Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

of a quorum. Um I call the box finance committee meeting to order. Um we will do a roll call vote as we have one person on Zoom. So I'll start with you Michelle. Can you just state your name and present please? Michelle Ryan present. Joe present. Nean present. Connor present. And Newton present. Thanks. And also we have here uh Raj Jean Hudson who's the deputy town administrator Hongwe finance director and Susan Back from Boxman news. So Gary's not not won't be here tonight. He's going to he's going to listen in later and do the minutes. Okay. So let's be super clear. Adam's here. And Adam's here.

Yeah. You can announce him. Adam Adam Clyde is here from the AA AB school committee. Um so first thing is minutes. Yes, we have two actually two systems to look at. October 7th and October 14th. So October 7th. Are there any? Yeah, just one note. I was remote. Michelle was not remote. Um I think it it was copied from the previous meeting. So it just had us reversed. Okay. So I'll get Gary to amend that then. So any other comments on the minutes of October the 7th? Take a motion to approve. So moved. Seconded. Okay. Uh all in favor? Um, roll call vote for those in favor. Michelle, yes.

Joe, I John I. Tony I. And then the minutes of October the 14th to approve. Second. Any discussion comments? Yeah. Okay. So, Michelle, I Maria, hi. John, hi. Tony I um any citizens concerns? Adam's the only citizen. Adam, he's a citizen. Yep. Yep. No concerns. Last check was um no reserve fund transfers.

Um so the first substantive item is the um FY26 budget. We have the we have a dashboard now for um Q1. So I will show that. So, um, first thing I'm suspending for Q1. Um, I think everything here seems to be pretty much in line with expectations. Um, the only thing that jumps out is the retirement funding line, but that's I think typical that we do a one-off payment for that once once a year,

I seem to think. Um, any comments on that? No, we're at 25% correct. We're 25% overall. Yeah. Yeah. And then the income line um running slightly ahead as we did last year I guess. Um be interesting to see where we land. Yeah. If that continues, right? So yeah, just looking at local receipts, that's that's the one that and we had talked about getting more of an explanation on all of that stuff at some point so we understand it in budgeting upcoming

year. Yeah. Um and then our reserves. Um this is where the reserves stand right now. Um large free cash balance. That's huge

which we're going to have to deal with somehow um in the budgeting process but with limitations on what how we deal with that. Um the other bit of good news here actually is the OPED fund. If we look at the I looked I calculated a percentage of our OPED liability last year it's sort of at 43% this time last year. Um and now we're at 53% of the liability. So we've made you know reasonable inros in actually catching up on that. So that's a bit of good news I think. Free cash number is so high. You have a question John?

No. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm just looking at So, it's three times out of bound basically, right? 1 1.4 time three is four. The free the free cash is three times what it should what we what we target. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so tempting to use that to offset the budget, but Yeah. Yeah.

It's a long-term foolish thing to do. Um so debts um the outstanding principle on the on the main the main main bonds um the short-term borrowing um 1.132 million. So that will be refinanced in November and they'll roll in I think some of the other newer items that we have um authorized.

Okay. Um, so if if jump to the next slide, this is this this is what we have authorized and what's been not banned basically. So anything with a blank in in the right column is not been banned yet. So for example, we have um road maintenance for from town meeting this year which will be spent. So that will be added I think to the ban. Um and yeah, I'm not sure about the timing of the other things. Raan, maybe you know about timing of these other purchases that we have in in in here. We have, you know, like the covert and we have uh the chlorine system and you know the dump truck. I know the fire engine is going to be later, right? That's not

Yeah. So the fire engine the tender will is already bonded, right? So that took two years to get to the point where it came off the assembly line before it was upfitted, right? And that's when it goes into bonding. So we just did that. So we probably have two years for that 1.2. But we got one point. you know 1.9 million there outstanding which is authorized but not yet not yet taken and that ambulance for one 133,000 we continue to put money into this ambulance revolving account which is significantly more than it was when we did the debt yeah so we think it's possible if it's another year and it may it'll cover it and then we'll just we'll go to town meeting to withdraw that death debt authorization

yeah can you go back if you're done with Can you back to the previous? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, can I just So, debt payments in the middle of the chart 1534, right? That that's what we paid on the existing bonds. Yes. Interest though. That's interesting. So, we're not paying any principal. Well, that's that's what we talked about. Not not this quarter, right? Correct. It's not this. It's not it's paid in November 1st. It was due. Okay. Thank you. And just just looking at gaps here. So there's interest paid on the on the ban how how like in Q we pay that once a year as well. So that will be due in November I think right? Okay. November de somewhere November December. Yeah.

Only once per year. And and we'll have and and also in November we're going to have to pay some principle back on that because some of these debts now are more than two years old. So the sort of rule is once they hit three years you have to start paying back principle on a ban. But that's all been authorized and that's part of our budget. It's all authorized and it's in the budget, but but we but we'll see in the next quarter some principle being paid back. Y and you said this is going to be refinanced in November. Yeah, because it's a one-year B. It's a one-year ban, I think. Is that how it works? And they just ref they roll in the existing ban and add the new stuff to it. But but that's what we're doing is we're just rolling the ban. We're not putting it out to bond.

Correct. Because what they're saying is it's not it's not enough money yet to make it worth bond. That's fine. I just because once you do that, we usually have to vote additional bonding fees. So, if you were to take that, roll the new band stuff into it, and let's just say in a year you decide we're going to roll this into a real bond, um, and it's going to be a full debt surfacing bond, there's fees that go with that. So, we got to make sure that we include that as you're kind of forecasting out in May for the next year. Whatever you're, you know, if you're going to do a real refinance on these bonds, these short-term bonds into a principal and interest bond. Okay. Um, it may not be enough still. So, this is a town meeting, is it?

It is for the And we've done that. We've done town meeting articles just specifically for the bonding fees. When was the last time you got to that so I can It had to be maybe two or three years ago. It's got to be at least because this band is now three years old, right? So, right. So, it would have been the the meeting. So, it would have been the year before this band, right? Because we took all the bands then. Actually, that probably makes sense. We took all the bands then we refinanced them into the debt. So, that's part of the 4.2 million.

Um, and we had it's like $30,000. I think it was like a $30,000 article. Um, but there's definitely we didn't need to do an article for that. So, it doesn't look like you you would have to deal with that in the next upcoming fiscal year. Just sort of something to keep in mind because you will end up with fees and we don't if you don't budget it or it's not a warrant article. Okay. Which is what we usually do is not Yeah. Yeah. Well, something for the new treasurer to deal with, I think. Yes. But financial director can put it on their list of things to remember. Yeah. So, we make sure we're all there. Yeah. All right. Um Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. No, no. Back to the next page. Next page. here. Sorry if I keep having Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, so that's authorized and we've got that in a line item someplace, right? How do we keep It's only really here actually. There's no It's not It's nowhere else. I mean, this is where we're keeping track of what's been approved by our meeting. This is new, right? Tony did this. So, we committed to this. Yeah. Yeah. Before it was just Before it was just the FinCom kind of writing stuff down. Yeah. Um, and the department heads knew, right? Because, you know, for DPW, he knew what he had to bond, so he would work with the accountant, but I don't Yeah. I was concerned that we had authorized a lot of staff. Yes. And hadn't really thought about how we pay for it.

That's what I'm trying to get at. So, the town has basically said, I'm willing to pay for this. Yeah. It's all been voted at town. It's already been approved and it's stacked up there in the back. Yeah. And it's sort of a liability in a way. Exactly. So, it's this debt payment or interest payment hasn't hit us yet, but has to be accounted for in the future, right? Yeah. Because when we just say authorized, it makes it almost sound a little bit like, okay, yeah, we're all set there. It's already gone through the finance department and we're good. Okay. No, it's it's I know you've gone through this a thousand times and it's all by town meeting, right? So, it's a town meeting. Exactly. Exactly. It's a legislative body, so they've they've approved it. Exactly. Just Okay. And so so so this is a hit to cash flow essentially

as soon as DPW come and say yes I'm now going to buy my dump truck. Okay. That check gets written. Yep. So no taken. Well that loan is taken. Yeah. So so DPW does have a big part in the scheduling of this at this stage. Like I was I was under the impression once it gets to this stage sort of in the town's hands as far as treasure or uh you know finances go. Well, I think the department heads have like

so like the ambulance has been ordered. The fire truck has been ordered. I don't know how DPW does with it, but the department heads kind of will come up like so when the the the $1.2 million engine, fire engine goes from the factory, comes off the factory line, which is usually two years now. It used to be one, now it's two, and goes for upfitting to become the Boxboro truck. That's when we have to bond it because we have to own the truck before we can claim the truck, right? So that's when they bond it. And so the chief works with the finance director and with Mike to say, "Okay, this thing's coming off the line this year, so we got to go to bond with it." So it's something I could go and talk to Ed and maybe get his idea of when these things are coming down. Would that help? Yeah. Yeah. I still haven't met with him to kind of get up to speed on the DPW.

He might want to show share this this document with him. So make sure you align, you know, he's aligned with us. I'm sure I'm sure he is, but I mean, but it be good to sort of let him see our view of it. Triply. Yeah. Okay. um staffing. Um so we have three openings right now and also what I did here not the changes from last year because we we authorized new heads or new head

and new hours at town meetings. So there's a if you look at Q4 25 these the numbers has obviously have changed since then. Um so this just there for for a note really. So, actually, I have a question, Rajan. I was going to ask Mike, but he's not here, so you're it. Um, so I hear we've lost an officer in that he's left town. Yeah. Okay. Not lost. A police officer. A police officer. But I also heard someone we just put through the academy. Is that the case? It's a younger officer that we just put through the academy. Yes, it is.

So, that's the rub. 50 grand to go through the academy and get trained and all the overtime to cover the academy. He's been out of the academy for six months. Actually, January, I think it may have been two years. Yeah. I don't know that it's been that long, but in any event, now he's gone. So, now we have to probably likely have to going to have to put somebody else through the academy. I mean, if we get lucky, we'll get an older officer, but like that's the um Is that the only officer that's left recently? Yeah, that's the only officer. I thought Cota was going to keep all the officers in town. Yeah. Well, Cota's keeping, you know, Max is still in town, so he's he's got Kota, but we can't give them all a dog, though, can we? Yeah. No, we can't give them all dogs now.

Um, but that's and and it looks like protection is down. Is that a firefighter? They're down. So, they're down a police officer. Well, it's two firefighters. Oh, and the police officer is not even in here yet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is This is This is the end of this last quarter and the police officer left in in October. So, they're down three people in protection. Yeah. So, but is the new police officer accounted for here? Isn't that a one one for one exchange on the We don't have a new officer yet. Oh, he's so under actual number that actually when it comes back after this quarter, it's going to come if we don't replace that officer, it's going to be 25 way down three pro protection. I thought you said one's in academy now. Is that No, it says I said all the officers are that were in the academy are out now.

Yeah. and it's likely we're not you know it's hard to get officers from other departments to come to to you know because it's seniority and all that kind of stuff. So we we've been having to we put two officers through the academy I think in No, those were the last two hires were two officers. So they were former dispatchers that went you know where he went this guy. So bigger department more opportunities. Do you know where he went? He went to I believe he went to where he recently purchased a home. So he's going to the community where he purchased the home. That's is a bigger community. We're just trying to you know

I think it's it's I don't know about the size of the community, but I think it might be similar to to Boxboro. I just know that he had a a long commute coming here and it was a easier move for him to be in the community that he's in that he's moving to. All right. Thanks. Okay. Um and then outstanding tax. So, one thing just to note here is the numbers for FY26 are estimates right now because the the assessor is going to be doing a final calculation of what the tax owed is by the town,

personal property and real estate. Uh but what this shows is that the top line is what is what was outstanding at the end of last quarter for every previous year. Um and then what got paid in Q1 for um all of those years and and for this year. So at the bottom is what's what's what's left outstanding as unpaid. I mean there's there's some negative numbers there which I think is sort of like we probably need to have our new tax collector go through these numbers and do some cleanup I think because there's obviously some some errors somewhere in this but I mean I think the bottom line is that for the year for the old years there isn't that much outstanding actually but it probably does need some clean up and some and some chasing

except for 24 right that's 275,000 uncollected in real estate taxes. Uh yeah, looks like it. Yeah. So you got almost just under 300,000. Yeah. Yeah. Was 400,000 versus 25 still, right? But that's still at least closer. I mean 24 we're getting, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean and I think, you know, I think there'll be a more aggressive approach in the future to collecting back taxes. Um so that's so that's where we stand right now on taxes. Okay, any more questions on the dashboard? And this is getting published on our website. Yeah. Yeah. If we will approve it, we'll just we'll put we'll send to Rajan. He'll put it on the website. Yeah. Do you want a motion or just you were good?

I don't need to vote it. I mean, just Yeah. We just reviewed it. Um, okay. FY27 budget. John, do you want to talk about the budget model? Um, sure. Do you have something I could talk to though? Do do you have the I don't have you you have the most recent version. Do you give you the the uh or you can share on Zoom maybe? Yeah, let me bring it up. Let me see. Mine's kind of ugly though. Just that would be great. Thank you. Can you Michelle? Michelle, did you have a question? No, I was just saying um if you could pop it up on the screen, that would be great. Yeah, working on it. Yeah, this should only take 20 to 30 minutes here. Um,

it's in the Maria school of sharing on Zoom. No, no, you're sharing rather than the screen on here. So, I said share screen.

I am a prodigy. Face it. There you go. Okay. Um, so do not look at any of the numbers, Adam. Do not look at any of the numbers. That's all there are. So, just don't look. What does that mean?

That is a fair point. Um, but let me just illustrate uh some of the challenges that we're running into right now. So, again, especially row 19 will be exceeded. don't it's so what we're trying to do is create a budget model and sorry this mouse is just going to be and we're trying to create use a a format that we've all seen before that's presented at the town town meeting and all so and basically it's revenues versus expenditures and we're trying to keep these categories everything consistent so that you know for example Hanwa when she goes back in online sees the calling people out here sees you know the same format seen uh collection of data that we've had in the past and what we're trying to do and and quite frankly I've struggled with and I think we both have had a little bit of a challenge is finding relevant historical data for us to go forward to extrapolate

what kind of historical data do you want I want actuals I don't want budgeting so if I have budget I h I have to have budgets going back since I got on this committee. I don't want the budget. I want No, but with the actual columns. Okay. So, like if we can go back to a point where um we have actuals in that budget spreadsheet. I bet you and I bet you Becky has some too that go back in the old budgets. Okay. So, what we were originally doing, we were using Desi. Is that right? No, Val. No, it wasn't VA. No. Um uh Department of Local Services

DLS. There you go. And it's one of those maddening things where there's a ton of data there and I think most of it is budgeted not actual and it also doesn't align perfectly with what we the way we present the data and there's so many other columns that are not defined for us. It's a real problem. So we need to at least just get the last five years. Originally we wanted 10 but I wanted five real solid actuals to super levels of detail. just to see how we've done over the last five years. If we can get five, we should be able to get 10, but I'm asking for five right now.

I know we can get further back. So, I I from when Jennifer Barrett was here and back, we can get as much data as you want. Okay. So, all right. So, that's what we're trying to do. And what we're trying to do is say, look, what have been growth rates for the last year, two years, three years, five years, and originally I wanted 10 years. And I think you're looking at some of it in here right now. Um, and it's just that I don't feel confident using the state data. I I just it's So, can I ask why we can't use the budgeting reports that come out to us, which we haven't seen in a while, but we used to get like at the end of the month, those PDFs? The PDFs. Well, do we have them for five? Do we have five years worth?

We have to because that's the that's the real record, right? So, I emailed you both earlier today. Uh sorry I haven't seen it just especially how he want to set it up to download it. So I'm working on that to get the actual um I finished 23 24 I'm going backwards because it's different database that I have to grab the data um so I can get those two for that um five years. So you have to go to a different database. Yeah, cuz in betaar it has the current year. It goes from 20 26 25 23

and then anything in prior to 23 there's another like database that I got to go in beta and grab it and that's okay. But there's consistency between those two databases. Correct. Yeah, I think so. What do you mean? So when you say um uh AB school no that's a bad example debt service existing from the old database to the new database it's going to have the same definition correct that the columns will line up the data will line up correct so and I don't mean to put you on this bottom I'm sorry I'm so like I exported out today the 212 and like I had mentioned the like the general fund code it's like O1 y

where the new one is 10 so then I I have to like do the pivot table. Yeah. To like make sure that it goes by department and the total of the actual and that's how I did it. And then I'm trying to fill in the the Google sheet that you guys sent it to me.

And so that's when the the p the other accountant. So we had Jennifer and then we had a temporary accountant and she went and changed all the account numbers on everything and changed the way everything's done. I may actually have some of her old pivot tables that I could maybe look up and send you. So maybe you could just kind of because she had done these massive pivot tables. So the information once you get it but it's not it'll be consistent in ABRS schools and all other town and then debt in the big columns but within town nonabbrd it may be different because it might you know what I mean but if it's but yes this is what we're looking for. I see it on the screen here. Yeah,

which is not as that's what we're looking for is the level of detail, right? So, you should be able to get that because this is like one level up of detail than we used to get. We used to get real the minutia and all of this. That's got changed, but it didn't change from town nonABRS to, you know, ABRS. Obviously, those remain different. The debt was a debt, so we should be able to do that. I don't know about this fire station debt. Is that debt servicing for the new fire station? Yes. You're talking about Okay. So, there's not going to be any historical debt on that. No, but that's something that's obviously No, no, no. I get that. I'm just trying to significantly. Um I I could look too and see what I've got for Excel spreadsheets just to send you so you can if I've got that table that I never understood, but I can look and see. Okay. Um

Okay. So, here's another challenge. So, how do we forecast free cash? Oh, I so my historical knowledge of free free cash is it's never been this high. Exactly. Every year we were able to um in our budget model kind of it would always hover at a certain amount. So as we got towards the end of the year, we could look at where we are with our budgets, have an idea of what was going to be left and kind of this is what we expect. A half a million dollars is going to go back into free cash. I'm dumbfounded by the amount of money that's going back into free cash every year. I don't understand it. So,

and I don't know how we we can forecast that. There is a there is a table out there that's on one of the state uh reporting documents where it kind of makes an estimate for it for us and that's what we have and we could look to that to use that as a um almost what percent of the ATM approved items were used were paid for by free cash. It's a very it would be a manual if you remember it would be a manual calculation a very tedious one but we could do it. So there's a docket a document out there and I think on the on the

well that's something we're trying to figure out right if you look back at look at town meetings we have warrant articles which are paper by mix of bonding free cash and ra appropriate and a couple other small small things and how do we look at that history which see which seems to be very up and down. How do you understand what that's like to be in the f? You know, we're trying to predict the future really. And so I think the thing is the reason it's up and down is because it depends on what how much free cash we have. Yeah. And what's the warrant articles, right? So last year we had a lot of free cash, but we could only we spent as much as we could on the articles we could spend it on, right? Um I think that's why it's limited. Like we have 4 point whatever it is. Yeah. Um in free cash this year.

I don't know that we can spend all that money unless we put it toward the budget, which we don't want to do. So, um I think and and it depends on what we have for warrant articles and if we're you know I know that Kristen in her select board meetings has said we're going to try to keep you know the warrant articles are going to be like what we need this year we have free cash that's also what we sent out in the budget guidance is to limit the amount of right well capital requests and warrant articles for and that's why we did the capital that's why we have the capital plan so that we can predict what we need within that capital plan but also capital items really should be bonded because they're multi-year items. They are.

You shouldn't be paying today. You shouldn't be paying today's money for things which are going to be out there in 10 years time. I don't disagree. But at the same time, if we can pay $75,000 towards a cruiser and we have $4.2 million, you know, it's that kind of thing, right? Free, you know, it's just like the OPED thing. $300,000 a year out of free cash to OPED makes perfect sense, right? And I think we did that last year. I think we were we looked at things at what we bonded and what we didn't bond based on, you know, what it was. It seems like there's too many decisions and like constraints based on what you can spend that like I I don't know how you could like tease out a trend or something that you can rely on for free cash because even if the amount that rolled into free cash each year could be

calculated or or at least estimated based on trends, I didn't know, we're still going to decide how to use it. And then like you said the different matter of what's coming in front of us, what's not coming in front of us, you know? Yeah. We could predict. Yeah. We just don't want to get in a situation where we're using reserves for the operating budget, right? That's our biggest constraint. Yeah. It's just that just doesn't it's not good financial policy. And it's not like we're we're budgeting in order to have more free cash flow in like we're trying to budget tightly, right? So yeah. Yeah, this one should be sharing but here we go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So this is

this is a closer. Um so that's one of the challenges we are kind of wrestling with. The second one is so Tony originally had debt as a line item for revenue and I'm basically that shouldn't be there and I just want to make sure and I don't mean to

debt as a line item for revenue. Well, it's like it's a source of funds that we have, right? So, when we when we when we if we look at our balance sheet or a profit and loss account for the for the the budget, we say we got this business going out, this much coming in, pre-cash, debt, um, and taxes. So, to meet So, in one way, it is it is a a source of funds that offsets expenditures. So, that ends up being net zero in the model. Well, in the in the model, yeah, it does. is a profit loss account, isn't it? Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in our So, it it didn't feel right to me after thinking about it because it's tied to capital items. At least it should be, right?

And we don't have capital items perfectly account accounted for at all in this model, right? So, I don't think you should have it in as a revenue item in the model. I I I understand where both of you are coming from. Yeah. depends where I mean maybe that we should put capital items in the in the model. It's a capital budget. That's a separate item. That's a separate but it's a but it's a line in the model, right? If you're looking at you could have a capital budget line our town expenditures going forward. We know we we we plan to spend $1 and a half $2 million $3 million whatever a year. But we don't know if it's going to be all bonding but most of it most of it will be will probably be. Yeah.

But you'd have to we'd have to look at the capital plan. So the one thing we don't think we've ever done with a capital plan is attached because it's always been a it comes in front of the our budget or capital day and we like okay how are we funding this because it won't make sense through the time because it's really hard to project you know if you asked me five years ago if we'd have $4 million in free cash I'd say no we've never had $4 million in free cash that's crazy so um that would have been hard to predict that we could have used some free cash for for capital items correct so right I'm of the if we're trying to get total revenues and we're not going to account for large capital items in the bottom half of this budget, you shouldn't have debt as a line item. Why? Okay. Yeah.

So, um so let me just take you through this one more time. So, local receipts um state aid free cash other is CPC and all of that. And that's that other one was TNC. Yeah, that's a transportation mount. It's like 600 bucks or something, right? It's like whatever we get our share of almost not worth the effort to like kind of account for it. I'm just trying to make the top equal the bottom. So I I I hear you. I do hear you. The the what we've done for where we've been wrong is am I looking at this right is local receipts. Yes.

In a in a large way. But before I get to that, so what we're trying to do is get for is extrapolate from the past five years, preferably 10 years, so that we can have growth values up here for for everything basically, and then create a model that comes out from here, which will basically it's the same method that we've done every year where you've got everything but the tax levy, and that makes up for everything we're short, revenues minus Yeah. expenses, right? So we're trying to get a growth rate from obviously the schools. Um yeah. So so the top the top block basically we can we can add in different scenarios of of what the growth might be

exactly those. So our assumptions is once we get our stable starting years of 24 25 and 26 um we will I will be asking for everybody's opinion on what we should put in for the next five years. Okay. Right. you know what's fair, what's conservative, what's aggressive, what do we think um and from all that all these calculations will flow out and we can add some more calculations. I'm more concerned about the raw data propagating through the model before anything else. So local receipts includes the new growth.

Yes. And let me just while we're on that, let's just look at that. So not that one, but got all the good stuff all over the place. All right. So, don't look at the numbers. Don't look at the numbers spreadsheets. Like my head's spinning. Don't look at the numbers. Highlight the column. I need the numbers. Um, so here's what's when you look at DLS. Um, they actually give you there's your state aid and that's very consistent.

Um, so I don't know if that's forecasted or actual, but it's close enough. where that's a problem because there's a big difference is when you go into DOS and you say hey what was our um local receipts it won't say forecasted but it will give us the forecasted numbers it doesn't give you the actuals does not give you the actuals in the place that it's easy to get but it should right don't you actual time out time out you can get to it but not in the data set that has all these other nice numbers that we would want to compare to each other as well that makes sense So here are the actuals. Okay. All right. And here's what we forecasted.

So this is a big difference. So you just have to hop these two columns. So when you look at that, that's about the amount we've been off the last few years, right? Where we're like, where did this extra half a million dollars come from? But is that is that forecast our forecast or their forecast? It is the number that we give them. I know it is. And it's probably off of the sheet that we do the assessment, right? The assessment sheet that we do in October. I forget what that's named. Don't we do this? Yes, we do. So when tax recapitulation. Yes. Yes. So we put in what we anticipate the receipts, local receipts, new growth, and all that. It's a tax assessor does that.

When he I assume it's he, right? Because we have a male. When he does this and sets the tax rate either, well, it's going to be coming up soon. There's got to be a tax hearing soon. Um because it needs to be done by November 30th. November. Yeah. He he sends a report and I forget the name of it. It's got a 32 something something. Um he sends the report in and it breaks this down. So I'm assuming I don't know that for sure. I'm assuming that's where so that report comes. We have a report. Yeah, that's where this number 2497646 comes from. So that's the that's the reason for our free cash problem. Yes, I think because

it's a half a million dollars every year. Yeah, easily. I have a question. Um, could some of that increase in the local receipts be a portion of it be because we've done a we've done a reassessment of some of the properties over the last few years where we updated the values. The reassessment shouldn't because they should be anticipating that, right? Because the reassessment the way the assessment works is it's information through the the January before. So for instance when Arontabio opened up which is now Bibleics or whatever

we didn't take into consideration like they they opened their doors in July that October we didn't take their personal taxes all their equipment taxes into consideration because it's the July 1 or January 1 number. This is not tax this is this is local receipts. So this is but it's local receipts that doesn't that include the nonreal estate tax non property. It should be excise. Yeah. And personal property. It's a type of tax. So it's not the personal property tax.

No, wait. Personal property in respect to equipment when so businesses pay. I get forms from two cities every year that says here's what personal property do you have and I used my last year's form and then you know I mean my equipment's so old at this point 20 years old that it doesn't count. But right so it it a little bit but there's a cuto off date and so anything during that year if it hasn't happened since January 1st does not get taken into consideration in the forecast for that year. So we went a drift here in 2021, right? Look at the numbers with forecasted and actuals. Before 2021, they were more they were pretty much in line. Yeah. Yeah. After that, they went a drift,

right? And so 21 actually early too 2015 to 17 as well and beyond that. Right. So one year one of the reasons we had um I don't know one of the years there was an explanation that it was um it was the new businesses opening up and the the property taxes it was also local receipts also include the fees that come through for the building department and when enclave was coming online they didn't include the building um permit fees

as that. So that was one that was right around that time. I don't remember exactly when Enclave came online, but I think it was they were started to build and so that was our first big bump in cash. So I'm assuming it was for FY21 and that had a lot to do with the the fees we collected during construction. So there was a couple of different reasons, right? So basically next time around we need to basically look at our historicals actuals not our historical forecasted or budgeted for budgeting and and actually hopefully we have an assessor who's going to get our forecasted number this year is going to be from a different assessor. Yeah. So for our budget models last couple of years we've taken the number that's been given to us by the town assessor

assessor. Yeah. And said okay that's it. We didn't question it really. Right. and um it's been wrong. Yeah. So now what you do have is the planning board is in the process of approving the Campanelli hopefully soon. They're writing conditions, but they're going to approve Campanelli and that's going to be a number of other buildings. So you we need to make sure that that's the kind of stuff you want to forecast. Yeah. That is a significant tax increase both real estate, personal property taxes. Um, so we got to make sure that that gets, you know, it's it's a huge development that they're going to be adding on to the Beaverbrook campus. So, yep.

So, I think that's enough gory detail. I mean, do you guys are you guys on the same wavelength in terms of what we're trying to do here in terms of So, yeah, we're trying to we're trying to model this so that when we do the budgeting process, we can we can understand how bad it is or how good it is or how good it is, right? So, and and Adam has this interesting number. So, one of the things is that the school just did a multi-year model. Yes. So, are these numbers going to be based on that? Um, not on their multi-year model, right? I shouldn't use your multi-year model. So, that's part of what my comment is. Okay.

So, I, you know, I understand what you're trying to do here and I appreciate it. And I think the some of the challenges that we've had and some of the feedback that we heard from you was around um, what's the word? stability in our in understanding what the the budget's going to be. And I think we we are back at understanding the difference between the school's operating budget and the stability of the operating budget versus the stability of the assessment to the towns. Um, and what I'm starting to look at, and I'm looking at some of the historical table six data as well, is that as even if the school budget remains consistent, and our model shows, we're looking at a 3% increase or whatever it is on the operating budget per year, we're still running on a three-year average of enrollment data, and we can be doing everything right in town, and we can be forecasting it. But if we gain students in Boxboro or more importantly if we lose students out of Actton if that ratio changes that's what drives this inconsistency in the assessment that the town is getting. Um, and you know what exacerbates this is there's roughly 800 students from Boxboro and the balance of the roughly 5,000 students in Actton for every delta in a towards us in students it's an extra 14 or so thousands whereas

so when you say towards us it's how for every student more students Boxboro has it's it's so it's not it's not every more student it's it's the change in the ratio right so like we could have we could be flat and our act goes down. But if actin goes down, we feel that harder than if actin goes up. Okay. Or if we were to go down to act side because they have a much larger percentage of the students. So each student changes. What were you going to say? I'm sorry. I

I'm I'm not 100% sure, but it's, you know, it's in the tens ten of thousands of dollars. 14ish I think is what I saw. whereas and and basically what you do is you can take the assessment divided by the students and say all right if we if we move a student a delta in students towards a box bro there's a significant change to us which is why our assessment feels like it changes so I think the the thing John that is going to be tough about creating a model that is a consistent increase is that there's nothing any of us have control over

that affects that and I don't I I don't know how to solve a problem like I can give you and our model is a consistent operating budget model, but it is not a consistent assessment model. Now, the assessments are a rolling three-year average over last year. So, we have October 1st numbers now. That will not affect the FY27 budget. That will affect the FY28. So, we can give you a year, maybe two years out of what it's going to look like if we plug in our model of what our operating budget increase would be, what that will look like on the assessment side. Um, but it's not not any farther than that. And then the you know the the the resolution to this is to find a different metric by which to aortion costs and there are any number of them. We could take a longer look at enrollment numbers or we could say we need a more consistent way of aortioning costs. What's something that doesn't fluctuate as much? What's something that is tied to another metric that talks about the community's ability to pay? And then how do we transition to that in a way that does not create a cliff for either town. So, how do you pick a number, offset that number to make it balance to what we're doing today, but then that basis can change at a slower rate, more

consist model? That's a possibility. Yeah. And that in the past, and I have no idea what that number looks like now, right? In the past, EQV, is that like an ability to pay model? Yes. And because of the formula the state used when we were negotiating the regional agreement 2015 16

Boxboro's EQV was much higher than Atkins because it also included and I don't know if this has changed that people who worked in Boxboro but didn't live in Boxboro. So we had Cisco at the time. So we had all of these people who are making a ton of money but didn't live here. So that was one of the reasons and the three-year rolling average was to actually try to bring some calm to. So it isn't like this every year on the enrollment, right? That's what the three-year rolling average. The problem is if student enrollment changes and Boxboro goes way down this year, it takes us three years to get two more years to get there. Three more years. That said, if Box goes way up because acting goes way down, it still takes us two years to get there. So it it that's why that model was used. But what's important to remember is it it it does not relate to just what Boxboro does. So Actton builds a bunch of housing, it swings towards Actton. Um Actton loses a bunch of students and they can, you know, they've swung hundreds of students. It it could hurt us. So it it's not necessarily the specific measure that you use. It's how do we find a measure that doesn't fluctuate as much that both towns going to can agree upon that you can offset. So EQV roughly is like an 8020 and we're at 15 or 16% right now. So you just take that number and in an agreement you say well we're going to do EQV minus 10% or whatever it is to get you where you are and then you're going to look at the last four eight years of EQV and EQV I think comes out every two years. Um but it doesn't need to be EQ. It could be you know real you know taxable value of real property in the towns.

Only like three or four models that the state allows us to use. I think funding models for between the two towns. I'm not sure. So I think at least when we were looking at it and then like I said this may have all changed but when we were looking at it 2015 there was just two or I would say three or four models funding models. The two top ones that most district used was the three-year rolling average and the EQV. There was a reason at the time we didn't do EQV. No idea because that's fallen off my radar where that stands today. Um because we've had a lot of businesses. Cisco is not here anymore. But now Campanelli's moved in, you know. Um I don't And there was a couple of more that just seemed the formula was crazy.

I have I've never looked at them. I I mean I think what I'm trying to do is come at this from exactly what you're trying to do. Like the problem to solve is how do we make how do we make the budget planning more consistent? How do we remove the fluctuation when we know that the operating budget that we're operate we're we're budgeting for at the school is consistent, but it's everything that's outside of our control that makes that that fluctuation. Do we know what other similar regionals near us do? Like conquered Carile, I'm assuming, is similarly swayed like way more people in conquer than in Carile. We can look. I mean, we have we haven't started this yet. Let's look at their their regional agreements. This is all laid out. Can you mention curious like if we know if they're happy with the way that they do they use different model? Sorry.

Yeah. No, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Um, so I mean could we do fiveyear? Is that an option? Fiveyear. What? I I mean if as long as both towns agree. No. No. Yeah. No, obviously. But is it I don't Yeah. I mean I don't know from the the legislation or what Jesse's regulations I don't think they say I I think it's just a rolling average. So I don't think they say could only do a three-year. I think you can negotiate that with the towns but I do think there was only a few mechanisms by which there was there was a lot of restrictions. It was also restrictions on

how you voted how many you know there's like three ways to like set the boards and and do that kind of My sense is that that that Desi is pushing more schools to regionalize and so I know they went through a revamp of the regulations just recently and I think they're getting voted on. So I I think there's there's an opportunity. This would my suggestion would be that we jointly school committee two towns put together a working group to re-evaluate what our options are. And what I would say is this is a problem to solve for Boxboro. It's clearly not a problem for Actton. We've got to find something that is a, you know, a challenge for them that we can all go into a working group and say, "What are some problems now that we've lived with this regional agreement for a number of years and the financial situation has changed dramatically for both towns that we can look at that improves it for both?"

Um, when you get enrollment models, do you do more than two years out? I mean, because we used to get enrollment models we five years out because beyond five years, kids aren't born yet. You have no idea. Yeah. The NASDAQ models that we get for enrollment, I think go out 10 years. Okay. Um and those are in the enrollment reports that actually I think we'll see at our next or following meeting. Okay. But yeah, I mean we see that and and the big change from last year from previous years. Last year we were at a plateau for a very long time whereas previous years they kept on telling us this is the bottom. We're going to go back up again. And so I mean this is what and you've not gotten the numbers this year yet. We have not seen this year yet

because um there's there's building going on. And now with MBTA communities, you would think that there's going to be another significant because they have to build significantly more housing or zone for significantly more housing in Actton than we do. And they've zoned that area Martin Street down by the in South Aton down by the train station and if you go over the bridge and you take a right there, there's there's land back there that they've zoned to do that. So So I don't know if that's being taken into consideration. We'll see in in like a month's time when we get that report. So what's the action item here then? Um I mean I think working party or another

the the the action item for what what I saw you guys looking at was maybe for us to look at our October one enrollment numbers for this year which will give you a really good way to model out what at least FY27 and 28 will look like from an assessment distribution view um to at least take the next two years model and have and feel really good about that. Beyond that, I think, you know, I I think once we get through the reorganization work, you know, we'll we'll we'll advocate to put together a working group to look at how the regional agreement could be improved, what's working, what's not. That needs to be done after the reorganization. Yeah, we've got enough to do right now. Well, and you without knowing where that's going to land,

right? You know, it's hard because that, you know, Yeah. But it does seem to me that the idea of making it more stable yeartoear would be a benefit to all of us because what we're trying to get to here is is being able to paint a picture that we we we're on a consistent Yeah. path here, not not an up and down budgetary path. What I would much rather argue with you about is my operating budget and not my assessment to the town. Yeah. Yeah.

Because one of them I have control over them and the other one I don't. Um and and a good person because Mary Berlin, John Fallon, M Reed, a few other people whose name I don't remember because it seems like forever ago. It's only 10 years, but it feel but Mary Brolan um and Mac actually led the Boxboro um re well they they led the regionalization committee um and then sat on the Boxboro side of the regional agreement negotiation. So, she's got a lot of she's got a lot of knowledge on how they got there, how they got to this stuff. Yeah.

Um I was on the committee, but but you know, really she brought the she brought it forward. So, I would say we have a lot of experience in town, including John Fallon, who's negotiated now two regional agreements and and Matt does this consulting work consulting work, right? So, there's three really solid people that have a lot of information on this. Matt could probably even answer some of the questions regarding the EQV and the enrollment and what makes more sense when we get there. But I do think it's or I do think they they need to get through reorganization and we need to

and see if that even affects the regional agreement, right? Because there's no point in if somehow the reorganization ends up affecting the regional agreement, let's just do this all at once. Doesn't make sense to do, you know, a little bit here and a little bit there if we can get two solid years of numbers out of it. So for the model then John you got Maria's gonna send some stuff it sounds like.

Yeah. So I will I'm happy to go through my files because I have everything organized by year pull out I mean it's that giant spreadsheet but it will have the actuals and then actually you know that should compare. Now, I cannot speak for the 3 years before our new financial director started. That was a that was kind of we were in this black hole of information that may or may not have been right. So, that you know, maybe between the two of us, we can come up with she can come up with reports and then I can show you actuals and I'll see if Becky has anything as well. So, I'm I'm happy to do that. It might take me a little while to dig through. I mean, I think I have some stuff on flash drives and stuff because I've switched laptops, but

I mean, it'd be nice to be able to share this budget Saturday, right? No, I can do I can get your information by saying Yeah. Yeah. the Sure. Yeah. So, we will live on this. Have this now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right now. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, in other words, we don't have till budget Saturday. No. No. I'll do that through the end of the week. I'm not very political. I'm sorry. Saying that as a as a back a backdrop, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, don't wait. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um we stop sharing now, John.

And then, um the budget guidelines I've sent to the select board and to John and and to um Mike and everybody. So, they all have that stuff. So, so we are doing a budget A and a budget B. Well, not by week, the town. And you're modeling budget A and B. We will be eventually. Yeah. Yeah. Budget A is the override budget and budget B is the non-override budget. Non non-override budget. Okay. I just want to make sure that that's consistent because that's what it's been in the past. Budget A should be due this Friday and then uh budget B should be due by next Friday. Okay. Okay. And is that all going to be in clear gov? Well, yeah. So, we're both in clear.

Yeah. But it will come to us in a better form, right? A different form. Guys can figure that out. We're not getting that inter We get an Excel spreadsheet we talked about a few months back. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just want to make sure. Yeah. Okay. Um and what was the guidance? I mean for budget A, is it still I mean what was the guidance there? Because did I I know we talked about it briefly but we talked Yeah, we talked about Yeah. Um I just want to make sure we're all on the same page because that was a little while ago. Yeah. Um, because even with the override we talked about, no new hours, no new um,

Yeah. Yeah. Let me try and get Let me try and pick this up. Get it to work. Yeah. Yeah. So, I can kind of give an overview. So, of So, what what I gave for all department heads for budget A was level service. Um, and then for uh, budget B, level funded. And as far as for like the non-contractual colas, um, I gave them an just do a placeholder with a 2.5. And then for budget B, uh, zero zero for COLA and steps. Just for COLA. Okay. So even if they're non-contractual, we'll still give them their steps.

Yes. So that's not level funded, right? Because level funded would be if if I'm on step A, right? Maybe I'm wrong, but work through this with me. If I'm on step A as an employee, um, and I'm not getting a COLA, but then the next year I go to step B and that's a $500 increase, then that's not level funded. That that is an increase to the budget. Level funded is I have to stay on step A. Okay. Is that right? Sounds right. That' be my interpretation. Okay. So can you just confirm that it's zero cola zero steps? Oh yeah.

So we we didn't tell them that. We said excluding code. This is what this is what we sent out which is no new hires or additional hours or salary adjustments except cola. That's for budget A. For budget A. Yeah. But budget B. We didn't say actually. We didn't. But I mean that but but Mike took it to level funding and level funding means that there's no steps. Right. Right. Other than what's contractual. Yeah. I mean I that's the way I I hear it. I guess I'd like to know if it's not that way. Makes sense. But if it's contractual, we can't do anything about it. Yeah. Yeah.

And um so from here um and I know I sound a little schizophrenic, Adam, so when I say this, you're probably like, "Oh god, here she goes again." But um on the one side, I know I'm I'm I'm a little bit harsh about the budget from, you know, the assessment from the schools and the money and and wanting reorganization, but at the same time, they have made significant changes to their budget and and cuts over the last number of years. I want to make sure that as we even with a level service budget of budget A, there's not a lot of extra stuff in that budget. We need to be able to we can't certainly can't cut to the degree that the region does. They have a $116 million budget. We're talking about half of, you know, you know, half of the budget that we have. But we got to make sure that that we look at this. I mean, as I look at it coming up, if we're gonna have an override, we can't go to the town with a budget that includes, for instance, $2,000 employee appreciation. With all due respect, we appreciate the employees. We can do it for like, you know, like we used to the select board used to cook lunch or a picnic for everybody, right? So, it's that kind of stuff. making sure that all the extras are really cleaned out of that budget and that would be budget A.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, because I don't want to be on town floor and have someone say, I think what we gave them in those guidelines, I think was okay. Are those should do we can we are is that a living document? Um, a living document like you sent it to them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But are we going to refer to it again because we should use the same same terminology. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, we we can update. I think we should update it, right? So what when we say A and it's a level service, what exactly does that mean? And you should say that in in your option A. And in level B, option B, you should say it's level funded. Uh level funded. Level funded. Yeah. Yeah.

But that level funding could go to other things. So it's it's a level funded budget. So, if you have $2,000 that you for employee appreciation, and I don't mean to be that I don't we don't appreciate employees, but if that number is there and we're looking at level funded, but we need to use that someplace else, you know, maybe that's what we're looking at when we're level funded because that's a lot more difficult. Level funded. So, when we say level funded, do we mean that at what level? Do we mean that we mean that this year's level? So, if this year's a $10 million budget, to use raw numbers, you don't mean that at a m at a subbudget level. Like everything we spent last year, we spend it. We can spend this year. Yes. The $2,000 appreciation, we don't need to, you know, we don't get to spend it again this year because

we shouldn't we should cut that out because that's waste. But if we need it for debt service, when we're looking when we're looking at the budgets that get proposed to us, we can say, you know what, in either one of these budgets, if we cut this $2,000 item out, and I can pick something else because I don't want to keep picking the same thing. What I'm trying what I'm trying to ask is as they go through each sub budget item and we say you have to it's a level funded none of those sub budgets should be larger than last year. Absolutely. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Or are you saying only at the top? No. It's usually well in the past.

The problem the problem we've got is this is is that a lot of those items in the budget are are going to increase like employee benefits, you know, health care, that sort of stuff's going to increase anyway. We have no control. No control that. So if you say you're going to level fund the budget and it's going to be the same number as last year, that means all the other stuff which is controllable has to shrink actually, right? To make up for that that that growth in in the other stuff. So it's doing you can't do it at a micro level basically. You have to the whole it's not just one thing or the other like departmentally like total.

You can't do that. There'll be some that have to rise no matter what. But are you talking at the top at the bottom level the total number in light of all those things you can't control that are going to rise anyways you still want that number to be funding we we well we said actually 2% didn't we in our guidelines we said 2% can you bring it back up so we said so it's got to be within our levy so if that's 2% so the guidelines you you said the last meeting that's what I included as part of the guidance to the department heads so would you Uh what what what what was shared right there is what I send to department heads no operational override less than 2% overall growth including ABRS so less than 2%. Yeah

right because that keeps us within our levy because that's when when we did that initial calculation with with the imperfect model that's what we thought would keep us within the levy was 2%. So, we need to look at that closer. And John, this has to be a living document because the reality is, you know, we're going to get this budget, but um it's it's if if it's $30 million was this year's budget, it's $30 million next year. We we're going to have to move stuff around. So, well, yeah. Well, the model if the model improves as well, we maybe have a different number there. Basically, sorry. Well, the number the number less than 2% was based on the first model we did, but now we have a better model hopefully. So, you're a better model, but does that mean that the levy is better? We don't know.

Well, well, it's a just a more accurate model. Exactly. You're an optimist. Good. Yeah. I mean, I just, you know, I mean, we have a small amount to we can we can That's the problem. We have a small amount of money we're dealing with within the two and a half%. And plus the exclusions. So I just think it should be consistent with whatever whatever the town is calling them. We call them the same. So that well Mike has taken this and done an interpretation of it. It sounds like a little bit.

So we don't have Mike can do whatever he wants with his budgets and bring them to us and we can say well here are our guidelines but under budget B the 2% isn't working anymore because our levy only allows for 1% and we're going to start going through the budgets and that's where we start moving money or cutting money out. In the past, when we've gotten to the point of an override, the budgets had been the fin, and I'm pointing to Susan because she was on that fin. They cleaned those they scrubbed those budgets to the point where we literally had no place else to go. If we didn't have an override, we were going to cut out a significant amount of people

because that's what we have left. I don't know that we've spent the last number of years doing that. And I think that that's where I think we have to at least show that we're we're making that effort. We have to get there even on the a budget because with all due respect, you can't go to in front of the town and say we need an x number of dollar override not having scrubbed those budgets. Yeah. So I mean I think that's the yeah favor we have here. But I think yes it has to be a living document. I think we have to look review these as time goes on and update Mike and you know about what they are as we as we you know refine them.

So I would say in addition to this if there's any additional clarifications you want me to make to department heads while they're preparing their budgets just just let me know so I can send an update to them. I mean if you think we need to clarify the the level funding and the steps we can talk to Mike about that. Okay. Um Susan said her hand up. Yeah. Sorry. So um Personnel plan actually says you have to do the stuff every year. But in the past, have we not? No, it's in the Well, it was in the plan. It was out of the plan. It's back in the plan. So, right now, so we're we're required. It's contractual. The town is required to No, it's not contractual. I mean, it's part

But it's not contractual, is it? I mean, it's part of the personnel plan. It's part of the personel plan, right? And then I guess my other question was guess Is this is the zero cola for non non-contracting employees contract employees would in fact then still receive whatever's in the contract. It's all contractual, right? Unless you're going to sit with the unions and try to open up the contract. They just closed and signed. So that doesn't seem Well, it's all contracts. Yeah.

But all right. So you're saying the steps are so we can maybe look into that and get clarification because I know in the past I think we've not done steps in the past. I mean when we've done this in the p when we were on when I was on school committee not regionalized and we had this override you know the budgets had been through two or three years of of really hard numbers and I think we've not done that. So I I want to make sure that we're looking at these budgets and that included conferences and travel and anything extra. Yeah. You know, there's a few years we pulled back in professional development. Yeah. You know, we all need to kind of get there. The school's already done a lot of that stuff. So, I think we keep talking about par. We just need to make sure we're like looking at that as well.

So, maybe I should talk to Rajan and and Mike offline about what their guidelines are to the department heads so we can sort of at least feed that back here. We, you know, we can try and make sure these these become consistent, I think. Yeah. So, we're working to the same two targets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it will it will change I think as we move forward closer to the budget Saturday. Well, you know these will these will obviously change a bit as well. We'll have a better idea where we are. So we can yeah so we'll revert to this. Yeah. We'll refer back to this next time as well.

And the only thing under budget B where it says defer all warrant articles and capital items. I think almost with this free cash number we can go back to high scrutiny on capital items. I don't think I think we need to be careful because if we defer that means we're just bumping everything up over the next couple of years, right? So, so maybe maybe so maybe it's too harsh. So, we can let's go back and let's come next time. Let's let's go back go through this and review them all again and make sure we're all aligned on that. Okay. Um Okay, put on FY27, I think. You think so? Yeah. Okay.

Fire Station Building Committee updates. Fire Station Building Committee updates. So, tonight we were supposed to be doing nothing but recommendations and voting um on for special town meeting in December. So, that's been postponed. Um select board has got a target date for March 9th. Yeah, we've we've reserved March 9th at Blanch school. Okay, great. I did not know that. So, the target March 9th. So, there's nothing in December, correct?

There's nothing in December. Um and then so and the reason for this, so let me back up. Um after town meeting uh we got the zoning we needed um which allowed us um to build anywhere. That next week a property owner approached the town and said you know I I have piece of property that I would be willing to talk to the town about that I think we didn't even we had considered in the past. Um but there's a few things that we need to we haven't done any testing. So before we stop this process um we and or go forward with this process, we want to make sure that we either bring that piece of property in which right now is being kept as kind of property X um and we got to make sure that before we bring it in to look at it and and think about it and and do all the testing, we do some preliminary testing. So we're in the process of preliminary testing on this piece of property. um it fits within the warrant article on the you know up to $6 million. it's well within that number of spend a little bit more money and that was that question came back we consider it a 50/50 although people said yes we would be willing to pay more money to be on on Massav it was by like 10 people it was so that is a 50-50 question so the best we you know we're trying to really look at this

and take everyone into consideration um this one piece property would get us out of potentially a residential area so Um, that's as much information as I can give you. We're hoping next week, we have a meeting next week and we're hoping to have a lot more information because despite the fact that it is March 9th, when you sort of start backing all these numbers out, you're at like we need to make a decision pretty quickly and we have to have this information maybe in December. I don't I have the dates written down in my fire station book. Um, so we we're we're still going to be quickly coming up to warrant articles and that kind of thing. Um the hope is that we will come up with um a warrant article for design and depending on what property we're bringing forward it will be one piece of property or it will be two pieces of property. Um and that's presuming one would be 72 road and one would be somewhere on MassF. Um and we're we're looking at the existing fire station 750 and 800. That's where that blue house is and the construction road and the house next to it and 1300 and then this fourth piece of property

is the clandestine nature of property X to protect the privacy of the homeowner or No, it's it's we're just not there yet and we can't um if it you know we're also trying to negotiate. So, right, you know, you just it's really hard to do this because um you know, Mike is trying to talk to the owner and you just it's really hard when everyone's like, "Oh, that's a terrible piece of property." or oh that's a great piece of property and you know all of a sudden you you know everyone gets entrenched in their camps and then the you know people are watching this right um and so that's part of what I worry is people watching and thinking the town's keeping secrets from we're not keeping secrets everything's been done

um in executive session posted meetings people understand there's another piece of property we're being as honest as we can be without giving out the address and we are doing that to protect the town um because we're in the middle of negotiating and talking about the property

so Um, so that's that. Um, uh, I have one other thing. Believe me, I can't remember what it was. Properties town meeting. Oh, we have a forum that we're doing in January, which will be another listening forum 10:00 a.m. at 700 p.m. on the 26th. I don't know. I'll confirm the date. And then we've asked or Mike's going to ask Alec or already has asked Alec to do a pre-Town meeting meeting with the warrants just like we did last time at the library which actually was very successful. We had a lot of people who had not been to town meeting that that came and and really it was a great way to give out information. So we're going to do that again closer to I think it'll be the week before town meeting in March. So do you guys have any questions?

Great. Um, tribal meeting recap. Anything to say? Felt like a long introduction and then not really a lot of meat there, you know, not not a lot of meat on the bones. um as far as the full the whole experience um you know except maybe from the you know the um actton box regional school district's opening presentation and then kind of circling back it kind of just felt like sort of get to know each other baseline uh sort of um vision and expectations and then it kind of felt like the meeting was about to start right when it closed for me

I thought we I thought you know I thought we got Yeah, some of our information out I think there. So, yeah, it's good to get get our view out there. Michelle, what what's your comment?

Yeah, I just I just wanted to say I had a pretty similar experience and I think I shared that in meeting too that I was just really hoping for a little bit more detail. I was thinking about I mean I'm not sure if this is happening tonight or in the future, but I was thinking about like how we can get more detail in real time like the actual meat that we need and like what that kind of collaboration might look like. I don't have any distinct ideas at this point in time, but I think we just need to stay closer like monthtomonth so it's not just like a buildup. Um, and then we have to ingest a ton of information year-over-year, right? So, Adam, you sent a lot bunch of stuff to us, right? Which you Yeah. Michelle, did you get that information that Adam sent out?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I got all that information. It was just it was pretty apparent to me that the like based on some of the email discourse I saw that a lot of this information was coming to everyone all at once and we have to like catch up and attend a bunch of meetings and ingest really quickly. I'm just wondering if there's a way for for fin and this doesn't need to be solved tonight, but I'm wondering if there's a way for FINCOM um to just stay more involved monthto month rather than having to ingest large amounts of information all at a critical time in the year. Yeah,

I mean honestly it's not just the school committee. We all end up this is the time of year that we're all end up with a lot of information and over the next course of number of months it's it's just we're in overload with budgets. Um I'm not going to speak for school committee but I will say it's not just them. It's it's what you're going to start seeing from us as well as soon as budgets get run through the town and then Mike presents them to select board and then get presented to us and then we just end up with all this information we have to go through. Yeah,

totally. And I'm just saying like specifically for the AB school district like that is a huge line item in our budget. So I feel like we should maybe just be brought along for the ride or informed as things like maybe directionally changing throughout the year. I don't know. Just something I was thinking about while I was trying to catch up through all the meetings and content that was sent over. I see you, Michelle, as a future school committee liaison. I know. I kind of smell it. I smell it in the air. Took the words right out of my mouth.

I I'll share um just a little bit of perspective on that. So in the past and we're happy to do it again, right? The school committee has come and presented at both the select board and the finance committee usually a little bit later in the process as we get further along. Um so that's something that we would do here. And then Michelle, I totally hear the feedback. Um I I think there's like if you had nothing else to do, you could go to meetings every hour of every day. So we have our budget subcommittee meeting. In fact, that was just uh yesterday. Um, but typically we'll provide a recap of that budget sub at our school committee meeting. So having someone either listen in or come to that, you can at least start to hear the conversations that we're having. So at our last school committee meeting, we presented the budget subcommittee's budget guidelines to the full school committee and had a very thorough conversation around the definition of level service and how that's impossible. And you know, the school district hasn't had a level service budget in over 5 years. And we talked about what it is that we have to get to for next year. We talked about very similar things to what you're talking about. Health insurance and colas eat up the entirety of our, you know, ability to to raise funds. Um, and so the only way to manage that is through cutting staff. And at this point, the only staff that's left to cut our classroom staff, which means we're looking at class um class sizes. We're not at the top end of our class size guidelines, and we will be there most likely next year depending on how reorganization works. Um, but you know that's the what I would share and and I know Maria you've got this experience as well. The biggest difference in terms of where the budget goes for town versus schools is we have 800 plus 900 plus employees. And so the almost 75% of our budget goes towards that. We hold everything else at a very low number. Our model shows like 3% or so for everything else. Um, so when we have 18% health insurance increases and we have

cost of contracts that put us at 5 a.5% increase a year, the only way to meet the community's needs is to cut staff. Um, and that's really that's what we wrestle with every year and that's what we've wrestled with for the the past few years. So, um, happy to speak with anybody individually about some of the things that we're looking at more specifically. What I will tell you is we're hedging all of our guidelines right now to see where the committee ends ends with AB forward with the reorganization. We know it's not going to solve all the problems, but the budget and AB forward are so intertwined right now. We're really, you know, we're struggling with what is the guidance that we give the administration because we just don't know what we save out of one and then what we have to do to close the gap on the rest.

Can I ask Adam? Um so you heard kind of our thoughts and my thoughts on the tri board meeting is it was a good start. I do think that specifically uh because we have John comes back and we we get updates right so because he goes to the meetings or watches the meetings and we get our updates from the school. I think it was really productive for the select board. I know Kristen's now starting to go to the meetings but I think it was really good for them and it was good to hear the other perspective. But I am curious because I have heard that the school committee felt a little beat up that night which I actually was surprised about because I thought everyone was it was just sort of a general we're all in a world of hurt. Like not you guys put us in a world of hurt but we're all in a world of hurt. Um you know I I I that's how I came off of it. I mean I came out of there thinking like Michelle we need to do this is a good beginning. I think you're both right. Um, but I didn't I certainly didn't hear it's the school's fault. We just said I I heard the select the fincom, you know, say we need some balance, right? Kids need to be educated, seniors need to be to eat. Um, but I I I don't know. I that's what I heard, but I also heard that some of this I mean, and Tori said that at one of the forums it was his last forum or whatever. What I would say is when you represent an organization that is, you know, 60% of both towns budgets and you have four boards there who are struggling with that and actually five boards that are struggling with that and then one board that represents that huge portion, inevitably we're going to be looked at as the ones who are carrying the load. So, you know what I would say is similar to Joe's comments, it was a great introductory meeting for everybody. It's something that I think we should do if not every 3 years more frequently. Um it's really hard to get to sort of the meat of the discussion in something like that and it's hard to get past our first go which is our budgets are killing us and and that's a a communal thing. Um I think for school

committee members particularly you know of the people who were in the room only one other person and myself and one other person had been at the previous tri board meeting. Um, I think we, you know, we struggle with what's the best form, what's the best way to get this information out. We try to do it one-on-one with all of you. Um, but there is a value in bringing everybody in the room together. I, you know, if I were to look at this critically and say, what do I want to do to make it better next time? I want to have more time in advance that ramps up to say what is it that we actually want to address as five boards in a room other than getting to know each other and getting to know what our pains are. Let's come up with what is the what's the problem? What's the one problem we can all solve when we're all in the room together. Um and I think inevitably we end up will we will end up feeling more equally you know the pain more equally in a setting like that.

And it might be not doing it every couple of years. might be doing it every year because you know the introduction can be we know that the budgets are hurting everybody. So let's just kind of all agree that that's the problem and that let's talk about where the you know let's just jump to the next step. We don't need to go around to have everyone speak on every board. We've done that right? if you do another meeting, you know, uh maybe it's a quick like the chair can say, "Yeah, things were better last year or whatever, but then we just jump to the problem and and so I think maybe it is the distance between the meetings because I think before you did that, we might have had a trio board meeting when I was on the committee and like I left the committee in 2017 and then there was no trio board meeting." So

yeah, I I mean I think we struggled we struggled with the format, you know, how do you how do you create an event for 40 plus people that's valuable for everybody in the room and how do you balance canned presentations with an opportunity to have a discussion and a deliberation? Like we brought everybody together. We had to open five different meetings and you know have all those votes. Like there's a lot of process there. Um but once we've done that there's an opportunity for all of us to actually deliberate in a public setting. And so what we've tried to sort of balance is how do we have a a talking head, which was kind of what three years ago was, versus how do we try to have some reading in advance and an opportunity to deliberate. Um that was kind of the way we were trying to do it this year. There's opportunities for improvement for sure.

But I think it was a good start. I mean, that's how I felt. I walked out of there and thought this is a good start. I didn't mean to make it sound like I thought it was a um a negative experience. I I wish there was more like I wish there was more to it. Um but I think it was it was great to to meet everyone to kind of hear the different perspectives and I thought you know Tony I thought you represented our side of it really well. Um so I think it let everyone kind of get their voice out there but then it was sort of just it ended there I felt like. So Michelle hand up.

Yeah. I just wanted to say like I think what I'm was maybe getting at was more of what Maria was saying like I feel like maybe we need to get together as a group uh especially like that particular group maybe more often than like right before something is a big critical issue. Um that's kind of what I mean by like bring it along. And I I really struggled with like what we were accomplishing in that meeting. That's maybe just the way my brain works. I felt really prepared understanding Tony's presentation and then I felt kind of confused walking out with like okay so what do I do now like what did we all accomplish by being here like that was the confusing part and that would be like I guess my actionable feedback is what is the deliverable coming from that meeting and what are the actions that each committee is taking that would be really helpful for for next round

great thanks Okay. Um so next up is organization. Um so um the calendar. Oh that organization. Yeah. Okay. So we have no BLF tomorrow. No. Oh. So that's canceled. It's canled. Yeah. Um Oops. And then um Pinkcom on the 18th. Pincom on the 2nd of of uh December. Then we have BLF on the 3rd of Wait, wait, wait. Fin the 18th. Oh, second. I thought you said 22nd. Yeah. 22nd. Yeah. And then BLF on the on the Wednesday after that. Fin. So, yep.

Two meetings that week. Special ter canled. Um, so can I just ask right there? So, and will you guys have more information? I think I saw this in the email. you will have more information on the um options by BLMF the next one the December 3rd one yeah 12:30 I think that's the idea right that meeting the steering committee meets again I think the 18th of November and so we'll have the steering committee's evaluation of all the feedback and the whittling down I believe by that point as well

so they will be whittleled down by the steering committee will I think the guidance is that they need to deliver three to four to the school committee. Okay. They may be I think they've got two meetings to do that. So they may be on their way but not complete. Okay. So have we communicated to you clearly that we hope you take a very aggressive approach in terms of option selection? We being whom? Fin. We've not we haven't had that discussion. Oh okay. Can we do that now just so Adam is not uncertain in any I'm sure you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly under your school committee report. You're the school committee leazison.

Well, it's independent of the reporting. It's really fundamental to what we Yeah. Um no, let's talk about it now. Let's talk about it now. Let's what's what is the fin view of the school reorganization strategic organization options? Okay. So, does everyone know what those options are? Need a recap. I mean, I've heard a lot of Well, there's about nine different options like it um printed out really. There's seven seven, right? There's do nothing. Option one is do nothing. Option nine is nine is make the school district larger, which you can do, but that's down the line. So, so you're really done with the seven,

right? I mean the feedback that we've given to the consultants when we've had our our focus groups is we want to have the most costsaving version within those options which looks like I don't know that that was a we well that's what I said then do we get a bottom line on each of those no and that's why we will we have more of that information I know you're theorizing yes because I mean I think that's what people have been asking for a little bit there will be more information, but it will be after the survey closes and all of the first round of feedback has been collected.

So, and that's been a little bit of the push back because it is very complicated. Um, it's a lot of information and I think it's hard for just parents and I think the forums have been helpful because they've gone through all the different options, but like I got the survey before I went to the forum. I was on school committee and I was like, "Oh, good god." Like, this is so complicated. I think the forums did a good job showing all the different options and explaining it. And I have to say this focus group that we did this time was so much better than last year's consultant. It by far because I was on that one and I thought, well, that's 45 minutes. I'm never going to get back and when I die, I'm going to be pissed that I wasted it. So this I thought this group was much better. He listened, he talked, he stayed on longer. So I thought I thought it was a much better focus group. I want to put that out there.

Yeah. And just kind of freeing here, but just on just on the survey, I mean, I I mean, it felt like I almost didn't have enough information to answer to to prioritize. There was a lot of the questions that were like this could be interpreted so many different ways. So, I'm just hopeful like would we have another survey potentially once we get through another iteration of this?

There will be another opportunity for the community to provide feedback to the school committee. So the the I think the part that we've not done a great job of communicating to everybody is that we're taking everybody on the journey at the same time and that we wanted to have a very open process where everybody saw everything along the way and different people come at this in different ways. Some people say just give me the three final things with all the details and other people want to know that you've considered everything. Um, and so I think that ends up being frustrating for for both sides. Um, so the reality is this first round was to say, "We looked at everything and give us your feedback." And I recognize that it can be a lot of information and you're being asked to provide feedback where you don't actually have a lot of the details, but you have all these options.

Um, and the reality is that some people want that and they just want to say, "Don't close my school or give me the cheapest one." Um and then the next round there is more sort of discernment by the focus by by the steering committee with more information. So lots of the questions that we've gathered from focus groups from surveys and all of that and committee members has been we want you know we need a little bit more detail. Um, and so, you know, that detail is starting to get provided and the steering committee will then sort of evaluate the detail plus the first round of feedback from everybody and start to deliberate and whittle it down. And then we've purposefully after the steering committee says, "Okay, here's the three. We're going to give it to the school committee, we've purposefully have three school committee meetings by which we'll discuss and have ample opportunity for the community to provide feedback at that time. So, you know, part of it is if you if if you're someone who's like, "Just give me the three options and all of the details about all of them." You're frustrated because we're not there yet,

right? We're going to get there. There's going to be opportunity for people to provide feedback. Um, but this was for the round to say we're not we're not making this decision behind closed doors like we're airing all the dirty laundry is kind of what's happening now. Okay. So, I brought the options up. Okay. Yeah. slides. I mean, if you want I don't think we I don't want to personally go through each and every option. I don't think that's really what that's fine, but then I don't think we can give guidance. Well,

because on the options like I don't think we can be specific unless we all know what the options. I mean, I know what the options are because I want the forum, but I how do we then say to Adam that Fincom feels like a when not everybody understands all the options? Well, I mean, I'd like to make a comment that, you know, some of these options are obviously very scary and they're big changes and they are also um ones that conceivably could save us the most money. And what I was hearing from a lot of people was, oh, you know, I don't want to change my school. I don't want anything different. But it was a lot of fear, and that's understandable. Um, but what wasn't happening was kind of looking at on the other side, right? where you could go with these changes. And that's something I'm asking you guys to please not forget.

Yes. So, if you remember the process, John, I I totally agree with you. The first thing that we did in the reorganization committee was to go in and create our new strategic vision and mission and vision. Strategic plan and mission and vision for the district. That's happening in parallel with this. And at our next steering committee meeting, we're going back on to what is the strategic plan? What are the activities that support the strategic plan? How does that meet our vision of a graduate? All of the outcome focused work that this group has done and then we're going to tie that together. So, how do we achieve the outcomes we want with the organizational structures that we have as opportunities? Because your feedback is similar to what we've heard from a lot of people, which is if we think just about the money, then we don't think about the outcomes. If we think just about the outcomes, we're not thinking about they have to be done together.

Yeah. Right. And I and I think it's also just really pure fear, right? It's just a huge change and you know everything's going to go wrong and the reality is we've got tremendous staff here um looking at it with a fresh set of eyes and trying to optimize the school system. You know, let's make a fresh start for lack of a better term, right? You know, where could that school system go? I mean, it could go to amazing places, right? If you're just kind of starting with a clean slate. So, I'm not picking any model by saying that, but it's just an attitude that you're going to run. You know this better than anyone. There's going to be a tremendous amount of fear out there with regard to some of these radical changes or big changes. And I just think you can't just look at it that way. It it's it's not fair to you guys. It's not fair to everybody,

right? But that's it's hard for parents. Your youngest one is how old? He's still at elementary. How old is he? Well, I don't care how old he is. What grade is he? Seventh grade. Seventh grade. Okay. 12. So he's not a blanchard, right? So he's not a blanchard. So for a Blanchard parent, there's nothing scarier than any transition, kindergarten to first grade, first grade to second grade. I'm just Okay, I understand. So So that's the problem. And it's really I The problem is when you say save the most money, well, what saves the most money is to turn Blanchard into an early childhood. That's the most sustainable one, right?

That's the one that's got the parents freaked out. if that and I think all the rest of the models including 5v2 all make a lot of sense and can be done and you have confidence that it will be done and you won't put the fear of God into an entire community. Now that said, my only issue, my biggest issue is we have spent since 2015 convincing Actton and Boxboro, particularly Boxboro, we're one region. We are all together in this. We are one district. And what I'm hearing from young parents now is we should not be in this region. We should break away from the region. Why do we need to be part of the region? And that bums me out because we spent 10 years getting to the place where people finally there were some people who were absolute no people to regionalization that will never they'll go to their grave that way. But we finally got to a place where I wasn't hearing Actton versus Boxboro and now I'm hearing that again. And that bums me out because if we can't beat Actton versus Boxboro and I won't say, you know, it feels as if for a lot of the box parents that we're just sort of being pushed aside, right or wrong, that's how they feel and that's the conversation that's coming back. And that's so sad because and you've worked a long time to get to a point where we're a district. We are one district but this one you know version one of option five is the one that has all these parents screaming well let's not be part of this district I don't want to be part of box act in box anymore and that's are you kidding after so many years of getting to the place where that wasn't part of the the discussion that wasn't part of the noise anymore now it was everybody came out together

so you have a group of people who are hold on don't let me finish you have a group of people who are adamant about that opinion So what do you what do you expect what are you instructing Adam to do?

I'm not instructing Adam on anything. I'm just saying that that's the concern that I see with the communities because we don't want to get back to that point. I'm not instructing anything. I'm just telling this is what I see. And it kind of is after so long of trying to get that everyone to be one school district versus two separate communities because I felt like it was our job to advocate for Boxboro. our job to advocate for Boxboro financially, but the parents had finally gotten to the point where it wasn't an act in Boxboro thing. It was just the district. We were the district. So hopefully we can kind of quickly settle out on some of these things that we can get back to getting rid of all that extra noise because it's a lot of noise that we don't you don't need when you're trying to move forward with this. I I think that's my opinion. I'm hearing a lot of extra noise and I understand it because parents are scared and and they're scared of that option. That's the option that I hear both actin and box where parents are scared of but it shouldn't I don't want it to turn into an us versus them

for the parents and I and that's what I hear from people and I'm hearing it from a lot of you know the people who have taken a long road to get to the point where it was just us as a district and now they're like well maybe that was a mistake. I worked hard on that regionalization for really good reason. It was the the right move for Boxboro then. It's the right move for Boxboro now. And I understand. But I mean, isn't the proper way though to to acknowledge this is to to put all these on the table? Absolutely. I just I'm not saying they did it wrong. I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying that that's out there to, you know, I'm sure the Conan people feel fantastic about some of these.

I'm sure they feel I'm sure they're just as concerned. I'm just I'm But what you don't hear I heard Conan parents at the forum talk about their concern around co Conan. I've heard from people in the community why do we ever regionalize? We shouldn't have regionalized. I've had people I had people text me. I had people email me. I'm just telling you John informed opinion. It was opinions of I mean the majority of those people did go to the forum whether or not and when I said these are all the reasons why regionalization made sense in 2015. I think that's when we took the vote. We finally did it at 17. That's not changed. We we we could not go it alone. It was the right decision then. It's the right decision now. But you know there's nobody that has you know. Yeah.

So that's an important statement right there. Yeah. Absolutely. Very critical. Absolutely. I've said it. I know other people have said it. We can't go it alone.

We cannot go it alone. We couldn't do that. I'm not saying that we should ever walk away from the region. That's not this part. I'm just saying making sure that we get that message out to people. I don't know how to do that other than, you know, I've touched maybe I've talked to 10 people. That's only 10 people and I know there's a lot of chatter online. I don't know any of these parents, right? I know there's a lot of chatter. Some people have connected with me through other people. I've gotten personal emails and I've always said the same thing. It was the right decision when we made it in 2015. It's the right decision for Boxboro. Now, the process will pay out. I I'm not a big fan of this particular option, but that's, you know, I understand the concern, but this was the right decision. It just after so long of trying to get people to this was the right decision to hear the same thing I'm like oh my god like we got to get past this right we it's gota and hopefully this once they whittle it down the options down we'll get past that and we can start moving forward again as a district um

yeah so what you're saying is you can't let individual constituencies of a a set of school parents sway the process because there there'll be other schools who also prepare Yes, but I do think we need to be careful because that's the biggest option. That's the I mean I think that one closing Conan is going to be difficult, right? There's options that allows Conan to be a school and other buildings, but then those parents there's no good choices here. No, no. But but there are some in there which are I'm not sure if you know where they sort of merge them together into one building and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's there's Yeah, there's no good there's no easy options. I shouldn't say there's no good options. There's no easy options. They're going to be difficult options for every

people are going to be upset no matter

none of us have children in Blanchard. And all I remember from being on the school committee is those years from K to six in particular because once your kid goes to the region it's a little bit more distant. They're a little bit more independent. those years in particular that is the focus of the parents because that everything we do I was told once that if somebody's kid had 18 children in a classroom literally had a parent say to me in a meeting you're destroying my child's chances of getting into Harvard I'm like your kid's in second grade I and I think I said your kids in second grade so you know it's like that's part of the thing but that's a very real concern for people and so just making sure that we understand that as part of the process and take that feedback from people and under you know we have to be we have to just understand that's out there in the community and it's in both communities it's not just box actton feels much the same way a lot of parents are just as concerned with their schools

but on the other hand the option of do nothing is not is that is not an option and regionalizing you know expanding the region may be an option but it's not an option for next year and if the school's trying to do something for next year you know so there's some I think in the middle there there's some good options that uh on the more cost-saving side. I mean, yes. And but we need to make sure that it's also on the educational side, right? Yeah. So,

well, I mean, exactly. I mean, I think overlaid and implicit in all this discussion is what educational structure is the best for the kids, right? So, that's what I'm curious like is it 5, six or six, seven, eight or and there's going to be a cost associated with that, but that has to be factored in, right? Is it K through five or is it K123? There's also these economies of scale where you have specialists in one place, you know. Exactly. That seems to be where the cost savings would would come is is if you could, you know, focus specialists in in different locations, right? But the more you centralize each grade, which is more efficient, yeah, the less we get away, the farther away we are from our local schools,

which is the biggest which is a big concern for people at Conan, people at Blanchard. That's a concern. And but what if it what if it comes back that that's the best educational model?

But we haven't heard that yet. So right now we've heard these are the options and what we haven't heard is this is the most cost. We've heard this is the most sustainable, right? There's a couple of that are the most sustainable. There's a couple that aren't sustainable at all. We haven't heard any of that. We haven't and understandably you throw it all out there. You're going to whittle it all down. But without all that information is very hard to get people to understand. So the best you can do is give them some of the history on it. Um, you know, I understand the concern about a prekk. I understand the concern because I was on the building committee and, you know, Peter Leight advocated hard for a preschool to be built in that new building. Really hard. And some of us were like, no, no, we don't need to add cost to this. We've built a beautiful preschool in that building. So now to then now move it three years later just seems like, okay, you know what I mean? There was and there was a cost associated.

That's a consideration. That's it's also a cost almost really I mean I'm saying we're trying to look forward I understand it's great we have that resource but we need to you know not insult people along the way I guess or dispirit people could we get like a selection matrix going like how we did for the fire station building committee I mean like because there's more that's well I think that's what they're trying to get to right you're trying to get down to four options yeah that's that's the work of the steering committee at its next meeting and then how do we guide that I mean should we take a ranked vote at at that stage once Once we get to the four, we take a ranked vote or something. Ranked vote. Yeah. I mean, I just think we have to get once we get the information. Once they will it whittle it down financial information. I think Adam probably heard enough from us.

Yeah. I mean, just every every operational inefficient dollar spent is something you don't spend on education. Yeah, that's all I'm going to say. And then overlay that with optimal education structure. What the teachers want and what the unions want and what everybody else wants. Piece of cake. And good luck to you. No, that first one is true. and the and the optimal education model too. I want that I'll I'll prepare you. There may not be an optimal model. There may be research in support of several. Exactly.

Um and you know that's one of the things that we're going to get at our next meeting is some third party research that says here's what research talks about banded schools. Here's what research talks about a a true middle school 678. Here's what research says about K through six. Um, and you know, I don't know what the outcome of that will be, but there will be research around all of those and they may not help us as much as we hope that they will. It'll help you at least make an informed decision. It may not help

ease fears necessarily, but at least you'll then, you know, you have the facts to back it up, which is important, right? Because right now the optimal what we're doing isn't optimal either. It's what we've done. I think Tori or Peter Light or one of somebody said, "Well, what we're doing now, how does it work?" And he's like, "Well, it's worked for 50 years. It's been great for 50 years." 50 years. I mean, you know, things have changed in 50 years, right? So, um, I think, you know, it'll be it'll be interesting to get more information. Okay. Committee reports, school report, anything, John? Um, so anything more? Is there more? Um, so the capital committee meeting is meeting tomorrow at 7 a.m. 7 a.m.

Yes. Oh. Um, I don't know that committee. Um, so yes. So they're going to make a presentation to the school committee Thursday night. I think you guys. Yeah, Thursday night. The school capital committee meeting. School meeting. I thought you meant Fox Boxboro. No. Okay. We haven't met capital. We haven't met yet. All right. That's coming up. We moved ours back in few weeks. So yeah, that's coming up. Um they are basically their issue is the is the redistricting is basically impacting what they want to focus on as well. Reorganization. Yeah. Yeah. Reorganization. Yeah, not redistricting. Yeah.

Um they've got a few big projects. Where is it? Um Blanchard parking lot, the bleachers in the gym, Jackson church rooftop rooftop units. Those are the three they're clearly focusing on. can focus on will be impacted by the re the reorg. Um everything else is going to be a function of what happens with decisions we make in December. They make in December and the budget's about a million dollars as is expected as it is. So the million dollars covers like paving and roof units and everything else that's out there. Great. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Not the roof units. The roof units are part of a stabilization fund.

Okay. And it's a two-year project and we kind of have funding for the first year and we're not quite sure where the second half will come from. So the million dollars would be for the paving. Yes. And the bleaches. The net of everything that is budgeted for this year is a million dollars. Okay. That factors in everything that needs to be done for this year. Correct. That's the that's what's carried in the operating budget. Yeah. Um the school committee budget guidelines Yeah. came back at what 3.75 to 4.25. That's actually tomorrow's thunder, isn't it? Thursday. Yeah, I we just discussed that yesterday and I totally blanked on what we said. Um

Yes. So yeah, operating budget of 3.7 to 4.25, which equals somewhere between what is that? 2.3 to$2 million $2.9 million in cuts. So more cuts than we've had for the past four years. each year. Right. You said 50% more than Yes, that was Yeah, I didn't understand the wording of that. So, basically 50% more than what you cut last year. We've we've on average cut I think 1.7 to 1.8 million each year over the past four and to land a 3.75 to 4.25% operating budget, we'll look at 2.3 to 2.9 million in cuts.

So, this 4.25, 25. Is it the overall increase or just the operating budget increase? Remember the budget guideline? Yeah. What do you mean by overall versus operating? The very bottom of the the ones you the expenses you can control or it would be the operating budget plus the the um debt service and all of that. Everything before we distribute it to the towns minus the revenue that comes in. So that's that's a 3 point 75 to four point to four to five. Okay. So the upper bound. So that's your entire operating budget. Yeah.

Okay. So we we got to be careful with the term operating budget because you're using the word operating budget sometimes for the stuff that you can control, right? But there are other items in that budget like insurance and stuff like that. That's part of our that's part of our operating budget. Okay. All right. And it includes You know what I'm talking about though, right? The health insurance. Yeah. Yeah. I I mean we have no control over that but what I have to deliver to the towns is an overall budget but that's within the 32 that's within it so this is the overall bottom line roughly 120 something million let's call it 16 something like that all right so the upper bound for us is 4.25 25. So we would take 18% of that of the increase.

All that that goes back to the table table six gets crazy. We we we can look at it. Yeah. You you were going to send us the numbers, right? So we would take the worst case scenario 4.25 times the 18% times whatever it was last year as an increase. That goes into our model. That goes into schedule A. It goes into our model basically. It's it's schedule A is budget A. Budget A. I'm sorry. A budget A. Sorry, I didn't mean to say schedule and then budget. Yep. Um and probably should use my classes here. Uh yeah, that's really all the key. Yeah. Okay. Um Joe,

uh all's quiet on the committee front unless you want to know about steel farm spending which is not part of our budget. Um but they're uh I have a report from them only. Yeah. Go ahead.

Okay. Um so uh let's see um the farmhouse phase three renovations. Uh they've acred they have in a trust they've accured over 2k since inception. So they have 52,000. None of that has been sent spent yet. Um the ice house fund is exhausted and they'll be closing that. And then there's about 17,000 left in the phase three fund. Um, and the approximately $3,000 discrepancy mentioned previous meeting has not yet been resolved. So, the 17,000 is in the phase three. That's CPC money. So, that will go back to them, I think. So, yeah.

And then um I think that's what they had just voted to keep open at one of their last meetings. And then the revolving fund has 4.7,000. Okay. But that's all from prior warrants and none of it's in our budget, right? So, no, the revolving fund is money that they've earned through um either I don't know if it's Hayne, I'm not on the committee, but like the trees one a few years they sold Christmas trees. So, the revolving fund is money they can use. Yeah. But the the other all those other accounts are from Warren articles and and um the Well, there is a bud. Yeah. Right. So, there's different memorial funds. Um I don't know all but like the CPC funds comes from obviously CPC

um and different warrant articles. The Ice House was a Warren article. Um I believe so. But they don't. And they have a budget. I think they have a budget. A small one. I don't I don't know. I've never seen it in our in our budget model. It's like it's in the um like the 190 I think which is like the the maintenance budget.

When I first reached out to Chris, he was like, "Great. I have a budget. This is the first time learning. Tell me all about my budget." I said, "It's small. It's small budget, but I think it's under the 190s." Well, what used to be 190, I don't really know what it is now. Um, and it's like the historical commission, a couple of the smaller boards that have because they have the museum, right, to deal with and that kind of stuff, but it's not a very big budget. It's it's really small. Wouldn't museum be historical commission or Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So, there is there are overlap, but I mean, I I don't think I've ever seen Steel Farm. No, Steel Farm. I think it's within the 190 budget, but it used to be they used to have their own little tab. Yeah. I was kind of under the assumption we

didn't care a lot about a lot of those other things because they're out of our control now. Um, you know, do we keep a laser focus on previous warrants that are being spent out of a fund if it doesn't affect our current budgeting or anything? You know, like how important is this type of report to the committee? Yeah, they they have a building in maintenance under 192. It's about 3,200. Yeah, 3200. Yeah. So, um, it's important because we also, um, have someone who sits on CPC, right? Michelle sits on CPC, right? So, it's good for Michelle to know because maybe CPC hasn't that maybe 17,000 is going to go back. Her husband's on steel farm committee,

right? Okay. All right. Well, let's pretend they're not. Okay. And they don't talk about it over dinner, you know. Um, it's just it's just good to know what they have for funds because if we have to cut 3,200, they have a $3,200 budget. if we have to cut it, but we know there's 4,700 they could spend, right? You know what I mean? In times that are a little more difficult. It's not a bad thing. Okay. Okay. Michelle, anything from you? Uh CPC is on Thursday, so nothing new since two weeks ago. Okay. Uh no fire station. That's it. That's my whole life. Okay. Okay. Then I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second. Moved and seconded by Joe and Maria you roll call vote on that. Michelle I Joe I Neil and I Conor I Newton I meeting closed. Good job.