WEBVTT

METADATA
Video-Count: 1
Video-1: youtube.com/watch?v=fRbrCXE3qnQ

NOTE
MEETING SECTIONS:

Part 1 (Video ID: fRbrCXE3qnQ):
- 00:00:04: Call to Order: Finance Committee Volume Adjustments
- 00:01:36: SWAT Analysis: Acton's Weakness as a Destination
- 00:02:57: Senior Population Analysis and Conquered Redevelopment Threat
- 00:05:46: School Population Analysis, Property Listing, and Financial Impact
- 00:11:27: Tax Analysis, Affordability, and Population Demographics
- 00:16:52: Town Meeting Demographics, Fixed Incomes, Tax Burdens
- 00:23:15: Reviewing List of Cities and Towns Ranked by Taxes
- 00:24:20: Senior Center Representation and Real Estate Trends
- 00:26:52: Interest Rate Uncertainty and Census Data Concerns
- 00:31:42: School Enrollment and School Budget Divisibility Concerns
- 00:34:55: Balancing Averages and Medians, Acton is Property Rich
- 00:36:46: Managing Communication on School Ratings and Tax Burdens
- 00:40:22: Financial Realities: Override Needed and Tax Burdens Too High
- 00:47:24: Commercial Tax Base, Town Center Ghost Town, Override Options
- 00:53:43: Override Timing Discussion, Debt Exclusion, Point of View
- 01:01:06: Edits Requested, Upcoming Meeting, and Warrant Articles
- 01:03:00: Warrant Articles: Taylor Road Purchase Reconsideration
- 01:06:16: Town HVAC Discussion and DPW Location Alternatives
- 01:08:59: The Proposed Warrant Articles: Concerns of Other Options
- 01:11:38: Agenda Updates and Clarification About Q&A
- 01:14:11: School Liaison Report, School Committee Votes, and Next Steps
- 01:21:11: Public Comment Slot #1
- 01:22:39: Public Comment Slot #2
- 01:29:09: Election of Officers Post Town Meeting
- 01:31:29: Motion to Adjourn


Part: 1

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Noticing the time and the presence of a quorum, I now call the finance committee to order. Um, >> okay. I just sound very loud. >> Okay.

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Check. Check. >> Yeah, I'm I think it's still super duper loud. >> All right. Be very quiet. >> This just sounds creepy.

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>> All right. Um, are there any public comments while we adjust our volume? >> Should I open the window or something? Is that I'm It still sounds kind of loud, but >> it's >> I just know when it sounds loud here, it

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sounds loud in the audio recording. That sounds better. Thank you. All right, jumping in. >> Don't say jump. >> Oh. All right.

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Um, so what I'd like to do is go through the the point of view um that I've brought current because um we now have a lot more information than we did back in September. Um,

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so what I want to do is I'm going to walk through it and then um stop and then we can go back and have questions and go through and discuss instead of kind of going through peace meal because I think it'll just go faster. All right.

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Uh, the first slide didn't really change. Just talking about the SWAT analysis, what it is. Um, this slide didn't change. You've seen this before. for it's a gross versus net calculation. That hasn't changed. This hasn't changed. I'm going to really only talk about the things that have changed to

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save everybody time. Um, so in the weakness section, I added this slide. Uh, and really what it's saying is like a weakness of Actton is that it's a very

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nice place to live, but it's not a destination. and that we don't really have a like a downtown and we don't have um and places nearby do. We have as much history as the towns around us, but we

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don't, you know, have a a similar thing. So, just as a thought to put this in, uh I'm not going to read the slide, but as you're um let me know, I can keep going. I don't want to stop people from reading it. um open to we can come back to this

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later but that's a new slide okay to keep going >> all right this hasn't changed uh opportunities um so one of the things I did was I did a deep dive through the population um census and what I found was that 15%

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of the senior population lives with families and I'm not sure if that was common knowledge in the town so since I think it's not common knowledge. I just asking the question asking the question if um if there might

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be a better way to serve that part of the population. Um I know we do a good job uh with the senior center and everything, but I just don't know if uh reading up on this part of the this type of population. I don't there they have a there's a couple extra things

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that could be done for them. Um >> what's that? Um that slide has 15% living solo or with one other >> 15% >> if you look at the data section >> that's 15% of the total >> if you total up the seniors which is

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like 4,000 15% of the seniors >> but I can I can show the math to make that clearer and saying like one in four Americans live in a multi-generational household and that's a lot of that's to do with you know the high cost of um nursing homes and everything like that.

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So, it's uh I have it as an opportunity because um being aware of the population, maybe there we can we can at least maybe look to see if we're doing what we can for them. This I didn't change. Um threats. So, all the threats are new. Um I was

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terrified writing this. No, I'm just kidding. All right. So, the first threat um this uh mirrors a Steven Star presentation. I do feel that um m the conquer de redevelopment project is a threat to Actton. Um we Stephen covered

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this in his intern presentation. I kind of covered the high points here. I mean it's 54 acres of uh developmental land. Um they have their own uh water wastewater treatment facility. Um they have plans to do something with the

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rotary at Route Two. Nothing's finalized yet. Um we Are they putting in a wastewater treatment plan? >> They already have one there >> from the prison. >> They they have to do work on I just doing a high level on this. Just saying

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that. Uh and there the lightest news I have on that is they're going to start construction in 2028 is the earliest date. But uh so I I think that's a threat because we could have people um that downsizing, moving out of town. We

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could have businesses that would want to be near this community, but uh we have uh wastewater capacity limitations on Great Road. So, all right. So, this is the light one of the three threats.

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All right. School population analysis. Uh, so my conclusion to this is that I would like to pay attention to new housing sale listings in the next 60 days to see

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if we have an abnormal increase. And the reason why I did this analysis is I felt like the consultants uh did not take in account a possibility that we could have a churn in the town

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uh that was higher than the last couple years. Go ahead. I had concerns having listened to them to to the consultant speak about that also and they've actually done extensive research paid a lot of money to have this done and um including speaking to

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um the planning boards and the everyone who knows about what major buildings or the developments are coming down the pike. So there was more research they there was more research behind what they said than it was obvious from what was spoken at the meeting. I do think I have a data point they

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don't have. So I'll get to that. But I'm telling you my conclusion first. So that's the objective. So I build to my objective. Um first thing here is uh my data since I don't have access to everything. I have 2024 income, 2025

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taxes, and 2026 census. But beggars can't be choosers. U the reason why I'm showing this slide is that it has the medium household income. It does break out the stratification of the town by revenue percentage, but this is more of a supporting document than the featured

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event. Um, I can come back to this if people want to look at it more. I just keep going. The point of this slide, this is the population. If you put your hand over the under 18 and ignore that it's there, you're looking at a standard normal distribution.

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And the point of showing this slide is that when the census is filled out, not everybody fills out the census. So, hold on. Go ahead. >> Uh, is this the town census or the government census?

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>> This is the actual town census. >> Okay. Um, I can explain later on why that's unfortunately crap. >> You can explain what >> that census is unfortunately not very useful. is an extremely low response rate. >> You didn't let me finish my sentence. >> I'm sorry. Sorry.

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>> So, since the census not everybody completes it, I took the property listings in the town. I ran them up against the census and all the vacancy of the streets that for the I've identified all the houses that didn't respond to the census. Then I went street by street and looked at the

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average number of h people living in each house per street. And then I assigned per each street the for the vacancy the number of people for the average for that street. Then I used the standard normal distribution to distribute the ages across the population. Because when you have an 80%

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of a population and you have a standard normal distribution you can assume that the difference the the remaining part of the distribution is going to have the same um characteristics as the larger part of the distribution. So I have a full census. It's an estimated portion.

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>> I'm impressed. Thank you. >> All right. So that's this is why I when I said I was going down a rabbit hole, I went down a rabbit hole. All right. So >> yeah. So the result is um this is the my

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estimated see that I had 2700 estimated people and I was kind of happy when I finished because everything I see referencing actton says we have 24,000 people and I got 23883 doing a very specific approach. Um, so this is the

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breakdown of the town um, on the data that I pulled together. But again, this so I'm identifying the income levels. I'm identifying the stratosphere like how the population distributed. I'm

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breaking down how the how the population looks in order to do this further analysis. I'm going to go one more slide. I know there's a lot of stuff to look at here. >> Yeah. the senior's number there. Is that 60 plus or 65 plus? I can't read it.

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>> 66 plus. >> Okay. >> All right. I'm just going to move on. All right. So, to explore my hypothesis that my hypothesis is is that people have been stuck in houses. they've been unable to move and that if interest

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rates go down, which I expect them to this year with the Fed share changing in May that and that we might have a pent up demand of people that might want to move. So I got the actual tax history,

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property date of the town. So these are all actual numbers. There's nothing estimated here. So just looking at residential, so house single family, two family, three family condos. Um this is the sales history and you'll see there's

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a drop from 2021 to 2025. And at the same time, mortgage rates in inflation rate is shooting up to the roof, which makes sense. People aren't buying things when rates are going up and inflation's high. But then when you jump to the school enrollment, that's actually the

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same time when the enrollment flattens out. Um if you look you know like from 2012 to 2020 yes there's a massive drop in enrollment. There's a there's a about 150 difference between 2020 and 2025.

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Uh so only one more. So if you look, so then I took the population. I I talked with a um a a real estate agent in the town and I was trying to

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identify in the population what's the most likely group to to move like if you had to pick a scenario. So the most likely people to move are uh parents with either just college age kids or

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adults, young professionals living at home. So in this town we have 1,300 families that fall exactly into that category. And if twothirds of them, so about 860 of them were to go sell their houses,

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and if they sold their houses, they're all in nice neighborhoods. They're going to be replaced by families with little kids. We could have anywhere between 250 or 650 additional kids in the town. But this is why I want to look at

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property listings because that's a leading indicator. uh that's going to tell us if people are putting their houses up for sale. So what's the financial impact? Uh so the the current school model is being

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calibrated using today's demographic and mix of elementary population. Uh the model doesn't have capacity to to absorb the high end of this projection of the of these additional students this fall. Other thing is is that only only the uh

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only Blanchard is going to maintain its school ranking. All the other schools are going to be new. So uh new buyers come into town and they they've always come for the high ranked schools. So the only ranked school elementary school in the district for this upcoming year is

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going to be Blanchard because the new schools won't have a rating. It won't have won't be ranked because they're brand new schools. So what could possibly happen if we we could have a situation where we

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have uh new buyers choosing um Boxboro over Actton. Uh and Boxboro I've driven through it seems like have a lot of space to build things in Boxboro.

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So, the question is, are we making long-term changes based on short-term enrollment conditions? And I'm just saying, let's just pay attention to the housing listings to the next 60 days. Um, if they're static or they're normal,

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shouldn't be anything to worry about for the fall and the plans that we have. But if interest rates drop and the market's better and we have a couple years of pent up demand for people that have been trying to move um and now maybe Boxboro

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is more desirable to act than acting. We could have some changes coming. So that's the school and then I have another Well, can we come back? They're both thick topics. So taxes.

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All right. All right. So, this is the slide I put in the uh FinCom uh write up that Actton's the 30th 30th highest t tax. So, this if when you see the warrant, this is what's been put

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in the warrant. Um and then just taking that same data and sorting it by by annual tax bill. We're the 21st town and these are the towns above us. So, this is stuff that everybody's seen before. Um but what I did is I connected the

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census data with the tax data. So I was able to get a deeper dive into the population to understand the tax burden across um populations seniors

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um groups that the group that's spec identified is likely to move. And when I say seniors, um, when I did my census analysis, I if I saw like two young kids and two adults, what looked to be aged of

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adults, I called them a family. I didn't call the adults seniors. I just called them a family. Uh, when I saw a senior by themsel or just with one other senior, I called them seniors. And when I saw what looked like a family unit,

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three or four people younger, middle-aged, and then like one or two people that are much older, I called that seniors living with family just to I so I went line by line in the census and looked at everybody that responded.

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But then I was trying to get some type of measuring stick and there's this Lincoln Institute framework that bans affordability. Um so affordability like anything basically is 8 10 10 is potentially unaffordable and over 10% is

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but just looking at this right now our tax burden across these bands 37% of the addresses I was able to analyze. Um, now mind you, there are addresses that there's more addresses in town than I could analyze. So, this again would be

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more than 75% of the town. So, this is statistically significant, but it's not everybody. Um, so that's that. Looking one step deeper, um looking at how it breaks out across

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the households, you'll see that uh if if you're a family, if you're average s if you're in the 3 to four person household, we have a thousand addresses in town that are falling into the

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unaffordable range according to this metric by the Lincoln Institute framework. And then finally uh my last slide on this is the seniors. So my first slide showed the median

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income of 158. Um I don't know what the income of the seniors are. What this did is it took seniors with a moderate income and seniors with a low income and it just what this tells me is that the the

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seniors really don't have capacity for higher taxes. So that's the affordability piece. Um then I have the summary point of view and then um we have our note that we don't want to have an override. Then I

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have the forecast. Uh this is the recommendations that we had unchanged and then I have the three warn articles at the end. So now I will go back to the beginning and um why don't we go uh left to right and you well everybody just

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we'll go one at a time everybody ask your questions and then we'll by the time we get down to Fred will be Steve what are your questions where do you want me to go >> um go to your age brackets >> this

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>> no that Sorry. There you go. I've been to um who goes to town meeting. Um, and so, um, if you look at that distribution, I'm going from memory, you

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can strike out the under 18s, the 18 to 20s, 20, 30s, 31 to 40s. Um, the biggest group is, um, 61 to 70. Um,

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>> back then, >> back then, >> this is real numbers. >> Well, this was real numbers. This was an analysis of who actually showed up at town meeting. Um, the ones that consistently showed up u were a very small group of about 100

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people and their average age was about 62. Um, and Greg probably knows most of them. I knew most of them. um >> in the finance committee. >> Um so when you talk about

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town government, what I'm saying is the distribution of who goes to town meeting is our legislature because that's what town meeting is, the legislative function. Um so when you pitch something um

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to that group then like we're about to do at the senior center you're talking to the primary legislators of the town. Um so I would keep that in mind. Um the other thing I would say is you your

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comment about seniors living on a fixed income. It's not quite true. Um there always is a social Yeah, we still get social security. You guys will not but um

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there's always a bump, you know, for inflation. Uh and it represents a fairly big chunk of a lot of seniors income right now. Um, most of the other people who don't have a pension, and that's not that many

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people these days, are living off IRAs or converted 401ks, and those can go up in value. Uh, basically, they're um the retired minimum distribution rules is you're always taking a little bit more out of it than you did the next year.

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The variability comes in, it it's based on the value of your account at December 31st. Um, so they don't really live on a um a fixed income. What I would say is they don't have an opportunity to make uh

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large gains in income. >> Yeah. But I'm not saying that I'm not saying they're all on fixed income. The the whole point of that the slide I'm showing right now is that uh it was saying that if the seniors are not making the median income it was just

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showing a sensitivity of moderate to low on fixed income. >> I was just reacting to the seniors live on a fixed income. >> Okay. They don't >> not saying they all are >> that and um what I would say is they have limited potential income growth and

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therefore limited capacity to withstand higher taxes. >> Any further questions, Steve? >> No. >> All right. Rollins. >> So the one that you had it had Actton's listing against 350 cities and towns is 351.

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Uh the town of where or Warren did not have any data. >> Yeah. >> So there are 351 towns, but there's only 350 that are ranked >> where >> it's Yes, that one. >> It's it's it's way out west somewhere. >> Yeah. There's no data on it in the data.

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>> Population of 1500 or something. >> Yeah. >> All right. I just I just you know because it says the first add a footnote and say that there >> well just of all 351 Massachusetts municipalities on the on the verdict on the board. >> Well they could be the wor could be the

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worst and we could be 31st. I don't know. They didn't have their numbers so high that they're afraid to report it. >> But it's 351 cities. >> I'm trying to get humor in Greg. It's not working. >> I know. >> I'm trying. It's >> 351. So >> all right. I I I can I I'll add a footnote for you more. Well, just just

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change the 350 to 351 on the on the bottom mask municipalities in the verdict. >> Okay. Sorry. >> Is that your only question? >> No, but I'm surprised you came out of the rabbit hole on this whole thing. It's like holy moly. >> I don't know how you did any of it, but anyway.

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>> Okay. It took some time. Um, no other questions on this. All right. Uh, Greg. Um, one of the things that us seniors uh have access to is the senior center.

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And having interviewed them last week uh about who they think they represent, they define seniors as people who are 60 or older. So that may be different than some of the data that you have, but

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um the audience you'll be talking to um thinks they're 60 and older. >> I am not doing this again. >> No, no. What? >> I'm not doing this the whole thing again. >> No, no, no, no. >> We're going to live with the notes down, but I'm not

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>> When you're getting in front of that audience, they know who they are. Uh the one thing I will say is that uh a lot of people these days that are 60 are still working. >> Some of us who are 76 are still working.

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So yeah. Um, second, um, I don't have any context for this, so I don't know what normal looks like, but over the last month or so, I've subscribed to uh, releer.com

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uh, for Actton. And what it uh gives me is daily data on what houses have come on the market and also uh data on uh houses that have dropped their price 10,000.

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Um uh and and apparently, you know, maybe that's uh to encourage somebody to buy it now or whatever, but but but what it I I just don't know what normal would have looked like a year ago or two years ago or three years ago. But if you want,

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you can subscribe to it. I will send you as many as I have from the last month, but that's probably more than you want. But I've been watching that stuff, too, just to see what the trends are. Uh, three, the interest rates. I would have agreed with you until last week when

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Scott Bessant took a very different position than he had up to last week and he said now he's for wait and see on lowering interest rates partly because of what's going on in the

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Middle East. And so if even Trump's guy in the Treasury is hedging on what will happen in May, I don't know that we can presume that we have a better crystal ball than

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he does. Um just FYI, >> but just to be clear, I'm not trying to predict the future. I'm just saying that I'm asking that we pay attention to the housing listings. Oh, >> I'm saying my own personal opinion is that rates are going to go down, but

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after looking at 10 years of all these documents that have been produced, I know that we're more likely wrong than we're correct. >> But we can be factual and if the housing listings spike, that's a real result that would indicate that housings are housing is going to turn, it would also

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indicate that whatever assumptions are being made now >> are going to need to be adjusted immediately. >> Yeah. All all all I'm saying is if you're talking to a realtor, that's the right thing to do. That's the piece I'm missing because what I've discovered is

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quote getting the data doesn't give me the context. And so I I wouldn't know a spike if it hit me. I can see the data and it's like, is that an unusual number of homes that are for sale or is that um I don't know. I

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have no context. So, the good news is there's more data available today than I used to be able to get a hold of. It's just I need help interpreting it. And um I I think what

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you are wrestling with is the right thing to wrestle with. And and do I have better numbers? No. If I did, I would I would email them to you, but I don't have them. But um the point is is that our point of view for

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the next several years is built on assumptions that we should question. Uh we should look at the upsides as well as the downsides because um there are a lot of factors that could

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surprise us and every time we get surprised, you know, people complain that you didn't give us enough time to get our arms around where you were headed. And so it's it it is when you live in a a unpredictable environment, guess what? We're all going to be

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surprised and a lot of people are going to be un upset that we're going to end up heading in directions that they didn't anticipate. Well, us too. So, to the extent that we can um begin that conversation, that's a good conversation

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to begin. >> I have spent years in this rabbit hole. I took a very different path through it, but I have been there. Um, I have concerns at about whether the last two years I I would love to know whether the last two years of town census data has

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changed in terms of numbers of respondents and or nationalities. >> I have two years of data. Um, last year and this year of respondents were almost identical. >> Were they all Caucasian?

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>> Uh, it doesn't say I didn't look at ethnicity. I don't think it does it say it on the census. I didn't look at it. >> Well, so then you need to go to the dennial census. Have you looked at that? >> What is the senial census? >> Dennial census is the census our US government does every 10 years. It has actually marketkedly different data,

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>> which is why I started saying bad things about the town census. >> Well, I'm using the number that the town says that we have in the town, which is 24,000. >> It's the same number I basically have. Yeah, it's so the the government census

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actually has shown a growth a significant trend of growth in the um senior population that was not reflected. At one point we switched over to um using the the government because the town data wasn't available at the

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time, >> right? But if you look in town by street address >> um where the seniors um aggregate I covered that >> where they aggregate >> there's there's a there there's there's

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some addresses uh that there there were let's say I had 10 addresses and eight were seniors and two no one responded to the census. So guess what I did for the two that didn't respond to the census? I put seniors in there

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because it was the same as the rest of the street. >> I did some manual intervention to the town census to get it as clean as I possibly could. >> Yeah. Um, what I'm saying is I'm not

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I am not willing to override someone who we paid to look at the census data going forward based on the town's census data and your massaging of it. I also don't understand what you're saying the point of this is that we need to be that the point of a

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point of view is to give people indications. What you've said is the schools are a threat. What you're leaning towards is, "Holy crap, we just got rid of a bunch of classrooms we're going to need back." That's the implication of that yellow box on one of your slides.

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>> Yeah, that could be what happens. >> Okay, that ship has sailed in terms of we're not getting it undone. >> I know. >> So, I need to see your data and I need to see the school district's data to have any faith in voting for this point of view if you're going to keep that in

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there. All right, I'll send you my data. >> Okay, you've got to get me their data. Did you talk to them? >> I have the Desi data, which is what they use. >> You talked to the town, the school committee consultants or the school committee about their techniques, who they talked to, etc. to do their

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long-term planning. >> I talked to Peter Light. He told me to email them. I haven't emailed them. Um, >> given the time we're going into right now and how close we are to town meeting,

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I'm not comfortable putting this out there. >> Okay. >> I mean, part of that is that the stupid idea that the way to change the world is to vote down the school budget, but I don't want to put anything out that's going to um promote that. And I'm not comfortable that I'm happy to see more information.

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I'm not comfortable. Um I mean I mean effectively my point of view is that I would like people to pay attention to the housing starts and then have a reaction to that and my rationale for it is that I am concerned that we

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are going to have a turnover that's going to increase enrollment beyond what's expected. >> That is something we've been saying for years around housing starts, not specifically around the school. We're in an extremely heated time around the school right now. And you phrase this as a school problem. This is a resource

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problem we have in the town. We have had multiple fights with the select board in the last few town meetings about attempts to get planning done which includes the creation of home housing for school-aged children and what impact that'll have. >> Yes, the school is a huge part of our budget.

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>> Um >> Okay. >> But also your your watch it for the next 60 days. What is the the purpose there? >> Uh the purpose there is that you can't sell the house until you list it. I understand that, but why 60 days?

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>> Well, in order to be uh in a house in the school system, the start of the school year, right? You have to have your house listed by the end of June and then sold in the summertime so someone can buy it and move in in time for September, right? >> Okay.

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>> So, next >> I'm sorry. So you what you're saying here is that people need to watch the real estate market for the next 60 days and decide whether they think we should vote for the school budget. >> No. And that's >> you have set such a short time frame that it seems like it's it's tied into

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the town meeting and it's sending a strong message for the town meeting that we have not discussed enough as a board. >> This does not have to do with the town the school budget. >> Okay. >> I am >> I'm sorry. Greg and I have spent a lot of time

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>> Yeah. >> with people around this current sentiments around the school committee and stuff and um I have been doing this for a long time now. I have never rubber stamped a school committee budget. I have voted them down. I've argued against them a lot. I don't want I don't want it to

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come across that that's what I'm doing. I am concerned about um any divisibility this is going to create by the way it's been phrased in these slides. And again, not having had a longer conversation, >> okay,

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>> as a committee about this, >> um, you also have something backwards on the slide about people moving to Actton or Boxboro. Um, you see new bars choose Actton over Boxboro because it has the only ranked elementary school. Your wording's backwards.

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>> Okay. Um, >> that said, I don't like this whole section. >> All right. Any other comments? Christie, you're just talking about the the slides, these slides. Um, you have any other

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>> Well, I was curious the the um I'm sorry, what was the next section? >> Taxes. >> Taxes. So, you've got Yeah, this gets confusing. You've got averages here, but median on the other one. And they don't of course line up because they're different numbers. Um, down to all of

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those. The annual tax bill, the average single family value, the tax bill is percent of income. Um, so it's just it's confusing because there's this inconsistency across the slides that you have to look at and realize it's a a medianbased difference, medium versus average.

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>> I prefer to take one and run with it. >> Another thing I've spent way too much time over the years, >> okay, >> um, dealing with. All right. >> These are scarier numbers. >> Um because it's a higher house value and a higher tax bill and a higher percent of income.

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>> Yep. Any other thoughts? >> The point I think Steve was making about the seniors on fixed incomes, it's the way you spoke to it, not what the slide said. >> Okay. Um because I was looking I was reading the slide and I'd had that same reaction and then I actually read through it

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>> another time. >> All right. >> But yeah, we do have people we have a property real estate rich town, not a wealthy >> Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. >> Town. >> All right, Fred.

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>> So, I think you're right. just googling the the ratings at least. So, is there a plan to address that that that two of the schools aren't going to have a a rating?

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You know, there was an acknowledgement at the uh school committee meetings that that will be a gap in the data for a year. One of the things that I think all of us should also recognize that if you look at let's

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say um Boston magazine's ratings are always based on the previous year's data. So there's a lagging indicator um in order to get apples to apples across all the communities in the state.

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um the people who publish numbers tend to use at least a year old and sometimes two years old data because that's the only way they can get comparable data. So what we have here are um some data that you can compare to

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other communities because it's two years old and their data is except for where >> or where >> where's where um but when you get up to some of the new data we don't have comparables because it's not published yet.

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>> Understood. I'm just wondering like is there a plan to manage the communication on that? I guess it's just my my question. Is there a plan to communicate? No. Most everybody's heads down and trying to get um parents informed of where their kid will go to

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school next year. So my guess is um >> this is this is this is a question of should it be tackled? Absolutely. >> When should it be tackled? >> Well, later. >> The the the I I was of the opinion that it should be done in May. I was told,

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but the school committee doesn't reorganize until July and the answer is we need to start discussing this sooner rather than later, but probably not this week. >> Yeah, understood. When I say plan, I

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meant not tomorrow, but um there have to be I I'm sure there's examples of how to manage this and like metrics where you can publish or something. >> Exactly. Yeah. No, I mean that like I'm but I just want to make sure that was was on the radar.

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Um then the the only other thing on the uh the Scott the tax section do so I've again not as much research as as you but I think I found somewhere that um we

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have a very very hot proportion of all of our taxes based on property taxes. I I think you mentioned that like our commercial tax base is is I think sub maybe 9 to 10%.

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And uh that's you know and I I think there's it seems like there's a stark difference between some place like um well that has 15 or 20% business like

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you know commercial retail tax versus the property and I was just I think we should probably highlight that and and uh well I don't know if they're going to be expanding the over in conquer They're going to be expanding the water treatment plant. Like how do

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we like be like Yeah, me too. to get Great Road opened up or anyway like I I think that we should forward, you know, think think a bit more forward about that. And and anyway, that's one number that I've seen that I think we should add if if you all agree

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with with that figure. Uh the slide about the override I think said that we don't see one coming or some statue. I >> I hadn't changed it since we wanted because we never got to fully discussing it. >> Yeah. >> Um >> where is it? >> I

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>> Where is it? Somewhere in here. Here it is. This is what we wrote like four or five months ago. I didn't change it. >> There's one coming and it's definitely in the upcoming years. The school has said they need a 6% annual um increase to function even with the

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restructure. Now, they're not going to get 6%. Um that said, we've got kids falling behind in our current structure, falling behind levels they should be at for reading. I think like third or fourth grade MCCAST somewhere in there and and I'm sure Lisa third grade MCCAST

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um are doing unacceptably poorly for the town that as much as we care about and invest in education. So that to me indicates that that's somewhere that we can't cut to reach more. We have some degree of untax levy capacity but it's not

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unlimited. I think we're looking at a $3 million hole for next year in the model. Um, and the school doesn't have any more levers to pull to get there. That one and 1.2 that we have in untax living capacity will get

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us partway out of that, but then we're looking at overhead the next year. And I don't the town just doesn't have enough to cut either. I mean, we're at some point very soon we're cutting services or we're overriding. So I don't I I just um I think we need to mention that somewhere

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here. >> So um just kind of summarize um our problem is a is the high taxes or the high tax burden. Um we know why it's happening. Um

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compensation growth both in the town and the schools, you know. um is greater than 2 and a half%. Every year um among the things that can impact us

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are yeah not so much well the school population but the mix of students impacts us more. Um you can have a lower number of kids who have higher needs. Um and or you can have and I've seen I've

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lived through a spike in an unexpected spike in school population one year and it it was most distressing. Um all of a sudden kindergarten this seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Um

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so it's a threat. I don't think it's a huge threat at the moment but uh it's a threat. The commercial tax base is too small. Fred, you're right. It's been too It used to be maybe 11% 20 years ago.

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Um, it's never been big. Um Um, I just heard I guess Jamie Eldridge announced today he was saying something about Crossroads going out of business. uh and he announced that Dollar Tree was moving to the South Act and the uh

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Indian grocery store was moving somewhere else and McGovern would build another car dealer on the site. So, um I presume then they'll move the Chrysler Plymouth Jeep up there and leave that

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one idle as acting Toyota is still just idle. So, we're hollowing out the the town center. Uh we've turned 2A north of Main Street into an auto mile.

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Um and um we I think we have to take a look at what we can do to change that. Now, was it last year, Greg, or a year before EDC

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hired a consultant and and put together some reports? Um >> yeah, the the data was great. Uh the recommendations were not so great. Um it it wasn't just

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the recommendations were there was no prioritization. It's like here's all the different things you possibly could do and it was like we can't afford it. >> Well, that was my problem with recommendations. you know, you know, there's nothing wrong with um two-way um south of Main Street that a sewer system

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wouldn't fix. Um that's a pretty pricey solution. Um other things that they said, well, you're just going to have to go over 2 and a half% to accomplish this stuff. Um, and I don't want to be a heretic about

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climate change or anything like that, but we've put some fairly heavy regulations on people wanting to move into town commercially. No fossil fuels. Um,

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there's a lot of empty space along 495. Uh, and you don't have to come to Actton. uh if another town doesn't have that same uh requirement. Um so I think we have to take a very hard

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look at why we're losing commercial tax base, why um in the case of the Dollar Tree or grocery store, what they're moving.

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We're not necessarily gaining anything. It's not economic development. If McGovern closes down one uh place and moves builds another one, well, there's some incremental value in a new building. Uh but that's

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the same thing they did with Subaru. They moved from South Actton to North Actton. Now they're going to move Chrysler dealer from Actton Center to North Act. We're not gaining much here. Uh but more important, we're turning the kind of the middle of Actton into a ghost town.

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Uh and all we need is a a well financed um commercial development operation in conquered and the rest of the town will be a ghost town. Steve, how would you write the uh overwrite statement? Because I think you

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gave us this note last time. So, um I would I would have always said that um our revenue cannot

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meet our um expenses in the long run. And at some point we either need to reduce expenses and therefore services uh or we need to increase taxes.

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Um 70 80% of both budgets is compensation related items. You can't cut much without cutting people and this is a people business. Um if you cut the people you lose the service. So,

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like I said, I've used that line more than once, but um that's kind of how I always try and sum it up. Well, back to the uh but I know that there's I don't know how new the position is, but there's economic

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someone heading up economic development for the town. I think we should after town meeting get them in in front of us and work on a a plan of some sort cuz I'm sure there's examples of bootstrapping something with company. I

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I don't know. But like there's probably some way not just to say, "Oh, okay, great. we're going to cut an X million check to do this laundry list, but you know, okay, well, let's have this, let's offer this, and we'll do this and and figure out what the what the

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step-by-step plan is. Anyway, >> I wholeheartedly agree that we should have her in. She seems really knowledgeable and excited about it. We have an infrastructure problem. Great Road does not have the sewage septic capacity for businesses that are not car

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dealers or supermarkets. Something that it we want restaurants or gyms, things like that. And there just isn't a place to put that many people. You can't have a business that requires that many people sitting in it. So, um I don't know who we encourage, but I think we need to get back into that sewer

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expansion to 2A project. >> Restaurants require both parking and wastewater treatment. Um neither of which is available um along Great Road. Um the old Nag Mall before the um had

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five operating restaurants. Now we're down to one operating and maybe one can open up again. Um because sewer capacity was there and the parking was there. So um last weekend I was babysitting with

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my grandkids in another town, but this other town passed an override at the end of u March. And so my middle son and I had a long

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discussion, some would call it a debate over what we were going through here in Actton, what they were going through down there in Arlington. And he made an observation I think is worth sharing. It's we understand

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really really well the cost of things. What we have not really measured particularly well is the benefit of those things. So, you know, whether you pick a firefighter or a police officer

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or a librarian or a teacher or, you know, fill fill in the blank, you know, what is the benefit because in the coming year we if we are constrained and we have to

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do a good job of explaining to the taxpayers, voters that, you know, here are the choices we have to face. They're going to want to know what's the cost. We got that. And what's the

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benefit? Or the flip side is if we cut it, what goes away? And that is probably uh bigger than tonight's conversation. But that's that was the insight from somebody who

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had just wrestled with that issue in their community. And I think that's the one thing that may be transferable. It's a very different community than ours, but I think that insight is is probably um would extend across Massachusetts.

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I think for this slide we need to be debating how soon we think an override is coming. My other question is do we put the debt exclusion up here because I it's not an override but it's another significant form of tax increase beyond our general annual stuff. So in my mind

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they need to be discussed at the same times. I agree. Especially >> especially since what the select board is putting like that 2.8% uh

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number that was netting out the the uh debt exclusion. I mean I think people some debt rolled off. We hit 3.5 or whatever it was. And so if if you saw of

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of savings like that's not going to be there permanently, right? I think we should be clear about that. >> I'm sorry, Scott. I know you've been working hard on this. Um I think this is too quick to finalize a point of view

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for next week. Next week's like our last meeting. >> I understand. >> All right. So, well, this >> W please ask other people. I think it's >> I will have to go around the room. Um I'm happy to make edits and whatever,

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but uh the whole intention was to uh talk about our point of view on things that we're concerned with. I have the warrant articles right after this that I want to get into and then um

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then call that the meeting. So to not move forward with this tonight means we don't do it at all this year. So go around the room, Steve. I mean there's there's material in here that's good. I think there's other

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material that's pretty complex to try and understand. Um, I would like to have had another shot at it. Um, but I guess I agree with Christie. It's not ready to be rolled out.

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I still think it needs to be massaged a little bit more. Screw those two. Um, trying to figure out how to word this better. I like how it's worded there, but I do agree that maybe we could add some, you

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know, like Christy was saying, if we're adding if we're going to be adding more debt on in the future because of we're going to build a new DPW or an enhanced DPW, whatever you want to call it,

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that kind of has to be spelt out. And I think another aspect that we haven't really discussed is whenever we buy property by land that we even though you buy it through CPC,

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right? If you bought it through CPC that there's an additional cost to go along with it besides the price is that that land then comes out of the tax rules. Other words, so we're paying for it and we're not getting tax revenue.

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Now, I understand the one that's on Taylor and I understand the importance of that and it's not a very large it's it's a good chunk of property, but it protects that arborita more. It gives another access to it. I'm in favor of that and I'm in favor of doing that.

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So yeah, I mean in Christy's point of median and average, we had those debates for several years when Christine Russell's on the committee and where the data come and it and

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we yeah, it's it's it's tough, Greg. Scott, I think you acknowledged what I'm going to share already, which is all the threats are new and therefore it's

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hard to edit this on the fly. But it's also a reminder that we got to have this conversation as early as possible because if we think all this is new to us, a year from now there will be

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people who said you never told us there were hard choices to be made and the answer is yeah, we said it. It's just I guess we're not funny enough for people to tune in and watch the acting TV. But um

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let me then try to frame this. I don't know whether we need an override next year or not. I think it may be too soon to know. Um I suspect that by a year later, the ambiguity of can we get

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by on what we have an untaxed levy probably evaporates. And let's put it this way, somewhere in the near future, we're going to have to deal with this. So the sooner we start thinking about

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communicating to the schools, the town, the regional, vote, whoever, we're going to need an A budget and a Budget. And the A budget uh can be the 2.5% or 3%

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assumption. And if you go over two and a half or 3%, we're going to need a couple of things back from you. And I think we've articulated those in the past. One of which is you got to show us why

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there is enough benefit to to cost justify going over your 3%. or why there is enough harm to not stick with the a budget. We're we're going to

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need that kind of rationale because the taxpayers are going to need it. Nobody can go forward just assuming that we can cruise along. We're we're we're really in a fiscal

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uh bind or as as the Mass Municipal Association said the perfect storm. And to navigate that, we're going to have to be blunt and candid and upfront with people early to say, you know what, if not next year, then the year after,

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we need you to start preparing A budgets and Budgets because it's not business as usual. All right. So, what I'd like to try to do is I'd like to try to get edits to this. So, if people send me edits

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directly, I can bring it to next week's meeting and we'll see what happens. If we can get across the finish line, we can. If we can't, we can. All right. So, and I also want uh suggestions on the language for the override

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>> slide. >> Yeah. >> Um are are you saying that we will discuss this? >> It's a real meeting next >> slideshow at the >> It's a real meeting. Yeah, that's our last real meeting before town meeting. >> I am also happy if it would help to reinstate the meeting on the 28th if that gives us more time to discuss

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information that'd be helpful for you giving the committee statement at town meeting. Uh but we haven't canceled that meeting yet. I I think why don't we see how how we how we do. Um I think it took me a while to get this together. So I

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apologize for not getting this to people faster, but um everybody will have a chance to digest this. Um if you can just send me your feedback, I will incorporate feedback as best as possible.

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and we have a real meeting next week. And if we can't figure out it kind of quickly, I will just transition to what I want to transition to now, which I want to highlight three of the warrant articles and discuss them. So, I won't allocate a

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lot of time to this, but if we can get it across the finish line, I will send this around to everybody's Actton email address, Actton Town email address as a PowerPoint. So, you're welcome to edit slides and send back, you know, how you

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what your thoughts are or put a big X on a slide saying don't include this type of thing. All right. And we'll just see how we can go. Um, I'm not going to do that slide. Not doing this one. Um, then the warrant

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articles. um Taylor Road. There was a request sent to finance committee by someone someone in town for us to reconsider our vote on this, but I think we can't change our votes because I think they've already been recorded and

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sent in. But um just discussing this um again, uh yeah. Yeah, >> we can change our recommendation. It will not be reflected in the warrant. the person who made the motion and the second would need to agree to

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reconsider. >> Okay. Uh I don't I don't think we have the same people here. I don't I forget who was here last time. >> Karine's not here. But really the just the gist of the the the

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request that came in is that um we are I I don't have this confirmed but the the email said that the properties assessed value was a little bit over 400,000

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and the purchase price is a million4 and that if we're paying then they're comparing comparing the purchase price to if there are properties built on the land and then we are getting in real

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estate taxes from them. So, uh so we're we're giving up uh real estate income for open space which is always the trade-off with open space. So, but that's why this

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is in here. I don't know if anybody wants to discuss this further. Christie, >> uh, I don't know about the estimate. I'm sure we could get that information if available. I know there was a select for close session talking about it. The town has to pay in a certain way

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anything above the estimate. Um, that lot is largely not buildable, the lot that we're buying, which is why >> I know that it's mostly wetlands, I think. Right. >> Yes. So, I don't know how much that actually decreases

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the developability of the remaining two lots. I mean, you don't have you can't do that little neighborhood where the houses are all clustered together in the same way. >> I I think my understanding is that they can just I think there's houses on the

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other lots. They can just take those houses down, put other houses back up or maybe >> Yeah. Um, having the town purchase this prevents this from having one of those designs had they could combine the three lots together and then

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squish properties um like buildings closer because they could count the whole lot. >> Well, and I think didn't one of them have an apartment building or something? >> It was like Yeah, it was like I think it was like eight condos. I'm probably misspeaking so um I want to be careful.

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>> My my take is it's like Piper Lane. This is open road open land right next to the arburedum. >> So it's it's unique compared to buying some other >> there is a significant wildlife population that goes through there where it seems like this is a chance to help

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them. >> Yep. >> I don't know. >> All right. So let me get to the more other ones. Um I have a I I don't have a slide on the town HVAC but um I want to put a slide in here so we can discuss

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it. But one of the main reasons why I want to discuss it here is part of the town's solution to handle the displacement of the town employees is to move them temporarily to

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Conan. So I think when they I think one of the things that should happen is whenever the town employees move the Conan I think that uh it' be an opportunity to move the DPW people that are in the

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offices to Conan at the same time because if they have a not an ideal work place they could move them out of there and get them with other town employees and

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it's only was I had a slide on it's 1,200 feet from the DPW building the Conan. Um the other thing is is that um since we discussed the DT DPW last

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um like the the old Saab dealerships up for sale for $2.5 million, we've already discussed tonight that McGovern is um probably going to move the Dodge dealership down the street and vacate

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another garage parking lot with office space building. So, I don't I I would like to have a slide that just puts the references this

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approved uh what the the building that they commit and they committed to, but I just want to just highlight some of these other facts that are floating around on this Roland. >> So, you'd have to buy those other properties, right? right? The Saab

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dealer or the MC McGoverns and who knows when that's McGovern's going to have take place. Actually, he owns the other the other SA one too. Then you'd have to renovate them. So, they're going to need additional work. So, if they want if you could be paid 2.5 million then renovated it.

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You know, you still you still have quite a bit of money too and disruption and etc. and not centrally located at one end of the town. So >> yeah, I just think we should just talk. >> Yeah, you should mention it, but you know, >> and then can the lifts handle the trucks

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and things like that? They might not be the right weight holding. You can't put a you know this how much Saab weight compared to putting a an F250 or 350 onto it or a 450. The the lifts can't handle it. So,

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you know, that's that's just little things. Right. >> Yes. So, for um specifically this slide and since you're on the committee, Greg, I' I'd like to see if there's outside of what I just

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mentioned, if there's any other bullet points or maybe folks, you could just email me directly. I'd like to add some bullet points of this so when we discuss it, we can we have like some more information. Yeah, I was going to wait until Leia is on reports, but there is a

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meeting this week, Thursday, where we're going to get the final number. Um, and I think you you told us at the last meeting it's going to be 23 mil. That was their estimate last week. We'll

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get the actual number by this Thursday. >> That's what uh that's what Tom said, but he was waiting. I talked to Tom yesterday and Tom said this Thursday is when we'll have the real number. >> Uh just to clarify that's the real

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number of the current estimate not our we've put it out to bid and have a not to exceed number. >> Yeah. what they are anticipating. In fact, there's going to be a session like the one Scott's doing, uh, Dean Charter is doing at the senior center on Thursday, uh, morning where he's going

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to be talking about the DPW building and that presentation, it's anticipated will include the new number in it uh, that we will then see Thursday night. So, I'm of course going to go to Dean's presentation Thursday

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morning. I hate surprises. Um but um yeah that's when we will um have a number for what they anticipate is going to be a question at town meeting is if we give you this design money which I think is

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what 720,000 now something like that um you know what ballpark are you looking at and and so this is not they're going out to bid this is they're anticipating the most likely question they're going to at at town meeting.

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>> All right, we're good with questions. All right, so please uh email me directly and I'll send this deck around. I'll do it. I'll log in and email it to people before I walk out of here. Um uh the only other thing I want to ask is

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so we only have an hour. I want to try to button up um whatever we're talking about as a group in 30 minutes to give a a a reasonable amount of time for Q&A. So, um

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so I want to figure 15 minutes to try to button up the point of view, 15 minutes uh us talking about these three articles in however we want to speak to them and then open the mic. Is there anything else that you feel should be on the

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agenda? All right. Not so much on the agenda, but in the slide presentation, if that's all the time you have, um, you you really want to keep your total presentation to like 10 to 15 slides.

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So, my guess is we already got way over that. So, one of the things you may want to think about is how you triage this down to something that that >> take the school deck school enrollment stuff out. It won't be 10 to 15 slides.

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>> Then then you've just sidestepped most of the controversy. Good for you. Chrissy, >> can you add into the wording of the the Q&A section that it also could be listening a time for people to voice concerns, not just ask us questions and

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have us answer? >> Oh, yeah, sure. I can put that on the agenda. >> Kind of like a mini listening session. >> Well, this really what I want to do have I wanted to have a real meeting. So, my whole thing was is I was going to have us talk and then have we do like um public comments, have the public comment

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section be after we talk so that they get to digest everything and then we have plenty of time for, you know, interaction. >> Yeah. I I just would love that the wording made it clear that that's what we want from them because public comment sounds like you need to come in with something. >> All right.

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>> You want to say specifically? I know. It always feels a little intimidating to me the public comment section. >> Okay. All right, I'll make sure I use that language. >> And this should go a lot faster because I won't be there. >> Yeah, you know, we might be able to get every whole meeting done in like about five minutes. Um,

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all right. So, since why don't we do the school liaison report if we have an update and then you guys go and then we'll let our our representative give us your thoughts. So, go ahead.

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Okay. So, it was a um dark and stormy night. There were people with um uh a lot of posters. Um the

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comments uh at the the beginning there was some variety. Not everyone was there with uh uh in protest. Some were there to thank the school committee but they were outnumbered by the uh ones who were

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there to um critique the process. Um the committee listened and then moved forward with three highly controversial votes and um they passed um by

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a really interesting majority which I was unfamiliar with which is Actton representatives get two and a half votes, Boxboro gets one. So, I'm I'm still getting my arms around that kind of um democracy and weighted vote. But,

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um um the baseline is going to be uh an option seven, which interestingly enough had been removed a week earlier, but added back in after public comment. So, uh, if

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anyone wants evidence that, uh, they were listening, one of the options that came back onto the table was was, um, basically people saying 6A and 7A were were head flaws. Uh, after that,

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they then, uh, dealt with um the issue of um transitions um getting from here to there. And one of the things that um I think is a positive for the community is that uh

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teachers have already been assigned to uh the buildings that they will be in next year. That uh eliminates some uncertainty. Um the parents and uh their kids will be notified I think by what the end of the

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month is by June. So, uh, again, one of the big, uh, anxiety points is I have no idea where my kid is going to school and if my kid's friends will be in the same building, in the same classroom. That's

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going to be um resolved uh, in two stages. One by building. We'll at least know which kids are assigned to which buildings by uh, the end of the month.

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And then uh the classroom one there is a uh grandfathering process that takes place if you are in a flex zone uh which is sort of on the border of Actton and Boxboro

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um and part of uh Route 2A and uh another part uh of Actton down by Stow. And if you are in the flex zone depending on they want to make sure that the classroom sizes are balanced so you don't have 28 kids in one fourth grade

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and you know 20 kids in a different fourth grade in a different building. kind of trying to even that up and the flex zone is um um the ingredient to to do that. But they want to give people sort of a right of um opting out um uh

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and um being grandfathered in. And I'm sure you Yeah. Yeah. You can explain that a lot better than I can. But but uh the point is is that at that point they are literally down to the we're talking about 10 kids here, 10 kids there and

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not the massive numbers overall. So we're not home free yet. Um but a whole lot of the ambiguity which has been feeding the anxiety uh is getting resolved in the near

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future. Now, from our point of view, there are a couple of things we've got to focus on going forward. One of which is um what happens to the Conan building a year later

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if there's going to be savings involved. Um that's the next step. And so that's a discussion for the next year, but that you know that's coming. Um uh the other thing uh that I think we need to be really clear about and this this is

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something I think we've already alluded to is there were still people who said can't we just pause this for a year and the answer is not unless you've got an override

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plan that I don't know is scheduled. Not unless you plan to get by on a one month by one month budget which is actually a cut from what's being proposed and assuming that that's not going to have an impact on kids. In

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other words, just as we have heard from people this is too fast. If if that happens, if there is a no vote uh at town meeting on the budget, um

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boy are we going to be working overtime because there none of that is built into anyone's uh plan, schedules, or budgets. >> Uh the one point I would add to what Craig said is the the new districtricting, it's what I think of it

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as. um is has increased the size of the flex zones which should maintain the flexibility of the system further going forward and avoid this pain. Also to be clear with the if you live in a flex zone and you get into a school, they don't then flex you to another school in a different grade when things get

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confused. >> Yeah. >> Or messed up. Yeah. Like you're in a school, you're in a school >> and and your and your siblings are too. Um, one number that did get shared uh late in the evening um almost near the 10:30 or 10:45 mark if you want to go

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back and look at the ACT TV. Um the superintendent said there's a lot of people with posters who said you're only saving 500,000 in the first year. And part of that is because they're using their

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equivalent of free cash to offset some things. But he said basically over the next 10 years um this process this whole AB forward is going to save about 17 million. And again that's that's the number that um if we

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don't adopt this at town meeting we delay the savings of 17 million and that gets really complicated in the outy years and we already know how complicated the outy years are. The 17 million savings is already in

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their forecast, right? It >> Yeah, but their forecast is only for what? 5 years. He was giving a 10-year number. Okay. >> The mic is if you want it. >> I don't know. No one's used it, but

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>> you're you're our entire audience. So, I just wanted to circle back on a couple things because we were talking about the projections. The 5-year projection, but the projection for the schools, the increase for the following year is 5.65%. Oops, close to 6%. Close enough. Close

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enough, but I'm nitpicky. Um, and then the other thing I was going to circle back. I appreciate you trying to do a presentation and looking at the 26 um, uh, 2026 data. Um, interestingly, I had

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sent to you and you've seen from ALG and probably some of you um, the others have seen the NASDAQ NAT data, the New England School Development uh, Council. It was actually included in the January 8th packet for um the school committee

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um agenda for January 8th. And what they did was they actually did an entire study that they conducted because obviously if the schools are going to lose an elementary school building um and there's some consolidation occurring, it's incredibly important to

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know what those projections are. And so just wanting to let everyone know that there's um a lot of demographic information and analysis, population trends, median age of the population, New England's uh preschool through 12 enrollment trends, demographic analysis,

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uh trends by age span, number of K through2 students per housing unit, births, data provided by the Commonwealth uh records department, birth to kindergarten relationship, real estate trends, residential sales, and real estate information. Actton

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residential sales, Boxboro residential sales, realtor information, housing detail, bedrooms per household, residential construction projects, information gained from Actton building department, residential building permits, enrollment projections, demographic study and enrollment

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projection methodology, enrollment projections, stability of grades 1 to eight, enrollment forecast based on increased residential construction. Um and so there were th there was that enrollment forecast as a result of all of those things and then there's a really nice summary at the end that

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talks about the demographic analysis summary and assumptions. So, um, this was really comprehensive study and I know that it was based on the 2020 census data, but I do uh want to I do want to mention um that it's pretty comprehensive and if we're looking at

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all of the factors as this is a multivariable um equation, it's really important to have all of those variables when looking at that. So, just wanted to quickly mention that. I remember I'd sent that to you and I know that it's been presented in ALG. So anyways, all

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right, onward to my um updates. Thank you so much, Greg. Um yes, on Thursday, April 9th, um as a result of all of the work that was done with Nick Stellatano from Dillinger Rad, um there were

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different scenarios drawn and the school committee ended up voting on scenario 7. Yes, that was as a result of feedback because one of the things that happened was that the consultant would come up with a scenario and there would be multiple surveys for people to provide

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feedback. And with all of those surveys and the data the consultant gathered as people would be able to go into a map and then add u detailed data about their streets and what they thought were neighborhoods um and you know who they felt that they were you know should be included with. um there the consultant

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continued to iterate and so you know there was iteration after iteration after iteration and at some point um I think there were people that said you've done a great job of including feedback you've continued to iterate maybe we've gone too far and then that's what happened with going back to scenario 7

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because I think a lot of people realized the the best results were with that scenario. So that was what what the school committee voted on. And then um as you also stated uh there was uh flex zones were voted on in a transition

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policy. A couple things that I want to mention that the expan the Blanchard expansion zones are not the same thing as the flex zones. Flex zones cover about 25% of act and are in four different areas throughout Actton. Um

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there's there is some overlap with the Blanchard expansion zones. one of the flex zones. That's true, but they're not it's not a perfect overlap as the consultant has stated. So, just kind of giving that heads up. And then there was one in North Actton um and then there was one in South Actton um well two

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technically in North Actton, but anyways to um to that point that was voted for and those will not be enacted until later. So right now the tool that is primarily and solely being used uh to balance those class numbers in class

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sections throughout buildings is the transition policy just because Superintendent Peter Light made it abundantly clear that they have already identified which families uh would be best for movement in terms of that balancing just because of families

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emailing throughout this process and expressing their needs and kind of where they were along those lines. the transition policy. Uh not only grandfathers, Actton students in the Blanchard expansion zone that um wish to go to

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those Actton uh buildings where the kids previously were obviously the school no longer exist. It would just be the building. But it also enabled Actton students who are currently attending school in Blancher to remain there. um in rising kindergarteners and Conan

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students were unfortunately not included as part of that grandfathering and those students will be going to Blanchard. However, there was also the option for families to be able to opt out. So, um one of the big things that was mentioned

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at the meeting is that no, no one wished to separate siblings. No one's wanting to separate families and so there's the um ability to opt out by families if they are worried about an upcoming sibling and they want to guarantee that they're at the same school. Um so they

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do not have to grandfather their children to an act in school if there's one or two they can go to the Blanchard school. Um with that being said because of that transition policy like I said flex zones are not being activated at

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this moment. Um so that would be a later thing if needed um just for you know balancing as a later tool but that will not be taking in effect this next year. So that's primarily that that that's the

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that was it. That's the main thing. >> Awesome. Anybody have any questions for her? >> Thank you very Thank you so much. >> Awesome. Thank you very much. >> All right. Um at our is it

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we have to figure out next chain of command right at some point >> after so after town meeting we need to vote that the first meeting after town meeting on the new chair vice chair and clerk for next year.

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>> Okay. And who who decides who the uh >> the new clerk is? >> People get nominated. So, >> all right. >> So, basically, if I'm going to take over as chair, somebody have to nominate me and then the committee would vote.

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>> Okay. >> Um you can also vote not to take me, which would be fine with me. Um cuz I just have tons of stuff going on. Uh but we need you know usually the succession is how it's been in the past is the clerk will then be nominated for vice

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chair current clerk then and they move up to vice chair and then we find a new clerk. >> All right. So we have to do this before town meeting >> after first meeting after. Okay. So we don't have to worry about it till after. >> No. >> Okay. >> So you know and then usually we take

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some time off. >> Yeah. >> We don't meet the following week after town meeting. kind of take a little bit of time, couple weeks in between to get >> kind of resettled. >> All right. Um and um doesn't have to be today. It

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probably won't be today, but um I will be looking for any suggestions for the speech. I can look at the last two speeches. Um so, all right. Any other Oh. Um,

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>> I think Fred has a motion. >> Yeah, Fred, you gonna set us free? I uh move to adjourn. All in favor of adjourning. I I opposed abstain. We are journed. Thank you.