we're recording please go ahead hi it's May 6th 2024 and this is a regular meeting of the Town Council the open meeting law allows us to continue holding meetings remotely with without a quorum of the council physically present however I want to note that there are seven of us in the room and several counselors are remote um the meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom by phone and as a live broadcast on amoris media channel 9 and in their live stream given that we have a quorum of the council present I'm calling the May 6th regular Town council meeting to order at 6:31 and I'm going to now take role and ask counselors to indicate that they um can hear us and we can hear them uh Pat deangeles pres Ana dein gothier present councelor present Lynn grimer is present councelor hanii Bob Hegman present councelor Lord present Pam broney here councelor Ryan I'm present Kathy Shane I'm here thank you Andy Steinberg pres Jennifer to here counselor Walker I have not seen her yet okay there's no chat room for this meeting if you have technical issues please let Athena and me know to make a comment or ask a question please re use the raised hand button if technical difficulties arise as a result of utilizing remote participation we'll decide how to address that at the time um it does mean the Suess discussion could be suspended if we have to um there will be a one general public comment period tonight um and it will include anybody who wants to comment on anything and on the items on the agenda including um The ammer Hills the order of the agenda is the same as posted however I want to call to attention the fact that we do not have all of the materials in a motion for amrest Hills so we are going ahead with that agenda item tonight in terms of a presentation and any questions but we will not be taking the vote until next uh on the 20th we didn't receive all the final materials we needed in time for the legal council to review it and formulate the correct motion um let me just mention a couple upcoming meetings um first of all we will meet again as a council on May 20th um and then on May 21st we will have a public hearing on the fy2 budget the public hearing will be totally virtual um and in addition to that we have several other committee meetings that are happening throughout the month uh but I want to call particular attention to the fact that the finance committee will begin reviewing the budget and in doing so they meet on Tuesdays at 2 o'clock and on Fridays at 10: during the entire month of May um the town Services Outreach committee is having a special listening session regarding Heatherstone Road and that is on Monday a week from now May 1 at 6:30 I also want to mention a couple community events Jewish American Heritage Proclamation reading will be tomorrow at 4:30 if the weather's nice it'll be in sweetzer park if it's not we'll be in this room Amis College Store ribbon cutting is on Tuesday May 14th at 9 a.m. in the morning the Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month event is on Sunday May 19th at 11 11 on the town common or in the event of rain at the Amis Regional Middle School and the District 1 meeting will be on Sunday May 19th at 3:30 at the North amest Library community room we just dedicated our we just did the ribbon cutting on that building Edition this past week hi Alicia can you just push your button and say yes I can hear you yes I can hear you thank you so much so all counselors are present with us this evening so we're going to move on to General Public comment anyone anyone wishing to speak who is in the town room if you have not done so up until now please do sign up with Athena o'keef she is over here if you are on zoom and you wish to make public comment please raise your hand now right now I'm only seeing two people on Zoom if you're on zoom and you would like to make public comment please raise your hand now I'm gonna have a 15 15 okay public comments on matters within the jurisdiction of the Town Council resident are welcome residents are welcome to express their views in this case for 2 minutes the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment and public comments are not reflective of the opinions of the Town Council the First Amendment broadly protects individual rights to address the government to speak and to express themselves including their right to say hateful and offensive things I am generally unable able to shut those commenters down under the First Amendment to the US Constitution unless their level of speech Falls within an exception articulated by the courts such as fighting words true threats to a particular individual harassment of a particular individual or incitement of imminent Lawless activity if a question exists as to whether a particular speaker is engaging in unpr protected speech I must defer to the principles of freedom of speech with that we will recognize speakers in the order in which they have signed up and we will rotate between zoom and in person there are three people on Zoom let's start with the room Nina manin please come up and state your name and where you live before you make your comment thank you hello counselors my name is Nina manin I live in ammer mass in north ammer thank you for service I am here to talk about the increase the proposed increases in the different departments in this upcoming budget with a very strong request that uh the education budget for the Regional Schools not be any less than any other department um I am also there was recent information that's been passed along to us about um an unofficial audit done by High school students of the budget in which they have identified a significant amount of additional funds that were in the budget as duplicate funds this is in the amount of upwards of $2 million and I am asking that if these funds actually do exist that education be prioritized in looking at our town we are about to bring in a new superintendent and I am hoping that we can move across departments to be be able to support that person in succeeding I see um really disturbing siloing across departments in this town as I've experienced watching people uh discussing the education fund I understand that our schools are are um demographically getting smaller and I ask that we all look at this problem from a systemic point and stop slashing things to try to just meet a budget um and I again thank you so much for your hard work and I I I ask you to not cut the education budget more than you possibly can and to prioritize it thank you thank you uh we're going to go to Ken Rosenthal please enter the room state your name and generally where you live thank you I'm Ken Rosenthal I live at 53 cents Avenue I want to compliment and thank sunrise ammer for having a critical review of the budget Sunrise amst is a group of local public high school students who live in amer and I think they have done a wonderful job and it's very encouraging to see their interest and their work I also want to take this opportunity to go on record and thanking ilda greenbound for her wonderful donation to make it possible to have the renovation at the North ammer Library Paul bachan revealed her name at the ribbon cutting last week and we were all so pleased to know that it was Hilda who made that possible it's a wonderful wonderful Library I'm sorry Hilda was not there for illness and I just wish her well another person who was absent I believe and I could be corrected is the executive director of the library who was not present for the ribbon cutting at her own North library branch I hope she is well I'm sorry she was not there it's a place where she should be to receive the compliments of all of us for the work done on the North Amis Library thank you very much for this opportunity to speak thank you for joining us again we'll go back to the audience Vince o Conor I'm B so Conor I live at 175 Summer Street Apartment 12 um I'm here to speak briefly about the need to fund Education First although the Senate budget is not won't be out till tomorrow if as I understand it the increase in per pupil Aid is included it will result in 70 to 90 additional th000 to the elementary schools for Chapter 70 that money comes into the town I hope that in the spirit of supporting libraries the council and the manager will see to it that that money is directed to rehiring uh paraprofessionals for all of our elementary School libraries so that the resources of those libraries will become um available every day to all students with regard to the regional budget I urge the council to approve the 6% increase uh proposed and voted to on by two of the towns and likely by the time the council meets Again by three of the towns um I also would ask that in the spirit of welcoming the new superintendent our first outside superintendent in a number of years that the Town Council consider making a gift a one a one-year gift of$ 400 to $500,000 to avoid any budget cuts at the regional level now staff budget cuts so those are the two things that I think are most important to focus on thank you thank you I want to warn the audience if you continue to make noise we will take a pause and that will just delay people's opportunity to speak thank you we'll go to uh Bridget Hines please enter the room state your name and where you live hello can you hear me we can oh perfect excellent my name is Bridget Hines I live in District 5 and um I'm here tonight in my role as the representative from ammer Regional School District the Regional School District um school committee passed the fiscal year 25 budget with an increase of 6% we felt strongly as a committee that any level below that would not allow us to uphold the mission and goals at the heart of the Regional School District to a inclusive Excellence for people from K through 12 education there may be a lack of awareness but we're in the middle of an exceptionally difficult time for students teachers and schools as my ammer school committee colleague Deb Leonard who's in the schools daily pointed out pandemic learning loss is not a thing of the past large learning loss gaps remain Nationwide and an amoris Regional Schools we see gaps in algebra geometry and reading challenging texts building arguments problem solving Etc in addition the CDC shows National Mental Health crisis and teens and pre-teens and at the same time locally we're facing um record teacher shortages we saw this recently when chiap school committee voted mid-contract raises because they couldn't feel fill teacher and Leadership jobs and then in ammer specifically we all know the regional schools are maing facing morale that's really low in the face of several simult in simultaneous crisis and multiple levels of leadership loss yet the cuts here in the town manager's budget would yield a 12% decrease in the regional District's teaching staff that includes guidance counselors school counselors restorative justice support for students who are failing in math and science and some doubling up in AP sections as well town are pitching in and um I would just very much like to ask this committee to ask the ammer toown manager to also pitch in as well um we can talk more about but I really think that it's important that this committee look at it closely thank you thank you we go back to the room Kathleen Mitchell hi my name is Kathleen Mitchell I'm a resident of District 5 with two children in the schools I'm frustrated to be here again tonight speaking in support of the school budget even after students parents Educators our interim superintendent and our school committee members the people who best understand our schools and their needs have told you that 4% is not adequate amest is still proposing 4% to the school budget even after shutesbury and Leever have offered 6% and the Amis police department has been allocated 6% the schools remain stuck with a 4% increase I understand that the situ ation is complicated and that there are difficult decisions to be made but I also know that the school budget crisis is not a problem created by the ammer superintendent or the school committee if you meet with Joe cumerford and Mindy Dom as I and many other parents have they will tell you that the majority of school districts in the state are in similarly difficult situations through no fault of their own as a community We cannot put the onus on our schools to solve this problem alone and I think what worries me almost as much as my immediate concerns about the future of my kids education is that I'm not sure that all of you understand the gravity of the situation facing our schools or feel a responsibility to come together to help fix it some of the comments that I have heard from town counselors and finance committee members over the last two months have come across as condescending and and unsympathetic the tone of these comments is one that I have not heard with respect to other Municipal departments or capital projects that have been in need of additional funds this has been extremely disheartening at a time when it has has become clear that ensuring that our children continue to have access to high quality education is going to take a commitment from all of us I hope that you will reconsider the increase allotted to our schools and work in partnership with all of us to show our kids that they matter thank you thank you for joining us Katherine we're going to go to back to zoom for the last person to comment there Tony Cunningham please enter the room state your name and where you live thank you Tony Cunningham District 1 so I'm wanted to speak about two uh issues and they're related one is I'm disappointed to see that the Jones Library building project is not on your agenda tonight for presentation and discussion and there's nothing in the council packet about this project nor is there a packet for the Jones Library building committee which is scheduled to meet within 24 hours the capital budget shows $1.1 million going toward this project in the next year and that's money that comes from property taxes that could be redirected to operating budgets such as the regional schools and looking at the the proposed budget from the town manager I see departments within the town getting increases Beyond 4% and yet the regional schools and the elementary schools are told to keep within 4% there don't appear to be any cuts to Municipal Staffing and yet we're hearing many many cuts at the schools that are necessary so I'd love this Council to review this budget with a fine tooth comb and find the money to reach the 6% thank you thank you for joining us Tony back to the room Jesse Ferris Jesse Ferris of ho Road members of the council I'm here today to voice my support for acceptance of the roads of amorist Hills as public ways I hope you will do so today or on the 20th as the case may be and as you do the right thing for the residents of amist Hills I urge you also not to delay accepting hopbrook Road and kestral Lane as public ways and so end a 20-year Saga that only you have the power to resolve let me also take this opportunity to correct an error that was made at the last meeting held on this issue concerning the town's responsibility for our predicament I stated incorrectly as it turns out at the time that the town had somehow failed to collect $100,000 in insur bonds from the developer the truth as I since found out is somewhat more straightforward let me read to you from the minutes of the town planning board meeting of June 18th 2003 new business escro release The Meadows at ammer Fields Mr Douglas coold told the board that most of the work had been completed requesting release of approximately $100,000 leaving approximately 30,000 to cover the remaining work Town engineer put together a punch list was a recommendation at 31,000 would be appropriate to cover the remaining work Mrs Connie Krueger of 15 hopbrook Road commented that much of the work was a big Improvement but had concerns about a number of items that had been left unfinished She asked Mr Cole to come out to the site nevertheless your predecessors approved Mr Cole's request to release escrow the motion passed six to nothing and so this evening we on the 20th as you relinquished the last bit of Leverage you have over a corporation which I think we can all agree has shown itself to be somewhat less than Cooperative over the years I ask that you reflect on the moment 21 years ago when your predecessors knowingly relinquished the last means of enforcement over toino and so condemned us all to our current predicament you all have the power to undo their error I cannot imagine you would repeat it we are counting you all all on you to do the right thing tonight or on the 20th as the case may be thank you thank you for joining us Rudy Cassidy hello there ammer Town Council my name is Rudy Cassidy and I'm actually a uh citizen of belter town I have lived there for the beginning part of my life then I moved out to Boston where I was a teacher at MIT Museum and a lot of schools in and around Boston three years ago I came back here to amist I taught at the high school I hope to teach there again next year but I am the face of one of those 24 Cuts what's happening so I'm the AP Calculus teacher I am a geometry teacher who just won the teacher of Excellence award the Pioneer Valley teacher Excellence award and I'm one of your Cuts so when I look at the high school it's not falling apart like the middle school is but it has this thing at the end of it called the flex block and the students are leaving every day for 40 minutes it's 11% of their educational time it's 20 days of school and I've taught in a lot of schools it is acceptable students should not be losing that much educational time and the reason why they are is because of the current schedule and the way that the school is being funded now I've met the newcoming superintendent and she's amazing so Dr her she can really turn the school around and I want you to give her a budget that she can do that with now they did tell me that I could move down to the middle school since my position was being cut but I don't want to to the middle school I'm a calculus teacher number one I will find a community to serve I've already been applying to other jobs I don't want to leave my hair is ammer colors my life is here in ammer I want to support this community but I can only do it with your help please at least the 6% thank thank you for your comment Lauren Mills I'm Lauren Mills I live in um South Amherst 12 Long Meadow Drive this month is Bob Marley's death month May 11th I say this to say that may Our Lives reflect a higher purpose of good and bringing people together with our words and our actions our jobs careers the manners that we pass on to our children and those in our schools if we are a teacher and in our communities leaders of Destruction have a pattern of Destruction you who sit in seats of Power are incapable or unwilling to do things fairly justly or without prejudice those who have forgotten that people are people you serve the people with your votes you serve the people with your words and with your alignments the students who have the energy and use their bodies and their voices to bring use to to bring attention to the war in Gaza thank you and thank you for making a difference and a space for others to join a movement of peace and solidarity with Palestine people and make the connections between all occupied people around the world the word occupied have you have we become occupied in the town of Amherst with everything except what really matters teachers children and students Futures our health and that of the environment tear down this occupation and any occupation of Madness of Injustice and do it wholeheartedly not with reluctance we are grieving since 2020 more more than ever we are grieving and you in the Town Council for the most part leave have ignored those cries we've lost a loved beloved member in the Amar Community sister Dr Nitra shabas who died looking out for and speaking up about the injustices in the town Lauren and let us not forget that we have oh sorry we need to stop okay whether we are high class middle class lowincome we should all have something to contribute to lessen this thing we call Injustice in the many forms it takes as has been stated before the Amer school we really need you to stop thank you if you don't have us we need to have us and we need to be there for our children and stay involved in what the town of Amherst is doing with the public funds for schools and education thank you Lauren Amita Rudder hello my name is am Rudder and I'm a former resident of District 2 a senior at emers Regional High School and one of the c-hub leads of ammer Sunrise I'm here to speak in favor of a 6% budget increase for the schools I've watched the school budget be cut every year that I have gone to ammer Regional High School and every year it has been destructive but manageable this year is different $1.8 million cut from our school would devastate our school I can see it in my teachers eyes I can hear it in the Halls as friends talk of their families moving from the district if the budget passes I can feel it in the building with us education is a public right without this school and the hard work of teachers like Mr Buford and Miss Peters two of the people that will potentially be affected by these Cuts I truly don't know where I would be it boggles my mind to see our schools as deep prioritized as they are under the library at the 4.5 increase under the police at a 6% increase under the 10 new vehicles we bought for this year for no reason it bogles my mind that I can stare the 3.4 million billion dollar endowed institution in the eyes and have them tell me that they have no room for us in their operating budget if the 4% budget passes families will move after the district enrollment will go down Revenue will go down if the 4% budget passes my teachers who have been fighting for as long as I can remember will have to pick up the broken broken pieces of this school district and make it into something I want to leave this District better than I found it in lie of that I want to leave this District functional I want to go off to college without worrying about my community that will not happen if restored of justice is cut that will not happen if we lose guidance counselors Prep Academy if we overburden the bright room there areund ways to fix this problem redistributing money from the library from the police from the around 2 million we found in vehicles already purchased last year demanding money from emmer college with a clear plan on how it will help the district funding from the emmer college alums you only have to choose one please appropriate a 6% budget increase to of the schools this is more than a budget cut this is the end of a good school district thank you Delany Chang uh point of order I'm being asked to remind the audience to keep their signs out of the view of the camera so that the speakers can be seen thank you hi I'm Delany Chang I actually live in Hadley but I attend the emmer Regional High School currently I'm in 10th Grade and I'm here with Sunrise ammer um all I really have to say is please vote in favor for the 6% um budget increase for the schools thank you thank you for joining us Julian Hines good evening thank you um my name is Julian Hines I live at 41 Pine Grove in District 5 in ammer and I am one of the c-hub leads at Sunrise ammer um and I just am here to ask that you not only approve the 6% increase but I'd like to make it extremely clear that we've been asked as if it's a false dichotomy to choose between a 4% increase for the schools with the proposed 24 positions being cut and instead having to either cut Town services to cut um to take from arpa or uh sort of Grant funded revenues um and then to uh increase taxation beyond the 2.5% um and recognize we just had an override so that sounds pretty daunting um that being said I think it's important that we recognize that we have an increase in the library project that is at this point unsustainable to the town um and that amount of money will also result in the town not taking out loans not paying interest Etc if we abandon or scale back this project um and that will allow us to have have money that we could reappropriate to the schools we've also identified um around $2 million in capital errors that we could use to reappropriate to reappropriate for the schools for an additional 2% which I believe would fund up to five years in total um and then in addition to those things we also have uh many capital line items that we could push back a few years um or reduce the capital budget by about 1 2% um and provide more continual funding for the schools as um Leverett and and shutesbury have already agreed to and pelum looks in that favor as well so thank you very much for hearing from us tonight um and for hopefully adjusting the budget thanks for joining us algra Clark um my name is algra Clark I am a resident of District 2 I am also the co-chair of the community safety and social justice committee and though I'm not speaking on their behalf tonight I did want to let the council know something that I heard in our meeting in April which was concerning and what it boils down to is that this the schools are already in a staffing crisis the superintendent called the director of Dei asking for Crest respon responders to act as lunch monitors because of the understaffing in the schools this was the reason she was given for the request so we are already in a staffing crisis in the schools so cutting 12% of the staff is going to be disastrous um and I know there are people on this Council that would rather not see crusy functioning at all and I think that Crest has made a great impact in areas in the community and I'd like to see them do what they were intended to do which is act as a public safety agency that's unarmed and an alternative to the police um in terms of the budget for the Regional Schools I would love to see the 6% that Leverett and shutesbury have already agreed to again I think our students are here and they're speaking out and they have done some really important work auditing the budget themselves and they have found $2 million that is appropriated for something that it doesn't need to be appropriated for that's why we need to fund our schools our students are smart they are taking initiative and they are invested in seeing that their peers have the same opportunities that they do this budget with a 4% isn't going to give our future students that same opportunity so please do not approve 4% for the schools please look at ways to find 6% Maybe those $2 million that are left over thank you next is Rachel H hi my name is Rachel Hall I'm a member of the amoris community and I have two kids in the Fort River Elementary School um I'm here in support of the 6% increase um not because I'm an expert or um well spoken or articulate in this field um I have a background in systems of Oppression funny enough um what I do know is that you always seek the advice of those closest to the system being impacted which would be our teachers our students and children and our families and they've spoken very clear that this 6% increase is needed to keep us at B level um to keep not folks underwater to keep not folks mentally at risk um I'm confused because we moved here from out of state because the schools were raved about and that everyone said we invested in our students that ammer schools were Renown in investing in Student Success um I think it's very clear what we have to do I understand you're all in a really tricky position and you have to find money and move things around and yet I don't think our police department needs more funding I don't think the books on the shelves and libraries and buildings need more funding if our kids are not safe and secure none of that is of use to us so I'm really hoping that you fund this budget like the other local towns have and that we can have a successful school system thank you for your time and energy thank you for joining us James Master Alexis James Master Alexus 35 Linden Ridge Road Amis good evening honorable members of the Town Council I'll be brief uh I am the group leader of 50 plus homeowners who that live in amrest Hills and I'm here tonight uh in support of accepting the roads of amest Hills as public ways uh I know you've moved that question off to the 20th and that's okay I understand um that whatever you're waiting for you need to wait for some information on the 20th and that's perfectly fine I understand how this works sometimes um I'll be back on the 20th but I wanted to say you know in the last four years that I've been involved in this issue there have been some questions in about our neighborhood but all those questions have been answered I believe and the only question that I think is will be before you is are our roads in proper form and built to town specifications to be accepted as public W I think the answer to that is yes I'm not the town engineer but from what I've told the town engineer believes that they are I want to thank a few people and I will be very brief I know you have a lot of people that you need to listen to I'd like to thank the planning board that voted that has voted every single time on our behalf and in support of our neighborhood and most recently unanimously I'd also like to thank Miss breast who I'd see up there on the zoom uh for talking to me every time that I thought I needed to talk to her and to be a very professional woman and to help our neighborhood I want to thank Mr Bachman who also was very transparent and responsive to us um and um I wanted to say that I'll see you all on the 20th and thank you for your consideration thank you for joining here Rich McLean HL I live on Alpine Drive eight years ago my family moved to ammer at the time we did not work in ammer but we moved to ammer specifically because we knew it was a community that prioritized I want to see amers continue to be that and so I urge that you work to find the way make the 6% increase in the education thank thank you for joining us Margaret Sawyer hello my name is Margaret Sawyer I uh live on Station Road it's nice to see you all in person um and I came tonight because I grew up in a town that has a slogan that they use um a town is known by the schools that they keep and to me that's that's where I want to keep living I want to keep living in a town that's known by the schools that they keep um I worked this past year as a student teacher at Crocker Farm my kids are at Fort River um my my daughter is and those have been I've seen amazing things in the elementary school elementary schools my son started at the middle school this year and it has not been easy we all know that it has been a lot of heartbreak for the staff there it has been a hard hard time for many years um when I talk to specialists at the middle school they different people tell me how hard it is what a hard year they're having how hard things are um and that makes me really sad and then I also serve on the site Council um for the Middle School the site site Council s committee and um we talk about how the building's roof was C leaving in recently and how hard it's going to be to make these Cuts I have friends who work in the ammer high school who already know that their job is on the line things have already changed there's already fear in the schools there's already people planning to look for other jobs whether you pass this or not there's already people making different plans because it looks like ammer is not a school not a town that's known by the schools that it keeps it the staff and students there I don't think feel that of support so I thank the town for listening I thank you for hearing from these students I hope you will more and I also thank the school committee and shs Barry and pum Leverett excuse me for stepping up and I hope that we do too thank you carad Martinez good evening my name is Gad just going to get straight to the point we have very little time um I'm definitely hoping that you will reconsider and that you will absolutely approve a 6% um increase the 6% increase isn't even enough really but at this moment this is exactly what we need to kind of stay afloat I'm a substitute teacher I've also been member of the equity task force I was a co-writer of the proposal for the restorative justice program and um what I would like to say is i' I've never I'll be honest be impressed At All by the town of amher commitment to schools um I understand that the commitment really is to the rich and to the wealthy in this town it is not a commitment to the poor working class whether they are white black or brown the commitment is to maintain wealth where it's at and not a commitment to redistribute wealth to support the people who actually need it our students need resources our students need not only what they have now they need more this town must make a commitment right to increase the budget and to give these schools what they need the people who know what they need are the teachers the students and the families right and so I hope when I hear these stories about you know and and I I I don't want to not acknowledge people's stories about I came here because of this but the truth is that for decades the bipac community has never received what it's needed right the town of amher has failed black indigenous people of color and poor working-class white people for decades I would say for hundreds of years from the moment that we colonized this place and the indigenous people were slaughtered and moved out and pushed out so what I would like to see is a change not from the past I want to see a change that mirrors the necessities of the 21st century that we give these young people the tools and the resources to be able to fully Envision a changed world and we're not going to do it by cutting we need you to wrap up yep we're not going to do it by cutting resources we're going to do it by changing our values and by living with the moral imperative that we must do for our young people what was not done for usk thank you any comment excuse me thank you good evening my name is Amy calman my pronouns are she her I'm WR um speaking as a resident and also an employee of the District I'm a parent of um two students who one Alum who's gone through I'm also an Alum of ammer college um I work with students who are not always represented here so the Regional School District budget cuts impact all students and are particularly damaging to students who are non-traditional neurodiverse Learners English language Learners student who students who struggle academically students from families with limited Financial Resources and students with disabilities they are disproportionately impacted and their voices are under represented in this forum the lack of transparency about the cuts impacting students served by the special education department the English language learning Department Prep Academy a tier 2 non-sp specialed intervention for students who struggle and special education gened co-taught classes such as science at the high school is extremely concerning counseling services and restorative justice programming are also vital for these students social emotional support and development robust elective offerings are also what keeps many students engaged in learning and keep coming to school it has been a challenging year in special education at arhs and arms leaves resignations changes in roles disruptions in relationships between students and adults one of the proposed budgets this lower one rejected by the school committee is for close to a 2.0 High School cut in special Educators teachers not Paras such as academic skills teachers and Liaisons who directly teach provide special education services and case management legally required for students with a disability on an IEP I come from a family of Educators from Conquer New Hampshire where Christa Moll social studies teacher at my high school commented I touch the future I teach truly the most profound impact our tax dollars can have is to invest in our youth they are the future please fund an adequate school budget thank you thank you that was the last name on the register thank you that concludes public comment um we are going to move on to the consent agenda let me again mention that items are on the consent agenda but that does not mean they won't be discussed later on the only thing that's on the consent agenda in in this case are two referrals to the finance committee the items were selected because they were considered to be routine if you would like to remove an item please say so after I make the initial motion to move the F following items in the printed motions thereunder and approve those items as a single unit 8B referral of fy2 budget to the finance committee 8C referral of proposed Council order FY 25-11 and Order approving the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for FY 2025 to the finance committee is there anybody who would like anything removed is there a second Shane seconds thank you um we're going to go ahead and start the vote I'm going to start with Anna delin goth here I appreciate I in I and I have a question yes I just wanted to clarify that the items in our packet were updated um pretty close to the meeting and so for folks who had referenced those items it might be helpful just to note that they should review the packet again for updated corrected versions of those documents that are being referred thank you yep and I'm an I uh councelor ET I ly grimer I councelor hanii I Bob hegner I councelor Lord hi Pam roone yes councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer toab yes councelor Walker yes Patti Angelus I it's unanimous there are no resolutions or presentations tonight um that I will mention that under the town manager's report he will give us an update on the Jones library to the extent that we have that update we're going to move on to action items the first one is the acceptance of the public way for amrest Hills as mentioned earlier we actually not going to vote tonight because we don't have the approved motion based on all the documents however we are going to go ahead with the presentation and an opportunity for counselors to ask questions so with that I'm going to call on um any number of people I believe Chris brrip is one of them and Gilford moring is the other okay Chris would you like to give us a summary on the planning board report can be very brief uh yes uh the planning board um has been working on this um project issue um since 2013 they've worked with Tofino Associates and the residents of emmer Hills um emmer Hills was um not completed in the time that it was expected to be completed I can go into detail about that if you'd like but in any event the planning board has been working on this for quite a while um at their meeting meeting on when was it um February 5th um they uh voted excuse me not February 5th they at their meeting on February 21st they voted to um recommend to Town Council that the town accept the roads that are listed on the um I think it's on Jason's memo do you want me to read those those roads Jason's memo says Hawthorne Road conquered way lyen Ridge Road and a portion of well a portion of Lynden Ridge Road so if you'd like me to go into more detail I can okay um this has come before the council before so it's not um although it actually had there are some new members here that it were not at that council meeting when this was referred to the planning board um Guilford do you have things you would like to comment on at this time just like to say that this road has been through several iterations of review um as people in am know a road when you repair it or when you pave it it does not stay perfect forever over the course of this project and accepting these roads there has been deterioration in these roads and the developer has repaired it and meets all of our concerns at this point so we are ready to accept it and uh we believe it meets the standards of the towns uh system okay I'd like to just step back and recognize that there are four counselors on the council that were not on the council that referred this to the planning board this is a public way and in order this is a petition to accept this as a public way at this point it's a private way and when we accept it as a public way that means we take over the maintenance of it it means we take over plowing it we uh basically it is one of it becomes one of our roads the town's roads and so uh this has gone through a process of um as people have mentioned it's gone through a process of review it's also gone through a significant process legally as well as uh repair so as you but please as you are members of the council and you would like to have more more description or discussion please ask questions because this is not the last time a public way will come before us for acceptance okay uh Pat thank you um I'm concerned uh not about ammer hills per se um it does seem that Torino has done the repair work that has been required but I am very concerned about um information and questions and requests we had back in February um I think it was February 5th and um so I have some questions um that I need to have answered before I can support um anything and what basic question is at that time uh Ted Parker agreed that there were shorties for the ammer hills project that would not you know that weren't going to probably be used and that they would then that money would be given or kept by the town with Torino's approval on to use for The ammer Meadows issues Road issues uh I want to know if that's happened and what's the amount of the Shri um I also we had a request in February uh for reports from the town engineer on the status of the ammer Meadows punch list the bounds and me meets of the road as it's constructed a report on current conditions and any items that needed addressing the need questions of the need for resurfacing and recommendations re acceptance of the road as public ways and I I am delighted that ammer Hills is going forward please know that but I am directly uh con concerned by the continuation of issues at ammer Meadows that have not been addressed so can I get some kind of responses thank you Paul so you're not being asked to act on ammer TS tonight that that is scheduled for the 20th as is The Meadows uh request as well so and I think the council had a list of about six or eight things that we we need to report back to you and we'll do that on the 20th which includes I'm sorry which includes those items that you just ticked off including the Shi that they that yeah um we'll talk about what that what that looks like at this point in time in other words he's not doing it uh I don't want to comment on on that at this point but um there it wasn't that wasn't the answer actually um it's more of how it would be done so I'm sorry in fact um I believe we all received I know I received a request from um The Meadows Association that they be on the agenda and we have we are putting them on the agenda for the 20th yes at which point we will be expecting then an update on all of those items okay are there other questions about this Pam bruny thank you I would ask if if we're being given packets of information that we also get the drawings there were no drawings in this in in the packet for tonight and I would hope to see those for the 20th thank you we can go back and get the drawings from previous memos and make sure those memos are in the packet for the 20th okay are there any other questions seeing none we're going to end the conversation on this and move on to our next agenda item um and we will see uh the people for ammer Hills and also The Meadows on the 20th I'm sorry Kathy you have your I'm just asking so we be voting on this on the 20th we will okay thank you the vote the one of the one of the reasons the vote got held up is there's a lot of pieces of paperwork and the vote has to be done precisely and reviewed by legal in order to make it accept able and all of that did not happen in time but we didn't want to postpone the presentation again thank you and and just we don't have to go through a whole presentation but we have to have all the documents great we'll have all the documents and we will pull things from previous agendas so that all the documents including a schematic are there okay thank you thank you yeah Chris you had your hand up yeah I just wanted to note that I think the February 5th meeting of the Town Council the packet for that meeting would contain a lot more documents so I'll go back and look at that and maybe the councilors would like to look at that too well and we'll pull that into the packet for the 20th Yep okay thank you Chris are there any other questions or requests with regard to this issue and the meeting on the 20th okay then we're going to go on to the main event for the evening I ha to say that for anybody else that's interested but we do have a budget it's been presented by the town manager on as required on May 1st it was sent to us with links and we are going to have a presentation on that budget during the um consent agenda we have already also done what we're supposed to do which is refer this budget to the finance committee which now begins putting in a lot of work um so [Music] um Athena are you going to sit up here with them no okay well first of all we'd like to welcome um as always Our Town manager but also our former Finance director and now consultant Sandy perer our co- interim Finance director Jennifer laning and controller Holly Drake and I do want to rec recognize the role that Athena has played in the preparation of this budget okay so floor is yours so I'm going to kick off over here um so the first slide well so this is submitting year on SE on May 1 we as required by section 5.4 B of the Town Charter uh I submitted the uh fy2 budget to the Town Council and um so we do have a lot of thank yous uh not a lot actually you mentioned the people the team that was really responsible for pulling everything together and um really appreciated Sandy poer coming out of retirement to help us through this process that really calm the waters in many ways and helped us um bring this major major multiple hundred page document uh to conclusion um it also the budget also includes budgets for the elementary schools the Regional School District and the library along with the capital Improvement program and just a shout out to sunrise ammer for noting you know doing such a careful read of that so quickly uh you know that was helpful to us and we've updated the budget to reflect the things the discrepancies that they find found in the document so um and I one of the speakers earlier on talked about the um you know the qualities and capacities of our students and that really it really showed so thank you to them and um I thank them out in the hallway as well next slide so as I said o is that it oh yeah so I said you know this there are five elements to the budget town library elementary schools Regional School District Capital Improvement program and then there's two other things that form the actual um Financial basis of the town which is the Community Development block brand and the CPA you've already those are things either that you've looked at or don't come to you um and you know we're really proud of this document it's um built basically on prior year documents and you know we we work from that as our as sort of our basis point next slide so this is going to be a challenging year for us um the Regional School District um has asked more than the budget Coordinating Committee and the town projected we could afford the other parts of the budget the elementary schools Library Town budgets all were able to develop their budgets within the 4% when we look at that number we say you have 4% elementary schools or town figure out how to bring your budget to the um to the council within that for 4% within that 4% you there you will see different places that that are higher than normal higher than the 4% some are lower than 4% but is really is the overall budget that I'm responsible for delivering to that's 4% um we have um in order for us to maintain this budget it's going to require a sustained um and to talk about the the Regional School District just to talk about because that's that's really the issue before you it seems like um it's going to require a really a serious sustained conversation with the school committee the finance committee members of the Town Council and our other partners in the in the region the other towns um my job in presenting the budget is to maintain the town's finances and maintain our strong financial position as a town and that means that we have a balanced budget that's funded by recurring revenue and that we can go to our bonding agents which we're going to do Wednesday I think it is and ask them to look at our bond rating and and having a balanced budget with recurring sources of revenue it's important piece of that um and why do we say 4% we initially said 3% if you recall back at the um Financial indicators back in December that was based on our Revenue projections all of our budgets begin with our revenues what is coming into the town and from that we say here's what we can afford to buy in terms of services um additional information came in in January after Sandy got on and you know he got deeper into the numbers and we found there's enough um Savings in one area there onetime savings actually that allowed us to go to 4% and we presented that to the budget coordinating group um in February and that seemed everyone seemed to be pretty pleased with that next slide so the key point this is um it's want to make sure that you understand that my job in our our town has to have a balanced budget by law so we have to be able to approve a budget the council has to approve a budget that is balanced the it includes 10 and a half% for Capital it doesn't include an override um we're going to tou touch on some of these things later on but it does fund our outstanding liabilities liabilities are the debt that we've already taken on that in the payments we have to make uh OPB which is other um post-employment benefits which is basically health insurance and pension these are liabilities that we have taken on we we and we have to continue to make progress on filling those Li those those liabilities um we have um maintained our reserves because it's really important for a community like ours to make sure that we have enough money and for that what they call the rainy day fund and that we have to look at this over multiple years it's not a oneye Outlook and I think that's where the conversation has to focus on as we talk about the Regional School District this year's one thing what about year two year three year four um as we go forward I'm gonna turn over to Sandy now oh thank you good evening uh council members and those of you listening at home um I'm gonna just walk through numbers which is one of my favorite things to do in the world so um I hope you join me on this trip um the budget summary uh as the town manager outlined there are four major groups to the budget the town budget the the schools budgets which are the elementary schools the regional schools and the libraries and going back many years uh there's been a pattern in Amish where each of these goes up at the same pattern originally it was going up at 3% uh back in the fall and then we were able to find some savings and uh better numbers on state aid so we did that to 4% and I just want to reiterate that on the municipal side that means the combination of all elements of the municipal budget within that budget some departments are going up uh more than 4% some are going up less than 4% some are even going down all those things can depend on any number of things uh including whether people have retired or have got steps or um other things that are just s of intrinsic to the peculiarities of that department in any one year what I can tell you is that we have not added positions in this budget with one exception which I'll talk about in a minute so when you see changes in a particular Department's budget going up more than 4% it's not because we're adding more people there or um other things it's because um that it just happen stance of that budget in this particular year and the Staffing uh it's the people who drive this budget and um paying for them is what drives the increases from year to year that makes up $96 million of the budget um there's still about uh another 20 uh some odd from other sources including what we spend on Capital what we spend uh to pay for reti ironment and OPB as the manager mentioned and the assessments that we get from the state it is in these uh last two areas that we saw significant uh savings from what we originally projected retirement we think usually goes up 6% the year in this year it went up barely 1% so the money that would have gone to pay that uh retirement assessment for Hampshire County could instead go and fund that 4% up above similarly on assessments uh the state gives us money and the state takes money away and this year they're taking away less money than they had in the past and that's mostly because uh our pvta assessment went down and our assessment uh for Charter School tuition went down um so because of all that if you put that all together in the Shaker and jiggle it up it means we have a 3.6% increase in our overall spending this year which is very typical of what ammer budget increases are from year to year on on a typical year ammer overall goes up between about three and three and a half maybe 3.6% really not much more than that and really not much less than that it's a consistent thing year in and year out I will say as I go along here if there are questions that you have I'd be more than happy to answer them but otherwise I'm just going to keep talking all right so we we're going to about to spend $97 million on out of our general fund uh that includes 4% for each of those four major areas as the town manager noted the regional school committee voted a budget of a 6% increase instead of 4% that would cost an additional $355,500 um that's just the amount of money we're talking about the difference between a 4% and a 6% budget we continue to spend uh 10.5% of the tax of our overall Budget on um on Capital uh particularly of the tax levy emis has always been very good at spending money on Capital and um there are some towns that don't do a good job on spending money on Capital and then they fall apart and then they end up spending a lot more money to to fix things down the road um so we've maintained a commitment to Capital I will speak a little more about the details of that and some of the reporting that's been reported on social media today uh in a minute uh we continue to meet our other long-term obligations health insurance and pensions um and overall our increased spending is 3.6% um I just want to highlight some of the spending uh increases uh these appear both in the operating budget and uh in the capital budget uh we're spending $1.3 million on roads ins sidewalks including money we get from the state under so-called chapter 90 we've just started this year under the capital budget uh funding Municipal roof Replacements we have a lot of old buildings in town and um roofs as uh Guilford was saying earlier roads fall apart eventually well so do roofs and uh so we are starting to invest in those so that we can maintain the security of our our buildings um we are uh spending $200,000 for technology equipment um we've added $100,000 for storm water management um and $40,000 for more trees um on the climate area I think trees is a nice segue into this uh the town is Broken Ground on a new net zero elementary school as you all know um we have uh created in this budget for the first time an independent sustainability Department it had been in um Community Development and now it's its own Department uh in capital we've started uh a multi-year project to invest $250,000 in energy efficient and sustainability um we're about to roll out residential heat pump incentive program and the town has adopted a specialized building code to further reduce greenhouse gases so uh we continue on the Green Path here in amers community health and safety a lot of change we're seeing a lot of change in names and faces at the heads of our our police fire dispatch and Crest departments um some of some you can see them in these pictures some have been replaced already some are in the process um but I'd say this is a very significant ific um amount of turnover it just happens to be timing um for these key departments that help provide Public Safety across a a broad array of methods uh and um programs um the council adopted a residential R rental property bylaw and um because of that we did add a couple positions uh to the inspections department uh so that uh we can have people to do the inspections of Residential Properties so that is the only um increase in Staffing it is paid for by new fees that the council voted for but also while doing that Still Remains within the four% of the overall Town budget increase um racial equity and social justice issues um we will uh this year we'll bring about further uh development of the residential oversight board we have maintained Fundy uh for uh the Dei uh Department an important department which uh does a lot of good work and I think ammer is really a leader across the state in doing that work I've worked with a lot of other towns across the state and I think ammer does a great job here um we've continued uh we put a little bit more money into uh childcare reimbursement programs for elected officials which would allow a broad range of people to run for office and be able to access uh these meetings uh without having Financial impacts um and uh we would continue with Community visioning sessions on racial equity and Justice issues for the entire ammer Community again continuing a uh multi-year commitment to these affordable housing um there are a lot of particular projects I'm not going to go through the details of each one but you can see um both the CPA is uh funding projects uh there are Street projects on belter toown road uh ball Lane Northampton Road um and the town as you know purchased the former uh VFW uh right down the street here and is working to convert that into housing uh Enterprise funds um are sort of boring this year there's not a lot going on in them um they are continuing to provide uh the services that you expect uh the biggest are water and sewer um and uh we've built uh monies in there to continue Capital upgrades and maintain those in in good shape um but otherwise they are um pretty much just continuation of things you've seen in previous years Capital um so I'd like to spend a couple of minutes talking about capital and the first thing I would like to do is offer an apology uh because because um I made a mistake in putting out the capital budget in not in the numbers but in the words uh the numbers which were reviewed by uh the jcpc are all correct um that they reflect the numbers that I've shown so far reflect the numbers are on here and they reflect the numbers that I'm about to show you after jcpc did its excellent work on the capital project um it turned the document over to me to then add a bunch of uh written descriptions of each of the individual projects and I started on that but I didn't finish it and then I turned it over without thinking to be published so all the vehicles in the capital project that were published on the town's website are from last year none of the vehicles that were uh approved for this year made it into that document so then some people looked at that and correctly said hey wait a minute we're spending the same money twice except it was just a mistake and it was my mistake and I apologized to the council to my fellow workers to the manager to the entire town uh I just dropped the ball and didn't um didn't update those properly they have since been updated they are on the website now and so um as I say the numbers are correct just the description of what we're buying uh is incorrect or was incorrect it has now been corrected um so I just want to put one finer point on that that means there is no $2 million of things that are just lying around because we already bought them we're buying new things this year we continue to invest in capital um and um so again if you have questions about that I'd be glad to answer uh but that is was entirely my fault um so our Capital Improvement program does continue to spend 10.5% of the levy on Capital um it uh incorporates improvements to our buildings to our roads infrastructure um and um with a strong look at sustainability and climate impact um you will see on the written description of projects those that are in green are particularly um suitable for climate sustainability uh and they're well their green projects um I'm just going to show you the uh numbers here and unfortunately because uh on the screen whenever I talk this little box shows up and shows my words and therefore blocks out the very bottom numbers on this screen what it says however is that uh this year uh we're spending about 8.7 $8.8 million uh total on Capital with the general fund and um CPA uh that is a balanced capital budget between the resources that we have up above and what we're spending below including cash capital and debt uh in the next year we have about a uh $500,000 deficit the next year after that about $100,000 deficit FY 28 there's a surplus of I don't remember how much but and then in 29 a $50,000 Surplus so overall um we're in good shape for actually the money we're spending for FY 25 asking you to appropriate over the next five years we'll continue to need to look at at the proposals that people have put forward um we're in range of being inbalance but uh frankly um we're just a little out of balance that this is not the first year that that that's happened we're not always in Balance every time for the out years I think that's okay as long as we're in balance for the current U the list of projects that we have um there are a lot of little tiny letters up on the screen uh I know you and people at home probably can't read this but these are all the projects by Department uh and the ones for fy2 are in the highlighted uh kind of beige column there and it goes on for three pages um you can see the things that are in f225 then if uh for some things if there are proposals for projects in future years they're in the white columns uh to the right of that we break things down on this by showing whether we're spending cash capital or whether we're going to borrow uh for these projects and then if we say we're going to borrow for them we uh then do a projection of what we think those borrowing costs are out into the future so that uh we understand overall what the impact of spending cash or borrowing is in some cases in the capital plan there are instances of um other sources state aid is one thing uh the ambulance fund needs for ambulances and so forth um but mostly ammer Capital plan is one that uh uses cash capital and some borrowing uh all right uh I like this picture because it has some great looking people in there digging dirt um and uh I think we're all very excited about the Newport River Elementary School um so in terms of ongoing Capital uh uh we're very excited for that we're about to sell Town's bonds for those uh that would be the first branch of money uh that comes in and then as we get other reimbursements from msba and so forth uh we'll spend that money um here's another thing with even smaller letter but to me this is um this is the kind of thing that I think about and I hope that you think about all the time this looks at a five-year outlook for uh the town's res ources it shows uh on this first slide all the revenues that we are expecting for the coming year a 3.6% increase and then in the following years um how much uh total revenue we have and what the dollar impact of those is and I would just say um that in each of the forward years the percentage increase of Revenue is going to be uh in this instance somewhere between about three and a quarter and three and three4 percent that is the kind of town ammer is if you were Cambridge you might have four or 5% because that's the kind of community they are they have a lot of businesses they have a lot of growth um when I worked in Arlington we were probably about a 4% Community but Arlington really is but excuse me amers really is a um you know three to three and a half% community that's who you are unless um there's outside sources of uh revenue or unless you do things like have overun you're basically stuck in a three to three and a half% commitment um what that means right now with the Outlook we have and this forecast is that next year FY 26 says we in the budget office already start thinking about FY 26 even as we're putting FY 25 together we're starting out with about a half a million dollar deficit and that goes up to about $850,000 deficit by FY 29 this assumes that spending is going to go up for those four major areas by only 2 and a half% which is a little lower than we've seen here in the past so this is the forecast as I inherited it and um it already starts with some deficits I think it it's likely that those deficits will be reduced uh over the next few months as we continue to look at um whatever state aid we're going to get and particularly as we look at new growth in town we tend to be very conservative in estimating what new growth is we estimated at $650,000 a year in the last few years it's come in closer to 900 or a million dollars so there's some growth that will do a good job of wiping out some of those deficits so that's the good news the more difficult news is that there are other pressures on the budget in the coming years I mentioned that this year a retirement assessment went up less than 1% it usually goes up 6% there are some weird reasons it went up so little that year mostly having to do with who was on staff on September 30th uh of the of 2023 so what staff positions we had filled and what vacancies we had we just happened at that date to have more vacancies than we might have at other years so the Retirement Board thought oh you don't have as many people you know your costs aren't going to go um that's not likely to recur next year so there's going to be some bounceback is it going to be the usual 6% or is it going to be something like 10% I don't know I do know it's going to be a lot bigger than the zero or the 0.1% that we had this year so that's one thing to look out for the second thing I would just mention H is that we're assuming only a two and a half% growth for the town the Regional Schools the elementary schools in the library uh that may be what ammer has to do but those aren't big increases and um if you start to look at a 3% or a 4% increase for those budgets those numbers get a lot bigger they get into the millions um I have talked with the finance committee with uh the town manager with uh chair of the council and with some of you individually about the need to have some of those conversations about what the future looks like um I have always said if you give me the money ammer residents I'm happy to spend but we're in a situation where they're giving us three to three and a half% increases every year and that's the world in which we have to live unless we do something else about that so uh I just point this out for now this is how things look into the future um and I think uh the town is scheduled to and needs to have a lot more serious discussions about what this looks like with some what ifs as we go forward um yeah I'm gonna take this thank you Sandy um such a cheery ending there um so but it's important because that's the framework that we're working in in terms of when we look at the budget we can't look at fy2 only we have to look at out years and as Sandy said if we start to project higher increases uh without additional recurring sources of revenue to support those increases we're going have a major deficit um and it's going to really impact our operations within a year or two so it's it's very serious um when we look at this um there's a lot of the town has the town has always been very ambitious on what we wanted to do there's a lots of challenges in bringing everything in um and we will address them all in one way or another but we do need to prioritize the biggest priority right now is about the fiscal stability or sustainability plan for the Regional School District that's that's front and center in our conversation we've heard a lot tonight about the the needs for the district but you've also heard tonight about the limits on our revenues so that conversation has to have H has to happen with our our school district with our um with our Union reps with the the other towns with the council um and so you know we need to move into a place where that conversation a very serious conversation can can go forward um the other piece that I know that is very is a high priority for for the council are roads and sidewalks um and then also the major capital projects they're a little bit in in uh in disarray right now we are we know we have the school moving forward we know we have to make progress on the fire inw and there's there's lots of questions around the L Jones Library where that stands so one of our goals before Sandy leaves is to help us re re um visit that entire um major um project uh spreadsheet so you can start to review those next slide um so one of the things I talked about was leadership changes that we talked about and I you know I was thinking about this and there's a lot of leadership changes going on right now you know we you you proved the the police chief um our fire chief Tim Nelson is retiring and so we'll have a new fire chief we brought in a new Comm director of community community responders our dispatch director is is retiring so we'll have a new dispatch director our finance director we're seeking to fill that position we the school committee great fortunately was able to hire a new Superintendent of Schools they're looking for a middle school principal and then as we as we expand out there's also there's a new president at Amis college and a new Chancellor at the University so much so that the president of Hampshire College is now the dean of all the five colleges he's only been here like five or six years so um you know and he's relatively new still and then just a a side note the directors of the chamber and the bid have taken other jobs as well so there's a lot of transition happening and that's not to be yeah there's always transition the only thing that's that's that's certain is change but with these high level positions superintendent you know um Finance director these types of positions that's it's it's trying for an organization to maintain our ability and I just want to again credit um Holly and Jen and you know for and Athena and Sandy for coming in to support what was a really arduous process of putting this this this document together for you um you know it shows the strength of uh leadership we have one of the challenges you know when I got here people said well what's what's what's most important what do you notice about the town and I knew before I got here that the town had really topshelf um department heads because I had known them they were Statewide they were known Statewide but I didn't understand is that we have we had really strong seconds in command you know if you look at DPW police fire um Finance across the board we had really good people ready to step up what's happening though is a lot of folks don't want to step up they're like I like my job I want to keep doing my job I don't want to take on what that next job looks like and I think that that's that's becoming more and more of a challenge for our organization as we start to um try to fill these major vacancies um amest has very high standards for its department heads and we really work hard to get excellent people and we're usually pretty successful at it um but I think it's not just the town of amest it's also it's Statewide we talked about it even today um about the challenges of recruiting and retaining people um in the new environment um for our town so I just wanted to really sort of focus on that because I think that that's sort of a a narrative that I've been really thinking about a lot as we move forward through our budget process and and that's I think that's next slide I think that's it yeah so that's it I mean I want to you know we've got some good stuff Happening Here you solar on the landfill we have a new school coming the north em library for those of you who are there was just so gorgeous um you know the North Common is taking shape you know we have new parks at gr Park and Kendrick Park there's a lot for us to be proud of and I think we should sort of take a minute and think back like what we have accomplished because it's so easy for us to be in the weeds of the challenges of the moment and we always overcome those challenges but we we often don't stand our lift our heads up and look back at what we've accomplished so as a community there's a lot that we should be proud of that we're moving forward on so we're here to answer questions but but be aware that you know we are well aware that this budget will be torn apart by the finance committee over the course of the next month there will be a public hearing on it um at May 21st and then there'll be a public forum on the capital budget on June 4th or 3rd something like that third and then um and then it come the budget will come back with a finance committee recommendation in June and then you'll have a month to look at it and again PA and decide where we want to go so thank you for your time so let me Begin by just saying thank you this is whenever ever I look at our budget document I go Yow this is not just a small document this is you know the equivalent of a dissertation um and in this case fortunately being able to be done by a committee so we really want to thank all of you for everything that you did and for our department heads who have worked so hard to come in and beg for money uh I had to do that for the Town Council by the way uh and you know sometimes they get what they want and sometimes they don't most often they don't but we want to thank you for putting the full picture together and recognize that it is no small feat and um as a team you've done a great job so with that I'm going to start calling counselors Andy yes um I'll just repeat quickly the same thing that you just said but I don't have to go into as much detail you did thank you for all of you who put the budget together and have' been managing finance department and it's been a very difficult year uh it's been truly impressive how we've continued to go forward I did have one question Sandy and that is on the fiveyear projection um I was curious whether there were any places where you didn't mention that might bring some additional Revenue um and the one that I thought about in particular was on under local receipts and whether you had given any consideration to what um the governor has proposed in the municipal empowerment act and some of the options that might be available to the town of the legislature follows through in that and uh whether that would U make even a small difference uh thank you uh I have looked at that within uh the municipal empowerment act two uh they have um proposals to allow municipalities to increase their motor vehicle excise tax by 5% to increase their uh meals tax I think by going from point no the hotel tax from 75% to 1% and the meals tax another 1% all those together if the legislature enacts those and uh amers adopts them would bring in about another slightly over $200,000 that's the scope of what's being discussed at the state house now Pam roone thank you I really appreciate that that presentation um I think we understand and that discussions about the Jones Library will be occurring they've already they've already started to be talked about and I I just want to ask that the finance committee um and looking at the the finance director and Paul bachan are we going to see or are we going to be able to project if there are any changes in our capital budget or any of these numbers whether the project goes forward or whether the project doesn't will we be able to reflect those changes in this coming budget so on the Jones library right now where we are is we have a bid a single bid for the project um we have to either accept or reject that bid by June 10th so the answer is prior to when you adopt this budget you will know uh whether the status of that project of the Jones Library project um and if not you know we'll we'll be able to quantify what that looks like in the budget totally in terms of the impact where where it lives in the budget you'll be able see what those numbers are okay so we we would see the ramifications one way or the other yes George yeah um one takeaway I get from this uh presentation and again thank you all for what you've done is that um a conversation or conversations will need to take place um over the next couple weeks I take it within the next month at least uh involving the major uh players um so I'm wondering if we can get some sense of who when and where um these conversations take place I assume it's something beyond what would normally take place at the fincom discussions and um I'm not envisioning them taking place during a council meeting so I'm just asking uh what where when and who can you just clarify George do you mean about the budget or do you mean about specific issues well yeah what came across to me very clearly is the issue is is is a manye issue um and involves thinking about a longer range set of questions um and I took away from what the comments that Paul made is that there needs to be some serious talking um amongst parties um including this the regional school committee the union the council um and uh with the financial facts in front of us um and that's what I'm asking about is is when when will that take place how will it take place um that's my question yeah no that's an excellent question it's something we've you know I've talked about and um we had actually talked about this last year quite honestly when Sean was here about a fiscal stability group that was mostly staff-driven I think it's beyond that at this point I think we really do need the elected leaders to come in into a room and start to have some of those sort of pointed conversations um and with the other communities um I don't have a really clear concept of what that looks like exactly but really focused on developing what that how that conversation can be had with adequate sort of um support in terms of getting the numbers and things like that so and I'm really focused on the Regional School District because they're the ones who have come in at a higher percent than the other entities okay um Kathy I I have two questions um and since I'm on the finance committee I'll get to ask them again tomorrow but I thought I'd ask them tonight and I have some minor ones on the regional school budget um I realized we don't have a formal proposal yet for the 6% I that the school committee voted on so when we are sitting together talking about the budget in the finance committee will you be able to show us some potential ways we could get to 6% that's my first question um you know we um I can think of a few so just how we would do it and whether that's one a one time versus going on the base my second is a followup on Pam Ro on Joe um the one of the big expenditures if you go back to the capital budget is the Jones building starting to come online what is not in the estimates um and Sandy gave us a fairly good reason why is we only looked at the 15.7 million we didn't look at those shortterm band notes because it wasn't clear when they would come on so the news that the it's even higher Gap than before is troubling because that current capital budget doesn't have that those interest costs in it I mean it has a small amount it has 50,000 a year but it doesn't have the big amount so the sooner we can get Jones information the better because it will it will reflect what do we have for roads what might we have for other purposes and I guess I I do have one more but I think it's going to be on the agenda um separately the Regional School track will have to re be rethinking but my understanding is it might come in at a place that we could reconsider some of the money we voted before so if we I don't know when that conversation is scheduled L um so it just all feeds into thinking about what's available for the operating budget next year thank you Andy Joe go ahead I also get to ask finance committee but a couple in preparation for tomorrow's Capital Improvement um I sent some in before we knew some stuff and as always questions come up um and the first one's about the library again Kathy just talked on some of it and touched on some of it but the fy2 capital spending has a borrowing payment for the library of about 1.2 million in within that Capital spending so um at some point I think Finance is going to need to know what the plan is if the project doesn't go forward or if it goes forward with um a different project that requires 16 million in borrowing or so when that would happen um and what the fy2 modifications may or may not be for that um spending on in terms of just Financial orders and stuff like that um and then I also have question on the regional budget but the process um two years ago I think it was was the first time a school committee had come to the council with a budget that was above what the manager proposed and I thought we went through and received some sort of legal opinion as to what the process was if the council wanted to do that like what we needed from the region I haven't been able to find that legal opinion um I looked I don't know where I put it in all my documents but I I I vaguely remember a legal opinion but maybe my memory is wrong I'd like to know the process like what is under the mgl statute it says on recommendation of the school committee or recommendation of a regional school committee what does that mean just them passing a budget or do they need to come to us with a formal letter request or something before we can even consider an increase above what the manager's budget is and just things like that what what are the processes for all of that if we could get that in finance as we talk about and get to talking about our options knowing all of that would be very helpful um since we're on that issue because both Kathy and and um uh counselor haniki have mentioned the questioning the process I've also would like as we enter into that discussion to have some sense of where we might find that money that's what I was trying to ask on it um I might not have been clear but I mean I had yeah you know I pointed to one place that if the track comes in between CPA and our special appropriation less than that there might be money there but but but whatever whatever the town manager can come to the table would would be great I I just want to point out that borrowing money that we have to borrow is not real money so saving money from by not borrowing doesn't find money we have to actually find money um so other because I don't think we'll borrow for this um that um um the other thing I wanted also um mention is that we have discussed because of the forecast that um Mr Po has done um po has done uh that we probably would have a BCG meeting sometime in the next month or so because it's really important that people in all of our different parts of government start getting a handle on what this fiscal picture looks like uh Jennifer uh yes thank you so um just echoing what others have said and uh number the public comments I mean recognizing that we have to also look to the shortfall we're facing in the years ahead I I do hope we can find the resources to um meet the requests from the school committee for the budget at 6% and you know confine the $355,000 um and it's terrific that we were able you know to look at what we the increase of only 1% rather than 6% from for the retirement um expense but what I'm also wondering is because I know we're often told well we can't really move things between departments but in both Crest and the police department over this past year there were a number of unfilled positions so I'm wondering if money was saved there and just as we were able to move some funds from the retirement to the regional school budget if we might be able to look at where we didn't spend all the money that was appropriated in different programs and departments so every year large departments have a certain number of vacancies fire police DPW typically what happens when there's a a vacancy particularly in public safety is you still need bodies in those positions to be in the Cruisers or the fire engines and so what you have to tend to do is then bring somebody in on overtime so a a v so and there there's always sort of this balance between how many funded positions do you want to have how many vacancies can you have at any one time and and over the years we've tried to get that right and have the right balance um if there is money turned back at the end of the year um it ends up as free cash so it doesn't disappear it goes back to the town's coffers H the town as most well-run towns do fully funds all positions assuming that they'll be filled throughout the year um and then if again there are vacancies and you have to bring somebody in on overtime you have enough money to do that um so I would say overall I don't see that there's an opportunity for those big departments to move money out of those departments even if they've had vacancies because they do tend to to use them up so not on um again completely as Sandy was saying completely different fiscal year so any savings that we have in this fiscal year we would not be able to use until free cash is certified sometime in the fall and then it would be an appropriation that could be used to fill gaps but it's not going to help us right now with the FY 25 budget until 24 is over we know what we have left over and it's certified by the do before we can use that so I I suspect there will be free cash I don't have a projection on that but it's not going to help us until sometime in Fall I hope we can look in other places so but just to put that in context every fall that we come back to the council and we talk about free cash and what money has come in and then we provide you with some options for how to do that whether you want to put more money into roads or what all the all the priorities that you've already listed that's you because we see it as onetime money and I do want to note for the schools you know we can't just look at this as a one-time solution if if that were it it would be an easy answer they have a structural deficit because half of you know a big chunk of their budget is funded by Esser money which goes away next year that's one of the causes for their deficit is that they've been funding their budget with one-time money which when that money goes away you suddenly have a major um deficit and so that also has to be accounted for next year just like you know so I think that as we look at it we have to look at a multi-year strategy to say they're going to be in the whole beginning on day one $500,000 less Revenue than they had this year before they do anything um so I think how they have to do more planning about how they're going to manage that Pat d'angeles thank you I I want to clarify uh in terms of the regional school budget the difference between the 4% and the 6% is 355,000 something um and that feels to me like a num an amount that can be gathered but but particularly I'm concerned right now about ammer college I from what I understand and my information may not be accurate so I that ammer college made a proposal of about uh $10 million over 10 years or a million dollar a year uh given to the town for for specific projects and I don't know exactly what they are why what why can't this shortfall or this difference it's not a shortfall yet this difference be um requested from ammer college um and put in a multi-year if there is really money coming from the college every year and education is one of the things they care about why can't that be used uh annually to support this given that Esser funds and and stuff are going away and I um for I I will say I will answer this and then Paul well the manager will have to answer some of it too um and I will just upfront say I don't know anything about ammer money I mean so it may exist it may not I I just have no knowledge about it um what I would say is what we have been focusing on uh I think with the regional budget are two things one spending ongoing money so as you said if there's some Source out there Hallelujah but on the other hand uh it has to be a recurring source of money um the other thing is um I think the school department given that it has declining enrollment needs to explain why its budget is going up more than the towns average annual increase in Revenue um they have not answered that question that I've heard and so I think as we think about how to fund their needs we need to think about what their needs really can be within a town like ammer Paul did you want to sure so so UMass does give a $200,000 donation to the schools every year and they you know they they spend that uh Amis College they have been giving about $85,000 a year to the to the district um and they allocate that the schools get that money and they decide how they want to spend it um so so if there was additional money that the college or anybody was going to give directly to the schools and it was a recurring source of Revenue that would be something that would be good for them to to for us to identify and move forward on but I also say want to note that we're not it's we're not in isolation if you look around you know South Hadley has their town meeting coming up um there's an article there's a a piece on New England public media that talked about how this is happening in many other towns Northampton is a classic example um they're they're like a year ahead of us where they used a lot of onetime money last year to plug a hole and now it's it's a bigger hole and we're all talking we're all in the same sort of percentage uh changes and there's a lot going there's a lot of moving pieces so it's not I'm not saying the school district has an easy answer or we have an easy answer if we had a lot of money that'd be an easy answer but we don't um but in terms it's it's the contractual relationships that we have with our our employees and you know employees they're their their pay isn't keeping up with inflation so you want to be able to compensate them appropriately but that sort of digs into our two and a half percent Revenue that we get from the people every year so it's a it's a it's kind of a zero some game and it gets really it gets it gets eaten up very quickly because our insurances are going up much higher than they have in the past both health insurance and property and liability so those are things that we can't go without so we have to sort of take care of those fixed costs first you know our debt services and things like that before and then we say well how much money do we have to actually operate our business here what about the rain day F so again isn't there at least 355,000 fa sure but again it's it's a principle of the thing of using one-time money that that you don't have next year it's like spending out of your savings account in essence I mean that's a rough way to think about it as opposed to having it coming in on your paycheck every every year so it's like and at some point that goes away and you can't it's and it's in been the in the town's Financial policies and the guidance not to rely on one-time money to support the ongoing budget Thank you Pam thank you um first of all I'd like to thank the people that are in the finance committee who have been asking questions because many of us don't get to hear those being asked at the finance meetings certainly many people in the public don't get to hear them so ask away I think it's good for everybody to hear them um I had a question about the the creation of a separate sustainability Department what are the financial re uh ramifications of creating a separate Department because I know we created Dei um and crest what what what does sustainability do um we created a new department on paper but we didn't give them any more money we took some of the money from the conservation department that had been there for sustainability and moved it over to sustainability um so we did it on the cheap the the point of that I think is since sustainability is one of the major goals for the council we wanted to have more transparency in our budget otherwise it was sort of in the conservation and development budget this way you see exactly how much is going into sustainability so it is also to promote TR transparency okay Andy well I had a couple of things um one on the schools and I'm saying this partly from our fellow counselors who haven't been involved in it because I think the staff has been experienced ing this and observing it for a long time and for the public but the school question is not new as long as I can remember and it's been a lot of years that I've been involved in budgeting from the old finance committee meeting through select board days and Council days every year the school does the budgeting in the same technique that they start with what will it cost to maintain level services and then they determine what Revenue there's always a gap and then they make adjustments some adjustments end up being some programs and we see little bits of programs go each year and um so when we talk about the Regional School reality their costs are rising as Sandy indicated at a greater rate than um either Municipal resources or other departments other sections of the school it seems to be particularly um in the regional school and um think that it's U sort of as indicated it's worse this year because we knew they were using one time vesser funds for um operations and that was we predicted that was going to catch up and we said you know please be prepared please tell us what you're going to do and U I say we as finance committee and uh we we did not get a response to that and then we're in the position that we're in now um we're going to have to make some difficult choices of what to do for next year's budget um you know we don't you know I don't personally desire crisis but uh you know is uh us to try to figure out what's going forward and it is a fourtown proess process and uh the complexity of the law around that how that fourtown process is a little bit more than I think we want to get into tonight so this is a tough tough issue and um I was I'm pleased that talking about trying to create some kind of a group that can really look at the issue both on the re Revenue side and the expenditure side because um I think that we have reached a crisis point which is evident now the other thing that I just wanted to mention I sent this to the town manager this question previously when we did the L projections um back in 2020 um with is what was the town's commitment and how did the town's commitment to those Library uh to what just to do the repairs to the current library and U one of the things that the uh Tres did was they hired riddle to look at options to um address the repair issues if we did not do U the renovation project and just did repair of current facilities and there were two um options that they came came up with one was um there were both multi-year multi-part projects one total 16.8 million one was 14.4 which was one of the reasons that the the council at that time said that 15.8 million was a reasonable number considering we have to spend that on uh so one of the questions that came to my mind as soon as I heard what happened with the bid um was that it would be um helpful to least see if there's somebody who could take a look at the riddle work and see how uh those numbers be now because we have to assume that those numbers the uh 14.4 and 16.8 the two options that Kun riddle defined at the time have also increased and that we get as part of our report some understanding of what that is so um I just wanted to share with the rest of the council and the public that I have raised that question and I'm hoping that we can at some point get an answer to that as part of the whole presentation so thank you so Paul I want to go back to the fact that at the uh four towns meeting and subsequently in your budget message um and tonight you've mentioned and I I at the for towns meeting said this is a problem we all need to work on together so that it's not US versus them it's us working with the schools in a way that clearly demonstrates our valuing education which we do in our community um so I really um it's disheartening unfortunately that you were able to start such a thing when we still had Shan and our former superintendent and uh it fell apart so I want to make sure it doesn't fall apart this time it we don't have a choice we have to all sit down together and say what do we want education to look like in amest and how are we going to make it happen and so I um speak only for myself but I am more than ready to start working on how we're going to get make that happen what that committee needs to look like how that process is going to happen because we can't be sit here given what we saw at the um Regional um for towns meeting uh what next year looks like I mean it next year is it's out of control there it it isn't it isn't a $355,000 solution it's a much bigger and much tougher solution and we can't be sitting here next year saying gee I wish we had formed that committee so um whatever it takes we need to do it do it fast and it needs to be clear what that charge will be um Kathy I'll just Echo what you just said Lynn but I I think it's an intense effort to be rethinking curriculum rethinking a lot with and I know we're bringing in a new superintendent and we're the council and we can't micromanage I mean we're not because we don't have enough information to make those decisions either I I just wanted to um supplement what Sandy said about sustainability of breaking it out we do along with the person who is in that department we have a line in the capital budget called sustainability that's real it's another it's a quarter of a million dollars and one of the things that's enabled us to do is plan to seek grants so we sometimes have a matching grant to get more money I'd like to have the town over time not right this budget cycle be thinking of how that could work even more so I mean with with the one person if we get the grant money they've got to figure out how to implement it but we really need to be talking about both and there is quite a bit of money on the table now between the state and the federal government to support some projects um that are around electrifying in our around solar so so I know our one person is involved in all of them but just trying to make sure that we don't drive a terrific person out because she is trying to do multiple things all the time so I I think it's terrific what we've done and I just uh I'm just going to because Andy raised it I'm going to be sending off my thoughts on the riddle and o how not all that money needs to be Town money there was an elevator in there that did not need to be in the list and we were told that verbally and it was a million dollars of that cost so it's real money so just when we come back if we switch to a plan B we better have a real plan B on you know the roof the HVAC system and let's get it moving and Paul I know you can't move on a dime that way you have to have an engineer or someone come in and tell us what it's going to cost but being able to think because we don't want the building to fall apart so as as we move that way but we're pretty we're a few weeks away from having to think about that but not very far so that I just wanted to not let Andy's comment sit like it's the same amount of money it's not necessarily the same amount of money um are there any other questions or comments on the budget we have one other item that's f FAL I'd like to do it so that we uh people may need a break but at the same time I don't want to hold our staff any longer than they need to be um the other item in fact is the we've already voted to refer it's the proposed Council order FY 2511 in order approving the acceptance of optional tax exemptions for FY 2025 and I believe um is Kim with us even no okay um sorry if there are questions about the optional tax exemption we can take those up at finance committee she's available at that time thank you so uh with that I'm GNA again thank you all um for getting us started yes thank you very much and um and I just want to say Sandy your apology was much appreciated but when I opened it on Thursday I should have called you right away saying the word list doesn't match the number list yeah thanks we wish you had but um I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to Sandy perer Jen Le Fountain and Athena o'keef for supporting me through a very difficult budget process for myself so thank you very much thanks great we are going to take a 10-minute break and then come back and finish the meeting please turn off your speakers and your cameras expanation I open India midnight article was there none of us and then I emailed PA at like 125 think I'm crazy but you still see it War yeah um but I did I didn't even I didn't even on that no I didn't catch the budget I in the Indie there's no way this thank you thank you well hey the fun begin the fun Jennifer have we met before I think we met at MMA probably okay all right because there's a Jennifer there is life I think somewhere oh is it the one in Northampton I don't know it's just but your name was like wait a minute and then I thought like from my youth or something but maybe not where are you from uh grew up in Newton and lived in the Boston area most of my life so oh no where'd you go to college Dart no that would but um no because I have to say I you looked really familiar to me sitting there and then I wasn't until you came up I was like oh that's Sandy so I don't know but okay well did we go to summer camp together maybe maybe any nice to meet you it nice to meet you too and thank you for you really sa somebody if somebody ever comes up to me and says I've had this happen says your face is familiar with the names wrong it's because in fact I have an Al I when I was previously married I carried my husband this last and I went by Judy which is my first name L your middle name j that name and now I and literally I had somebody come up to me in Washington one time and say I know you but the name's [Laughter] not J your sisters call you that no oh you just came I I I dropped it when when I moved to rhod Island right after I got that wow that I did it I dropped it then yeah I never felt like a Judy but I never did it legally so I always legally I write J yeah no I have seen the Jay and I've Wonder to because my mdle name's Lyn so oh there there you go now have you ever met that one my sister-in-law did that and took me years to get it straight e e e e e e e e e e mean it'll stay on as you as you return Please turn your uh video back on but don't turn your sound on yet thank you e councelor ET would you please turn your video on so I know you're back thank you all right moving right along uh we have no appointments tonight uh and but we are going to go on to committee and liaison reports although please remember you just gave one last week so um CRC Pam Rooney and Jennifer to Pam thank you the only uh um uh reminder is to pleas please reach out to ask people if they're interested in serving on the planning board and you've seen several iterations of the bulletin board notice so you should be well armed with um with the material to share thank you thank you Elementary School building committee Kathy and councelor Walker we have a meeting coming up on Friday the 17th of May and at that point we'll get the new cost estimates for the the 90% drawings and by the way these drawings um this is a document that is starting to be look like the bid documents you know it's that level of detail so it's it's pretty exciting uh the stage we're in and that's the 17th that's the 17th and we meet at um is a Friday let me just 17th is a Friday we meet at 8:30 in the morning okay so we should um we often don't get the document till just before the meeting in this place I can't remember when the cost assessments are due back to them they need to reconcile the two different pieces but it will be at a minimum presented to us but we usually get it about the day before write Alicia on this with a a summary and then this big long cost estimating document okay all right thank you um finance committee Bob hegner yeah as Lyn mentioned we're going to start uh to with tomorrow's meeting we're going to start reviewing the the budget um and uh we'll beet pretty much every Tuesday and Friday we we will not we'll try not to meet on the 24th which is just before Memorial Day weekend that's a Friday uh and we intend to do our final recommendation uh at our meeting on Tuesday June 4th uh for those in the a audience uh we plan to do this to review the school budgets on the 14th uh Tuesday at 2:00 pm and Ju Just I want to add to what Bob just said if any of the counselors have questions um on small or large send them through to Bob and Athena so we can get them to the presenters when they come in so it's Elementary and Regional that we'll be doing on that day and that's Friday that no that's the 14th Tuesday the 14th Tuesday the 14th at two thank you I should know this I was that no that's that's I just have it memorized because I took that part of the budget to do questions but but we merge all the questions that any counselor comes up with so they they're looking at a Consolidated list thank you um go Anna go has not met since the last time that I uh have given a report however we have five resolutions and proclamations on our agenda for this week so we will be busy thank you everyone for that um and uh we also will be working on our the timeline for the charter Review Committee um and the finance committee appointments um we got a couple big things on the horizon too so we're really trying to tackle that including the town manager evaluation the um uh legislative process guide and um as soon as we get it back the um legal recommendation regarding the um successor committee charge to ah so those are all coming to us um or with us currently and we're working our way through them as fast as we possibly can along with everything else that comes up so thank you everyone for your patience with the process okay um we're going to do the Jones Library building under the town manager report so I'm going to skip that um and except I think Pam uh confirm you have a meeting tomorrow right okay uh Town services and Outreach Andy yes I don't really have uh much to add to the report from last week I just want to remind everyone that um the 16th which is our next meeting we're going to be focusing largely on ways taller though not exclusively and then on the 30th we're going to be um trying to meet with staff from various departments to get a better picture about um what the options are on things of um speed limits traffic calming and other things that um are that can be done by the town and uh I for either of those if you have any questions that you would like us to EXP explore or POS during those conversations um welcome um anything that you send along to me as committee chair on those issues thank you okay um there's no minutes to approve although we do will have a catch up in two weeks I hope uh and so we're going to go on to the town manager report Paul submitted a written report of about 13 plus pages and so Paul do you want to give us some highlights and then spend a little time on Jones sure just a handful of things uh just to thank those who were able to come to the north Hammer Library ribbon cutting um it was really a nice nice beautiful day great event great music uh I I messed up because I forgot to talk at the end to do the ribbon cutting um so we had to GA gather people after the fact to get come let's do that um ribbon cutting so um but it was a terrific day you know great people speaking a big turnout and thanks to uh Angela Mills who put a ton of time into organizing that and to Dona for supporting it by providing the the the food and things like that so uh and if you haven't been up there please make an effort to go up there it's a beautiful beautiful beautiful building um the second thing was the cleanup day which happened a week ago Saturday um which was again a gorgeous day and we had uh a really good turnout and uh three in three rally points gra Park mil River and Kendrick Park and we had counselors at each one to help sort of guide and and actually do the do picking up trash and that was a real that was a terrific think that we do every year lots of football players who are out there you know patrolling different roads and things like that um Valley Bike you you already you talked about that when I wasn't here and you approved it and that's you know we have the press release out on that so that's moving forward um Electric electrical electricity aggregation has been approved by the Department of Public Utilities um so I've updated you in the town manager report on what's the next step for that it will go back to the committee um today um I was invited to uh be at with a very small group with the governor lieutenant governor and the Secretary of Housing and livable Community communities um they really are focused on housing and breaking down barriers to creating housing and it was a closed door session so the Press wasn't there until afterwards and they were really were saying like what else can we do to create more housing and we talked a lot and from my perspective Ive uh they had number of managers and Mayors from across the state uh probably maybe 10 or so of us that were there um and uh we're so for us we talked about the the demands placed on our community based on the student housing the demands for student housing because of our location of UMass and um and and how it in in in um infringes on the recruiting efforts of UMass amest and Hampshire colleges because we don't have a wide range of housing not just affordable housing but it's also market rate housing so the administration feels like it's their number one job it is an economic uh deterrent in our in our state and that we're losing that 24 to 36 age group who are moving out of state because they can't find houses that they can afford to buy um it's an all things everything on the table um the uh lieutenant governor call also said you know we're looking at OPM like what does that mean other people's money so you know we're looking for other people's money too uh and so lots of effort based on affordable housing and just generating more housing for everybody uh they talked about um manufactured housing to bring down the cost and also um adu's uh accessory dwelling units and and they've talked a lot about MBTA communities and the zoning that's required there so they're in this battle and um they're hoping they they feel like the time is right for them to make some significant changes in housing policy in in the Commonwealth lastly the Jones Library so uh bids came in on April 26th Friday at 2m I should have said bid came in because it was one bid the amount for the bid was 42 m742 42.7 42 million as about almost about 18% above the the cost estimates that we had one bid is always a bad sign being 18% above what we estimated is a is a is a terrible sign um so the owner project manager our real OPM and uh our Architects are working with our capital projects manager and others to sort of sort through what is in the bid what drove it up so much um and so what are the options available we're gonna we're GNA talk about them tomorrow with the Jones Library building committee so what's what what's their assessment what's their analysis of the bids can we go out to bid or not um Can Can we rebid it are there ways that we can make changes to it there's you know all these different variables are in play um we have to make a decision by June 10th so there is a bit of time but not a lot to in and ultimately um it's all going to be driven by finances you know what are the paths forward and um so I don't have a lot more information than that accept that to say that you know the our Consultants have been looking at this bid and talking to people who bid and people who didn't bid and say why not and trying to understand the market conditions under which this is happening um so we'll as much as they they can share based on their private conversations we'll we'll talk about at the Jones Library building committee meeting tomorrow it's five o'clock I believe is it yes yeah um so and then you know all those all these decisions you know we've been steadfast the council has about its contribution which is $15.8 million um and if it's going to be more money where does that money come from and if it's going to be you know or else how do we change the project are we allowed to change the project under mblc so more questions than we have answers um but uh just to let you know that we are working on it uh through our Consultants primarily and trying to figure out if this is a go or not um it's an important time because if we say it's a go then a lot of other things click into place um we had a a separate uh a location a temporary location for the library that uh we had they had asked us to sign a lease by last Tuesday when this bid came in I did not sign the lease so we I did not want to commit the town to any additional expenses so that's where we are at this moment in time um and I don't know if I can answer questions but I'm hoping that I can listen to them okay questions on anything in the town manager report Andor the Jones Library update Bob hegner yeah the the Paul it would be helpful to know whether the uh the difference in the bid the one bid we received was due to labor costs or material costs because labor costs there's not much we can do about material costs we might be able to do something about yeah that's that's a we'll ask that question um I mean we have had some people look here's some ways you can save on material you know it it means redesigning the building sometimes sometimes it's it's sourcing your materials from somebody else um and um you know the you know so those are those are those are the things that we have to look into yep Kathy just building on Bob's question on the sources of it um I'm also uh wondering whether I watched and then I went online to look at it the number of times the questions came up on the bid documents and the mon number of complete Replacements of documents whether the bidder built in a large premium for uncertainty um uncertainty either on uh future change orders because we're not ask we're asking them to be at risk for it without putting a risk premium into the bidding so my well I'll stop there but I do know the 1993 building um the what I call the new edition is now the old New Edition uh was there was a concern that we had cut back too much on some of what the architect had originally wanted in the building and then we had a construction crew that didn't do everything right and they weren't full insured so I'm just wondering how much of a premium was added to hold on to the reputation of the one bid we got because we did get it from a good company but they might have said you know there there have been too many changes even while we're trying to figure out what to bid so um I know you can't control that Paul but there there have been more than a number of them in the bidding process of changes okay um Jennifer uh yes I may have a lot of questions I think I'll just start with um what I am not clear what the council's involvement is going to be over the next few weeks so if the I'm not quite sure how it can be AO with such a a large discrepancy between our budget and how what it came in but if the design the building committee decides they're going to vastly redesign the building that that might you know be a way to work within the budget will the council like I I guess I'm not clear is if we have if the price increases the council has to vote on that but can we also weigh in on the design if it vastly changes yes I think there's two levels at the council one is if you've appropriated a certain amount of money and we can't sign a contract beyond what you've already appropriated so that's fixed if there if there's going to be more money a dollar more that has to come back to the council um in terms of whether we take a a you know go back out to bid or do something else there'll be a cost involved with that and you know I'll be talking to you about where that money comes from and how we how we finance that if that's what it's going to take so it's not a matter of the building committee or whoever the town negotiating with the one bidder to say you'd actually have to go back out to bid and so we would have a role in yeah okay yeah I mean the building committee will have a primary role in our path forward but we don't we don't issue the bid Town issues the bid yeah and you're the one that signs the contract correct but you would definitely have to come back to us if there was any request for additional money right but under what other circumstances would you come back to the council only if we need an appropriation to do something else and I don't really go with that option but if we said we needed a half a million dollars to do something different explore something that might require a different appropriation okay Jennifer please go ahead no so if if the building I mean it's already been value engineered if there was continued value engineering so that it was a very different building than what we've been seeing or even you know what the public was seeing when they went to vote in 2021 would we get to have an opport opportunity to weigh in on that I guess I really I don't want to speculate on that until we know what we're really talking about yeah I mean first of all M mblc approved a certain size building that to the best of our knowledge can't be changed but the material it's built with yep that would be part of what I don't think we know yet yeah it's a big dollar amount that's the challenge yeah I agree councelor hanii so my questions are not on the library project so if others have them we can stay on that till they come back to me um uh councelor ET likewise uh councelor Walker um I just have a quick question about the temporary space because I think you said you didn't sign the lease for that um and that essentially we have until June 10th to decide what to do with the current bid but is there more time to decide what to do with the space or did we just pass up on that and if we were to move forward we need to find a new space um it doesn't mean that that space goes away automatically it's just not rented to us so but there's no guarantee like on June 10th for us to come back to that space like do we have a timeline by which we think we would be reconsidering or are we more concerned about the bid itself we're concerned about the bid itself yeah okay councelor hanii go ahead so I have a couple of questions and comments um I mentioned this at CRC uh Community Resources committee but the downtown design standards in your manager's report indicated that the stakeholder meetings were going to happen or were started to happen and have already started to happen will CRC be involved in the stakeholder meetings because I personally believe they should be since that push came from this Council to begin with um the war memorial there was a listening session tonight at 7 pm on War Memorial Park yep when will the council be able to weigh in on ideas and plans for that since it was will there be another listening session will there be other opportunities since it was held concurrent to a council meeting none of us could go if we wanted to so please let us know how we are able to weigh in on that um and with that how does the Regional School committee's likely decision not to rotate the track affect the plan for war memorial or even the fields to begin with on that whole project that already had a plan that required track rotation and then finally I was Disturbed to see a couple weeks ago that the Community safety and social justice committee needed to file a town committee needed to file a formal public records request with the town to get documents and information from the town that logically Falls potentially under their own charge could you explain why they had to resort to filing a public records request to get information on dispatch calls from Crest cuz that's was reported in the paper that they needed to file a formal public records request and that doesn't seem right it actually seems very wrong that a town committee that's set to oversee Crest would have to file a public records request against their own town to get documentation related to Crest yeah I don't know the answer to why they did if they chose to do that without asking the staff person first not I just don't know the answer to it if I can look into that why counc so I have two questions um on page four there's a brief comment that speaks about you receiving the legal opinion on reparations and I wanted to know what happens after you get it and then the second question is from page six where you speak about the opioid settlement and let me see if I could get this so you or at least in the report it's mentioned that you are opting to First collect residents ideas for the funds and I wanted to know if you could expand on that uh on a ah IL legal that'll go to all the town counselors but I think it's going to live in go that's where it's going to wind up for discussion and finance and finance um and this is I think this is going to be an opinion about how um where funds can come from and how you can handle funds it's really a financing question um on the opioid that is um the advice from this is a major settlement and we get a certain amount of money every year and it's it's it's supposed to be spent on um addressing the needs of the harm done by people who've been um addicted to drugs or op opioids and the way you're supposed to process this is to listen to the people who've been most impacted by this so in our area there's a lot of little towns they get a little bit of money and then you know North Hampton gets a sizable amount we get a pretty decent amount as well and so our health director has been working with a a group um forget the maybe it's Hampshire hope I forget exactly who it is uh to do more of a regional approach to so these we can sort of land because these things a lot of times addiction doesn't observe Town boundaries and so looking at Regional Solutions and that's why they're looking at it as a regional approach it's still the funds still come to the town of Amerson to each individual town and as I noted that our funds have been segregated separately into a different accounts so we can account for it there and because this was something new do had to make some additional rulings on how towns could because it was falling into free cash every year so ours is is is is set aside in a account that you can actually see and then it gets appropriated out of there um so if I get you correctly then it is that one it's in a separate account but two because you're working on a regional basis once that is done then might be a proper way to make use of those funds thank you and our health director can talk much more eloquently about this she knows she's been really working on it so if you'd like her to come in sometime or or talk to you individually that's fine um so I have two non Library questions the first one is did I read the report correctly that we have already retained somebody some organization some company to demolish the VFW I think they went out to bid um and hir someone to demolish that building yeah okay all right they've done I know they did an asbest assessment of it and all those things that needed to happen I'm sure the asbest is all over the place um okay and then second am I correct that we have not gone out to bid for the construction of the new elementary school all we have done so far is the site work MH that is correct that's what I think Kathy talked about earlier yeah okay so we will get another estimate on the 17th and then when will we be going out to bid for the construction of the new school plan is to be ready in July so the paper the the it it this is a quick turnaround that the bid documents will be all pulled together so I don't know that we have an exact date yet PA I have a date written down by I don't have it with me yeah I'm just remembering beginning of July you know and then that that we do have that in a sheet on a timeline so I can get that back to everybody but it's a pretty quick turnaround which is why this this 90% is nearing to be 100% in terms of which window goes where and how thick is it and what's the color of the design around it I mean it's it's it's they're starting to be they are Bid specs yeah okay I I I'm asking that question frankly because I don't think people realized that even though that we're working on the site that we still don't have the bid for the school there's a lot of people who think well we're often no that's that's correct and so it for others who are listening we um because the site need to be reworked in terms of the footing that the building will be on there was an early sight package so what's happening is dirt is being taken away and dirt is being brought in and then there are it was there something called aggregate Piers which we were described as think of a pin cushion putting a lot of pins in it when you put the pins in it the pin cushion gets really hard so that becomes a footing for the eventual building that goes on it but that needed to happen several months before the construction started to allow the whole thing to settle so the the design team I thought was brilliant to figure out just break that out of the other projects so we could go out early on that so they're they're more ready to go yeah okay great thank you I again Point made we we do not have a final price for the school okay Alicia um I have uh some questions regarding the resident oversight board um it says that we have gotten we're moving like to the second phase we've done a second set of um requests for rfps but I'm just wondering what was the outcome from the first phase like do we have something tangible that came out of the first phase that's being used for the second phase yes there is a report that was that's will be the basis for what the second set does okay and is there somewhere that like that's accessible I can find out where that is sure okay that would be awesome and then for the second phase they'll be using that first phase to we're moving to implementation okay um and then my next questions were about the Youth Empowerment fund um I mean I mean Youth Empowerment it just says that arpa funds have been set aside to support this work um and that there will be additional Outreach and assessment of possible sites um I was wondering if you could just elaborate a little bit more on the plan for that I think the last time I had an update we had an amera corpse person who was working on that and I didn't ever hear any updates as to like what findings or anything was the outcome there um but I know that we were looking at like feasibility and so if we're moving to assessing sites maybe we had some type of determination that person didn't work out as well as had been hoped uh um and so I think what we're looking at doing now is to have two things one is to look at TH buildings that we own or that might be available that could serve in that function also to have somebody else an actual contractor come in and or consultant who to really do the um needs assessment that didn't really get done well with the with this you know um ourt our our volunteer what whatever their name was yeah do we have like a timeline for that I don't have one but I can get one for you but it's a good question to ask Jennifer uh quick question um in response to I appreciate the long ride up on the senior center but we also got an email today so um from a resident so I just wanted to ask if there was any update on the elevator at the senior center so there were elevator repair there's a whole story about elevators and how hard they are to get them fixed and it's a Statewide issue there very few elevator companies they set their own schedule getting them under contract has been a challenge they don't bid on projects so on if you have an elevator in a in the library they won't submit bids they'll just it's it's a really um tight Community or of businesses and they just it's tough um there was there were people I know last week um who were there working on it I don't know the status of I haven't had a chance to follow up with that question but okay I'll get an update for you Kathy um I just looked up the schedule July 5th is when the bid documents will be out and bids du back on August 7th thank you you know the other thing that we've done and all I don't know the exact schedule there were a couple uh the circuit system and the emergency generator turn out to be on a long back order so to get ahead of that we're we're breaking them out of the package and doing early bidding on them um so so it was like an 18mon delay but it it won't delay the school because of the way they've done it it's a very interesting way they've tried to anticipate delays and and avoid them it's not just interesting it's impressive frankly it's good people Pat d'angeles something else that's impressive is on page two of the Town manager's report and it is about the uh graduation the receiving of a masters in public administ ation from subf University with a 4.0 average of our incredible town clerk atheno Keef and I so identify being the first person in my family to have gone through college and also gotten a masters Kudos love everything can you believe it that great I hate to say it but it's nice to have her back between between between the budget and the yeah inclusion of the degree um I think Athena would like to suggest she doesn't want to repeat April and May over again but congratul and the budget right she's done phenomenal um are there any other question oh I actually I want to ask another one I want to build on uh the question that uh Alicia asked about the Youth Empowerment Center I I guess I didn't know we were looking for a location I thought we were looking for what the program would be we we're doing both okay and at some point I [Music] assume you'll bring back to the council what that's going to look like what's it going to cost or whether we have a partner that's going to be doing it or any number of things because the way I believe the motion read was to explore it not to necessarily right I mean there if if it's a program that the town is going to do there'll be ongoing operating costs that would have to be identified and Incorporated somehow into a budget yeah thank you um are there any other questions for the town manager okay just very quickly um on the 20th uh we will be voting on ammer Hills we also will have um people from The Meadows uh and an update on that um we are checking on another piece of information and it relates to the questions that councelor haniki was asking and that is the process by which we would have to go through to increase our appropriation for the schools and there may be a vote we have to take that allows us to then do something a month later but that's legal stuff we're just trying to clarify um and then I also wanted to people have been mentioning the school track we've had a discussion earlier in agenda setting and felt it was probably best for the schools to disc decide what they were going to do and then come to us with the request for the two different pieces of money that we did vote but they have conditions with them okay one is rotation and the other one is artificial turf and since they haven't they have eight options I believe is what I've seen and once they decide on the option then they would request of us for the D two different pieces of money which one of which was free cash and the other one was CPA money uh and then we would have to revote the CPA would have to go to CPA absolutely yeah y AB absolutely and and just so people remember the issue is the wording of both of them attached to a option so in CPA it was an option three and then ours we did say it could be grass or artificial but it was option two or option three both which were very specific and now we've got as Mandy said an option that doesn't rotate the track goes to eight lanes and looks like we can afford it but to use either of those monies that wording would have to be they have to come back to be for us to for in one case it would have to go to CPA and then come to us for a vote and the other case it has to come to us for a revote okay and and as I understand that Paul the free cash side was money as opposed to debt so a piece of it is corre money CPA might have been planning on borrowing that money I don't know what they were planning on doing CPA money was debt yeah yep okay are there any other questions or comments any other agenda requests see none I'm going to uh make a motion to adjourn and seek a second Shane seconds okay I assume we don't want to debate that so it's not debatable thank you um all right uh going to go to counselor ET I Lyn grimer is and I M councelor hanii hi Bob hegner hi councelor Lord hi uh pamy hi councelor Ryan hi Kathy Shane yes Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer to yes councelor Walker yes Patti Angeles I Anna delin gothier I it's unanimous we're adjourned thank you