Finance Committee - Regular Meeting

Call the meeting to order with a roll call. Heather here. Dan here. Greg here. Samir here. Skip. Angelina here. Kyle here.

Victoria is here. Okay. We are called to order. Um on tonight's agenda, we are going to be covering the FY27 budget for two of our departments. Um both the Grafton Recreation budget as well as we have visitors from uh Blackstone Valley Technical High School here. Um so following the agenda, let's go ahead and start with the FY27 Recreation Department budget. Adam wants to come on down. Everybody, good evening. How are you? Good. Good. How was your half marathon? Slow but good. Um matters. You finished.

Yeah, I finished. Um it was a pretty wild experience. Um it was in New York City and it was really cool to just like I basically gave myself a free tour of New York City and just had to run through it. So, it was pretty cool. Um not bad. It was a lot of people. Over 30,000 people were in the race. So, it was very overwhelming. Um but it was fun. I did it. Survived. My legs are still hurt, but we'll get there. Lots of stretching, lots of foam rolling the past couple days, but um it was fun. It was fun. Congratulations and welcome home. Thank you very much.

Awesome. All right, so we'll just go through your budget here. I think page 18 of our packet has your line by lens highlighted, which is is very convenient. Um, but we'd like to go through particularly the changes, the differences, uh, year-over-year and and your notes to those lines. Um, all right. So, just a couple of the the big things. Um, and if you don't mind, if you indulge me, just uh before we talk of budget numbers, if I could talk a little about impact numbers, if that's okay. Love to hear.

Okay, great. Um, so I've been here three years now, so I've been able to kind of see um a significant change in the positive uh in the past couple years. But I thought I'd compare fiscal 24's impact versus fiscal 25. Um, comparatively uh we're offering 14% more uh special events in town uh 2025 fiscal year over 2024. We're offering 235% more activities in town. Excuse me. We're offering 30% more um uh well 30% more people are attending our events. We've been very intentional about uh tracking that a little bit more now. Um we have 50% more program participants uh registrations in our programs. Um we've had four a 49% increase in our beach season and day passes that were sold. Um and we've increased our enrollment in our summer days program which is our summer camp style program by 133%. So when I started we had about 50 kids a week in our program. Now we're hovering about 140.

So, uh, you know, I I feel like I've hit the ground running and I feel like we finally really like gotten to a groove. Um, we got a really great team up there. Um, and we're looking forward to continuing to push the needle in 26 and 27. Um, so that was some impact numbers before we get into the the other numbers. Um, so yeah, so the biggest changes uh for fiscal 27 versus fiscal 26, and I apologize, the notes that were in the packet are were incomplete. Um, I it just like craziness of half marathon training and stuff. It just didn't get done. So, I'll kind of explain some of the stuff. So, um the biggest change obviously is right now the reduction budget does include the beach staff salaries being removed. Uh so, you'll see $104,000 decrease there. Um I just for for record just so people know um you know if override does not pass um and we are on a reduction budget the revolving account that the recreation department has will absorb uh those costs uh just for this season. Um we've crunched some numbers and there probably will be uh some service changes. So less than days, less staff. Um one can only speculate. Uh but we have some plans in place if you know after a vote comes in and we know what if it's a yay or a nay uh what the next steps are and we'll be sure of course to communicate those changes as soon as we hear them. Um so that's number one. Uh number two, um the other big changes monetarily, um I would say, um the biggest swing I guess would be um the uh the uh excuse me, the assistant, uh line, which has an increase of about um $12,000. Um that change is one obviously the traditional step increases for our staff members. Um and I believe uh um the projections for fiscal 26 were adjusted uh incorrectly. Um we had an admin in our department who was at the highest

level of her step range. Uh she left us and we hired uh someone at the lowest step and I think um when we calculated the numbers we were able to increase that person's hours from 20 hours a week to 25. Um that 25 hours didn't get carried over. it was just 20 because I think it we were just used to having a 20-hour week staff. So, um that's why the increase looks like that. She we hired the new admin at 25 hours. So, that's the the biggest difference there just to kind of show some clarity there. Um I mean, the other ones are small. I can speak to those if you'd like. Um but those are I think the biggest picture ones that I we we have coming up uh this upcoming year. Um happy to answer any questions. I have a quick question about your your revolver fund that you'll use to sort of bolster um Silver Lake in a limited capacity for this for this season. What's in that revolver fund account at this point?

Um right now probably it looks very healthy because we took all of our camp uh registrations about a month ago. So there's probably about 700,000 in there right now, but that basically gets absorbed uh after our department's weird where our busiest season's the summer. So we take all of our registrations ahead of time and then we deplete that by August or September with salaries and supplies and stuff like that. So yeah, because all your part-time st or your seasonal staff will come out of there, correct? Yep. So all of our our summer day staff. Um how many seasonals do you hire? We just

we hire a total of 60. 40 in summer days and 20 um at the beach. So that additional um 20 at the beach um the additional 104 that is what you need supplementary to the revolver funds in that case. The the revolving account doesn't the beach salaries are separate from that. So we don't the the revolving account covers those the summer days camp staff fees. So it's separate from the the beach staff. the 104 that is in the reduction budget would be um for those beach staff. Gotcha. Thank you.

And so that is half of half of this summer coming summer and then part uh next summer. Correct. Yep. So it's sixish weeks of this summer and then threeish weeks of the following summer. So summer 2027. So you'd have about 65,000 to cover for this year from other funding sources. Correct. Uh, how much do you know how much you bring in in beach passes and other stuff to offset the 104?

So So yeah, so last summer we brought in about $16,000 in beach pass fees. Um, I didn't mention prior to on top of cutting back hours at the beach if the override didn't pass. We would most likely increase fees as well um just because we we need to close the gap. So um that would be where it would come from be increasing those fees. We haven't increased fees. I don't have the the number off the top of my head, but probably decades at this point since those pass fees went up. So, I mean, even if we an override does pass, it might be a conversation that and I can have about increasing them. Anyways, um you know, I have comparative analysis done and we're one of the lower like our our passes are cheaper compared to what other communities offer and they we have far more amenities. So, I think it's reasonable for a little bit of a jump, but

um we want to make it affordable because it's a great resource in town. We don't want to, you know, price people out because we need to close the gap. But if unfortunately decisions need to be made, those are the decisions need to be made. So, uh do you know what the current uh fees are for Silver Lake?

Yes. So, it's $45 for a family uh pass, 20 for um a uh uh a couple um 10 or 20 for individual, excuse me, and then 10 for a senior. Um Season passes for non-residents are 75, 40, and 20 right now. So this year, unlike last year, we are also offering, so before I was here, um there were no day passes for non-residents and we're offering that back this summer in a hopes to recoup some costs as well. Um so that we're hoping that we'll bring some more revenue as well. Yeah, I think they remember scaling scaling those back to during CO to keep the population

Yeah. in line. Do you know how many out of town passes we sell normally or like off the top of my head? It's probably about 20 to 25% of the total pass sales that we get. I feel like I would raise that first. I mean 45 is pretty low for a family, but 75 for non res for a family. Yeah. Yeah, I think you there's I think you could still argue that there's some some wiggle room. I don't want to pull numbers out of nowhere. Yeah, I'm sure there's some quantitative.

Like I said, we have I I every year I always do an analysis of all the communities that are within a five mile radius of us, 10 mile radius, and see what their pass rates are. um just in case the conversation needs to be had about increasing rates, I have that information ready to go. So um like I said, we are below I think a lot of communities um and like I said based on the amenities that we have, you know, bathrooms, the whole thing it Yeah, exactly. So I think it's um wouldn't be a bad idea to explore um if if we needed to. Great.

Are there any costs other than salaries uh for operating Silver Lake? Yeah. So, we um every year we get the beach permit, of course, uh through the board of health. We also uh pay for a weed treatment uh that basically gets the swimming area uh clear. Uh we also have to do weekly testing due to the board of health. So, that's about $170 a test and has to be done every week. Um on top of that, if we have any issues with bluegreen algae, I'm going to knock on wood now. It won't happen, but um that will, you know, cover costs of those tests and things like that. So, we did some work upstream from Silver Lake, which seems to have helped. It definitely made a big difference last summer. Two summers ago, we were closed for three weeks because of algae and last year it was three days and it was the last three days of the season. So,

although I'm fortunate, I'd rather be at the end of the season for three days versus three weeks in the middle of the summer. The poor dogs though, they don't get their dog. I know we that I h I have not been here for a doggy dip day yet. I really would love to see one um because my dog is would love swimming so I'd love to take them out there, but unfortunately we haven't been able to do that. So then all in with the staff um salaries and the permit the weed uh spraying all how much is it? Probably about 130. It's about 25 for all the testing and and the weed treatments and stuff like that. So

I do have some basic questions here, Adam. One of the things we'd like to see is people be able to look at this clear gov. Yeah. and kind of know what we're getting. So, I kind of take a look at the repair and maintenance line. There's $21,700 in there. Yep. What's that for?

So, that's where we take um the u the testing and the weed treatments out of the out of that line. Um we also have when we uh dewinterize and winterize the beach bathrooms and Norcross is included in that as well. Um, we also have um about a $3,000 placeholder for miscellaneous playground fixes or or beach fixes. Last summer we had we had to remove a bee um infestation at the beach that we weren't anticipating. Um, you know, it just kind of has a buffer for us in case there's, you know, significant, you know, safety issue at a at a with the portal place rubber. We have money set aside that we can fix um fix the equipment or things like that. you know, new parts for swing sets or playground equipment, anything like that. So,

okay. The ne the next one I had a question on is professional and technical. The the note kind of seemed a little confusing compared to what was in there. Yep. And sorry, that's professional and technical, you said? Yep.

Um, so most of that comes from our software that we use to register for our programs. That's our b biggest expense. Um, other than that, um, uh, built in here is an ADA accommodations fund. Uh part of my um task of being here was to increase our inclusive and adaptive programming in town. Um so this just kind of puts money aside for us to be able to create reasonable accommodations outside of the basic you know visual schedules for our campers or um you know small things that that don't cost a lot of money if it's just printing out a piece of paper. Um and then also um in this line as well there's a little bit of of money to help subsidize the concert series. um bands are getting more and more expensive every year. Uh we do apply for a cultural council grant but that covers maybe one band. Um so that's where that that money comes from.

So they so like in in that kind of uh section I would expect to see you know what 10 band concerts for $500 a piece and and that kind of stuff to total up to the the amount of money that's there because that's you know 18,000 bucks. Yep. Um the same kind of thing goes for the recreational employees training. Yep. Um you've got a note about a $700 increase for the uh uh for you to go to a class, but what's the other $5,000 getting us?

Yep. So that includes um giving uh our coordinator a chance to go to the conferences as well. Uh the conferences average between $400 to $500. Um and then we also factor in travel as well into that. Um hotel stays, things like that. Um we have that in there. Um we're looking to get um one of us, either me or Cody, uh um certified playground safety inspector certification. It's a $600 certification. Again, just to make sure that our playgrounds can be properly monitored and safe. Um that also includes um all of our certifications for first aid and CPR for our non-lifeguard staff. Um so we I am an instructor and I train all of our non-lifeguard staff, first aid and CPR. Um, so that that's about $45 a person and we estimate we have about usually about 20 people that need it um every season. Um, and then uh as I mentioned, the $7 increase is typically um I I attend I attend the national park and Rex conference which typically it's about $1,000 by the end of it. But this year um kind of the the premier uh recreation training is that uh director school that I had mentioned in that the notes and that's about $700 more than that. So that's where the increase comes from.

Do we have anyone that is certified for playground safety inspection today or is that something we outsource? I don't believe we have anybody. Dere Daryl, our parks guy, is not. Um, that's typically not something we outsource. It's typically a lot of rec departments in the state just have somebody on staff that just goes and inspects them. Obviously the bigger, you know, bigger cities that have that capability, they do. Um, so we I'm not aware of anybody. I don't know if you know anybody that's CPSI certified in town. I don't think so. It's a it's a gap right now. Yeah. Okay. So, all right. So, what's the uh there's almost $15,000 in other supplies.

Yep. Um, so that covers um beach supplies uh for staff um what's it called? Staff uh uniforms, whistles, etc., etc. Um that also covers some subsidies for some of our special events. Um if we didn't have the subsidies built in, we'd be charging people or we wouldn't be able to run as many events. Um so you know it's supports you know getting um you know things like for graphin celebrates the holidays you know getting some ornaments or things like that for the tree um things like that. Um and also includes um uh our every year for our summer staff we do an overtime exemption through the state. we have to apply for it. Unfortunately, I don't know why they charge us, but they they do. Even though we're a municipality, it seems silly, but that's what they do. Um, so that basically helps us also control costs with our lifeguards because if they go over 40, um, they don't get time and a half because we're a seasonal. Uh, so they're exempt from overtime for that.

Some of some of that almost sounds like it should be someplace else in in your budget because not really a supply. And then you had mentioned some instate travel included in some of the other things. Yeah, there so there's a you have a line for it.

Correct. There's a $250 line um under instate travel that you know if you know we do a monthly central mass park and wreck association meetup meeting. So that covers you know mileage reimbursement for that. Um if Cody or anybody attends one of those conferences and doesn't take the wreck vehicle that covers the mileage reimbursement there. Um that's kind of more of a placeholder. Um, last year I think we over spent in this line by a little bit because the the the conference was in Norwood and both of the staff that went took their own vehicles. Um, but we just have that as a placeholder in case somebody needs to be reimbursed for mileage. The u in the wreck professional of tech, how much of that is the software that $18,

$8,200 this year? uh they're projecting a 5% increase. Um and also the the software that we have, it's based on um how much money that the software actually processes. Um and although it's great that we're bringing in more summer days enrollments, that means $300 times a lot more kids. So um I'm anticipating a little bit more um and is this annual? Annual. It's annual subscription. That's if you put something like that in the notes section there. So yeah, when we're kind of going through and looking at it, it kind of adds up a little bit. Yeah. Cut me down on the Yeah. conversations. That's fair.

Is some is a excuse my ignorance if if this is a dumb question, but is a is a software package like that that is like processing fees or enrollment for something an opportunity for sharing across departments? Is is is there a specific reason why it must be a different line item here versus maybe somewhere else where we could combine funds, combine pieces of software, you know what I mean? Like are we paying for the same kind of thing twice? No.

So wreck is a very specialized department as far as what softwares exist. Um and so their software deals with scheduling, takes payment, does the whole thing. Whereas like our um tax collectors, you know, their software is entirely different because they're not scheduling. It doesn't tie to anything else. Um we did go through in our um performance-based budgeting process and look at all of our softwares to reduce redundancies and we were able to do that in places that were like PDF readers, uh different accessibility tools, things like that. But there are like the the building department software very specialized based around permitting. Wreck has a very specialized software. Core group obviously police and fire have their own. Um everywhere else it's we're just using word and excel. You know there's so we can we can move um the wreck software into it. Um,

we just have a very spe the software that we use is very specialized to to what we need it for. You know, like I we talked about we moved to this software actually because we were on a different one when I started. Um, you know, like we were going to go on to a a treasure collector's pay and point system and it just it didn't like we we needed the backend registration that wouldn't connect with the point and pay. So, it just didn't work. Um, so doesn't use anything like that for their sports. Not that I'm aware.

They use a scheduling soft well with the software. It's like a website. I don't know if it's technically considered software, but we use it when we reserve stuff through the school, but it it doesn't cover like our software does everything. Registration, reservation for fields and spaces, paying for program. It's a it's a compulsory, you know, software. So, nothing that I've seen that the schools is using is akin to what we're we're using. They also do things like rent out facilities that I'm sure fees and have registrations, but but fair enough. Worth asking if I The other thing to to just note, and I'm not speaking specifically to the Rex software,

but what we've been seeing more and more is that these software companies that we're dealing with create a municipal project product and they create a school product and you can't share that product. They do that on purpose. Yeah, for sure. That's kind of like the plugs on your cell phone. Yeah, basically. It makes total sense. Yep. So, we we have seen that in in uh in a couple of different areas. All right. Any additional questions for Adam? Uh maybe quick, this is small on the energy $45 increase. Like, do we think this 3% is like actually reasonable? Should it be more than that? I mean, we're seeing three to 5%. Um I mean like

I I'm the one down there that when the beach closes I'm like shut everything off, make sure the lights are off. So I make sure like we're not lights aren't on when I'm not there. Um the last few years we've had about a three a 5% it I know it doesn't it didn't make sense in my brain just knowing how crazy electricity rates have been. But because we only really use it three months out of the year, we don't really see the impact like your normal house would where it's like you know you're seeing the 20 or you know we're seeing 15 20% some places. Yeah. Um, well, that's good to know. I feel like just because of what's going on lately, I'm like, that's 3% even. Yeah. No, I looked at it too and I was like, there's no way. But yeah, no, it's trending about a 3 to 5% increase. And and who knows, in three weeks, it might not be.

Exactly. That's like almost like these little increases. I always get worried. I'm like, is that real? Are we lowballing ours? Yeah, we we've been that that line itself has been under spent, not significantly, but we that that 3% is seems to be seems to be holding well. So, Just one plug before Adam goes. If if none of you are listening to our podcast, Municipal. Uh Adam just recorded one with us with William and I today. Think it's a one of our finest ones yet. It was fun. I had a lot of fun. I've never I was like, I've never been on a podcast before. This is weird. So, you listen to it wherever you get your podcast.

Spotify. Yeah. How long is it? Will it get me through my 12 miles this week? if you run a one minute mile maybe or a two-minute mile maybe but it was like 30 minutes I think by the end of I honestly don't remember it was such a good flew by flew by so uh Williams said some weird stuff so we got to we got to go down that haven't was off the reservation already get bored nowadays so anyways uh that just my plug for for the podcast love a plug fun great job thank you sir

thank you everybody Okay, moving right along to our um second line and that is to review the FY27 Blackstone Valley Tech budget um with the superintendent director. So, I know we have Mr. Steel here. Hello. How are you? Welcome, Chair Duckworth, members of the committee. Appreciate uh giving us the opportunity to present. I know last year I was here as your assistant superintendent and obviously July 1 took Dr. Fitzpatrick's place. Um, going well so far. I think you know this fella here, your longtime school committee rep. Absolutely.

Mr. Longer. Listening to the the wreck budget was kind of different. I was on the rec commission in the 90s before there were any paid administrator people for that. We had to all be volunteers at that time. I'd also like to introduce Dr. Connor's back here. So, Connor took my role as assistant superintendent. He's also the curriculum director of BBT. Uh, and like Dr. Fitzpatrick did for me, I'm trying to baptize him by fire here and get him used to these things. Um, I was also one of your camp coaches multiple decades ago. We also have some seats up here. Yeah. Yeah.

Get I thought you were getting them into the fire. Get them up. Come on up, man. So,

I love the wreck ties here, too. That's great. just to kind of kick things off here. Um a little bit different uh budget book than we've had in the past. We redesigned that. Uh hearing a lot of feedback. Uh we tried to put more things on our website. Uh so this is actually also electronic. That's what Matt was going to do for us here was to scroll along. So I was always envisioning people at home in Zoomland watching a bunch of people flip through a book they can't see. Uh, so Matt's going to follow along, but just be aware that um the entirety exactly as you see printed here is on our website and accessible to anyone any time. Um, few other things we tried to do just uh listening to people in the past. I think last year, Mr. Mario, you were asking for the regional agreement. It's on there. I made double checked before I came. I believe it's under our district tab. uh we have all of our school committees uh email addresses and uh so forth. So, you know, trying to uh be responsive and transparent in that way. Um the FY27 budget was just voted and approved uh last Thursday night. Uh so, it's less than a week old. Uh but thankfully, we have talented students and staff that put this book together for us. So, we do make this inhouse. Um we had our public hearing on the 12th and following that uh school committee vote just like to walk you through a few things as we get going here. Uh first you'll see uh the composition of our budget subcommittee uh subset of our larger school committee uh plus a few of our administrative team members like Miss Ferguson is our business manager, Mr. Pill is the district treasurer, myself, Dr. Connors, uh, and a few

assistant folks from the business office. Uh, they really start meeting um, gez, it's it's about September uh, when we really start the budget process. Uh, on the next page, you'll see page four. Um what I would like to point out here is is obviously this is a nice summary of our mission, our core values, uh what what we have for learning expectations and so forth. Um admittedly this presentation is heavily financial. Um if you are curious about the return on investment or how the kids are doing or how the school's doing, I'm happy to stop and answer that. Uh it's just this presentation is mainly geared towards finance committees and and folks interested in in the numbers. Uh I've seen schools present uh on budgets and you get 90% how the kids are doing and a few numbers at the end. Um I have a lot to talk about in terms of you know the finances. So kind of inverted that. Uh but I can assure you the students are doing extraordinarily well. uh your students that are at Valley Tech are uh continuing to really deliver uh under high expectations and happy to again talk about any of that if you wish. Okay. Uh the next page is a cover letter from me and I'd like to just point out obviously I'm not going to read this to you but I just want to point out a few uh key things that really were substantial in this budget season. Uh first um it was very evident uh very early on, you could even say from last year that this is a time of great financial restraint or distress. Uh I would say at least half of our member towns are in significant financial situations. I'm well aware. I I do read

the papers as well. I know what Grafton is going through. Uh I just left North Bridge last night. I'm well aware what they're going through. Um, we always have said we want to be good partners. We want to be great partners with our member member towns. Uh, as they say, talk is cheap, right? Show me. Uh, and I think you'll see a lot of that throughout. uh that not just your new superintendent but our school committee members, our teachers, our support staff, uh everybody was well aware recognizing the reality uh of the times financially here. Frankly, not something I've seen in many many years. Um also follow Mass Municipal Association and others. This is something that extends well beyond the valley. uh certainly across the state, better part of New England, you could even argue, you know, nationwide, but the the classic problem that expenses are escalating faster than you can, you know, create revenue. Uh and so we want to do our part. I can say luckily, thankfully, as the new superintendent, the school committee felt that way. The teachers association appreciate what that means. And so it's not me swimming upstream. I had, you know, good cooperation throughout. Um we always look at ourselves you know in terms of how efficiently are we doing what we do. So the best way of doing that one way is to look at our 25 sister schools 26 schools like Valley Tech in the state. um not that it's a competition, but it's nice to know what's possible or not possible and are we being as efficient as others and so forth. Um the state essentially um considers vote tech or career tech like our system to be one and a half to two

times the cost of typical or regular education. Uh I did look at all the per pupils of the 13 towns. They vary greatly uh but we are doing at that about one and a quarter times. I think in here there's a typo. It says 1.25% uh of the average per pupil cost the centers. I wish uh I guess in percentage that'd be 125%. Uh what we mean there is 1.25 times. Okay. So I just want to acknowledge that typo in there before somebody calls me on that like I did last night. Um and the other thing we look at there'll this slide in the back of the deck here. um I look at the other 25 uh sister schools like us and we have consistently ranked down in the bottom third uh on a per pupil cost. So we monitor that. Um and and really um one thing that is an exciting challenge for us is is to say can we provide you with uh the best or at least one of the best regarded folk tech schools in the state and do it at an extremely efficient cost. Um, a guy like me finds that exciting and I got to say Dr. Connors too. I think Mr. Yitz appreciates it. Uh, one thing you'll see thematically through here is that I've already referred to a good working relationship with our teachers association. Um, I don't take that for granted. None of us do. That's nice when you have it. We've had it for quite some time. Uh I did mention that they also recognize uh that a lot of our sending towns and sending school districts are in trouble uh struggling financially. Uh and it's a challenge to them as well to say, hey, how can we run Valley Tech more efficiently? Don't ruin it. Protect the quality of the education. uh because

there you know every little contribution of how you can do this more efficiently or cheaper without sacrificing the quality is the is the goal. So I have two examples of that um here in the cover letter. Uh one we early on in the year uh negotiated our health insurance for active employees um five or six working sessions with our brokers. We do deep dives into exactly what's driving cost. Uh everything from prescriptions to you know habits and so forth of how we're utilizing services. A good example in the past was that we had a lot of emergency room usage. Go to the faculty and we say you know you please use the urgent care stay out of the emergency room if you can. The good news is they respond uh and they actually do something different. Uh this year uh The big difference was the GLP1s. So the weight loss injections and we asked them had to bargain with them or have them agree uh to drop that benefit. Uh we were able to have consensus with that mutually. We did drop that and that helped us secure a 3.95% increase in active employee health insurance. um almost unheard of these days, but certainly welcome news uh for a school district trying to cut costs. Okay. The next thing we did uh with the teachers was uh it was a contract year to negotiate. Uh Mr. Gitz was on the negotiation subcommittee. um we were able to work with our teachers uh without legal and in a very amicable fashion restructure uh time and learning for the school

year. So we actually um still have the longest school calendar in the state, but we were able to increase the count the school day uh but decrease the calendar days. So for a net gain of more contact time, but in exchange for that negotiated a 0000 on the base race. Uh they're still stepping but there is no adjustment on each base. uh with the exception of the top step, they have nowhere to step two.

So they go a two one and a half one. Uh the total salary increase for us is about 1.2% over last year, which is incredible. Uh again, we didn't have to sacrifice quality of instruction or instructional time to do it. It was mutually beneficial. um very agreeable with both parties and again we're able to settle that with without legal representation. We were had a plug when we were budgeting of 11%. So we use litics. I don't know if you're all involved with negotiating but it's a great tool that looks at all of the regional agreements that have been made uh and basically 11% over three years is the norm in the region. That was the plug that we had used in budgeting until we had settled this contract. Um the difference between what we settled on and what the norm would have been is about $2 million over three years. Specifically this year it's about $323,000 savings. And so you know it gets better. Next year I think it's about 700 and the final year it's about a million. Uh so again a great example of let's say everybody rowing in the same direction at Valley Tech. I say you know can you do what you do as well or better and do it cheaper. So those are two good examples I'd like to share with you about you know I don't take it for granted. Um you don't always have that. I'm very appreciative of that. It's and it's been helpful for us. Uh let's see last uh I just you know want to just reiterate that the uh relationships that we have make that possible. A lot of these things um I would not be able to achieve these these things or school committee if we didn't have uh a staff

that was responsive like that. So happy to to report that to you. On the next page, a little bit about our process if you don't know it. Uh the earliest part of the process starts with our program advisory committee. So part of chapter 74 uh vote education is that each of our 18 programs plus the uh nurses the adult program at night uh must have a program advisory committee. A program advisory committee is basically a uh group of folks that are in that trade actively currently in the trade and they consult uh with with each uh program not just on curriculum instruction skills that are let's say coming into need but also the ones that are falling off. Uh but a big part of their role is to help our department's budget specifically with equipment recommendations, what's needed, what's no longer needed, and so forth. Uh so that really drives a lot of the vocational budget requests that you know early on in in the fall. The budget subcommittee uh really starts getting together in the beginning of October. Uh meets regularly. Each uh department comes up and presents. So it's a zerobased budgeting process. Uh everything that is brought up series by series probably not unlike how you do your local system. Uh is rationalized defended if you will. Uh also looked at to see if there are other ways that we can get it. Uh so if it's a piece of equipment, is there anybody who can donate that? Uh is there a grant out there that we could get that and so forth. Uh we allow the budget to just build. Okay. We don't do any cutting at

that time. There's particular focus on particularly the deltas. Okay. What's either getting a more expensive or less uh the bigger the more interest we take in them. Uh and an explanation for those with the you know final product uh of the you know budget subcommittee uh this year. There's a I'll give you a detail of this at the end of the towards the end of the presentation, but I believe the total was 7.22% increase over last year. Uh that is not uh we say consistent um with what we had in mind. So we go through it and try to make thoughtful cuts. Uh we did that to the tune of $1.5 million because we had a target of 250 in mind. So to reach that 2 and a.5% overall budget, we did have to reduce one and a half million dollars within that starts with that subcommittee. Ultimately that moves forward uh to the school council. So uh that's a parents, students, uh teachers and so forth have their input into uh the budget. Um, usually a scenario like that, their input is into is in, you know, oh god, what are you cutting? Uh, you know, are we going to be okay uh with this? And and admittedly, um, cutting a million and a half out of our budget is, you know, down to the bone. Uh, but we we feel like we're not destroying the school to do it. It's not comfortable. I think everybody can relate to that. Uh, the last or next step is a public hearing. As I mentioned at the beginning, that was March 12th and subsequently a school committee vote to approve it. At the end of that process, our treasurer distributes that to our 13th town. So, by now, I would

imagine that has arrived. Okay. So, that's a a note on, you know, basically how we go about building uh the budget each year. And I'll get into those cuts as we go. The next page is a summary of our revenues and expenses. Uh start at the top with chapter 70. Uh it hasn't been, you know, incredibly robust. It's certainly been the topic of a lot of schools across the state saying, "Look, this this math isn't mathing. Chapter 70 is not doing what we think it should or sufficient." Uh I don't know if anyone had a chance to participate in the chapter 70 listening sessions uh or to submit your testimony in those. Uh we took part in those. Um but we uh as as a result as a result of the formula had a 1.81% increase in chapter 70. As I always say, you know, I I can't get too mad at them. They did give us 9,588,000, but obviously from a formulaic standpoint, everybody seems to be recognizing that it is not uh keeping up with inflationary costs and things like that. Um the next line down is uh chapter 71 regional transportation. So as a regional school, you get the benefit of the state reimbursing uh transportation. Originally in the beginning to encourage regionalization it was 100%. We don't typically see that uh 75% is somewhat the starting point. I believe the governor's budget starting point this year was 80%. That will float up and down uh until the budget's finalized say June. And you know we have to nonetheless put a placeholder. So we we used an 80%

placeholder for chapter 71. If there is a windfall, let's say it comes in at 90 or 95, uh whatever excess there is will go into the chapter 71 stabilization account. The rules there are that it came from transportation from 71. It can only be held for transportation and used for transportation and has to be used the subsequent year. Okay? So should we see uh an increase in that then uh that will be held for you and applied to transportation in FY28. Okay. Uh fee revenue you'll see doubled. Uh we are one of two career technical schools uh that charges students fees for sports and parking and things like that. Uh so we we've been doing that but we also thought that in you know good faith if you will that it was time to increase it. Uh so we doubled all fees. That's that 65,000 change you see on the next line. Investment income went down. Uh that's simply a function of interest rates. And so you know that's not good news when you're talking about your investments. But as a school that's going to bond in the near future for a roof project. I guess it's not bad news. Okay. Live by it and I buy it. Okay. But nonetheless, our treasurer who manages our investment accounts uh definitely was responding to the decrease in in percentage or rates. Uh unreserved fund balance. Uh over the years, you've been accustomed to usually putting 250,000 from excess and deficiency towards uh the revenue side of the budget. We're doing that again. I think over the last 20 years it has ranged from 100 to 350, but that's typically two to 250. We're

being consistent with that uh to help again offset member assessments. Um other miscellaneous revenue, that's uh equipment surplus for the most part. Uh and we, you know, pretty consistent with that year-over-year. Uh last you'll see a line there for that that there is that other funding source XSPY chapter 71 that's that uh transportation reserve you can see back in 2425 we benefited from that or should I say you did uh as we were able to hold that and apply it uh that year moving down you step into the member assessment side of things um the first line there transportation that's the remainder of what uh the 80% % if you will does not cover uh capital equipment is minimal. It's 106,000 essentially that's a firewall uh and switches uh I'm going to call them switches. Anybody needs more detail on that uh one of these technical guys can tell. Okay. But the things that all those cat five wires plug into and they're incredibly expensive. Um, next, retirey medical. Uh, we budgeted or put a placeholder in here for 13.25%. That's what it was last year. Um, I don't believe this when I see it, but we were predicted to be level on retirey medical. So, we went with level. Uh, if we are wrong and it's more, we live with it. You know, we'll have to fill it in either with deficiency or some other way in our budget thematically as the cover cover suggests we got one bite at the apple. We don't come back if we you know blew it with a prediction there but u and likewise if there is an excess it'll go to END and we'll be giving back at

least portion of it to you the following year. So hopefully the So what number is in here now? We use 13.25 which is what it was last year. Okay. Uh, and I'm hoping that that that holds. Okay.

Okay. Retirey medical is hard one to predict. We hardly ever see these folks. We don't know what's happening with them or the family. Uh, you're kind of going off of uh general GIC predictions and so forth. So, we nonetheless we we feel comfortable with that number. I'm just saying I hope it sticks. Okay. Uh, let's see. Minimum contribution. Uh, as you see the the purple on the right there increased by 5.12%. This is a trend that I think you're probably used to seeing where the state goes up a little but then ask the towns to go up a lot. Uh, I know that when I started at Valley Tech, it was roughly inverted about 6040. The state would pay 60, the towns would pay 40 and we're about the total inverse of that. And it's usually slowly walked about three three and a half% a year. You see it shift. Uh so to see a year jumping 5.12 got my attention. They're basically asking the towns to carry more of the burden and the states carrying less. That's part of that chapter 70 issue that people are saying this formula is not working for us anymore. Okay. Um let's see. additional assessment did go down by about 16 17%. That's a concerted effort. Uh we're trying to you know bring that down as much as we can. Um when I talk more about well next line debt there is no debt in FY27. That's in reference to our uh roof project uh which all 13 towns approved. I'll refresh your memory. That was permission to borrow up to uh $10 million to do our 60,000 square ft of roof replacement and the associated ventilation

under it. The school is uh moving ahead. We haven't missed any deadlines or any uh you know major requirements. It's just the MSBA is a very patient, thorough process. Okay. Uh so as I say, we're moving at the speed of the MSBA. Um we did just get our bid openings uh and they are all well within the expected range. So that's good news. And we're slated to do the roof construction this summer. Uh it's about probably six weeks, maybe maybe less to come in. And they'll do that, of course, when the building's not occupied. uh and then we'll be able to proceed with the ventilation portion of the project. So in the meantime uh we will be working off of bands and GANs. So bond anticipation notes or grant anticipation notes. Uh and in that scenario there you're not assigning debt to the towns. uh we basically will run on a series of bands and cans until the project's complete and then you consolidate them all and that's when the bond is is transferred over to the towns as a debt service. In the meantime uh we absorb the interest uh for the it's interestonly payments uh and we absorb that within the budget. So in the perable cost in here is about $150,000 for interest on the bands as well as about $250,000 in um feasibility and schematic design. So we're carrying about $400,000 uh within this budget to service that project as it goes forward. Now I'll say this. I hope that we finish the ventilation portion of the project uh in 27 and

we're able to bond in 28, but there's a good chance that might not happen. I shared that with with Evan uh that, you know, I'm hearing things about particularly ventilation, mechanicals, and things being backordered and maybe not the roofs clicking right along, but I don't know that that portion will. So there's a potential that, you know, we could be still uh in a van scenario in FY28, in which case you wouldn't see a debt service until 29. So that's the kind of the situation with the the roof uh and the debt associated with it. Uh you get the the total there. There's our 2 and a half% and below that we get into some of the expenses, the summary on the expenses. uh the 1000 through 7,000 series. There you can see there's a 4.11% increase, but give you a little asterisk on that that I'll come back to in a moment. We just discussed 8000 series. That's the debt and what's going on and as well as short-term interest. Um school choice, we have one student. Last year, we had four. If you're not familiar with how school choice works, this is a student who is going to Worcester V.

At Worester, he or she, someone we've never met, uh, is attending school at Worcester Vog. Um, not even sure what town this person lives in. It's kind of irrelevant. The way it works is that we would get chapter 70 money for that student and Valley Tech acts as a pass through for it. So, this doesn't hurt you. It's not an expense. Uh, we're not We're simply a mechanism to pass it through. Doesn't take a seat. Doesn't take a seat. There's none of that. But financially, we act as a pass through. And we had four of them last year. We have one now. That's why you see this uh $14,000 difference. It's just a mathematical function of how they they pay for out of district students.

So that comes in from the state in in school choice incoming and then goes out to the other. It would come in through chapter 70 through school 8 and then right back out the door uh to Worcester. Right. So they just use us as a pass through. It's basically how that works. I know at least for us it's it's a separate line than chapter 70, but yeah, same. It's a little little different for your choice students than it would be for us. We're we're basically like the the middleman who just passes through the the funds. If it's your students, doesn't it? Yeah. If they were the state, they'd be charging 20% for the privilege of passing it through.

Well, if if you're the town who owns that student, yes, you're you're definitely paying a lot more the bill than than that. Okay. Uh let's see. All right. Uh the last line there, you see reduction in force, but let's keep flipping here. Uh next page is uh page eight is about excess and deficiency. Um I think everyone is is aware that excess and deficiency for a regional school is uh not just allowable, it's um highly recommended. Uh again we are fiscally autonomous in that whatever happens we have to be able to manage any kind of uh unforeseen situations a boiler breaks uh anything like that uh because we simply don't have a singular town to go back to. Uh so the state uh and department of revenue caps that at 5%. We are currently uh certified END this year of 1,384579. You can see the summary at the bottom which is 4.3%. So we're within our 5% cap. Uh I think I already uh made it clear to you that the district has applied 250,000 of it towards the revenue side of the the uh a sheet. Uh but we also, you know, like to for full disclosure, uh make sure that everyone is aware of the things we use END for. So obviously one-time purchases, highly unadvisable to ever use END for a recurring expense. To my knowledge, we've never done that. Um, it has been uh our primary go-to source to maintain our our building. Um, you may may have noticed that over the years uh I think it's been about 25 years since we've had a special warrant article. I think it was a dump truck in about 23 years ago.

Y,

right? But we maintain our own building. We have a capital improvement plan. Uh, this has been a great uh way for us to keep Valley Tech uh 62 year old building now uh up to snuff without major again borrowing our projects. The 2004 renovation and this 20 years later we just did this $10 million bond to fix the roof. But otherwise everything in between we've been able to maintain uh actually a very good-look school building uh for its age. Uh and so that's one way. We also will seek, as I said, any kind of grant opportunity. It certainly strengthens your grant if you have some matching funds. That's another typical use of END for us. Um, as well as any unforeseen emergency or cost or things like that. In full disclosure, the school committee intends to utilize up to 600,000 of END in FY27. It's come down a little bit. I think last year we were 7 750. We're in more of a conservation saving mode at the moment. So, we brought that down a little bit. Um, which I think is advisable. Um, couple other things on this page. You may or may not remember that last year we uh had a majority of the towns approve a stabilization account. We great accounts made uh but we are not in a position to be stowing money away for stabilization. So there's no appropriation to that. It's basically uh formed but we'll stay there with a zero balance in it. And transportation we've talked about a few times. Hopefully we may see greater than an 80% reimbursement on transportation and we'll be able to put some money in there

for next year. Okay.

Any questions on END? Okay, next we get to the town assessments on page nine. Specifically, uh, Grafton is uh going down by two students and but has an increase of 1.93%. Uh, the increase is $31,882. Uh what's interesting about it, at least from my perspective, is minimum contribution for minus two students actually went up 39,630. But because we have a fairly conservative budget here, it cooled it cooled it down from 3% to really 1.93. It's still never great to see you have a decrease in students and you still have an increase. U but at least I'm happy to say that it's uh relatively minimal increase given what I'm seeing in some other districts. Um brings you per pupil uh cost to 18,342 which puts you right around say fifth in rank in terms of the varying per pupil costs that chapter 70 formula creates through minimum contribution. So you're not you don't want to win that prize I don't think anyway. uh not the contest you want to win, but you're you're not quite at the top. You're somewhat at the top third. Okay. Um basically, uh if it I look at this a little differently than maybe most people do, but 81% of that increase is because of the change in that formula minimum contribution. It's tough because we worked really hard and took some pretty good hits to get to a two and a half% overall increase and then I turn around and tell good people like you that congratulations, you're down two kids but you're still going up,

you know, 1.93%. But that's the way it works. Um, any questions on per pupil? Excuse me. Okay. Uh before you flip the page, just one thing I did a little bit different visually here. Um you see in the the chart there, it shows everybody's operational ratio. So you have Grafton with 92 students uh with an operational ratio of 7.36%. Minimum contribution is not highlighted because it's its own animal. Okay? And it has its own formulation. When it comes to the other items like transportation, capital equipment, retirey medical, they're always in their own column because they're not part of foundation uh and additional assessment. I colorcoded those the same because everything else simply goes by your operational ratio, right? You will pay 7.36% uh of the total of those items. Uh so I just I did that just to highlight that you know some of the things that we find surprising sometimes baffling about chapter 70 calculations and minimum contribution at least the portions that we do control it's straight operational ratio. Okay no voodoo math there. Okay. Um

so those are the portions above what's covered by the uh minimum contribution.

That's correct. So you as you go across you finally get to your last column which is the assessment FY27 assessment. Um so you get minimum contribution you have to take transportation capital equipment and retirey medical and put outside of minimum contribution and then whatever the plug is in other words the difference between that and your overall budget in this case to close to 2 and a.5% that's where we have the additional assessment u what's interesting about additional assessment is that if I last year it was 1.8 8 million. We got it down about 16%. I think it was the 1.52. Uh our goal is to try to shrink that even more. If we didn't have the 400,000 in there for the interest, it's onetime interest on the the roof and the uh feasibility and schematic design. Um really comparing year to year, that's really 1.1. So we felt pretty good about, you know, our ability to really crank things down and things a bit more efficiently. I somewhat use that like the barometer and so, you know, we hope to continue to do that in the future. I don't know that it's ever going to go to zero. You can have other problems start to occur. For example, we're running very very close to required net school spending. When you start falling under required net school spending, there's penalties and punishments that can come with that. namely they'll start uh the primary punishment is they'll reduce your chap to 78. Right? So you're kind of like hovering a helicopter as close to the ground as you can get it and don't crash it. Okay. Uh so we're we're reaching a point of efficiency like that where I think you'll see additional assessment in the future continue to come down some

especially when we clear off uh holding interest payments and things like that. Uh but I think you get down to a certain point and it's going to kind of hover uh because you really don't want to fall under required net school spending because of the penalties. Um moving to page 10. Let's see. Okay. So you have a a overall budget expense summary by function here and in the pages that follow uh kind of an explanatory on each uh series within the budget. I want to just jump if I can to page 22. It's the debt 89,000 page. It's page 22. I'll give you a second to get there. The reason why I want to do this, okay, I use a teacher technique. Everybody look up when you found the page. Okay. Uh you see at the top debt 8,000. We've talked about that with what we're doing with the interest only school choice. We talked about that. It's the next column down the reduction in force. So in order to reach a 2 and a.5% target from you know again coming down from a 7.22 to a 250 required a million and a half2 to be exact. So you don't do that without getting into salary and wage. 88% of our budget's fixed cost but 56% of it is salary and wage. So, you just simply can't make cuts like that without getting into FTEES. And so, this budget includes uh about approximately eight uh FTE cuts in it. Um some of that and much

of it is highly variable depending on who comes in. We're just about to, you know, accept our next cohort of students. How many classes do we need of X, Y, and Z uh to to fill their needs? What I can tell you is that um it that obviously we had some concept of what positions are they cutable uh and up for consideration. Um and it's across pretty much all series, right? It's not just teachers, it's not just support and so forth. It's pretty spread out, very spread out. So what how we represented that in this budget was that clearly on paper here within the math you can We've committed to $650,000 of, you know, reduction to salary and wage or approximately eight FTEES. So now when you go back and you look at series 1,000 through 7,000, they're actually not accurate because there is eight less FTEES that are going to be sprinkled throughout those categories. Otherwise, they're they're perfectly fine, but they're not ex that 4.11% increase is not accurate. There's 650,000 or eight less FTEES at the end of the day. Okay? Uh so, I just wanted to make sure that people understood that there are other ways to go about it. You could pink slip the whole place and then at the end of the the session say, "Okay, you're good news, Anthony. You're still still employed." uh we just took it a little bit differently because we're we know we're we're doing it uh but exactly who and what positions uh remains to be seen. Okay. Still

and and our head headcount isn't going down. Um we had almost 700 applicants again this year for like 315 320 positions which has been the norm now for the past I don't know eight or nine years.

We have two and a half times the applicants than we have seats. So, you know, our enrollment's basically never going to go down. So, we're we're it's not like we had a fewer students to to do that. We just u well we're very committed to coming with a budget that was not in excess of the levy for two and a half and that's what it took to do it. Okay. Um the following page 23 is uh the accounting of uh that 1.52 million in cuts. Couple point out a couple things. Obviously at the top is your biggest reduction is in those FTEES. Uh showing you the collective bargaining agreement. That's the teachers contract that uh has saved us quite a bit of money in year one. Uh some other things uh I'll I'll look at um oh here's a important one down you see revolving account offset. So another way to uh help with things is you can look at cutting expenses but you can also generate some revenue. Uh and so we started you probably aware that we started BBTI uh that is our night school program for adults. Um significant uh effort by the school all grant funded. It is self- sustaining doesn't cost zero expense. In fact, it generates revenue uh and at the same time uh also provides the community with uh essentially skilled workforce for adults. Uh we were just we just launched it this year. It started in January already have 108 adults signed up. So we're off to a extremely good start. Um now BVTi

uh that was first of all a million40,000 from the state to you know start the program. Uh we're already looking at round two for us to add another four programs to the five we already have. Uh and so uh two things that BVTI does. we were able to cut some expenses because if it's one of the we we started with HBAC, plumbing, electrical, machining, and welding. So, those five programs uh benefit they're able to let me say it differently. BVTi picks up a lot of supplies and materials. It allows our day programs to cut their budget. Okay. So, uh the other thing it does is it generates tuition revenue. Uh and you see here the 30,510 uh is essentially revenue we took from BVTi. Now I was it was born in January. It's all of what three four months old and I I said you can't steal money from a baby. You don't do that, right? So picked in the pocket a little bit. Uh but I want this program to grow and get bigger and bigger. I think in the future you'll be seeing, you know, 300,000 in in revenue from it once it gets up to full scale. For now, we just took a little pinch. Uh but it did also save a lot on the expense side, right? So, and it's a win-win. um 108 adults who were getting certified and trained in in those trades plus a dozen or so courses like

personal enrichment courses um understanding social security floral arrangement and we see those types of courses growing in the future. Yeah. Yoga things like that. So what we call uh p personal enrichments

personal enrichments and then you have the other side of it which is uh the 200 hour certified trade courses. Okay. Uh so I'm happy to see that. Also, you might notice underneath that cosmetology, productivity, auto tech productivity, uh productivity, all those productivities. Those are the shops where the kids um perform a service or create a product uh and basically we tapped into their productivity accounts. They're essentially working towards their own paying for their own education, right? Um the deal we make with them is that if we take your productivity, we're going to spend it on your program. It's not like we raid their account and spend it on the whole school, but all of those programs that have the ability to create revenue are helping to fund themselves. So, that was helpful. Uh that's, you know, summary of the reductions we made there. The next page 24 is a summary of the grants to as of February 17th. It's actually more closer to 2 and a half million um kind of, you know, 2 million is about average for us in grants. We're very aggressive with that. Um, of course, as a new superintendent, I wanted to break all records, right? But it didn't happen. It's just two and a half million.

We had 2.86 last year. See, I'm already getting it. So, you brought it to the table to get it.

Here's one that I want you to I want you to know about, and you would have heard Dr. Fitzpatrick say this. We don't just chase grants for the sake of getting grants or trying to set a new record. if it pulls us off mission, if it's not right for us, we won't go for it. So, one grant, it would have really done the trick here. The state of Massachusetts when they implemented the new lottery system also made a commitment to increase the number of seats. So, great, you have a lottery, you're going to just jumble it up and different kids are going to get the same seats, but you're still short on seats. So they made a hundred million dollar commitment to increase the number of career technical seats in the state. Um we were all compelled, we meaning schools like Valley Tech, uh were all compelled to look at how we could expand, right, expand seats. Um and each school could get up to $5 million for that effort. So and and they're pretty strong on this. So we uh in due good faith due diligence looked at it uh what we would have to do. Now Valley Tech over the years I remember I started there there were 600 kids then 800 then a thousand. We did the renovation and said we'd have 1,200. One day I said no way and we currently sit at 1250. Well over the years we squeezed a sponge. every closet, every meeting room was turned into a classroom or reconfigure walls uh to to make new shops or whatever it may be. So, not it's not easy to to say you're going to expand seats at Valley Tech. We also fill it as much as you know as possible given the waiting list. So, every teacher has a full schedule. Uh you know, there's no fat left on the

bone there. So, in order for us to increase by, let's say, a student, you need another math, English, science, social studies, a guidance counselor. You got to do a fifth one. Uh, and you're going to need two or three more shop teachers. So, okay, I'm looking at million and a quarter of ongoing expense and salary and wage. So, I can't get bigger by one. If we're going to get bigger, we're going to do it by at least a hundred, maybe 150, right? To make it sustainable. So, we set about it uh as as Bessie wanted us to do and we looked at what it would take to build probably about a 15,000 square foot building in the back. Move your HVAC plumbing and electrical the three most demand shops back there. Take their space inside, convert that to academic space, and there you go. You can now fit roughly another hundred in. Anyway, well, our cost uh to do that was we figured $10 million. So, okay, you did your homework. Can you imagine if I came to you today and I said, "Good news, guys. I set a new record. I got $7.5 million. There's five million of it is a grant to expand seats, and I just need you to match it. You haven't even paid for the $10 million roof yet, but I just need you to match this $5 million. Uh so I can add another 150 seats. It's just not the right time. It's not right for our valley. It's not right for our school. So of course we said no to that. But there's an example of a grant that we did not think was the right thing to pursue. Maybe someday, but not now. It's just the wrong time for that. So, I just share that with you to kind of give you the how we uh are judicious and what what grants we pursue. Another one on

here that's kind of new uh is the inind contributions at the bottom. We do get a lot of equipment uh cars, things like that donated to us. As we try to ramp up, uh asking for donations, we're much more likely to get those in the form of inind donations than cash. Uh and so we've been doing that. Uh so we just started really quantifying some of this equipment that we've been blessed with I'll say. Okay. Uh the last page here 25 is I told you at the beginning here a comparison of us to the other of Voke schools in terms of per pupil. Uh and that typo at the bottom of 1.25% should be 1.25 uh times the cost of the average vender. So, it's just nice to see where we we stack up there. Um, there's a lot of variables that go into that. I can see some that are way up near the top that are actually at minimum contribution. It depends on the school, the situation, the students that are there and so forth. So, it's and there's no prize for being at the bottom of the top of this thing, but it's just like it's nice to know kind of where you where you stand. We've been as low as I think fifth, but we never really too much in that. Um, the last page is something I think you're well aware of is that as a regional school, uh, all of our expenses are baked into one one request. Essentially, all shows up in our per pupil. And that's not un like any other regional, but sometimes um, I'll say I'm envious of schools that are within a town because you're able to partner. That's a great thing. But when you are regional, you you have to make sure you've taken care of all aspects in

one request. Okay. And that's the budget. Happy to answer any questions for you or anything you like. So for general purposes, what is the increase in salaries and wages compared to last year for for an average 1.2% increase in salary and wage lines for the teachers? So in other words, that you're talking about the contract. Well, just um in general, yeah,

uh administration uh teachers and all of that stuff, is there like a number? It's like increasing 3% 2% overall or uh overall uh I know the teachers are 1.2. Uh it's right around two and a half would be a good estimation of all of I'd say support staff all the way through administration. Um would be within about a two and a half% increase overall. Is that taking out the eight positions or No, no. No, it's not. That's what the main

Okay. Because I was like looking at administration 10,00 there's a 4.5% increase. It's almost entirely in salaries and wages, but no change in full-time equivalents. are these Yeah, let me I can explain some of that. So, u a bit of a some reorganizing. Uh so, for example, Dr. Connors was previously a vocational director.

Uh when I moved up to superintendent, one thing I did was uh I was the assistant superintendent slashprincipal. Um one of the last schools to attempt such a thing and I felt bad for who was going to take my job uh seriously. because you start getting pulled in two different directions and you know except for the possibility of not doing either one well. Uh so as we thought forward here uh there was no change in the the FTEES but uh promoted Dr. Connor to assistant superintendent curriculum director from float director uh and let the principal be a principal. Uh so categorically you'll see some changes there because he's now reported on the district side where he would have been on the school side before. So some of those percentages get I don't want to say misleading but there's some categorical shifting going on there. Um so we're we're at the same uh you know FTEES in terms of uh administration. The other thing that's u little challenging about vote tech schools is that we have a lot of regulations that regular schools don't have. So you have to have co-op coordinators, you have to have licensed vote directors and so on and so forth down the line uh to be compliant. And so there's I've looked at other Voke Tech schools in in comparison and it's not unusual that we all have pretty much the same setup because it's what you're required to have. You have to have a director just for practical nursing uh and things like that. And so you see that be pretty consistent uh vote school to vote school because of regulation requirements. So is the like the other one I see there's a instructional supervision there's a decrease of one and a half FTE but an

increase of 85,000. So is that simil that kind of where the other part of that comes in?

Uh that would be part of it and also that we are um looking at uh how we do special ed. We were also combining well one student services director uh so doing all of guidance 504s and special education uh and we were splitting that role in half uh basically special ed on one side's uh guidance uh and 504s on the other. So again some restructuring reorganizing there. That was another one of those that uh we couldn't find one left in the in all the land who was still trying to cover both bases with one person. And we've had quite an uptick in in both um say uh not not unique to Valley Tech, but student mental health has kind of skyrocketed in the last, you know, five or six years. That puts a lot on the guidance side of things. And then special ed, we're right around 19 and a half percent. So I think we're just slightly north of the aggregate in the valley in the 13 or 11 school districts. So we've had a lot more of that.

So kind of goes along with the the 2FTTE increase in schoolbased health center. Yes, you got it. It's been a challenge. I I would find it hard to imagine that Craftton schools aren't having a similar experience. It seems to be ubiquitous.

Well, I appreciate how thorough this is. It's like writing down questions as you're going then getting to them and crossing them off. There's a lot of information in here. Other people say I just talked too much. So, you know, I'm somewhere between those two. Um, I had a quick question on the the short-term interest. Yes. Um, so we're saying 150 and the previous year is five. Like how do I think of that? Because I guess if it's short term in my mind, I think year-over-year should be somewhat similar, right? Because we're thinking 12 months out, right? So yes, is that the way to think of it or am I missing something?

No, I can explain that to you hopefully um in a way that makes sense. So, uh, in this past year, uh, we basically our treasurer, uh, requested to put in $5,000 in case there was any kind of borrowing expenses, uh, related to the roof project. Um, knowing that, you know, we weren't likely to start bonding and sorry, borrowing borrowing

and and when you borrow, you either borrow short or you borrow long, right? So, what they would refer to as So where we know we are going to be engaging in bans in FY27 we have to put the interest only. So in 26 there was no such thing. Right. So the 5,000 there um honestly I don't know what exactly kind of fees you can have and so forth but he felt the 5,000 was adequate but that wasn't anticipating paying any interest or anything. Um, prior to that, we were paying off the last year uh of the 20-year bond for the 2004

renovation. So, we basically are in our second year here with no debt. Yeah. Um, does that make sense? Yeah. They they may not even even use that money last year. No, I don't I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it was um uh you didn't want they didn't want to have zero. I know that. And I don't know if that was applications considerations or account creations or whatever. They still have three months to go. So yeah, and I see that when we do finally bond, they see that you're dead exempt. You voted the exemption in this town. Then maybe quickly on the investment income. Yes.

Obviously we pointed to like a decrease in the rates, but like would that does that jive though from 2024 we say 55 25 26 we say 130 then we're coming back down to 70. So we're seeing an increase and then a decrease again year over year over year. So it's does that like make sense? If we're saying it's just interest rate driven I would think it'd be somewhat consistent because I think rates have come down last year. No, it's a very good question. So, if you back up, uh, first of all, from if you back up to the 55 there,

um, we actually went to our treasurer and said, you know, we think you're, you know, sandbagging us here. We think we're going to make a little more than that. And he said, yeah, you're you're right. You're right. And so, he adjusted it up uh into some and he was actually pretty pretty accurate. It came in about right where he thought. And that was, you know, when we went up to I don't have in front of me here. Was it 1:30? No problem. And then uh he just cooled it back off uh reflective of what he anticipates will happen with interest. Uh but two years ago it was light. Yeah. Okay. It was

Yeah. And everybody's interest went through the roof in 204 right then and 24 into 25 interest rates were out of control. So, we convinced him to raise it uh and it lasted a year and then he said, "I got to lower it back down." Yeah. The amount of money you haven't dunk in your accounts, Yeah. will change over time. So, it's um I quick question for you on the uh chapter 71 money. You were talking about an 8020 split. Yes.

Let me try to make that make sense. I don't Yeah, I was trying to figure out how 1.8 million and 8.43 is 8020. They It's not Oh, okay.

Uh I I I did the same thing earlier today. I called the business manager say, "Hey, this doesn't make sense here. It's more like 6436 or something." Okay. Uh no, no, no. The chapter 71, the 1.824 824 is based on our prior year's final uh transportation bill and they base the 80% on that but the 843 is on what we know is contracted for FY27. So you're kind of in a rears on the 80% reimbursement, but you're in the forward on the because it's a known. We're actually in the last the fifth year of a five-year contract with Vendetti. So we will be going out to bid for a new bus contract, but I caught that same thing earlier.

So the 1.8 million is your your total spend for last year. No, that is the we can anticipate the reimbursement being because it's 80% of what last year's total was. Does that make sense? Our total cost of 1.8 plus the 84. Blowing Chip's mind right now. No, it's just, you know, I try to do make the math work out right off. You know, it looks I'm sorry. It's state math. I said is not fun. That's exactly right. Um, okay. And I did the same thing earlier today about it two hours ago. I said, "This math isn't mapping."

So then maybe the state regional chapter 71 1824, you would take that, you would sum that with the 843 below to get to an approximate total cost, right? That that's is is what is getting applied. Now, I'll make it even more confusing. um that 1824 is based on an 80% assumption of the prior year of the prior year's total but it's not but it's not exactly the she's not but just earlier today somebody introduced a bill to move regional transportation to 100%

and I've seen that trick before it's not going to last and it's going to go to through the process and it's going to get dropped back down uh probably bounce a few times and probably going to come out maybe if we're lucky 85. This year's interesting because so many schools and towns are talking about how inadequate uh school funding was for the state that you may get a better bump uh than the 80% that was in the governor's budget uh because they want to show that they're listening. Yes.

If that's the case, then that 1.8 million uh will be using a different factor. Say it's 90%. That would be wonderful. It's still going to be 90% of what your last year's total was. That's what you'll get to roll forward into 27. Uh and then if there's a windfall there, we park it in the revolving or sorry stabilization and we'll apply it to you 28 which is currently at zero. So if you are are you concerned about it being less than 80 or no because of all of the if it is we live with it. Yeah, it's happened too. Yes, it is. Up and down in the 70s. Yep, that can happen. Yeah.

When is the new contract for transportation? Next year. Uh it starts next year. Starts next year. Yep. This is the final we're in the final year of the three-year. And uh what is that? 27 to 29 is the new. So 8.43 is 20% of your expected cost for the year. So your expected costs for the year are 4.2 million. Uh let me check that. Which mean 1.8% would be much less than half of your actual reimbursement or less than less than half of your actual costs.

Yeah, I'd want to check that before I answer you on that one if I may.

Okay. And if you want very precise number, I happy to send you the the answer once I get back to the uh with my business manager and say, "Give me the actual total cost for transportation prior year." That might be a better way to answer you there, Mr. M. Yeah, it looks like uh I'm looking at school services 3000 transportation 2.710 uh on the I'm looking at page 10 with the summary there. I'm assuming that that is a good total number without what you call it desal

total transportation.

Okay. Uh page 10. Contracted services plus green 2.7 million 20% of that is 542,000 But I think it's the 2.7 million minus the 843.

So it looks like it's about 30% is the the budget. Yeah, it's the 20% from last year plus the increase for this year to make up the gap. So I also want to just ask some some future casting questions as well. Sure. Um

I know that we are moving away that the state has mandated that there is now a lottery system for admissions moving forward in the next academic year. Um you are you splitting up the lottery by population in each town? Yeah. So I actually got a chance to share the we call the aortionment uh with Evan. Um and then we did not think of that word before. Aortionment. It's a good roll off the tongue. It's such a normal everyday work like every day.

It's really not that hard. But I don't know. It just wasn't there. I know. I know. I was in that meeting. I know that. Um anyhow, uh there it's not exactly straightforward, but it's very easy to follow uh when it's presented. We did just turn it into a video format because we've been out to six, seven, eight times, you know, try trying to fill in anybody who was, you know, interested in had an hour to kill. Um, and really the video I think is 30 minutes,

but usually when we present it and discuss it, it's usually about an hourong discussion. But I'll tell you it this way in concept and just quickly and happy actually Miranda, my assistant was going to send that out to all town managers, finance committees, and boards of selectman. So you'll probably get an email from us with a YouTube link, right, that will walk you through all of it. uh but just for here and now I'll give you a quick summary of this just the highlights

just the highlights we needed for okay in the merit-based system state approved merit-based system uh it was students would be scored on uh grades discipline attendance and their interview right and whatever your score was it went into all 750 applicants and we would accept students and down usually to about a score point of cutoff score about 84 till we're full. And that was how admissions worked across the state for well as long as I've been in the business. Okay, a long time. Uh and last fall the department of ed, the board of ed actually voted to move to a lottery system for forever more right until further notice. uh whether you like it, don't like it, think it's good, not it, it doesn't matter at this point. We have to implement it. And that's kind of our attitude towards it. Hey, we're going to make the most of it here. So, but you're now into a statistical process that is very different than a merit-based process. So, some things have to happen right away. Uh suddenly aortionment matters. Okay. Or you're

what I always say.

That's true. He says it uh it's totally different animal here right with withdrawing a lottery. So of the 26 vocational technical schools in the state roughly half of them had a portionment in their regional agreement. The other half of them do not make no reference to how many seats Grafton would have or Milford or so on and so forth. So we're in the porch the half that don't. Uh so part of the discussion about implementing a lottery was said, "Hey, you're going to, you know, really cause some problems here uh if you just take a random spinning of the wheel here and and let it let it go." So they said, "No problem. Any school, a regional school like like us that doesn't have a portionment in your regional agreement, you can create it within your admissions policy." So we did that. Now the state said, "You don't have to do anything. Just spin that wheel." Okay. No, no, no. That was predictable chaos and disruption, right? To do that. Uh, so we went about creating a portionment. First step, how big is Grafton? How how many seats should Grafton have? So the went through a number of ways we could determine that. What we settled on was the number of eighth graders was the most relevant. Some towns getting bigger, some towns getting smaller, some towns have lots of little kids, some towns have lots of big kids. It's it's all over the place. Most applicable was the number of eighth graders. That's a little spiky, too. So, we took a four-year rolling average of that based on October one numbers. Smooths it out. So, we got a very smooth snapshot, if you will, of how big each town is by way of its number of eighth graders on a rolling four-year average. Okay, there's your ideal. Now we said, well, wait a minute. Let's

look at the enrollment trend. What is each town, if you accustomed to sending um again, yearbyear, that's got a whipssaw to it. So he says, take a four-year average of the enrollment trend. Smooth it out. Now you have ideal and you have what's been happening. Two different things. We call this foundation target and we call this enrollment trend. match them up and you say, "Okay, what's the delta, the enrollment delta?" So, are you on target? I'd say that half the time right on target is some are way over and some are way under. So, I'll say over prescribed, underprescribed, and a bunch in the middle that are pretty close to where they would they would be if you use those two metrics. Uh, Grafton is way uh underprescribed. Um, the most extreme case actually of all 13.

You you actually surprised me with how big you are with 3,000 kids, second only to Milford. Um, I know Mr. Yets has been around long enough because I remember this too that there were times when people wanted more kids from Grafton at BVT then it went to no we want less and I remember coming back to more and I think we're at two oscillations I remember but that goes back like 30 years. Yeah. So to the board of selectman and explain why we didn't have more kids from Grafton going.

So and there was some time this is common when you guys built the new Grafton uh school. Beautiful. Uh you see the number come way down. I don't think you ever came back from that oscillation. Uh back 2012 or so we're about we are at 115 and right around 100. And then when the new school opened up, we dropped down as low as 56. Wow. Because everybody was excited to stay in town for the new school. Recently in 2025, we were at 104 and now today we're at 92. Yeah. And Matthew, do you have that? What's What's their target? Their target is fasten your seat belts, everybody.

Drum roll, please. Yeah, I have it if you need it. should be at 184. So, we also realize that you can't do that to absolutely double or or a school like no.

So, um you know, for example, Milford's going up by 70. you guys I think what are they 90 short 89 short uh and then you have towns in the opposite scenario that are going down 54 and so forth and and this was the why we said we cannot just spin the wheel you need to you'd have this every year correctly yes and and I said I'll never pass a budget again it was my first year I was

you were looking good the first year and it went down to So, I do have a question about this with the numbers at the start. How does school choice affect the number of kids that we have in school? How many kids do we have in Grafton in 8th grade that are in school choice? Well, I assure you I don't know. Well, I'm just saying but like if we had like kids that are in town that are skewing numbers of Well, I also think we have a lot of kids who end up going to like St. John's and other private schools probably more than Milford.

So I can I can speak to that very quickly. So we actually again said we're looking for the best metric, right? How big is is graft? And so we actually talked to some folk we looked at the census

that wasn't doing it. It's not only every 10 years and you have a midpoint but it doesn't necessarily tell you how many school age kids you have. What we liked about the October one number is you anybody anywhere can go on Desi's website. It's there. You can see it. It's verifiable. You can look it up for every town, etc. But we did ask uh the good folks at the SIMS department, that's a student information uh department, they could create a uh possibly they said they have the capability to create a report for us. It'll be a custom report that basically says how many school age children are there from this zip code and do it for all 13 towns. And to your point, you're going to then get not just the kids who choiced in or choiced out, but all your homeschoolers, private schoolers, charter schoolers, if I'm missing anybody, and so forth, and get a more accurate count of how many eighth graders there are spread out across the land. The short version there is that that was a possibility for the future, but everybody has some net of either kids coming or going or and so forth. And so perfect. No. uh you know using Octo October one school counts but with the other understanding that everyone has some degree of that also when you

I was going to say we we also were given six weeks to create this so we did the best we could yeah it's revisable every year because it's part of the admissions policy so Mr. and the 12 other school committee members will reauthorize every year. So if you want to tweak it, the formula if you will, we can do that. Um over the past four years, we have had 245 applicants from Grafton. So on average a year, is that what you're saying or no? No. Over. So the 185 would be the total class enrollment for a four-year period in BBP.

Over the last four years, we have had 245 students. It it stays roughly the same every year. Uh I can tell you you have typically 62 five year, excuse me, average is 62 applicants a year total. Uh so let me finish the story. Oh, okay. Fine. Yeah. So, we we just the goal here was to try to make something that was fair, uh, predictable. That was one thing I was hoping that we could tell town managers was, hey, no matter what it is, at least you can pretty much bank on that, plan on that for the foreseeable future. Never did like the fact that, you know, you're up, you're down, you're up, you're down.

Uh, and so here we go. So, we we thought there was never the point. Well, the whole point was to not uh create chaos. So, we decided to slow it down. And so, we took the uh delta uh whatever it the fastest 89 89

the 89. Well, the fastest you could go is 25%. So, in other words, in the next four classes, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, right? We're going to adjust to this 90 kids in four bytes. So, we slowed it down to a 12 and a half% pace. Uh, basically cut it in half. What that does is it predictably says next year you're going to have a plus 13 give or take. It's not a perfect math because kids move, they come, they go. Um, and I was pretty forward with Evan to say, "Listen, this is this is year one. I can predict you're going to have 13 seats. We're going to run a lottery in all 13 towns. So, we need the whole point of this exercise is what's the seat allocation? How many? You have to look at how many seniors are leaving or students are exiting. So, you got to replace that number and then you have to add in what's the adjustment we're trying to get to. So, that's the plus 13. will determine how many seats there are in the lottery for for Grafton applicants. U no town doesn't have enough applicants. So that if anybody's curious about that uh and we basically try to take this and as slowly and smoothly roll into this new system uh as being as dis least disruptive we can be uh whether it's again kids coming or going. You also would predictably have some adjustment to make it the local school system. Uh and so you know there were some towns who really um for example had a lot of kids losing seats. Um you have to be mindful of as I say the hat that you're wearing. Uh sometimes people with the financial hat on will say great we have a

reduction in seats. But if you're a parent you want junior to go to Valley Tech. I could tell you I got a lot of folks not not too happy with us right now because they're realizing that they have fewer seats, fewer opportunities to get in. Now you can boil it right down to the odds. Uh what are my odds of getting in when you know how many applicants there are. So it's a very strange new process. I'm not going to say I'm for it or against it. It is what it is. But given the rules, we tried to come up with the least disruptive possible way to do it.

And what I've said to people and I encourage you to watch the whole video if you're so inclined and interested that we are very open that if somebody has a better way or suggestion uh of how we could do this better, please let us know because every year we can revise this thing a bit. And it it just I'm going to slam the people in Boston again, but she seems like a typical state house brain fart because now you're in the position of having to say, "Okay, you town, you're 30 people over, so we're not going to take any from you for a couple of years until we flush the people out the other end." Yeah.

Yeah. And we tried to mitigate that the best we could. I I would think that that percentage would apply to the incoming freshman class, not the school as a whole. So that it's it's the because if you apply to the school as a whole and people leave and stuff, you're your incoming people are going to change year to year where if it's if it is you get to bring in this many new people each year and then it's consistent year to year. I think that that seems that would help some of that. Once you get to a steady state, it's going to take a while to get there.

Takes takes four years to get to a steady state. The steady state is somewhat of an unknown right now. We have a very low rate, maybe just one or two or just a handful of kids that leave BVT during their four years wanting to maybe go back to their their hometown high school, something like that. Um, most of our the admission process that we had previously uh was focused on students that wanted to be there. the grade part I think was was only about 20% of the overall consideration in the old formula. Um so we had students that that wanted to be at BBT with very little numbers dropping out.

Being a votech uh if we if we get a significantly more higher amount of students that drop out their sophomore, junior or even their senior year, we can't replace a lot of those students because they've already missed a year, maybe two years of vocational instruction. So you can't come into Yeah. a machining program your junior year and then just fit into the class and and go there,

right? We we couldn't get enough hours in to qualify for the state anyways to be able to take a student like that. So if we get a higher number of D because in the lottery, I mean, we might get more students. They're just throwing their name in there to see what happens and check us out and maybe leave after a year, year and a half. and then we can't replace that student. Um, so you know, we might have overall smaller class sizes graduating because of the different type of mix that we have now um being a lottery system because I imagine that you get you get some loss because people move and that kind of stuff.

Oh, normal normal. Yeah. Sure. Not not just people that I don't want to do this anymore, but people that leave the area or move. I was I was thinking if if it's you have this many you have 1250 divided by four seats plus or minus two or three each year then I think doing that as a percentage would be uh smoother than if well if you have three people from Grafton move out then suddenly you have three more seats coming in the next year. That is all I was I was thinking with that. So and we looked at it a number of different ways but you know Dr. Connor is famous for saying if we were a brand new school

starting from scratch this is easy take 184 divide by four that's your seats and it's just smooth and heaven can bank on that like the sun rising okay but when you it's all about aortionment

when you start with a school that schools 13 of them that are all over the place in terms of you know their relative size and now you're forced into a statistical process process. How do you do that fairly? Right? And there's always going to be in every town, I tried to explain this to Dr. Connors because I said sometimes people are just going to be mad at you that uh even within a town there are some people who say, "I wish it was faster. I wish it was slower. I wish it was more. I wish it was less." And so, you know, it's impossible, let alone 13 times. But sorry. No. Um, so it's a pure lottery system or do you have a choice to make it a weighted lottery? Uh it is weighted.

Okay. And would you like me to explain what weighted mean? Happy to explain it. So there are three possible tickets that can be earned. Uh you get one ticket automatically. The second ticket or you can earn a second ticket um if you have not missed more than 27 days of school in the previous 270 days. Okay. So 10%. Yeah. In which case you wouldn't be eligible for promotion anyway. So that's a free ticket. So you could have graduated if you got more than that. Right. And the third ticket

can be earned if you have not committed and been convicted of committing a felony in school in you can commit one out of school. Out of school. So 13-year-old felons, a very common demographic, literally everywhere. So you could say they made the lowest possible bar. Wow. Again, if you had, you might say with 27. So everybody gets the same, right? So it's really

everybody starts with three ludicrous and there's some extraordinary circumstance that you didn't get all three. So, I mean, BVT is you've built your reputation on, you know, and most of that is obviously your administration, um, but also the students that you admit, like you said, they want to be there. That's part of the interview is getting to know these kids and and knowing if they're serious about it. Do they actually want to come? This is a nightmare. Yeah. Thank you for a nightmare. Seriously, I know I'm stating the obvious, but

you you can't get one ticket because you didn't graduate, but you can still apply and get the other two tickets. Yes. Yes. Good solid thinking. Yes, this is true. And to your point, um concerned about it. Yeah. Uh particularly from a school culture standpoint. Yes. Um, we have what I would refer to as a lot of positive peer pressure or peer encouragement. Uh, that usually when freshmen come in, it's they're usually when the juniors on that cycle, sophomores and seniors are together, but usually it's the juniors in somewhat of a mentoring capacity. They're like, "Hey, we don't do that yet." Like, you know, that doesn't work here. And they

you hear a lot of that. Yeah.

Positively. and and plus it's a culture of professionalism like hey you're in this shop now you have to you know act like a professional mechanic or whatever and so there's concern that that could change could um hope not we might have to ramp it up in terms of trying to you know get students that are coming in to understand or appreciate conform to if you will the expectations of a culture of professionalism Um, it's not year one you're really worried about. It's year four when now you have four years of lottery admissions. And like a true lottery, there's a lot being gambled here.

Yeah. All right. And I I don't want to. So frustrating. Yeah. I don't think it's the kind of thing you should be gambling with, but some folks had different thought on it,

especially for the student that, you know, wants to be in the trades and maybe has worked with a parent since they were small, doing things around the house, working on the car. We don't we don't get to hear that and have that be a a part of how we accept students. Well, I think you can probably expect to see what other Voke schools get as far as graduation rates and that kind of thing because the only thing really separating BBT was your admissions process and who you were bringing in. I mean, I just um we shall see. Yeah.

Um I always What do I got if I'm not positive and I'm not, you know, thinking about, you know, this will be fine, Evan. Um, we have to take the high road

and we might have to work harder at some things that we came a little easier to us before, but um, it is what it is and I can assure you that no amount of belly aching over it's going to make it better. So, we're going to lean into it. And, you know, to get to the point, I'm also concerned that students may not have as much uh, skin in the game, so to speak, right? take um previously merit mattered, right? Like I was going to keep my grades up because I want to go there. I'm going to not miss school because I want to get into Valley Tech and so on and so forth and not commit felons. In school, you could do it outside of school, right? Right.

Crazy. So, you know, now I I don't I just don't know. Time will tell. Uh but we're going to work hard at trying to preserve what we're known for and what we've always uh found really the mission and the value of our whole school system. I hope we hang on to it. So So you said half of the the Vogue schools have a portionment portionment. A portionment. Okay. Uh aortionment. Yeah. It's a pretty common How do they how do they do with their graduation rates and stuff like that? Are they similar or

uh typically there is very low dropout rates in all vote tech schools. So that seems to be a common trait. We've we've been extraordinary with that with 100% or zero dropouts. But uh typically you find that is characteristic of of just about all of them. Um whether they have a portionment or not, it was really just a blueprint for how they created the original agreement. Um right now I'm kind of wishing we had it because everybody would be right on target where they're supposed to be. Easy.

You know, I also know that just totally random spin the drum and see whatever happens. Uh we did that math and the average range was 26. So at town could be plus or minus 26 in any given year. Wow. Due to the number of applications. So if you look at the number of applications, they they vary quite a bit. So we knew that if we just did a random draw that we would predictably be coming in every year and telling you you were either up or down. Median was 26, right? So quite the whipsaw. Smaller towns might not have any. Sure. But Milville, yeah, you could get downs with zero,

right? that could happen. So, you know, we're trying to do the best with what we got or that the hand we've been dealt if we talk 230, right? essentially I think the one of the top the things that has come up in the past with this with like the the merit-based version is it there's kind of this idea there's like this you know segment of of students who don't do as well in a typical traditional classroom setting who might do better in the trades and might not have had the best shot at getting in on the merit based system.

Um, and I kind of feel like the the idea here was that this would give them more of an opportunity. Um, it just it feels like it's like not a fully thought through idea. like if there a way to to kind of identify not necessarily the students who have, you know, earned it the most, but the students who would be the most benefited from it. I feel like that's the idea that that people were aiming for and then somehow ended up with just random lottery. And over the years, I think, correct me, was it 15% or 20% that grades counted? Oh, we kept dropping.

Kept dropping it. I think it might have even been 15% in the last last few years. So, we we actively dropped the weight of grades in favor of uh the recommendation from the sending school system, the attendance and disciplinary recommendation from the sending school system. So, if a school system had excused absences, we we didn't care. whatever your your your policy was, you send us that information. And then the interview, which was on a on a rubrics that they were all conducted the same. And the grade part of it was actually probably the smallest portion the least of the way we do that.

The biggest the problem now, the way I see it anyways is since we get so many applications, you know, that like the students that you were talking about just by the the the the numbers that they're going against in a random draw, it probably drops their chances from getting in just because we get 700. One year I think we had 900 students going for 320 spaces. Um so if you just the numbers there, they're they're going to get outweighed um in a in just a you know just a the luck of the draw.

So it was it was a 10-year discussion if I can call it that. uh that finally culminated in well let's vote do the lottery. Uh but all good points to to your yours. Um I can tell you at Valley Tech we really didn't care about grade that was the least important. The interview was nice because we I give you the answer to the quiz right now. Tell me why you want to come because we want to know that you were interested in one of our trades and you know we could do something for you. Uh that would we would get the random student that would say my dad wants me to come but I really want to go to Grafton High.

Yeah. They would say that. Had a nice lady once who told us that she wanted to be a concert pianist. That's wonderful. Lovely kid. We don't have we don't we don't have piano. That was helpful to know that. kind of related to that. Is it one application for and lottery for the entire school or are there applications for different areas like someone wants to go into cosmetology or someone wants to go into shop? Not yet. Something that's being discussed happen. Okay.

Right. Initially for so it'll be a lottery by each town. So you get in but there is the possibility that the state could take it further and to say that your selection at the end of exploratory is determined by a lottery also. Oh, that's that's not quite what I where I was going was was the the application up front. I So that's not something the state still mandates that all freshman students have to go through a 120hour exploratory process so they learn about different careers. Okay. So that's a state mandate. That is any voke school that has more than five programs or any school that has more than five V pro programs has to have a exploratory.

And we have quite a number of students that when they first interview say oh I want to go into electrical but after they go through exploratory they change and say I want to go into culinary or something like that. So they really do find out what they want to do and we try to collect the students that are interested in a vocational uh profession but they do change between what they think they want and what they actually see 50% 50% change their mind from when they come in the door to what they finally choose like when you go to college they know what they want to do sometimes they'll explore plumbing and that's their new favorite next week we'll take we'll Okay, we'll take one or two more comments and then and then wrap up your your session. Thank you, gentlemen.

Yeah. Is is there any thought on how I don't want to say advertise, but how you position I guess the application process now and are you are you planning on changing it to almost make it because before you had the interview to kind of weed out, but now you kind of almost need to say discourage, but like if you people don't want to be there, you kind of want to get them to not even apply. Is there a way how you're even a changing a quirk? Yeah. No, I mean to to to the to the contrary, we now have guidelines for how many open houses we will have, how many information sessions and so on. So, it's all pretty scripted for us. Okay.

Right. So, um we don't we don't I'm joking with you. Yeah. We don't really get the the choice to do that. Sure. Um we've never had to really advertise. We always So, it's interesting. M said one time we had 900 applicants. Um what's pretty fascinating about it is it's every year it's about 40% of the students in the in the 13 counts that apply. Today it's about 700 because there are that many fewer eighth graders in the in the town, but it's always been around 40%. So we haven't ever had to advertise. Um in fact, we don't like saying no to all those kids. Right.

So we we were always kind of trusted the fact that the ones who found us are the ones who really wanted to come, right? And we're going to stick with that because we still have way more applicants than we have, you know, seats. And it's just a different process now for get elected. The state's wisdom is, remember I told you about that $5 million grant? They just want us to make more seats until there's no more kids left on the the wings. That's that's kind of their fix. But they're not going to give any more money for that other than they get no they'll give it to Grafton.

So if Grafton wants to start a chapter 74 program that that money is available to Grafton too. Uh what we said is hey plenty of room in the pool. Come on in. Uh we'll help you start the program, build the program. Um happy to do it if that's what you want to do. when they make that I think they're going to go for another round two but probably not for another year. They just did I think 70 75 million in awards uh and they're going to put that money up again. But they're encouraging any school uh to start chapter 74 programs as long as you stay under five. You don't need Voke directors, co-op directors, Vogue certified principal, Vogue certified superintendent gets gets extensive after you go over five, but we're happy to happy to do it if you're interested. Point you in the right direction.

Thank you for that generous offer. All right, any more questions? And I don't see any online. All right, thank you for the opportunity again. Dr. really really appreciate your time. Have a nice day. You too. Good night. Thank you. Thank you.

And you know helpful to know for next year as well. Sure is. It's more information than we usually know. 365 days out, right? Yeah. Makes sense why the budget looked the way it did, right? Yeah. Okay. Um, second to last item on the agenda is the individual to prepare the state of the town message. Do we have any volunteers? Greg just volunteered to plug the new numbers into what he's done the last two years. I didn't do the last one. I did three of the last four, but not the last one. I I wrote the last one.

Just shorten it up a little. That's all. Well, that's a good photo of that is what I just heard. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That should be the status quo. Should be down to two pages. Mine was 62 pages. I had a lot to say. Um, you should do a lottery. All right, I'll do it again. I will write it again. Um, I will and I promise I'll make it shorter. You want me to take mine off of 2000? No, thank you. the number. I think it's a little different. Probably. No, the issues are still kind of the same. I guess you might be right there.

That's probably true. Um All right, I'll do it. Um would anyone like to discuss any relevant topics as they pertain to an override? Um elected the vote passed, so there's little to say on our part maybe tonight, but happy to hear any comments. How has the process been? I know it was proposed the five I don't know if I agree with this but the fiveyear 5 million the process of backing into like the individual year impact this is a good question

and what it means because I wasn't a big fan of just throwing out this arbitrary number because I know you put a lot of work into yearbyear and how we got to the 5.7. So has it has it worked okay and like how's it been for you so far? Um to be honest we really haven't done any of that work. We've been focusing on fiscal 27 and spooling up our tax impact calculator and all of our educational materials and trying to create all that this week. Yeah. Um, you know, I think that we're we'll do that. You know, the year one will be that will be 1.167 which what where we're at is we're not going to start,

you know, scrambling around now. I think that that's just going to lead to a disaster. Then we'll take what we have left uh you know divided equally among those four years and that'll be our starting point and then we'll have to make a decision every single year up or down by looking at also what what did our new growth come in at? Right. So there's going to be some some play there. So I don't want to say like we're not going to do that work at all, but I think we'll we'll have a good understanding with our forecast. I actually was just playing with the forecast um yesterday, plugging in kind of that spread out and see what the deficit looks like. I I think I think some of it's going to be

play it by ear is a bad way to budget, but a little bit. Yeah. Right. Seeing what where we get to in each, you know, you get to December, you'll know kind of what we're what we're going to be looking at. But um yeah, I mean it still still projects a deficit, but we you know, we have other work to do. So maybe we can My thought immediately afterwards was, okay, so they've passed a four and a half year override and we've stretched the last two overrides from five years to six years. I think we can probably stretch the extra half year out of that as we go. Well, hopefully except for that we emptied the school's reserves. Yeah. Yeah. To get through that. And BBT is going to go up by at least 238 next year. I mean there are there are absolutely

which is why when when we had met last or Saturday I had mentioned that we had you know we were about $351,000 to the good and while that looks like money that we want to take and put towards our our our schools or the town side of the budget. If you use up that capacity this year, it's gonna really hurt next year when you've got to come up with $283,000 additional for BBT, which is only the seats, not any other increases that that that come I I mean, I think Mr. Steel did a great job. I mean, they held their budget really

did some great work on that budget. um the you know that's not sustainable every single year because things are going to happen people right exactly so so you know we have to be realistic about that too um so you know I think we we need to leave something on the table if especially if if the vote is no right then you'll you know when you we'll make all the cuts we're supposed to make in fiscal 27 But now you still don't have that money. And when you hit fiscal 28 and you get the additional impact of

of of uh BVT, and I'm not blaming BVT. I'm just saying that's one of the realities of the conversation we just had. Um, you know, when that happens, you won't have anywhere to go but more immediate and deeper cuts. And we don't we we don't want that, right? Theoretically, we're going to see the minute savings on the school side because kids wouldn't be attending the school. But then again, but one of the things to keep in mind is that it matters where those kids would have fallen in the school system, right? Because just because you have less kids doesn't mean you can have less overhead because there's there's a point at which it doesn't matter, right? Where they where they are, which grade they're in. They're not going into the eighth grade, which is over stuffed anyway. So you

So So and and where where are the teachers and what are the programs? And I mean that's beyond what I do. Um that's that's a Dr. Cummings thing, but um you know, you have to look at that that you could lose in theory a hundred students and not see any real impact to overhead because of where they fall in the system. So, you have to keep that in mind as well.

I would say too to the um we stretched it. We also last year moved 600,000 in the trash program out and used that money to fund operations. And then also the school took 600,000 I believe in cuts. So we are super lean and for the record pulling a number out of the air for a five-year override is not something that I'm comfortable with, but it's also not my decision. So and and my my other part caution against that was

yeah, we had extra co expenses that brought it out. So yeah, hope hopefully those two things balanced out and we'll be able to stretch this out uh a bit more. So I'll see how it goes at the point that I mean optically perhaps disastrous but also legally accurate overrides are for a dollar amount not a year amount. Y So we're saying five million for five years but actually the only thing we're voting on is five million. Yep. Yeah. So, yeah, we might hopefully make hopefully we'll make get

we're working on some materials to try to and we're going to do some I guess listening sessions or whatever you want to call them. Um, but we're trying to work on the the simplest and and other towns have done this, so it's not like we're reinventing the wheel, but you know, explaining to people what the levy limit is and you're voting step one, right? Well, you're voting to move the levy limit up by $5 million. It has nothing to do with years and it really doesn't have anything to do with dollars because if you don't spend that money, that doesn't get taxed. And so getting people to understand that it's not an instant year one.

You know, year one, you're not going to see a $763 increase on average or whatever. So, I'm I mean, I've met with a few people uh this week that have come to the office to to ask that don't do computers and things like that. So, we've been printing out some, you know, we've been trying to help educate people. But it's been actually really good because as much as I know how to be a town administrator, I it's my first time going through an override from the start and seeing where the knowledge gap is is not necessarily where I think the knowledge gap would be. Yeah, is is incredibly helpful.

Yeah. So, so we've been we've been working on that. We've been in touch with other communities that have had successful overrides. We've gotten their materials. We've been talking to their staff about what went well and what didn't go well and and so we've been really hyperfocused on that. Uh this week, one of one of the things that I've seen online that people are confused about is if we don't pass the override budget at town meeting, does the ballot vote still matter? Yes, absolutely. The t the ballot vote is up or down, right? Whether or not we take advantage of that is the second vote at town meeting and there's questions about okay do we vote on two completely different budgets or do we just vote on additions.

So we we were working on that this week too because there are two different there actually not two ways there's multiple ways to do this. Yeah. Um but we are we think we are going to follow the example of our 2020 uh override conversation here. One because it it it's laid out very well. It makes perfect sense. So you've got the regular budget and then the contingent budget which is just the stuff that you would add to the budget if the override passed. Additional appropriation.

Additional appropriation. Right. Um, so one, they I think they did a a good job in 2020. And two, people are used to that. So, you know, we're going to try to stay a little we'll try to try to be consistent with that. Then maybe one other somewhat naive question like we put like an average cost per single family or whatever the actual terminology was. Like if I'm thinking of this correctly though, it would be based on your property value that correct. So we like when we put out the materials, we sort of say, "Hey, if you fall in this bracket, it would be Yeah, we have so we have two different ways we're doing that. We've got three info sheets that break down kind of by your value, you know, just a grid." Exactly.

Uh so it's year one, the 1167 number, what does that look like? The average rolling over five years, what does that look like? And what's the total at year five? Right. So we've got those three sheets built. And then William was working on today with with Amber um our override calculator on the website. And so we've got that pretty much queued up. Good. Um we they were running into techy problems that um you know because I think that's like one thing I when people see that I'm like that's not going to be the impact to every person, right? And it's like so what it what it is is you you put in your address and it come it automatically populates your your assessed value

and then it gives you year one uh the then the the um basically the rolling average right so for every year after year one this is about what you can expect to see and then it gives the year five number. So it actually splits spits out three um three different figures. So, um, yeah, the the two of them were working on it for a good portion of the day because it

it seemed like everything you touched then broke broke somewhere. The thing you you take a bunch of goofs like us that have sat here and done this and know the ins and outs of everything and take that kind of for granted when you're talking to people and there's just a big hole out there where people that oh my god this is going to happen or you told me it was going to be this and my it was twice that. Well, your house is twice as much as the average, you know, all that kind of stuff. And people just I've had I've had a few of those conversations, but I've also had um you know, some success talking to folks and likening it more to your credit limit on your credit card. Yeah.

Right. That's what we're doing, raising the credit limit. You don't have to spend it, right? But now you have some wiggle room to do it. It's not a perfect analogy, but once you start with that, people are like, "Oh, because I I was trying I did do some actually that's good. I did some explaining uh this week uh based on the debt ceiling. People don't understand that any better than the override vote. So I was like, "Oh, this is going to go nowhere.

I got to tighten this up." Um so but we we'll buy early next week. We'll have things ready to roll. Um that's our goal. So as we discussed, you know, yeah, the number changed a little bit, but it changes on every single thing that we were we were working on. So, we're just working out the bugs and want to push out, you know, correct information. So, yeah, the the credit card thing is great because everybody's gone through that. Unfortunately, you're never going to hopefully not going to go up to your credit card, but in the end, we will be at the

right. Yeah. And we've also been working on some narrative around the tighten your belt conversation. Um because the reality is we can tighten our belt and live within our means, but there's an impact to you, the resident. And so that's why you get to have this conversation. You can decide whether you want the impact or not. You can't just say tighten your belt and we'll just keep doing everything that we're doing now for the same amount of money. It's not it's just not going to work. To that point, uh what I was going to say is the um when you show like the the cost in dollars for a vote. Yes. Yeah. Um, I think it also is important to show the costs and services for a vote no

and like so if you're showing how people's taxes would increase over five years, um, I think it's important to also pair that with the those the projections of the cuts that we would see over those five years and make sure that those those two sides of the the coin are kind of being shown together.

Yeah. Yes, I agree. Um we have we have been working on that and I I have some data actually got to get to Dr. Cummings so that he can finish building out you know his longer range. He he already showed them and but the numbers have changed a little Anyways, um so we're working towards that and we also been breaking down like the per day, the per month because that that's impactful too when it's you know it's $2 a day versus you know whatever the final number is those types of things. Not even where you get a cup of coffee for $2, right? So we're working on some of that just to build that narative

just to build the narrative a little bit of of you know what that looks like. And it's tough because you're trying to do it on, you know, one sheet. You want to be able to put some something in front of somebody. So we have we have like 10 one sheets that kind of tell a different part of the story. Um so that we can start, you know, rolling that out. And so anyways, we we've been working on it. It's just not 100%. The other thing is get get people to use the clear gun more when they're doing their budgets because I sit back and kind of think Yeah. I feel like an old fddy duddy here now, but like when I started on the fire department, auxiliary guys were lucky to get a new pair of those heavy orange rubber gloves. Yeah.

A used aluminum helmet that most of them didn't even say grab the fire on and somebody's cast off coat and a pair of boots that on a nice dry summer day will keep your feet dry. Today, you take that same person and you start them on the auxiliary, it cost you $3,000, right, for a new set of turnout gear before you put any Scott air packs or any of that crap on them. So, for people to, you know, this this isn't your father's Oldmobile anymore, right? You know, it costs a lot of money to run this town, right? So, when they go through and see all of the stuff that they're getting,

right? We can, you know, bet Mark wasn't here, but we won't hear people saying, "You don't go through the law, you know, the budgets anymore. Fair point. Great motion to adjurnn." So, second, can I have a member of the committee that motion? Motion to it was a joke, but it took off. He worked for you. I'm sorry. Yeah, he he aortioned that motion. Aortion. All right. Because Heather's online, we'll do roll call, not to call you out, ma'am. Heather, hi Dan. Hi, Greg. Hi, Samir. Hi, Skip. Hi, Angelina. Hi, Kyle. Hi,

Victoria's eye. I'll see you tomorrow night at 700 p.m. Thanks, Craft. We are