, not budgeted, budgeted because they weren't known and they're not part of the budget itself, but they're really very essential and how that works and how we're, you know, what our role as a finance committee and a council is on those are something that I was thinking that we probably need to give some discussion to at some point. Yeah, no, we certainly struggled with that. You know, we heard some feedback on the schools as well and, and we didn't want to ignore the grant because it's going to be a big part of FY 22 and, and it, and it specifically meant to make up for some of the economic impacts that we've dealt with and that we're experiencing for FY 22 so we did want to begin to put thoughts to how we, you know, some ways we see spending that money. So you're right it's sort of in this, it's unfortunately the timing is not great with how that, how the grant is kind of being rolled out it's sort of right at the same time budgets are being voted. So other looks. You go through multiple layers. Dorothy you have your hand up so do you have a question I have a comment. I strongly recommend not using blue. When you particularly when you had blue as headlines the blue disappears. And so perhaps using bold place or all caps. Because the most important words disappeared and they really help organize the structure and make it easy to use. I'm sure that if it's printed, you can read the blue but on the screen. Okay, did not work for me. Can you give me an example of that Dorothy where that's happened. When you have the whole index and you have the key words were in light blue. Okay, sub topics and the key key words are the most important thing in terms of looking, looking down it's like an MLA work site. You want to be able to see the headings very quickly by the formatting. Okay, yeah, we might be able to fix that up quickly. That might be something we can clean up. Okay, thank you. Any questions on the overview. So, anything. Because the other thing that, but I think we'll probably just be talking about it throughout the process is that this budget is much different and much more helpful in the way of linking goals and future plans it back into the budget, as opposed to being sort of out there in a separate world. But I think it strikes me that we're going to be dealing with those questions as we go through each section of the budget. For example, obviously when we talk about the police budget and services budget will get into the obvious issues, having to do with the recommendations of the working group and future relationships and pointing for that. And just for the committee as a whole and for any changes to make it clear. I think you all have the budget calendar that Sean put together and has the dates for each meeting and the estimated time who's going to be present and what finance committee members assigned to it. And one of the things about this one is that I did include as you know in the finance committee report on meeting that people should send to those of us who were signed each time to sections of the budget. And I think those questions that they would like to have added to the list that they come originally through the finance committee person who's assigned to the section. And what we want to do is that ultimately that you should get them to Sean because Sean might be able to answer some of the questions themselves. It's the best person to get them to and get them sent out. I think that that was what is understood to be part of the process. Sean, did you have a time goal for when you would like to see the questions from the committee member. specific I think giving the department heads if some of it's not going to be possible just because of the condensed schedule but and the length of the budget document but if you can give them at least a couple days to work on questions especially and it also kind of depends how many questions there are. If it's more than one page of questions you might want to give them a little bit more time especially if it's going to be pulling data or something along those lines so I think just kind of judge it by the length of the how many questions you have and and what would be reasonable but I think every all the department heads are ready for it we met with them today we let them know. They know who's assigned to them we let them know that questions would be coming soon. Now that the budget's been presented so they're all ready. Any questions for the committee or suggestions that anybody. I'm just just sort of a see their question or comment if others have a section that they would like to be reading or have questions that isn't assigned to them. So, you know, I have Pat and I are splitting police and fire. If I read another section like Lynn's education, should I send quickly if I should I send them to you should I send them to Lynn, just to avoid duplication that we're thinking of the same things and it's already been asked so what would be a way it's, you know, or, or their counselors who aren't on finance who aren't assigned to anything same same question. How do we make it not feel duplicative or not have different things coming in at different time periods. I think I think Andy touched on this briefly I think you should send that to the person who signed to that section. It's just so they don't ask the same question. You know, schools for schools for example, and you have questions on those send them to Lynn and then Lynn can make sure she's not also also asking the same one or she is and she can let you know that she's already asking that. Okay. Thank you. I think that's how you described it, Andy right. Yeah, I think that's what what I was thinking sir. That's what I expressed in the finance committee report to the council because I was just didn't want to have multiple sets of questions going in multiple sections and I think you're absolutely right that we want to assemble them and if you see if you're assigned to a section. I'm pleased in this in several questions come in that are pretty much identical that you can sort them down. One, the only comment that I received from a counselor who's not on this committee. And the other subject was that she wanted to know whether there was a way that we were going to get the information back and what her suggestion was that we include in committee reports, each time there's a council meeting. A summary of key points that we've heard through the process and not wait until the end when we have the final report. So that people can absorb that and if they have follow up plots that they want to pursue that they'll know what questions to raise during council discussion of the report can come out earlier. So that I thought was an interesting suggestion and something that might want to try but it's one additional thing that I'll probably be looking to the key person who's been assigned to that section to also help with so that we can make sure that the key points get included in finance committee reports that go back if we did that. Other thoughts about our committee process and working with the budget. Okay, the only thing I'm going to ask is that there's probably going to be certain sections of the budget people are much more honing in on than others. And so when we bring those back to the council prior to the full report. I just need a heads up as to whether or not, how much time, and in what way we want to bring that to an actual council meeting. I think public safety is clearly in that category. So, I think that's a decision that probably you need to make with Evan and Paul and one of the agenda meetings is how much time if any you want to just allocate budget discussion prior to the final when the budget comes out, putting it in the report is one thing but allocating significant time for discussion at the meetings I think we need guidance from from you in that capacity. That makes sense. Okay. So Sean, do you, is there anything else that you want to say on the budget as a whole or did you want to turn over the capital improvement. I think I will turn over to capital improvement if you're okay with that. So I'm going to share my screen again. So the capital improvement program went through the joint capital planning committee. They've had it at the beginning of their process so it was the one really nice thing about this year is that we received feedback sort of on the document itself but also on the what was in the document. So we tried to reflect, we reflect a lot of the feedback that we received from the joint capital planning committee is in this document already. So let me just go to some of the key pages, no light blue on the contents nailed it there. There's a pie chart this is similar to the pie chart you saw last night in the in the story map so I won't spend a lot of time on that. This was the JCPC schedule, if anybody wants to review how many meetings are were on capital but we had, we had Kathy Shane was the chair of that committee and led a very robust process with department presentations and things of that nature. And so you can see what was discussed at each meeting. So this page is probably one of the more important this is the summary and it's got a lot of numbers so I'll just do a quick overview of what it is. The top is the funding side of capital on the bottom is the expenditure side of capital. And so on the funding side at the top we, the shaded gray is FY 22 proposed, but we also project out for more years so that we have a five year plan. And so the top is the tax levy. And then below that we see cash capital, when we talk about a certain percentage of the tax levy. That's this row right here. So for FY 22, the proposal is 8.5% of the tax levy for capital, and the 8.5% is of the prior of the two year prior tax levy just in case somebody tries to do the math it's, it's the the last tax levy that we knew for sure. When we put this together which would have been the, for this particular year would have been the FY 20 tax levy. So we built into the five year plan, the, the proposed plan that was presented a finance committee for funding the four building projects. So just keep that in mind and when you look at the out years you may want to be the out years are more important this year maybe then another years because we have built that planning into this into this summary. So when you get to like that exclusion override, normally that row is zero, because we don't have one of those a while but since we are proposing one of those for the school as part of that plan. You'll see it in some of those out years. So you've got your cash capital, and these other the section here that I'm highlighting they are the other fund possible funding sources for capital. So you've got the debt exclusion override. The community preserves Community Preservation Act which is just a debt portion of Community Preservation Act just to be clear it's debt only. I forgot to update this term but Comcast funding so this is a new, a new component this year. We get we're receiving money to partially offset the installation of the municipal fiber fiber that was installed throughout town. So as we begin to pay the debt on that we are applying money from Comcast in this case to help offset that debt. And so that's why you'll see it running out for a number of years because it's related to a debt payment. Other funding sources, it's typically if it's coming from a revolving fund or some other type of grant or closing out a prior year capital article. So in FY 22, in particular, the 761 is the close out. It's two things it's the close out of the FY 21 capital reserve that wasn't spent that has now been appropriated for as proposed to be appropriated for FY 22 to support the FY 22 plan. And it also includes a couple other articles that were closed out from FY 21 these these were individual articles. One for a zoning project and one for forgot the other one was something smaller one. So, again, this is re appropriated prior year articles essentially, and then state aid is just is chapter 90 funding that goes mostly towards roads. So this again kind of makes up the funding picture in terms of the cash funding. And then there's one other piece here that just to be aware of is borrowing. So, if we're proposing to borrow a project, we're showing it it's sort of in between these two areas because you're not going to actually start paying on the borrowing that's going to be paid over a number of years and so you'll see the, the projected debt payments, those the debt payments below are specifically tied to whatever we say the borrowing is. So, for FY 22 we're proposing 4.6 million worth of borrowing. And I believe one of the handouts in your packet gives a breakdown of what's in that number. There are three sort of projects and then there is the DPW and fire station building projects, the design and opm services for that. So I'll keep going down and maybe I'll pause after this because I see there's a couple questions so I'll stop after this. Then you have the expenditure side so we start with the actual debt that is on our books that we have to pay. Any projected debts, which is really looking more at the out years, and then new projects that are going to be paid for in cash that that specific year. So again you have outside of sort of cash items you have the debt exclusion override, which is a wash with the revenue source up above. So this would only happen if there actually is a debt exclusion override in the future. And then you have other which would be the payments from the, the prior year closed out articles. So you have the revenue source and then a matching expense. And then state aid same thing you have a revenue source and then a matching expense so it's sort of some of you got there's some times where the same term shows up in both places and it's because it comes in and then it's spent and it goes out. And then the most important line at the bottom is over under available funding. So the FY 22 plan is after going through JCP see it wasn't balanced to begin going through JCP see but by the end of the process it was in balance, based on their recommendations. And then you can see the out years that are more or less in balance with a little bit of flexibility as we go further out, which is normal because the out years projects are still sort of being formulated. And so those numbers will surely decrease as we get closer to those years. I guess, Anthony Andrew of Andy sorry if it's possible maybe I'll stop there and see if there's any questions on this chart before I keep going. Yeah, I think there are two members of the committee who had their hands up and I have one question to look. So I go thumb because I might ask my question so Kathy. Hey, thanks Sean for this and also thank you all because the recommendations from JCP see seem largely in here so my, my question is on the debt service for DPW and fire which is in here. And I do understand what it's in there for I'm a two part question one is, we haven't made a decision on DPW and fire but you have in fact, as you said there's been a proposed way to do everything during this time period. So we are moving forward on the elementary school, and it's never been entirely clear to me how much money, we've already appropriated for the OPM plus any schematic design. I would say, do we need to have a placeholder for more money than that before we get to, we actually have a project that we're debt service finding. So, was that clear, you know, because that's not a line item in there for schools, and so it's a question of we could use reserves for it, for example. So, and I don't quite know what seeing how big the number is so just for people if you look forward, the number, the 3.4 million of that 4.6 is the DPW and fire the two to which are each well over a million so I'm thinking the number would be easily that as well so that that's my question on and I know we haven't made the decision but how fungible is this as we're trying to think about it what we're going to need in 22 for the school. Yeah, no that's a great question. So, kind of good news is that the school. The design and OPM services through feasibility study has was already approved by the Council, and it's already in in these numbers I think it was 750,000 and maybe Sonya can double confirm for me. But we've already got a projection of that in these numbers is that right Sonya. I can't see her so I don't know if she's so crazy or what. So, let's say that is the number and then my question would be, suppose it's more like a million you know when we're running into it that we're moving faster. We, and we're getting more deeply into so that's my question. So we've already got 750 so that's why it's not going to be as much as the 1.2 million, each for DPW and fire. And it's a little bit different process to because you do a feasibility study. And so, so the contracts right now are to fund portions of those contracts through the feasibility study, the money we're asking for, or proposing for FY 22 for design for design for the fire station DPW. It goes farther than that, because that they don't follow the same process that the money we're proposing would get us through construction documents and up to bidding. So the money for the school again because of the working with them MSBA and the process they use it gets you to like schematic design essentially. And so it's so it's a little bit it's not really apples to apples when comparing the total dollar amount for those projects. That's just the, the, I don't know when we will make that decision but as you know I'm, I'm focused on schools, the school right now. I wouldn't want to hit a roadblock just because we haven't earmarked money for whatever piece we might need because there's nothing in 23 or 24 either so when I was looking forward it you don't hit school until we do. At least I don't think I saw it maybe I didn't look for no no the money that we appropriated a 750 that are not appropriate but that was authorized already. So it covers through the feasibility study up until the next stage of that project which we're we're in the process of getting the opm on board and the designer which will help guide how long of a process that will be but Yes, that was just what which is for you, you and Paul will know these numbers better but if we needed money beyond that in that 2324 before we're going out for the whole building, which is the as I've been worried that we are really loading up as everyone can see what what's happening if you go down to the online that says projected debt. In 2023 is when we start seeing the debt for the library. It's there's a jump up of new new projects, and then it's steadily going up what we're we're spending on actual debt plus projected so we have a pretty tight capital budget going forward as everyone knows so just that's it that was my question and comment on that. Yeah. Thank you Kathy. Bernie I guess. And just a quick question if you look in the in the cell the other cell the 761 522 there's a little red care flag up in the corner. Yeah, and you go over there's a couple green flags on cells and on the projected ones and going forward through the document those red flags green flags reappear I'm just wondering what they mean or is that just an artifact. There's probably a way to hide them. So those are those are in the cities. This is an Excel table. And so the so the red flag means that there's a comment and I'm sure the comment in this particular case. I mean the PDF it but it just flags that probably breaks down what the 761 is. Yeah. Okay, that was my my guess is those were comments. Yeah, or nearly be hidden. But yeah, I was just curious. All right, thanks. Okay. Okay, so I'm still working on understanding this. The phrase out years you mean the future years but I guess I'm used to hearing out years is mean years that somehow don't behave like the other years, but it just means future years you right yeah so in this case I when I say that I mean f y 23 through f y 26 so not not the year that you're considering specifically this year that the year you're going to be voting on, but the year the four years in this plan beyond that. And then you said something and it was maybe the over under available funding, and you said the numbers would go down. As we get there and I guess I we're so used to having numbers go up as we go into the future. The same thing. So right now the way it's overrunning under looks it's showing that we have available funds. We have more money that we can spend in like f y 26 you'll see it shows that there's available funding of 781. That number will go down as we get closer to f y 26. So we work with department heads to try to project out needs five years away, but it's just you're never going to project out the needs to the same extent. As you can like you're coming up so we so that's why there's a little bit of a surplus surplus at this point but again as we get closer, those numbers will start to come down. I got it. Thank you. Yeah. So Sonya, did you check was it 750 because I know at one point we increased it. Yeah, so it was voted in the area of 20. Okay, we originally I think we're like 600 or something then went to 750. 400 and then once we got closer I knew what it was going to be. Thank you. The next question is, I know that we start with MSBA with them saying they will not reimburse that because they already gave us feasibility money once. But then there has been a discussion from time to time that maybe as we go along they actually might reimburse that and I didn't are reimbursed part of that half of that I guess. And I didn't know whether that there had been any further discussion about that. I think it's a I think it's a hope but not something we're going to count on I think some of it comes down to whether or not there are parts of this feasibility study that are new, and not something that already been done before. So, I guess I just would say we're not expecting it but we will try for it. And that's based on I would just like to add to that, you know, just speaking with people who know the MSBA said don't expect that to come through. So we are we're not banking on that at all. Thank you. And then, so I know I understand that you're interviewing and getting ready to offer for opium for the school and I have always assumed I think I've been told that that opium will not be the same as the opium for fire and likely not. I don't a lot of times the opium is for school projects are very specialized. So I can't say for certainty that they will not be the same, but I don't expect it. We will do a sort of a bid process for the opium for the DPW and fire station. Similar, but slightly different fashion than the MS MSBA is process. So, I don't expect it. Okay, thanks. And, you know, Lynn just looking at the bids that we do have the one so far that's the leader didn't have fire and DPW one of the others did have those projects listed so when Sean said some of them are more specialized some you saw a lot of that some they had some fire stations in addition to schools. So, yeah. These companies have different arms. Right. Different. I just didn't was curious more than anything. Okay. I'm going to keep going. Beyond that age just there are other funding sources we've used over the years and capital like ambulance fund. Yeah, so that's actually this other Andy that's one of the sources that's in this other category. Okay. Yep. No, but you're absolutely right. Okay, go on. And there and just to be to wrap that up there's no, none of that's proposed for FY 22 so none of this 761 is is ambulance proposed but in the out years and FY 23 through FY 26, it does show up. All right so then the next section I won't spend a lot of time on but it's all of the specific projects. So if you look at the pages of this and you can see projects for FY 22 highlighted in the in the first column there and yellow, and then the projects that have been identified in future years. And one of the things that joint capital planning committee was pretty clear about was, there are several projects on the list for FY 23 through FY 26 that could be CPA eligible, and that we should pursue CPA funding for those. That's one possible so that's one nice thing about the CPA process being a little bit earlier this year is that can happen before JCPC starts. And then the next section is the description is a description the full write ups of the projects are all posted in the packets for the meetings that they were discussed. So this is more of just a summary of the of each project, and one thing we added this year was to try to, we wanted to start kind of threading the sustainability lens route document. And so, one of the projects that we feel have a have could improve the towns, reduce the town's carbon footprint are highlighted with sort of this little green leaf and again that's something we'll prove on as we go forward. And that's on the screen right here I'll just highlight you heard a little bit about it last night. This is the hundred thousand that was added for FY 22 that and we suspect there'll be recurring item for this for sustainability projects. And you can see the description there. Keep going and almost done. And this is another where we took some direction from JCPC as we talked about projects that aren't ready to be on the five year plan for a variety of reasons, and identifying them somewhere else in the capital improvement program. And we, the first version of the capital improvement program kind of just listed them. And for some members of JCPC that was sort of confusing or, or it wasn't as clear, there was a recommendation to maybe break those into multiple groups. And so we, we tried to do that in a way that made sense. And again this is a page that I think we can improve over time, but we tried to put things here that are on our radar, but just aren't ready to be on the full plan for, for different reasons. And this is just a little chart on asset maintenance and what we spend on different facilities in town. And this was prior year approved. So these are all the capital articles that were approved with balances that are three years or older. So any project from FY 18 or before that still has money available is listed here. And this was in response to kind of getting a status check of how these projects are spending out their money. You'll see the project this 40,000 that I mentioned was for Gateway was for zoning. This is one of the art, the prior articles that's been repurposed to support something else for FY 22 and you'll see that in the status. And you can see a status check for each of these. And I think the last thing I'll just highlight is at the end you'll you get into the inventory. And again, this is another area we can certainly will improve on as we normalize the process, but it's broken into two sections or sort of building an infrastructure section, and there is a vehicle and equipment section. And so, and one of the pieces of feedback that we received from JCPC was to highlight the vehicles that are expected to be replaced with the vehicles that are proposed. The vehicles that are highlighted in red are the ones that are you'll see throughout this list are ones that are proposed to be replaced if the new vehicles are approved. And with that, I will stop. Okay, Kathy, did you get your hand up first. Okay, yeah, I just have, I have a suggestion and I think this is sort of already in print but under the sustainability we had a resident proposal from two high school students for solar canopies and parking lots. And that generated a lot of excitement and people were delighted to see it was going forward I realized we've got it flag for try to do grant funding. I'm wondering if there is a way in this document to mention that that came in, you know whether it's a footnote a flag to just acknowledge it because it's, it's the resident proposals are seen by residents as a way to participate, and to acknowledge the influence to decision. It's, it's flagged in as you know Sean is flagged in the JCPC report where it's when we received it but whether it's one additional sentence and that sustainability this would include canopies and originally proposed by high school students because they were those who weren't on the camera they were eloquent about this, you know, the future the future is now on climate. I'm just acknowledging that that's where that came from. So it's a sentence, a footnote or something to make it be part of the town manager's capital plan. Yeah, I can connect with, I can connect with Paul about that after and if there's a way we can highlight that I don't know if it, if we'd want to put in that summary or if we, you know, there might be other ways we can acknowledge that we received that and that I think that somewhere, you know, somewhere in particular because you're not necessarily spending that 100,000 but we said if you need to draw it on it, you know, okay, thanks. I do. I actually meant to ask this back earlier. I mean, recovery money. Was that in the grant line item, or are you just not putting that in at all. Yeah, there's no. So again this this is one of the things that was sort of developed. The version I went to JCPC was developed sort of prior to a lot of knowledge about the recovery money so there's not anything here specifically that's proposed to be funded from the recovery money. The other thing that's sort of related is the capital projects manager that was mentioned last night potentially would help support the the buildings that are listed in this document, the development of those projects. Okay, and then I do have another question and that is. This really is looking down the road as we do inventory and we decide what else we might want to do related to it. I actually have found the old inventory of property, very useful because there's pictures and, you know, it just gives history of each of the buildings. I'm just wondering as we, you know, upgrade as we agreed we would do the whole inventory thing. We want to consider, at least on the property side looking at that. And maybe even on the vehicle side pictures of the vehicles. Lynn, are you referring to the facility report. Yeah, from 2015. Yeah. Yeah, no I agree that that document informed a lot of what's here. This document I don't know if I guess we want to talk about whether that's an inventory or just something we normalize in our process every so many years I think Jeremiah is looking at that. But I agree that's a really nice document I think Ron Bahana what's had put it together the last time it was done and it's you're right it's nice to have that narrative to go along with the with each facility. And the actual pictures. But or not, I mean people look at it and say, Oh, I didn't know we own that. So, so Jeremiah is working on that he's finding a lot of discrepancies in the material that was in the 2015 report so it's going to take some time to get that up to speed but he is working on that. Anything else Leonard otherwise called Dorothy. I am taking the risk of asking a really stupid question, but I have a memory of us being assigned to sections, and I, I have notes but I haven't gone dating to the notes, I think maybe I was assigned to the library, but I need that to be confirmed. And then we're to do to look at this particular budget. I know the words I need to have a much clearer description of what my task is, and how I proceed with it. Yeah, my apologies, Dorothy actually Lynn brought it up earlier in the meeting I'm going to send you the library's budget. It's not super long which is nice and it's a it's a nice package. I'm going to send it to the full group but you'll get the, everyone will get the school budgets but you'll also get the library budget, and that's the one you should focus on to review and see what questions you may have. A very good question. Okay, thank you. Just for the counselor members just remember the last night's packet. One of the things that's included in the packet was the button something called budget review calendar and the calendar had the dates for each presentation the estimated time who would be there and who's the committee members signed. I think I sent it to the three resident members and one of my keep trying to remember to do that every time I something comes up if I didn't get that one I'll make sure I did we can get it to. Thank you. I do. Yeah. So, but building on Dorothy's question and Dorothy there is no such thing as a stupid question when it comes to finance, never. The, do you want us in our reviews to also look at that portion of the capital that pertains to the area we're looking at or how are we doing the overall capital. Do you want my thoughts Andy on that. So, I view the capital sort of as a collective. It's sort of its own topic for the whole group. I think certainly if you have questions on the capital improvement program it probably does make sense to kind of save them for when the, when the department comes up and ask them at the same time. But in terms of I don't think nobody was like assigned to it or anything like like specifically capital I think that's the full full committee. I think we already had JCPC better than that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just the PCs have done fair amount of work on it. The one area that I think we need to be very careful about that is with the enterprise funds, because enterprise fund capital is not really historically done it through the operating regular capital plan, but it's funded separately because it's being paid for separately. And so would. This is following Bob Hagner, unfortunately, but the capital related to the enterprise funds is something that we do need to pick up on as we do the enterprise funds. Yeah, I was I was planning on doing that Andy. Thank you. Anything else that we want to talk about people have questions about the capital plan at this point. Yeah, I think it's good as we go through our agenda planning make sure that we have a lot of time to talk about that since if we're going to treat it shown as a committee of the whole we have to make sure we have it on our plan for committee meetings. Yeah, potentially it could be added you know if we stick. If we do our best to be to stick to our time allocations for each department. We could potentially have time on the last meeting in May. After all the departments have gone we could come back to capital at that point. Okay, anything else. Because we're done with the budget then we could move over. And I think what I know is here I don't know that in your second year but we were going to talk about the water and sewer. Great questions. I've got a I've got some slides I was going to bring up we received questions from Kathy ahead of time. And I think we answer most of of Kathy's questions and these slides. So, I think a feel for hops on I think Amy was planning on at the look at the meeting invite to see if she was able to make it but I did get information from Amy ahead of time. Go for me was coming on. I'll see where she's at. I know we're a little early I think in terms of our schedule schedule. Now she was just, it was just kind of doing the wheel on her saying she was initializing something must have happened. Do you want me to start Andy by going through some of the questions. We kind of split up into things that go for the name he would would answer and then some of them were things that kind of fell into Sonya and my world. Let's go ahead. All right. So we just put together a few slides really quickly just to kind of go through some of the questions that we received. The first question this one is for Gilford was around the. I don't know if there's an update to be given on Centennial but more, I think the more important pieces when will we sort of get to an, when will bids be done so we have sort of an exact costs and Centennial. So we, we don't have a final estimate right now we're still finalizing our permit with DP. We don't actually add things or take things off of the project scope. So we don't have the final estimate. The estimate we do have is 1313 or just around 13 right now 13 little over 13. The additional cost is basically from what they're seeing in the market in the last during the bids during the coven prices have gone up substantially either from the either from tariffs on steel that were placed into into place before the cope COVID pandemic started are because of requirements to operate during COVID or the fact that plants have shut down. And things are not available sort of like we're seeing use car prices now sort through the roof it's it's it's just a shortage of shortage of material and stuff being made. We don't know the true cost or a final cost until we get a little bit farther along in the bidding process. And then we still have the ability to actually cut some things out and to reduce some things to try to bring back in. And we also were trying to reach out for more funds beyond the town to supplement any over just make we might have. So that's where we are right now. I'll just add to that just to step back for a second. So the there was a memo in the packet that's been that was presented to that was given to the committee and also to the council that explains the rate increase proposal for FY 22 so water rates are going from 4.2 per 100 cubic feet to 4.6 per 100 cubic feet and sewers going as projected to go from 4.6 per 100 cubic feet to 4.9. And so the questions that we received from Kathy were about that but also some of the out years that have been that were part of that memo that gave a sort of five year projection looking forward. And so just again to kind of reframe where these questions came from that's what they're related to. Before you go into the next slide and you just done the cost to Centennial. I don't know if you've done any thinking further about the question of solar panels and trying to come up with that. Moving a little bit in the direction of net zero, even though it's not that's in that zero building. To try and get an understanding of what the cost would be whether that's still capable of being in there and what the operating expense savings in future years would be if you were able to do that. I'm not asking for an answer now but I think that you do need to expect that the question is going to be asked. I know counselor school. Guilford do you have an update on that or do you want to wait and we can. No, I wait, like I said, if we change the actual process in the in the plan that could move the electrical usage up or down so that's something that really isn't nailed down either. But I keep saying and I keep telling people you're not going to put enough solar on the building or on the parcel to make it net zero energy would have to be some type of solar facility offsite. I recognize that, but just keep the question alive. Sean can go on to the night. Kathy has her, Kathy has her hand up. Okay, Kathy, I'm sorry. Okay, I just, I'm just so people have those who haven't remembered it. This is an increase 13 million is about a $2 million increase from the 11 we had originally said so it's not a small increase. And one question I had you for is this. Is this a timing issue at all that we've got a pipeline and every paper newspapers talking about this, you know that the supply chain and the costs have been soaring. Building a year later, would it make a difference is my question. Do any, does anyone have a judgment. We had a comment from the people who were proposing to be the opm for school and they said you should be really glad you're not bidding your school right now, because it's a crazy world out there. I would just be really glad you know that you're you're going to be doing it later so I didn't know both can we, is that even feasible for the town to move the plan construction into a future date that's a bit further out and would it make a difference. Right now we can't really move the construction too far away because we are working in a five year window to get the source back online. So that's that requirement that we have to have this back online in five years. As we move a little farther maybe we can get some relief from that but the one thing that's not changing in the world right now as DP regulations they're staying pretty firm and fixed. No, no COVID exemptions and no real COVID buys or waivers. Is dp state plus federal or is this mainly this at which level of government is is the rigidity on the on the water side of our business the rigidity and dp is the state. Okay. If I could just add to that. So there are multiple factors here, you know we have historically low interest rates, which motivates us to act now and then we have rising construction costs which, which says oh you should wait. And so I think we just have to make some judgments. The key thing here is that the federal government has allocated significant funds into water sewer and broadband projects. This is something we're going to actively pursue and hope that this will complement the work that we're already doing. Yeah, thank you. Thanks very much I can move off this question. I recall this facility is in Pellum. And so my question, going back to the solar is, what complications are we anticipating of running into trying to put solar on a building that's not even in our town. Putting solar on the actual building will be easy the building has an open site and has a good. Actually it's kind of a Western facing front. So the little amount of solar we can put on the building will be easy it's just a matter of what does that little bit of solar give you. Does it power the computer that's in the lab or does it power one of the filters. I don't think it will power one of the filters but it might power some of the smaller incidental things around the building. Thank you. And with the problem that you're alluding alluding to as I recall as we talked about the fact that we own a lot of land up there nearby because of the what to protect the water should we on that land, but whether we can build on that land as a matter of either state regulation or town of Pellum regulation is the unknown. Did I get that right, Guilford. It's actually state regulation will let us build a let us build a solar facility on watershed land as long as we're powering a watershed facility, a water facility. The other the issue the really big issue is whether we really want to clear that much timber land that harsh land and poem to build a facility. So let's go on with other members of the committee. Pat. Thank you, go for a new said that when you were talking about the cost this 13 plus million. You talked about some things could be cut out and I'm wondering what they are if, if they it was necessary to cut them and what makes them less not necessarily essential. And if they're not essential, why are they being included. If we cut out or things that maybe possibly we can do at a later time or we could contract with a bigger contract when you, when you build a building you have site work which includes paving the parking lots and paving things like that. If we take that out of the centennial project and put it into either the regular paving project or we wait a year or two to pave the parking lot. That's what we can do, but we still end up doing it. It's just how we, we phase it. The big things we have to make sure we do is build the building, build the clear well, build the filters and get all that stuff working and then, then we can look at some of the things inside the building and outside the building well, we can take a little longer or we can do it ourselves or we can put in another contract and maybe save a little money that's the things we'd be talking about doing. We can kind of cut down just about everything we can cut down in the building right now that we don't think we absolutely have to need. So, those are the, those are the cost savings we're looking at next. Thank you. Yeah, Dorothy. I think the challenge go for its comment about since you can't provide enough power to run the whole facility with the solar you could put on the roof. It's not worth doing. Because it's like saying I can't get back my figure of my youth so I'll just eat all the desserts I want. I mean, I think that the energy people and I'm not a total total diehard energy person would think that everyone should do their bit. If we don't. To argue with me. Yes, ma'am. What I would say is right now the goal is to get the water plant running. There may be a time in a year or two down the road where it would be more cost effective through another mechanism than building the plant. There's a process such as a lease type rental option with a company that does solar to put some solar on the building. But right now there's really. If we could run the whole plant off a solar that's on the building, I would say we should pay the extra money right now and do it because your savings would begin now. That's not the case in the amount of solar we can create on the building and that's why I would say that's something to put off and maybe do a year or two down the road if we wanted to do it in a different way than bidding it out with the construction of the building and the facility. Okay, thank you very much. So I'm just going to conclude this and then get on back to the slides is just my own observations over time. We have a tremendous investment up there in Pellum. And if you've never been up there you should try sometime just to go and walk around a little bit but there's a network of reservoirs and working towards streams and collect rainwater store rainwater bring the bring it through the intake reservoir and into the plant and you know the amount of land the amount of investment in that infrastructure that has been put in by the town of Amherst over the years is tremendous So between protecting that tremendous investment that's been made over a long period of time and the what we talked about previously in the council and in this committee, but just being able to get protect as many water sources as we can for the future. I think it's really important to get that big picture and keep it in mind that you know this is a big investment but we are big, we also have a big investment we're protecting. Sean, you're going to go on to the next slide and keep going. So this slide that the follow up question or the next question that was asked was, if there is an increase for Centennial what is the impact on the the financial information that we provided already. The five year enterprise fund forecast that we provided incorporated the $11 million project. That is in those out years which is why the rates are going up to meet that debt payment. So one thing I just wanted to point out is that the estimate that we use for Centennial. The estimate that is in those five year figures was on a 20 year debt schedule. Not a, it could certainly be a 30 year debt schedule. So if there is an increase in costs there. One way we could potentially mitigate the impact on the rates would be if we wanted to stretch it out. Keep in mind if we stretch it out we're paying higher interest costs so it's not something we necessarily want to do. But it's something that could be considered so that's one piece. And then there was a question about what is the impact on the rate itself. If there was an increase in the project cost. So we don't have an exact number. The financial advisor hasn't worked on this yet because we don't have an exact cost of what it's going to be. But just to give us a ballpark figure. If the increase in the cost was a million dollars, if we paid that off over 30 years. It would be in the ballpark of a $63,000 payment per year. So the first 10 years of what that would look like. And, and so that equates to roughly six cents on the rate. So $60,000 is roughly six cents on the rate. And the million isn't to mean anything in particular on a million I just figured that was the easiest way to kind of female, you know, if it's two million you can multiply by two it makes it easy to think about. The next question was on comparing the, the five year rates that were given an FY 21 to the five year rates that were given an FY 22. There really aren't huge differences between the five year rates that were projected in 21 versus 22 there are some differences which is it not unexpected that things would change a little bit in a year but what you're seeing on the screen is sort of the five year rates that was presented back in June of last year for FY 21. And the, the five year rates that we just provided you in the memo back in April. And so I just kind of laid it over the top so you can see what 22 projected last year versus was proposed for 22 this year, 23 and 23, 24 and 24 25 and 25 and then 26 is new for for this year. So the, you know, this is water, water is is a little bit higher. And in part that's because the consumption was lower for projecting the consumption to be reduced for another year. And then the debt payment itself. I think we are projecting to start a little bit sooner than it was projected to start five years ago. Sorry, sorry, last year, we're projecting the debt payment to begin for Centennial a little bit sooner. So, again, if you compare these rates actually if you get to the out years and what we just projected recently the rates actually a little bit lower than what was projected last year. So last year we projected that in five years we would be at $5 and 46 cents for the water rate. And in this most recent one we were at 524. So that actually dropped a little bit. But again, these are all moving targets that are based on assumptions of expenses that are going to change a little bit year to year. And this is the same sort of analysis for sewer. Again, if you look at the projected FY 25 of sort of where we end up it's pretty close. In terms of the rate that's needed between what was presented in FY 21 and what we're presenting for FY 22. Matthew, that was your question. Does this give you the information that you were looking for. Yes, it does. Thank you. And again, a lot of the differences are on the timing of the debt and FY 21 we hadn't authorized the debt yet we were sort of making more of a gas about how the when that debt would start. We have more of a timeline this year to project how that debt will come on to the books and phases. And again, Gilford's got a much more well defined timeline for those projects so that's a lot of what the changes that you're seeing. And then the last piece of this was looking at the rate comparison with other towns, and I will, I think turn it over to Amy to talk about this slide. Okay. This was at, I think it was Mandy Joe asked, just, you know, as we're looking at how the rates compared other communities rather than looking at this statewide average usage of 120 hundred cubic feet per year instead looking at what the average Amherst water user who you know obviously we're a little more conservative with our water usage in this community and so I looked at we looked at what the average water usage is for an average Amherst household, as well as a median household and a couple of residences that use a lot of water whether they're you know watering their lawn and that sort of thing and that's why the average usage is a little higher and then the median so the actual middle, you know, mid exact middle household is actually lower because there's a lot more people on the conservative water usage side, but either way so this shows a comparison with the other communities which you can see. And you'll actually notice I sorted it by the average but you'll see that when it comes to the the median they're in a slightly different order and it's because some communities have flat fees and then water usage of it. And that's why you know when you take that into account. They don't necessarily rank in the same order, but either way so hopefully this gives a little more of an apples to apples comparison on how this is going to impact the average Amherst household or the median Amherst household. So you think you fall, and then on the side is just some information on how this is really going to impact our water bill and our sewer bill so you know for Amherst you know we're looking at an average increase with the rate going up this year of you know $37 in our water bill and 28 on our sewer bill. And then similarly the median household will have an increase of $23 on their water bill and $17 on their annual sewer bill. Hopefully that answers kind of the questions that Mandy Joe was looking at. I'll take any questions. Kathy. Yeah, I think that's great. My question is, can I think the answer is yes but if I if someone wanted to say and where will the median household be in by 2026. So all we do is multiply, assuming that you say is about the same we multiply times the rate in that year is that correct. So people want to say how much is my water bill going to go up, not just next year, but five years from now. Yeah, so that's that's what they could do, at least for the Amherst usage. It gets a little trickier with the other communities because some communities, you know have that flat rate so it's not as easy as just, you know, exponentially increasing or whatever, pro rating it I guess. But yeah that's a good way to calculate that out. Okay. Thank you for thank you for doing that change. We're a low user too. So. The other questions. I guess, have you, by the way, Amy have you sent this information to Mandy, since she was one who was originated the question. I didn't yet this was information it took. It's not as easy to just kind of come up with a median household, we actually had to crunch a year's worth of billing data for every single, you know resident in town and kind of crunch it and so you know obviously the the billing department did a lot of work with that. Yeah, so we just kind of got this together for this meeting but but certainly happy to share that. And we'll say that that does mean that the average and the median like, we'll keep in mind that that's the average and the median based on this last year and those numbers are going to go up and go down a little bit. So you know, we can talk about what we want to do in the future if we want to look at water bills and sewer bills impacts like this and how often we want to update that average and median. And Andy, I think this is also broader interest so if Amy get if we can download the tables we just did put it in the finance committee report, you know so that others could use it you know trying just residents trying to figure out so what's what's going to happen to my water bill. I was actually just going to ask Sean if you would mind just putting the whole slide deck to the. Yeah, I'll put it in the packet and I'll send it to you. So that it's available to the committee. Bob, you had your hand up. I just wanted to ask Paul or Sean, what specific assumptions about water use and sewer use going forward. You've made in terms of generating these these numbers. Yeah, that's a really important question so for FY 22 we've projected a reduced level of consumption from what is our normal level of consumption. We're hoping that with the college and university with their plans to come back that it will come in better than that. But because for the enterprise funds water and sewer they rely so heavily on this one revenue source, we wanted to be extra conservative with sort of the projection so we are projecting one more year FY 22 at a lower than normal rate. You know for water we're usually around, I won't get the, the description perfectly right but we're around a million hundred cubic feet is that right, Amy okay. And we're projecting, I think 90 we're projecting 90% of that for FY 22. And then once we get beyond FY 22 we're going back to sort of that normal level. It's something that we are going to have to monitor on an ongoing basis because there's lots of initiatives that are reducing water consumption. When these new buildings come online, especially when they replace older buildings they're more efficient. And so we have seen sort of a steady decrease just in general. So that is an important thing to monitor as we go forward. And I just like to add that you know the construction at UMass, you know North Village is totally offline. And Lincoln apartments are totally offline so until they get those back but they will be back bigger but they will be much more efficient than what they've been using water as. Thanks. I just wanted to mention right now I have this on the town council agenda on the 17th. In the past there's always been this sense that it's better to give the public a little more time. Once we presented to think about it and come back. So, and yet we don't require a hearing on water and sewer rates, or even a public forum. So, I guess I'm looking to the finance committee, one option is we can present this on the 17th and then not take the vote until the 24th, giving people an extra week if anybody, any residents want to weigh in. I'm open to ideas. Yeah. No, I don't have a strong, you know, some people focus a lot on this, you know, in town, and the message last year rippled through very quickly when that five year, when the impact of Centennial could be seen. So, doing this, what Sean just described about having to redo things and if Centennial comes in higher we can go out 30 years, you know, I mean people are not just looking at next year but at what's coming toward them. So, so Lynn in terms of I wouldn't want to change the rates again. I would want to be on pretty firm ground. I can go ahead, put it on the 17th and if somebody says they want to defer then we can still vote on the 24th. Okay. We have a proposed order for this or do we just do it as a vote on the rate and that there's no order attached to it. I think Sonya did you give us an order for this today I think I thought I saw one but maybe I'm making it up. Yeah, I sent it to you. I'm going to check. Yeah, if you. I put a bunch of stuff in the packet I thought the water. Okay, it is good. Yeah, so there is an order for this in the packet. It's in the packet. Okay, I'm going to leave the vote then on the 20 on the 17. And if some of the council objects then we'll give it another week. In that case, I would need to have somebody who has access to the proposed order because I'm not on a computer that has all of it on it. I can get that for you in just a moment. Okay. Put that order on the screen. We ought to be taking a look at the order and then take a vote on whether we recommend the order. Give me a minute. Well, you're doing that. I just wanted to do one thing and that is that I know we have one member of the public who's an attendee. And if the attendee has any public comment that is directed to water and sewer rates. You know, please raise your hand because I would want to recognize you before we take any vote on this. I have a question. If we have a moment. Yes, go ahead, Dorothy. Because that one's looking for the order. Okay, I'd like some clarification on how rates go down. And I know that sometimes if you're talking about the mass counting in the university's buildings, that might be part of it. But for the individual homeowner, who is the person that will be talking to us in terms of increases in water and sewer. The buildings aren't going to go down. Are they. I mean, I'm just guessing that when you said new buildings are more efficient. You're talking about plumbing and toilets because I don't otherwise you use the same amount of water to wash dishes to take a bath to take a shower. So I didn't, I didn't follow that new buildings necessarily. I understand how they're more efficient in terms of heat, but I don't understand how they're more efficient in terms of water. That's number one and number two, will any of this have any relevance to the individual homeowner. Yeah, so, so it's sort of maybe paradox is not the right word but as we are more efficient with our water usage, the costs can rise because that we bill for less. The costs and the enterprise fund are fixed costs related to infrastructure and managing the facilities, running the facilities electrical utilities or run the facilities. So as as a town as we consume less water that that has been leading to an increase in the rate because we have to charge a higher rate to produce the same amount of revenue for the fund. And so when, when Paul mentioned more efficient buildings, it's good from an environmental standpoint, they're, they're consuming less water. But again that means they're going to consume less water so the will have the rates could trickle up because we're making up for that loss consumption. And so a lot of new facilities have things like more efficient toilets that don't use as much water when you flush. And the heating systems I think there's ways to use less water that are to some of the newer buildings so the heating and cooling system so that that's some of what they're doing go for probably knows a whole lot more about it than than I do. Sonya I'm mistaken I don't have a financial I have any I have it here I can share it. Okay, thanks. Bernie your hand is up. I had the experience in your field of having your field Academy improve its HVAC systems, and all of a sudden our water way down. And that's part of beating and cooling is actually a big part of water bills. I want to just give you a moment as you're reading it, but what I will look for is to see if there's somebody who wants to make a motion then to recommend approval. Order FY 2110. Andy I'll do that. Okay. Yeah, I recommend that the finance committee, or I move that the finance committee recommend to the town council approval of order number FY 21-10 and order setting of the water and sewer rates to be effective July 1 2021. Sir second. Change seconds. There's been a motion that's made and seconded and what I'm going to do is what I've done in recent meetings. I'm going to go through each member of the committee just in the order that they show up on my participant list. Then, if you remember the committee, I'm going to be asking for your vote. And if you're, if you're a voting member, if you remember the committee, you're a non voting member. If you have any recommendation to the committee, you want to have your position stated to the council. And before I do that, Bernie, your hand is still up with or something else you had or is that more for okay. So, just going in the order that I have you on my list, Bob Hegner. I support the motion. Kathy Shane. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. I agree with the order. Yes. At the Angeles. Hi. And see Bernie Kubiak. I agree with the order. And Jane Schaeffler. I agree. And I'm voting yes, I think that I have now, I got everyone. I think I can give you a quick comment. To go from the 5 to 0. And the indications of support. The recommendations of the motion. From the three. None. Resonate members. Can I ask Sonya something real quick. Related to what you just voted. Yes. Sonya is the FY 21. A typo should it be FY 22. Yes. Just looked up on our grid and it's listed as FY 2210. And I just don't want to mess up any, um, any order numbers. So I accept that as a friendly amendment. Okay. Good. Kathy, do you accept it as a friendly amendment? Yes. I don't think we need to revoke. Good. So, um, it is, um, The point where we said that in the agenda, Estimated a three, but not guaranteed to be three. So. Does the attendee have any public comment to offer? And if so, please raise your hand to let me know. And then I'll have you brought in so that you can make comment. So seeing nothing. No indication at this point. And I want to get back to, um, Find my agenda here. So after that, the other thing that we were going to talk about is The, um, Auditor procurement selection process. And, uh, There was an amended version that Sean has put, um, Sent to us since the last meeting. That has a small number of changes that were highlighted. Uh, Within the document. Does anybody want to see those on the screen at this point? And then I need to get on to the next thing, which is, um, One thing that I, and by the way, Amy and Gilford, If you end up leaving, um, Because we're now no longer talking about water sewer. Thank you very much for all of your work and your help. And, uh, Amy, thank you for doing that. Putting that answer together for Mandy's question. And we will make sure that it gets to. Just to her attention. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Um, So, um, The one thing that I do want to, um, See if we can make a recommendation vote. On, um, because we want to get it on then. To, um, the GOL committee and back to the council. Is the, uh, committee charge. Um, Do you have the committee charge? Or do you want. I'm getting to it. Okay. It was from the last meeting. I have it. Okay. Thanks. So I think, uh, Pretty straightforward. It would be very helpful for the schedule that, um, Lynn has in mind. If, uh, The committee is comfortable in making a recommendation and charge to Recommend it and then pass it along to GOL and then, um, I think, Lynn, you have a date. You'd like to get it back to the council. Yeah, my goal was that if you go to GOL and then comes to the council on the 17th. Um, the council approves it. Since the appointments are all counselors. And we have a process. We've used in the past where I basically poll counselors to say, are you interested? Um, and then I bring that to, I bring all of the names of people who are interested. To the council meeting and the council. Selects who is going to be on the committee. Um, so the only thing GOL needs to do is approve the charge. And so if you're interested, If they approve it prior to the 17th. The council approves it on the 17th. We can appoint a committee on the 24th of May. So Sean, you said, do you have something that you wanted to. Yeah, I just wanted to, um, So I, we talked, um, Sonia and Holly and I, um, talked about this. The one thing. The charge, I think looks good. The one thing that we would ask you to consider is possibly adding. Um, to. Um, non counselors to the committee. Um, we were thinking probably one person from the finance office, probably Holly would serve. Um, on this committee, someone who's gone through the audit and knows what it's been like, because we've had, um, we've worked for the length of quite some time. So someone that really knows what it's been like. Um, and then possibly another, uh, staff member outside the finance office. So, um, That was the only thing that we would ask you to consider. I'm fine with that. I'm absolutely fine with that. I think it's a great addition. I agree. I think it's, it's, it's not just great addition. I think it's probably essential to. Given the time, Given the short timeline here. Um, Just to go to GOLs tomorrow. If you want it on the 17th, I believe. It does. Yeah, which is why I want to. So, um, If we, um, Add. The members. Are we adding them as voting members? Or non voting members. Cause when you look at the block at the top. Uh, Remember, this is put together by taking, um, The. Process that was being put forward. In the original memo and then adding the, And then just placing it into a standard charge document. That's why it's written the way it is. So it was the intent to make them voting members. Um, and given what the role is. Is that a significant issue? Sean, do you have anything else to say on that? Um, No, I think it's up to you. You all. My guess is it'll probably be a consensus. Hopefully it'll end up being a consensus. Um, decision. Uh, for the whole group of people. Um, so I don't feel strongly whether they're voting or non voting. Cause it's to deliver evaluations. It's not to make a selection because. Right. Um, That's the next step. Yeah, they're really, that's a good point. They're really. The voting or non voting is somewhat. Arbitrary. Because they're really, everyone's just sort of doing their own, um, evaluations and then giving those evaluations. I guess the question would be whether for non voting member, maybe they don't do an evaluation. They just contribute. Which in that case, I'd probably say it would make sense to maybe include the, include the staff as. Participants in the evaluation process. I would think you have the staff included. Um, these audits are. Incredibly time intensive for the staff. So, um, Them having an input and them being able to do an evaluation is. Important. Yeah. I think that the other point in, uh, You know, Sean, Sean, You might comment on it, but, uh, As they have said before, the auditor provides a lot of direct services between the audit process and being available. To the finance staff to provide advice during the year. So that it's not just around the audit, but other. Roles that they play, which I think is some of the, you know, part of the. Um, Pat. Yeah, I like the idea of it being a consensus. And I think that's how the group would work, but I do think that the staff members should be voting members. It's a respectful. To do. I'm actually going to pose that I think the staff should definitely be there. I think they should. Have a serious. Responsibility to provide input. But this is a contract that the council votes. And what you want to make sure is that you protect staff. From ever looking like they, uh, voted on an auditor that they may have a long standing friendship with. And you really want to keep it as clean as possible. So it's a. Reason not to do this. I want the staff on there, but I want them as non-voting. For that, for that reason. So I guess one thing we might want to clarify is. So again, this committee will be doing something similar to what the, the RFP committee just did for the RFS committee just did that. Kathy was on. Which will be. Receiving the applications from audit firms. And evaluated them against the criteria that was in the RFP document. And in some ways the evaluation is because of the way we structured it, there's not a ton of wiggle room in some of those items because you're, you're saying years of experience and things like that. So this group isn't actually going to vote on anything. In particular, they're, they're just doing evaluations. Again, I would think about it more from the standpoint of. Are they doing the evaluation or not doing the evaluation? What are you thinking about this committee? I guess my concern is that. If we don't hear their evaluation in the end, is it going to be helpful to the three. Counselors. Right. In the discussion. It would be value. Yeah. So I'm just, that's what I'm trying to understand. Because the process we just went through, we. Assigned points to each of various kinds of characteristics. We separately read them. And then put our points on and came together. We were a group of five. And you would certainly want the two staff people to be doing that. And I wouldn't want. Their point rating. To be treated any differently than the other three peoples. So it wasn't even a vote. We just, we literally all looked at and said, Oh, on this, if there were three firms on this one, there's a spread. Why don't we, you talk about why you rated them higher or lower. And it, what Pat, what you said is the cons, was kind of a consensus. Because actually when we came together, we all ranked rated one of them higher. You know, so it was more like who was number two. But I wouldn't want them not to be assigning points with that separate independent read. Of the proposals. So it's not like both. We didn't really vote. We. You know, you got 50 out of a hundred points and you got 99 out of a hundred points was, was the way the review of the proposals went for the school. So I'm assuming since this is, you're going to set up criteria. You're going to then. Assign them points based on each person's read. You know, I've not been through an auditor thing, but as long as you have enough criteria. So I wouldn't make them lesser. And then maybe the three voting people vote to approve the. The firm that gets the most points. Well, of course the, in this situation, what we're doing is going to get into the sentences as charged. The bottom of the screen. Yeah. They're going to receive the applications from qualified auditing firms evaluate the applications utilizing the criteria and deliver evaluations plural. To the town manager. So that it wouldn't end up being a composite. It would be giving individual evaluations. To the town manager. And of course the question. For you is in the process you, you just were describing. Were your evaluation, your evaluations for your points, and they were set for you. Before it was shared with each other. Absolutely. But I read this. And you can read this. I read it that if there are three firms. Applying for this. You evaluate the three applications and you deliver the app. The evaluation of the three applications. And if there are either three raters or five raters. You do a, you can do a composite or you can say the five raters. Here's their rating. We, we literally just put them into a grid. And so when I would deliver evaluations, it's not delivered Kathy's evaluation and Pat's. And I deliver it. This is the evaluation of the firm. And then what score did they get? Well, I read it, but I, as I said, I haven't picked an audit firm before that is what we did. With the OPM. And we looked, we said, oh, one has more points. Is everyone comfortable with that? And just to follow up on what Kathy said, I believe probably all of that would go to Paul. So you, there would be a composite evaluation for each firm, but Paul could also get the individual evaluations from individual members as well. So I think it's, you would want to do a composite, but to kind of bring the groups, frankings together, but all of the information could be given passed on to the town manager. There's really no voting. I don't think that shouldn't even be there. That's what I was trying to say. It's not voting. It's a, this is not a voting process. That's what I was trying to say that they hold that. It's what you said. Yeah. I want to understand something. And it's based on the charter. And what the charter says. The town council shall annually provide for an outside audit of the books and accounts of the town to be conducted by a CPA, or a firm of CPAs, which has no personal interest direct, whatever fiscal, whatever to the officers of the town, the town manager shall include in the annual budget, which is the sum of money sufficient to satisfy. It's made a cost of conducting the audit. The town council shall adopt procedures for selection of the audit. Firm and the clerk of the town council shall coordinate the work of the individual and firm selected. I find that a little strange. The report of the art audit shall be filed in the form, et cetera. So how do we. How do we interpret the words shall annually provide. For an outside audit. But it's Lynn, the key. That's not the key sentence. This key sentence shall adopt procedures for selection of the accountant accounting firm. That's okay. So we're saying we're going to just adopt these procedures. And. Then we're going to give everything as a recommendation to the town, to the town manager who's the only one consignant contract anyway, by the way. And. Okay. I have been on audit selection committees. Oh, and I. We've all this selection process is different than reviewing the audit where you do where the council really comes into play. I've been on both. I've been on the selection of an audit committee and I've been on audit committees and. On the selection of audit committees, we have never. I've met in both instances, I've never had staff actually. Do the ratings or the voting and it's not because I don't value staff. It's because. Wanting to protect staff. That's it's my experience with nonprofits. So. I totally want staff. I mean, as many staff as want to have to say in this. Be there to give us their own insight. Into these audit firms. I just want to make sure. We don't put staff in a position of somebody later saying. Oh gee, they chose, you know, their bias because that's the firm they've always used. And we're, we know we're already up against an interesting wall anyway, because. You probably only have two firms that may even bid on this. You don't know. Can we hear from Sonya? Yeah, I was going to. That's on your next. I was just responding to the council. Annually providing for an audit. I think that was. Annually appropriate funding to provide for that audit. And why are we involved in this election? Except we. Usually the board of an organization is involved in the selection of the audit. I mean, I think that the problem is in the end, but. Is, is this a community was it intended by the charter commission as they. Put this together. To create a process so that the audit was a function of the. Council for the council to provide. Some sort of a oversight of the people who are handling the funds, which is all of you. And if that's what their intent was, then. You know, we just have to be thinking about it. In those fashions and I have not had a chance to talk to anybody, any members of the charter commission to ask that question. But. What was, what was their intent and what makes sense. It gets sort of Lin was getting at it from nonprofits. Point of view. And I've had the same experience as an. Executive director of the nonprofit. I always assumed that the auditor worked for the board of directors to keep an eye on. Funds and day to day basis. Yeah, I just, I. I'm not sure whether this is relevant or not, but I know how the federal procurement process works. And it is not uncommon for. You know, technical people who would be directing the contractor to be on the evaluation panel because they have the expertise to understand, you know, what, what they need and, and whether the, the vendor can provide it. What the federal government does is it, it keeps the names of the people on the selection panel. Secret. And you know, I'm not sure who was on the panel. You can guess. But you can't even ask. It's, it's actually illegal. To go to your client and say, Hey, are you on the, on the procure on the evaluation panel for this. This. Proposal that we're going to bid on. So I don't know whether. Amherst can do that to keep, keep the members. Confidential, but that's a way to get around. The issue of conflict of interest and the issue of, you know, sort of someone sort of trying to game the system. Interesting question is to whether. This process is subject to the open meeting law. Any of our staff who work in the regular basis of the open meeting law. Have an opinion on that. Certainly welcome. Well, when we had an audit committee, we were. We did have to. Relate to the open meeting law like any other committee. So. I guess that was the other reviews process. This is the. On the selection process. I'm not familiar enough with procurement law. Kathy. I'm not familiar with it. I'm not familiar with it. I'm not familiar with it. I'm not familiar with it. So here's an issue as I'm reading the one sentence charge. You can, you can only apply the criteria that's in the RFP document. If someone develops the criteria. So do we have. So the charge should say. The committee shall develop. The criteria that goes into the RFP. Right. Cause that was, we had to do that with the OPM. The OPM. The OPM. The OPM. The OPM. These are the six things we care about in points for each. So, or is there Sonya? Is there just a standard. When you're selecting an audit. Committee. There's a list of six things you always want. And it's already got points assigned. Because what I'm reading the one. So the sentence in the charter is shall adopt procedures for the selection, adopting procedures for the selection means. You come up with what you want in an auditing firm. You assign key aspects and you. Evaluate them based on the criteria. So. That's the part where the council member. The council is doing something. So if we have a standard way, we always do an RFP for an audit. Or those are already developed. What the criteria are. Okay. Let me clarify that because if you go back to the last. Meeting and that long document that was attached and the, and then it was revised in today's. Packet. The proposed RFP is in there. Right. So it's already been. Holly has her hand up. So she's probably. Yeah. I just wanted to say that keeping the people that are on the. Evaluation committee, a secret is not possible because of public record loss. As soon as while you're evaluating nothing is a public record, but as soon as you choose your top contender, it becomes a public record. So you can't, you can't keep people's names out of that. And just for the record, you can't keep people's names out of that. So I wouldn't have a problem making a completely unbiased opinion on whatever auditors are, are out there. It's whatever's best for the town at this point. It's only. Sonia. Yeah. And I just wanted to remind everybody that. Choosing an audience and firm is exempt from 30 B. So we don't even have to go through this process. And we don't have to go through this process. And we just have to do it. We just have to follow the standards that they have to follow. That's set for them. So they come in and they tell us what they're going to do. Right. Basically, so. I think we're overthinking a lot of this. Yeah. The, and the criteria are all in this, Andy. It's already set out. It's already set out. We don't have the auditor. We don't have the auditors come in and tell them what we want them to review. But other than that, they pretty much tell us what they want. And the final decision is the managers. Right. And normally the town manager points an auditing firm. Yeah. Really under 30 B. There's nothing right now from having Paul make a couple of phone calls and bring in some firms and pick one. Right. But. You know, and. Right. So can I just say something real quick, Andy? Yeah, I was just a, just to ground or kind of bring us back. So the charter again, to the key sentence that people have brought up is that the charter calls for the council to adopt a process. So we recommended a process. That was the memo we sent. A few meetings ago. That said, we are proposing an RFP process. We don't have to because it's again, it's exempted or 30 B, but we think that since you have to adopt a process, this is the process that. Could work for this type of activity. So again, we are looking for the council to approve the process, which would be an RFP process. This committee charge thing kind of. Is a new wrinkle we have to deal with because of the, the charter change that we have to come up with a committee charge. But the key piece is that we are looking for the finance committee to weigh in on the process, which is the RFP document that we gave you. And that we've made some revisions to. Do we have to have a committee? The committee can be. So if we're going with an RFP type thing, it could be. A committee of one, it could be a committee of five. You know, again, we went with what we thought was sort of a reasonable, the recommendation we included was what we thought was sort of a reasonable approach for this. But there's. Since this is exempt, we're sort of, you can be, there's flexibility there. And then I have a suggestion that let me say you're from Dorothy first. I think we discussed this at a previous meeting. And I guess I looked at the criteria that Sean must have sent. And I thought that I said, you're giving points for various things. Why not add some points for the sample audit? Isn't that what we're talking about here? Kind of that is what that conversation is what we're talking about review of the RFP and, and we did, I think you made another comment that we did. Implement into the latest version that was provided for today's meeting. You had, you had made a comment about. Maybe over weighting the experience of a firm. That's right. And so, so we did make an adjustment to that. Yeah. In the latest version. So I guess I thought we kind of dealt with the topic. Yeah. You seem to be agonizing. So I think what we're going to do is. We wanted to get through the. Committee charge today. So we can get it to GOL and back to the council and get the council to. Get to work on. Creating. Actually. Populating the committee. Choosing the counselor. So what. We could do is where we have. Three. Town counselors on that sentence to say three town counselors. As chosen by the council and. Two. Members of the. Finance. Department staff as chosen by the town manager. No, I'm saying that sounds good. Paul. Did you want to, you wanted to have it qualified as only finance. Finance department staff, or do you want to broaden that? And just to add to that, we were thinking that one of the members would not be a finance department staff. We were thinking it might come from outside. Potentially the. Might be news to Athena, but potentially Athena. Because she's because she's mentioned in that section of the charter, we thought she might be a good. Good. Second staff member. So would you just say two members of the staff? Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes sense. The thing to get to say no. Only if we can. Now I'm going to look for comments from. Members of the committee to this version. I love it. Let's send it to GOL. So I can deal with somebody. I make a motion to approve this version. I second it. As amended. It's a motion because we never, you don't have to amend the motion that hasn't been made. Okay. I make a motion to approve the charge. And send the charge to GOL. And I second that motion. Any further discussion with the topic. The committee charge. If not. Go through, go through the same voting process we did before. Kathy. Yes. Dorothy. Yes. Lynn. Abstain. Pat. Perhaps no. Yes. Yes, I agree. I recommend it. Yeah. Jane. I also recommend. Bob. And. Yes. So the motion carries five to zero. Okay. I think it's really good that Pat will be able to. Have been part of this discussion. Before. Looking at it over at GOL. That. That. Helps. Okay. So. The rest of the project. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Make that correction. I just want to comment. I think it's really good that Pat will be able to. Have been part of this discussion. Before. Looking at it over at GOL. That. That helps. So. So the rest of the process as revised and. John sent out. John and I are going to come up with a date to put that on back on the agenda one last time. For a meeting and. We will then. When we recommend that back to the council, but. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about the committee. So I think that that's very helpful. So is there anything else that people want to raise about the audit selection process or anything else at this time? Anything that. I didn't think of 48 hours in advance that you'd like to talk about. Okay. Because if not, then I think that. I've done a lot of good work today. And. I'm so happy to bring this up. I appreciate the support that you guys have. All that they did on the. Giving us this budget and capital improvement plan. Such a great and. Helpful new format and. The hard work now. It's coming up. And if you have any thought. Questions about your, what you're going to be doing is your role in it. Let me know which one, whoever seems appropriate to contact. And I think we can treat the group as adjourned. Thank you. Thanks. So the meetings adjourned. Thank you everyone. And happy birthday, Andy. Yeah. Hippo birdie to you. Meet me the fourth be with you. Thank you.