26 Danver Town budget uh warrant excuse me budget review uh and I'll turn things over first to our interim town manager Rodney thank you very much Mr chairman thank you uh joining me tonight representing select
board is Mike Bean um we'll have a variety of select board members joining us throughout the week and then at the finance committee warrant review process i'm going to jump in and do a brief overview and then this evening we'll also have library uh Danvers public schools as well as land use and
community services on the docket for tonight just a brief look at where we are in the budget process slowly moving down those bullets tonight we're on finance committee budget review that'll be tonight Wednesday night and Thursday night from there we'll come back for finance committee warrant review on the
28th and 30th followed by town meeting on the 19th of May historically we like to show a little bit about the overall value to the taxpayer in Danver to start these presentations um as you can see among our list of benchmark communities we are
fourth from the bottom on tax rate as far as lowest tax rate the three below us Salem and Peodyy sign received significant state aid uh mostly in chapter 70 and Burlington is uh much more a robust commercial base than the other communities on the list so again
in terms of affordability with quality services we would put Danvers up against any of these communities in terms of the FY26 budget our budget pressures this year um many of them will seem familiar because they continue to be items that outpace Proposition 2 and
a half uh first our retirement contribution as part of our valuation process we budget to increase 8% every year in order to be fully funded by 2035 we are we'll talk about that on Wednesday night but we are still on target to be fully funded by 2035
um also on Wednesday night we'll talk about which was really the biggest budget uh driver and pressure this year which is the renewal rate on our health insurance our renewal rate was at 10.91% uh we'll dig in more about it on Wednesday but again this is uh both public and private sectors are seeing
the impact um of rising insurance costs and that translated to a $ 1.45 million increase year-over-year uh Dan Public Schools uh came in with 3.8% this year uh 5%'s their three-year average that's 1.98 million increase year-over-year which
they'll talk about this evening and lastly Essex Tech um pretty level enrollment in fact a slight decrease overall though it's an over 4% budget increase to the town in terms of the assessment so if you take a look at all the data points there those alone you'll
see exceed the new tax revenue available so between Proposition 2 and a half and our projected new growth we have roughly $3 million and as you can see by the screen these alone far exceed $3 million so in order to balance the budget um we
took cuts to various departments as needed and we also took a look at our local receipts and put us closer to the actual than we probably have ever been um at least in my time here which we'll talk about in a couple slides as well taking a look at our key
reserves FY24 is actual fy25 is projected other than free cash and FY26 would be based on other than free cash which has been certified will be based on some warrant article recommendations we'll have coming up later on this month um as in past years building and
maintaining key reserves remains a priority and this slide gives an overview of what we hope to achieve through FY26 free cash was strong this year um probably historic at $13.87 million we will talk a little bit about that in the
next slide um the target is 3 to 5% of net general fund revenue that's the uh Department of Revenue best practice that would put us at roughly 5 to 7 million so you can see we're almost double that but again there's a couple caveats to point out in that
figure um debt stabilization which we historically used to offset and shave the debt peak um we're contemplating a contribution of $5 million as part of the warrant process this year general stabilization will be recommending a million right now we have 5 million a
little over 5 million in that account um and then the OPED trust again this is based on projected market results as well as our annual contribution which increases each year by $50,000 digging in specifically on free cash so this is certified annually by
the state as I mentioned the recommendation is to hit 3 to 5% of operating revenue and our local policy is to leave 1% of free uh free c excuse me 1% of the operating budget um in obeyance after town meeting concludes in May we use free cash to fund a lot of
items some of these are again one-time purchases and some of these are annual expenses that could be either put into the operating budget or some communities bond these this would be our vehicles our heavy equipment um we do our building and ground improvements primarily through free cash we do our
paving in addition to chapter 90 primarily through free cash as well as the tech warrant uh we all also use free cash to strengthen and maintain reserves uh the ones we talked about on the slide before general stabilization debt stabilization our contribution annually to the OPED trust as well as the special
education stabilization the estimate to actual delta continues to shrink over the past couple years um and we see that now in FY25 and what we project in FY26 so from FY24 and FY26 we're looking at a $4 million
increase in the projection so that's not $4 million in new revenue that is us projecting closer to the actual which as we've mentioned in years past is a direct draw down of the following year's free cash um this is needed to maintain services um and we think that we can get there and still hit our revenue
estimates two times where these revenues cratered it's worth pointing out and one of the reasons why we are hesitant to get too close to the actual both the great recession and the pandemic the town was able to maintain services and not go into deficit because we had the space to absorb the revenue shortfalls
uh a lot of building permit shortfalls in the great recession as well as other accounts and then the pandemic obviously our hotel and motel meals tax motor vehicle all went down um significantly so if you look at the actual free cash that was just certified at $13.87 million uh two what I would
call onetime revenues worth pointing out one is our landfill project which continues to be a quality project generated $3.8 million in anti in unanticipated revenue in FY24 so that's 3.8 million right there and then over two and a half million um above
projection for our um investment income again investment rates are at a historic rate uh they're still high i think it's roughly 4 and a half in our main uh depository account right now so again generating revenue that you know historic rates that we haven't seen in some time so that account brought in $3
million in 24 just a couple years before that it only brought in 196,000 so again while it's good and it's going to help us balance these budgets we want to make sure that we uh maintain a number that we can hit so working with our investment consultants we feel comfortable that the number we're going
to project in FY26 is reasonable and does put us into a potential um structurally unsound budget so if you back both of those numbers out you get roughly a little over $7 million which again would be close to our target of 3 to 5% looking at the select board goals and
objectives the select board had three main goals and objectives this year in addition to their ongoing objectives the first was maintain current staffing and services and hold fees at current levels while the town transitions to a new town manager the FY26 budget does adhere to that guideline it was also to ensure
public safety and emergency services have the appropriate funding in place to be fully staffed police is adequately funded to hire a full complement of officers in FY26 which we'll talk about on Thursday night including the addition of one new additional officer the first since 2008
it also includes funding for a staffing study to assess the overall long-term needs of the department both in staffing and structure and fire department funding is increased as well uh as you may be aware we had a safer grant which funded three grant position firefighters that grant
concluded in February of this year the FY25 budget took care of that delta for the remainder of this year and FY26 they fully become absorbed through the tax levy partially offset by a uh projected reduction in overtime costs and lastly the third goal provide
Danvers public schools with resources to continue making progress in areas such as special education the town again made that a priority in the FY26 budget to allocate funding and superintendent and his team will be talking about that later on today
some of the highlights if you will in terms of expenditures as we mentioned schools is at 3.8% that's down from their 6.4% increase last year which was driven by a historic investment in sped which we'll talk about later general government that includes funding to ensure full staffing of public safety
emergency services you see a 3.83% increase year-over-year uh in terms of debt uh rel related excuse me related to the great rates structuring of our new debt and the debt schedule we have some big pieces of debt falling off um we only have one piece of new debt coming on and
that was the acquisition of the development rights at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead for $750,000 the first year of that debt service will hit in FY26 benefits as we talked about and we'll talk when on Wednesday the 10.91%
renewal we have a reduced contingency um we really tried to shave that number down as much as we could that we felt comfortable doing uh but we're not alone both in the public and private sector seeing these renewal rates um again just a sneak preview of Wednesday uh Maya our consortium that we purchased through
their range of rates went from 9.9 to 19.9 so our 10.91 was on the lower side believe it or not Essex Tech uh stable enrollment a 4.09% increase year-over-year in terms of the assessment and then the total
expenditures which also includes capital outlay which we'll talk about on Thursday and our unappropriated or cherry sheet charges the overall budget is increasing 4.24% in terms of revenue the town will once again be at its levy limit projected going into the process so
we'll see what happens once we get to rate setting in December but the projection will be a 3.26% increase that's our full levy capacity plus an estimated new growth again of 600,000 which is a conservative number that we routinely hit uh state aid we are
essentially a minimum increase this year overall that translates to a 2.41% increase on our state aid year-over-year and then local receipts where we as I mentioned where we try to squeeze out um some excess revenue to maintain services you can see an 11.84%
a couple of the big drivers there the investment income as I discussed is up 700,000 as an estimate over the prior year uh we also have a revised pilot agreement with the electric division which is a little over 400,000 motor vehicle excise again is simply taking us
closer to the actual projected number and then a slight increase in fees as well and other available funds the $90,000 change and with that I'm happy to answer any overview questions otherwise the library would be up first
wally anything i'll wait you'll wait um the renewal rate that you they they come through how How many years is that locked for just one one year so they can come back what what's the cadence been in the prior last few years
so if you remember a few years ago we switched from TUS and went back to Maya which we were a founding community we got a decrease in our rate that year i believe a zero after to it's crept up to I think it was a four a little over four last year so this is more than double in
recent years what was the um rationale uh it's a variety of factors rising cost of delivering services was one um increased utilization coming out of the pandemic was another um also the
rising prescription drug cost including some of those um right everybody's on his Empic now except for me everyone in town's looking great um the you mentioned in the the fire department Rodney the when was the safer
like when were those um the safer grant when was that initiated 2022 I believe would have been the first year and at that time were those headcounts that were prior part of the tax levy that we No they were added
to the that we added yeah so the only way the way the safer grant works in order to create to be funded for those positions they have to be additional on top of your existing staff okay um and then I think I I think you
mentioned we lowered our uh return assumption this year on the pension side yeah so on the pension side we'll look we lowered it to 7% okay which is still a little bit higher than a lot of our peer communities but it's still a drop relative we were at
7.125 was our assumed rate of return the prior valuation and if I remember like we we lowered it a couple years ago too right from seven was it from 7 and 1/2 so it was 7 and 1/2 I think when I started I believe it might have been eight but it was 7 and 1/2 then we went down to 7.125 okay and
now seven this year and that's still even with doing that we maintain we won't exceed 8% year-over-year which is again still a significant increase but we won't exceed that and we'll still be fully funded in 2035 what's the um change in funding need if we alter
the goal to be done by 204 is it 2040 is the deadline the actual 2040 is the actual perk i know we don't want to walk that close but I'm just cur like like now we're getting to the point where like there's not that many years left like doing it between 20 35 and like the
difference between 10 and 15 is meaningful how do you know how much that would swing things i don't know if we've done I'd have to look at my prior valuations see if we did one to see if we projected out to 2040 but generally we just do 2035 yeah okay and then um I guess last question
how how has the budgeting process been so far maybe you or Mike could answer was was there anything contentious that or challenged or discussed in depth at the Mike said he loved the question is that right Mike about it no the rash i don't believe there were
any contentious items that I'm aware of but so it passed fairly fairly cleanly without any challenges correct okay that's it almost right now no questions eric two questions back on the healthcare please
do you know what did the health well do you have the numbered our utilization rate um from the I don't have it right now but we have that yes so just for explanation utiliz utilization rate that I'm referring to is for every dollar that we pay how much insurance company
pays out which is a a driving factor in rates when they quote you if you are costing them money or if you're at a or for every dollar they're spending a$120 then we're in a very bad position so I think that would be a helpful number and Then have we considered changes to our
plan as we as we look forward um strategic changes to our plan you know with the changing nature of our of who's who's receiving care yeah I think we had talked a little bit about it during the select board presentation that probably over the summer we'd want the new manager to get on board and take
a look and meet with our union representation to see exactly what we can do in terms of any type of design alterations okay thank you Paul um just for my own purposes that when we we lost the AAA rating
was there any specific reason and I think I might have seen it somewhere but I can't remember could you fill fill me in on that yep it was solely due to what they considered debt but not in terms of our bonded debt which is a relatively good metric for us but the liabilities so our oped and pension liability so the
cost per capita is significantly higher than some of the other communities that are AAA so that was the main driver we still re received the high score you can get on budget performance financial management we do okay on the economic indicators but it was those liabilities
became went from 10% of the score to 20% of the score and that's always been a weak point not unique to Danverse but that's always been a weak point right that was our commitment yes yeah and uh because I noticed when you talked about we everything seemed to be good till it wasn't and I have down here what about
OPED OPED and I guess you answered my question again we have worked tirelessly to bring down that liability between again investing um having the select board support a policy to redirect once pensions fully funded that excess revenue again that's one of the
frustrating parts is we've done everything you need to do and in fact we put together I'm happy to share with the fincom but we put together a presentation here's where we were in 2019 on all the key metrics you look at here's where we are in 2025 and we're better literally in every single metric including where we are in terms of our
pension not liability so uh how often do they evaluate every year every time we go for a major borrowing but I think they made it clear that unless we dramatically alter our funding of both so unless we speed up pension to being fully funded you know in 2030 and invest millions and millions of dollars which
again I you know I can't cautionably recommend that at this point the bang for the buck on the you know lower interest rate is not worth deteriorating services so I understand uh you mentioned the uh the positive uh uh amounts that we receive from the
landfill um now how long is that going to last is that another year i believe yeah we actually have a memo going to the select board tomorrow night that I'll share with Fincom as well ahead of Thursday from our town engineer Stephen King walking through really the soil filling project as well as where we at
in terms of the next phase which will be solar panels in the future okay how many solar panels are they looking the uh I believe it's in the memo i'll tell you that pardon me it's in the memo but I'll get that out to you um do
you is it realistic to expect a continued growth in our investment i know you you just said we've we've had great rates i mean you know it's been it's been positive um long-term no but I think we're estimating I believe it's
1.5 million this year and again according to our consultants the terminal rate would still bring in if it went down to into the threes would still bring in roughly 1.5 okay okay um if it went lower again that's where we don't want to cheat it to the actual because again you basically be creating a $3
million structural deficit in your budget but 1.5 is the number that we feel comfortable with for FY26 and not scary enough if we have to back it down a little bit in 27 okay all right that's all market related is that correct yeah um okay we'll skip a further question on
that area but um moving on just if you can briefly walk me through the financial policies aspect of uh I think it's on uh your fourth Roman numeral 4 and I was just I'm a little confused as
you had the asterk on unassigned fund balance as of percentage of net operating expenditure 8 to 12% what so the aster so we're we're at 18% but again some of that unassigned fund balance you know 3.8 8 million of it is related to the landfill project so while
we're significantly higher than our target that's not we're generally not going to be ahead of that target that's again a one time occurrence of that significant revenue so we wanted to call that out but that didn't affect the AAA rating no okay that was another thing that they loved
oh okay thank you that's all mike so from a from a policy standpoint if if you know we've made as you've said catastrophic efforts in both the retirement and the OPED to try to meet the goals and it's clear that we're not going to be able to do that on the
opposite end of it is there a value in diminishing those amounts moving forward in order to give us a little bit more breathing room in regards to some of the some of our capacity in the event that we see an unexpected downturn in regards
to revenues especially I think everybody is understandably concerned about where we will be in regards to state aid um it's a trickle down effect the latest estimates are that it may be as much as a as a 10% diminishment of federal aid
obviously a 10% diminishment in our state aid if that works that way it's not that simple but if it did would be a sizable amount um would we be in a position position to be able to adjust quickly if we did see a substantial diminishment in our in our revenues
something that we you know I know we planned for it a little bit when we dealt with the with the uh the pandemic fortunately enough other sources of income came in and replaced those those those areas where we did see severe diminishments in this particular
situation there is no white horse coming to save us if we have those limitations and as you said it's been probably close to 20 years since we faced real costic concerns in regards to revenues so I mean in terms of the pension we're
locked in by our valuation yeah it's voted on by the retirement board so we're locked in we just had our valuation as of January 1 2024 um so we're locked in there um OPED we could lower our contribution right now we fund it's only 300,000 yeah exactly the rest comes from free cash so again the short
answer is no yeah long term if the world fell down and two years from now we had to re revise our you know pension valuation and as was mentioned extending the years out we could potentially look at that but again I would also caution that there are scores lower than double
A plus from from S&P so no one's going to be borrowing money probably if we're in that situation but um would we ever be in a position as once we've once we've assigned money into that OPE account is it locked in there and there is no possible way for us to go in and
remove it no there are methods to utilizing it okay again that would be an really an emergency dramatic but but it has it has the option to be able to do that so yeah um Okay thank you okay anything else anything from the audience on the overview
okay all right with that we will jump into the first department tonight and that's Noel Bach representing the library that is me do you want me to take that or you I can just direct signal you i can just signal all right fantastic
good evening everybody as as you already know I'm Noel Bach the library director i have uh one of my trustees here Ken Lee is here as well with me tonight so thank you and good evening uh so as you can see from our budget we just have a
modest increase um which we kind of do a little bit pretty much every year uh for the most part our increase is just obligations that we have for salary um for our membership in Noble which is our consortium uh which provides a whole bunch of different things for us you
know that money goes up there for a little bit and that's really our increases for the most part um we're fine otherwise we don't we don't have much we don't have much we don't ask for much but we do a lot with what we have you can go ahead Rodney um
and then I use this as just like one of my examples of just that we still do really well uh circulation wise like when we first came out of the pandemic obviously we had a big jump and went from you know practically nothing to going back to normal uh this is a point
where I expected us to stop actually still be going up with circulation but we're actually still going up a little bit at a time and actually this year um since this is only halfway through the year but uh when I did these numbers but we're still increasing with our circulation which I think is just
incredible and I I really tout my uh staff for providing materials for the community that they really want and that they're coming back to the library to really get from us so um and we have a wide range of things so that's just been doing fantastically that we're still
going up um I've seen a lot of other libraries going down um with their circulation and we're doing the opposite so I think that's fantastic and uh my children's department likes to pull together statistics and they pulled together one recently that they actually
since comparing to prepandemic numbers to now they it's an actual 63% increase in how much children are checking out um in the library than they were back in like 2019 so we're doing pretty good we're doing good next slide please Robin
uh and then just uh bunch of the things that we do we do so many things at the library so I just like I'm mentioning a bunch of the things here um yeah we have our seed library where this year we have over 2,000 seed packets um that we have going
out people have been taking those uh a lot right now since spring is spring is here um we have tons of databases that you know provide crucial and vetted information for people so don't I always like to joke about WebMD but like don't don't go there when you we have we have
information at the library that you get for free um our community outreach services have been growing all the time we're actually just took on a a volunteer to help out some with that because we're going everywhere we have all these community events we're going to uh we go to a lot of assisted living
facilities we do in-home visits as well uh so that's that's been fantastic that's been going wonderfully uh we have our art shows that now our the the standing room there in the library we have four art shows that we do a year with the Dammers Art Association um and
now all these other organizations around town that do art and individuals have been booking the space as well so the the rooms booked up for the year already and then I have to like in the fall start putting in the schedule for next year um so that's been fantastic bringing art um into the community uh
and there's a bunch of ways that we we work with that as well they have receptions uh we've had lots of author visits book groups story times i have an author interview show on DAT uh we've been we started an English language conversation group this past year which
has been going fantastically as well and we expanded it out um to some of the area motel while we still had some of the residents there uh so that's that's been fantastic and we have a couple of different resources to help do
translation as well in case it's needed um we added a word languages collection for books in Spanish and we're hoping to add some other uh languages to that as well and we added a play group uh in Spanish as well for children and uh and yeah we've been working hard with our differing abilities including our grant
improve access for the deaf and heart of hearing i don't know i know there's a lot of things in the news to parse out um the Institute of Museum and Library Services is one of the agencies federal agencies that provides funding to all of the states for libraries um that is
scheduled to be closed down uh and so like the grant that we have right now for the deaf and heart of hearing like that came out of that agency so I mean we have the money for that so that's okay and we're we'll be finished with that grant this year but um that's like one of those things that there's some things that we're hoping will still
remain um around because some of those cuts might will hurt us in the in the big picture uh later on but uh we also been working with Northeast Arc on some developmental screenings for children uh we're developing memory kits is uh another thing that we're doing for people who have you know uh memory
issues and dementia uh we work a bunch with the schools i've been working with the schools a lot meeting with Dan and the middle school um as well to like work on you know helping work with the middle schoolers what they're doing after school so we're coming up with ideas for that um we do we work with the
second graders do library card drive with second graders every year um we do school class visits to the library we have teen library visits to the high school as well um of course the summer reading program we support everything the schools do with the summer reading
and what their assignments are um and we support book clubs at the senior center we've been working a lot with the senior center uh and we've been providing a lot of financial programs with college financial programs Medicare programs social security programs uh so we have all that for free coming at the library
that we do all the time all year long uh so we do a lot with what we got so uh I think I have one last slide there which is just a quote um and Henry Ward Beecher people know about Harriet Beecher Stow because she wrote Uncle
Tom's Cabin um and this is her brother was her brother Henry Ward and I I just like this quote um and that I really feel like the library is one of those few necessities that we really should always support in town and we do have a really wellsupported library here which
I think is fantastic um not every town like right now Stonem's looking at gibing descertified um yeah eyebrows went up it's like yeah um they are looking at some serious cuts to to things in Stonem so um you know so we're
very lucky here to that we have the support that we do so and that's that's my budget in a nutshell questions comments micah how uh how often is the IAVA center center open h that's a that's a layered
question um so since Richard Tras has been uh ill so he's not coming in regularly he's working from home and not in regularly so right now it's open three days a week with uh the assistant Julie Silk are we at the point yet where we can
contemplate folding that into the regular library operation it is it is already well it's not if it doesn't open because somebody's at home working you mean like having somebody else Yeah staff it uh it is well so what I have happening
right now is my reference librarian uh spends some time in the archives uh regularly to make sure that she's familiar and I have a couple other people on staff that that do that as well it's it's a lot of it's just such specialized information uh that it's and
all of these other people have other work um in other departments that is their main department that it's I don't really have someone right now that I could pull to be down there regularly um that's kind of like the unfortunatess of
it uh what I mean I would love I think we do need more staffing for the archives uh and that's I think a bigger picture thing i have a I have a bunch of ideas that to the best of my knowledge that is pretty much the only loc so if
you want to get historic information in regards to say historic budgetary information historic development information historic pretty much anything as it relates not just back to the to the to the witchcraft stuff but if you want to look at stuff for the
town in the 30s the 40s the 50s and it's not available there's no other mechanism right you can't just go to the library and get that information right uh well we do have some some information we do have just in the library generally not just in the archives and it doesn't
matter if the library if the archives is open to the public or not if like you you know messaged anybody from the archive you know to like to Richard and said hey I'm looking for this information we can still put that together for you and get it to you if you're looking for something specific so
it's it's a little bit different because we can answer requests um specific requests for the archives even if it's not open to the public all the time okay thank you Paul well thank you for all
you do i I believe that the library is u certainly appreciated in town and um I've used it myself quite often not when I was a student or But as a grandparent I was my place to
go it's okay to come later in life yeah we're at that stage um I noticed your salary and wage uh temporary is a lot higher than the uh part-time and I was just wondering is that summer help type
of thing is that something that you you do a seasonal or is how how stable is that versus your part-time help and was that the one that we needed to move right so temporary is pretty much all the non full-time staff the part-time is
only one position that's the part-time bookkeeper oh okay okay excellent um just turn let's see um no you answer the Noel noble fees are you fully staffed now in your mind
please just be frank are you fully staffed now am I fully staffed well right now I have I have a couple of openings on staff right now um I mean I have do I have enough staff to do what I need to do mostly I would say like I mean I do
think the archives um could use a a more hours an assistant with more hours than what we have happening right now um I do think that there's enough work there that we could use more hours
um for someone in the archives uh and yeah I always have some other things percolating like the our community outreach like that position was a new position um really a few years ago like I'd rewritten that position and the person who's in that position Jillian she blew that up so it's it's huge like
so she is at her you know limit to what she can do but there is always more coming to do with that so like that's another thing that you know if if I had any wish that I could have um I would love to get like another like an assistant to her because
it looks like we have the appetite for that in town um for sure for services okay all right thank you good evening good evening love the library i know you do my my questions are probably uh with respect to programs
I don't really have any um questions my questions are on the capital side so that might come back over to you Rodney what I'm interested in as I as I'm going down in my mind I saw the doors and I saw I think some it how are how is the
the grounds what's the state of the grounds at the library as just as in it's a decent size it's a it's not a it's not a newer building I don't believe and I don't really see much for the library in terms of in the capital plan through 2030 so I'm assuming should
I assume things are good or is there something that we need to pay attention to more i would defer to public works on Thursday night in terms of the status of the building but I would mention that a lot of those items you were referencing are in the building's warrant article if you notice in the 5-year capital plan
the building's warrant article is extended out 5 years so again while it doesn't the capital plan doesn't call for any major renovation right now we assume that part of the building's warrant each year will go towards different library um improvements okay thank you
no questions nothing other than what I say every year which is I think that for our investment the impact on on the community is is more than we invest so good job thanks Ted i echo what Arthur said i'm all good
yay i'm good thank you okay awesome um my perennial question um what is the balance of the PB Institute trust how's that going uh and you know what because I I was on vacation uh so I missed the last first trustes meeting I missed like was this
last month so I don't know the balance that's right now but um it was the previous month it was I want to say about 640,000 was about where it was at that's great yeah and then I'm curious how much does um state aid
uh play into uh what you're able to do you know do we have a rough idea of what you'll be getting in state aid this year and what about the augmentation of also the friends group oh and what how do they how do they help you better serve the community
so uh so as far as state aid goes so uh the last the last last few years have been very good for the state i mean now they're right it's coming out on the other side now but uh so the amount of state aid we were getting was higher so
we got probably in the around 60,000 or so in state aid um and a lot of the state aid numbers you know are dependent on population and you know size and things like that uh but that was definitely like even just a few years ago it was probably more in the 40s and
it like bumped up to like this the 60s and they do like two dispersements in the during the year so that's like about what it adds up to so for state aid uh we use we use our state aid to supplement a whole bunch of things right so we use it a lot of our program most of our programming money is either is
state aid and trust fund money um so usually the program is anything that we pay for outside of is that's where that money is coming from um and we also use state aid to supplement like certain things like you know maybe book budget items or so I I use state aid particularly like I want to do um or I'm
working on a signage project for interior for the library um wayfinding signs so like that will be paid for like out of state aid um and like sometimes if I need to like we'll go to the trust or something like that as well um so that's those are the kind of the ideas
of like what we use state aid for but like so a lot of the money per year is fixed into our budget to pay for you know so like well we have probably between 20 and $30,000 of that money usually every year is already earmarked for certain things um that we have like
the programming budgets um and if we ever needed to if budgets got bad here or whatever like we can use the state aid money for anything if we want to right so we can you know if we needed to you know throw some money into uh a part-time employee position or if we
needed to throw money like for a signage project or if we needed to throw money into the book budget um to make sure it was the number that needed to be then we can use state aid for that as well right so it's a it's a nice it's a nice money because you can use it for however you want to um the friends have right now I
was gonna say like I'm we have our next monthly meeting on Wednesday but I want to say so they have probably around 15,000 or so dollars in their bank account right now so of course their whole reason to be is to support the library so they um do give money every
year to support some programs and things like so they'll give money every year to like the children's room for the summer reading summer reading prizes uh things like that dinovember they do um they look for they they do their own um work at finding programming so and they'll
look so they're like gonna support um like the summer concert series they're going to like pay for one of those uh things like that so they'll do that as well but they'll also pay for uh other things like the mural project that we had in the children's room uh the last year like so they gave donated money for
that uh and we've been talking because they want to look right now we've been discussing um for some other things like they'll buy furniture or like other items like that as well so I mean they have limits because they spend they spend all like a lot of money um well not a lot of money but you know probably around $5,000 on the museum passes every
year uh which are great so you know chunk of their money is going to that every year right without fail and they do keep adding passes to that but they always are looking for opportunities other things that we we want to buy i have I have a dream of they have these um they're study nook things on wheels
um that I would love to get one of those but they're like $7,000 or something crazy amount of money so I keep telling them that's what I want and said maybe maybe we'll get one sometime uh but they're they're very willing to listen to ideas for things that we need at the
library whether that's furniture whether it's a program whether you know it's summer reading prizes like they're they're willing to work with us with things that we think that we need or or want so great and last question do you have anyone on staff doing anyone any grant writing
not particularly so the the grant that we've have had I wrote um myself we don't have anybody specific doing grant writing um right now if the um institute of museum and library services like the grants that we usually
get that money is usually through them and so if that goes away then there'll be less grants for us to be able to get there other things out there that we could could aim for but yeah thank you yeah you're welcome any questions from the audience could I just just quick
yeah if it would be possible Ronnie for us to get maybe just an update on sort of what has been done from a building improvement standpoint in the library because I'm I mean I'm going back almost 50 years but I I
remember them making the football team carry books from from downstairs to upstairs and around it because upstairs used to be a like a big auditorium and they were storing stuff and I think that may have been one of the last times that there was a substantial
interior change to the building and we're talking almost 50 years ago so you know I know we paint I know we we did a substantial paint and painting is very expensive in terms of doing that but it would be interesting to see what we've done i know we made some dramatic changes or improvements to the
children's center not too far ago but if we are going to be potentially in the next decade or so facing the need to to spend some money there we should probably prepare for it and and and get ready to do it because it would certainly be worth doing it I think as as we move forward for the community so
yeah yeah and I and I do talk um you know with the DPW about some of the things I and I think I've talked to Rodney about this before too like I would I would say probably in a decade we probably would want to look at having a more major renovation of certain areas
of the library like I would I would say for sure that's probably like where we're slowly you know going towards because I mean as you say like the the improvements that have been done in the library have been very peacemeal since it was the late '7s 1980 when they opened um thanks thanks for reminding me
when that was yeah know all about it um I've read all about it so um yeah so there so certainly like we we've been uh replacing lighting is what's been going on now we just replace some doors down in the the Gordon Room Emphas area we just place doors down
there um and so there's certainly though things that could be done uh that are that were you know in 1980 probably woo great and now could probably be improved in in different ways um as well as
particularly looking at accessibility so yeah yeah for sure thank you all right you're welcome thank you certainly entertain a motion move the budget second we have a motion and a second all in favor i opposed thank you thank you
thank you i'm not going to follow up and next up we have the D oh you okay think of the picture of me and those very tight shorts so so when you think
that was you probably the best team you ever had pretty good move some books that's great and Mr dr crane are you representing your illustrious chairman this evening i am on pinch hitting which
I figured out just about the time I got here the regular Bernie Carbo there you go i like that i like that um I'm going to try and be relatively brief but this is the uh school committee budget really it's one of the things that we are uh
tasked with and so even though it's um put together primarily by the district we really own this budget once it gets to this level um so really just a few comments we are um asking for a budget of 53,965,981 it's a 3.8% increase and uh
that's a little lower than the last couple of years um as Superintendent Bower will tell you we're looking at really a level service budget we want to try and and do essentially what we did last year and make sure that we take no
back steps we do want to continue trying to improve special education services so you'll see that as part of this budget um you'll see sort of a almost a net zero in terms of positions um there's not a lot of fat in this budget this
budget also reflects that we were able to settle um all of the uh contracts with our collective bargaining units last year and so um this gave us a a good amount of certainty going into this fiscal year um to know what it's going
to cost us going forward for the next few years um let's see i do want to uh point out my colleagues Mike Shannon and Shawn Dhy from the school committee are here and uh Pamrum and Assistant Superintendent Mary
Warmers and I am sad to say that this will be her last full budget hearing with us after many many years of service and we really appreciate everything you've done for the schools so thank you so the superintendent will talk to you about uh what we're going to do in the
process and and uh superintendent Bower the last couple of years has changed the process from what Arthur and I remember in that uh department heads principles they come to us in our budget hearing and actually they present their portion of the budget and answer questions about
what they're trying to do so that has um I think been eye opening for a lot of us and really worked well um so uh with that I'll turn it over to Superintendent Bower and his team to present the budget in detail for you thank you thank you
good evening how is everybody good good evening all right so I know there were a lot of slides i'll do my best to move through them efficiently but I do want to point out and thank um Eric and the school committee for all their support um we did change the process and I'll talk a little bit about that just to get
more feedback to the stakeholders but Pamrum is here so she may be called from the audience when we get the questions uh we couldn't have done this without her uh invaluable and when you talk about settling the contracts and how she was in the bunker with us um
unbelievable and Mary Warmer is of course and I know she loves when we point out that yeah so we try not to but uh but we have a wonderful team so I'll go ahead and begin the slides all right yeah we're ready to roll all right so I think the number one thing is that we looked at our
priorities and needs the the budget process really is a year long but really hits hard in November of the school year and we ask that our our school leadership our administrators they bring to us you know and work with their departments what are the needs we give them the goals out as outlined by the
select board in terms of we knew this was going to be a level service budget and really nothing you know out of the box and parameters this year um due to changes happening at the town level and so we have the goals they go back there's been multiple cycles of reviews so today the number that you see the
final number is nowhere near where it was in December and even January we were working the best we could to make it level service at the same time trying our best to improve special education services Um and I just want to say we have great collaboration with the town and couldn't do this without Rodney and
his team as well uh lots of conversations lots of meetings and we feel very supported by the town for the needs of the schools and we we feel that very strongly so um kudos to Rodney and his team so we look forward to continued collaboration and like I said there
multiple revisions in the budget to where we're at today so the the service level we looked at just that's our target you know maintain the level of services and some can argue that maintain level of services although that is there there's always cost increases
with that uh but we feel it's very important because we we really feel that we're on a upward trajectory of our our district and want to continue that um and obviously special education programming and the generous um allocation last year to help provide for
special education building of programming and such um we've really done a nice job in that area and continue that work we actually have a brand new leadership team last year when I came to you um that we turned over the whole team not anything more than just part of the process and they've worked
really hard uh we've conducted audits to really dig deep into all of our programming just to ensure that we know that we have to be responsible with the allocations and being responsible with building positions to sustain programming but also to improve programming um and that really is key
with the improvements is a sustainable and fiscally responsible budget and the other part too is looking for ways that we can be not only support and improve our programming but student achievement is there as well what can we do to push student achievement what can we do to attract and keep students in Danvers um
and I think we've done a nice job with that but lots of work to do so the budget pressures are not unique to our district um you know the foundational level we were at 75 per student this year at our chapter 70 funding which was I think for 230 districts throughout the
Commonwealth which is kind of interesting knowing that we have multiple needs um we were hoping for that 104 student per day we were very close to that threshold um and that may change with some work with the supplemental budget we're keeping our fingers crossed on that special
education out this placements roughly about the same maybe a little tweak here and there but again you it's not an applesto apples comparison each year because there are circumstances that arise rising transportation costs uh we're working to address that i'll speak to that in a little bit contractual
obligations and I think as Eric said that was no small feat uh we felt very good to settle all four of those contracts and the overall increase uh for that is 4.05% just for this year alone um so we knew that coming in and
and again Pam's work to ensure that every little move every little movement has an impact on that bottom line and I think we did a great job with that um and certainly as we looked around us and saw other districts you know we don't have that disruption and and the continuity is really critical um and the
curricular needs and inflationary pressures that all districts face special education costs transportation we know that is one where you feel that it's something that is just out of control and if you look from 2018 to 2025 projected it's a huge
increase and we are taking steps to flatten the curve i don't know if we could ever actually go back down but we are taking some actionable measures to flatten that curve um and that's the reality you know we have to provide the transportation And if you look at the special education costs themselves as we
look to the increase of transportation increasing tuitions um you know we do the best that we can to to not wear down circuit breaker but we need circuit breaker to help balance our budget and bring us to a point where we're sustainable so those costs keep going up
too and that's not unique to Danvers that's that's the trend um we look very carefully to maximize resources so we look really hard at retirements and reallocations of positions as possible while maintaining a level uh bit of services uh Pam and her team um they've
combed through our personnel several times just to make sure and looking for ways that we can you know if they're retirements we've we've seen some savings and will see some savings this year from that for sure um grant opportunities we do not have a grant writer i have a slide about our grant
writing this year mary Wormers led that charge and substantial grants that we've received that really have helped us as a district um and try to defer the one-time purchases as much as we can to other lines we had ESER in the past although we wore that countdown and thank God because you saw what happened
in other districts that didn't um so we're in good position with that uh flatten the curve of transportation so we are adding two 7D vans what that means is that we're able to put two 7D is taking students to and from school i know Eric knows that with the
transportation and uh the town and the DPW has been outstanding with the collaboration they were able to help us find two vans that we can then translate into in district special education transportation uh we were only able to hire one driver and I have some savings we've already seen just with that one
driver we're looking to hire a second driver um and the out of district transportation program with the collaborative that I may have mentioned last year um is is ongoing in fact bids have come back they've selected a company and they're still projecting 8 to 10% savings for our district probably
closer to 10% which is substantial uh so just that work in itself you know is looking ways we can flatten the curve and out of district costs are still increasing we know the consortium is going to 8% this year which is not out of line with other consortiums um and
continue building our programming as much as we can to keep students in district is still our goal and we're working really hard at that so the next slide is one about our grant funded um allocations and you can see that's well over 200,000 from the previous year uh and again Mary and her
team uh worked really diligently to find whatever grants that are out there that can support our programming so that's less money we take in operational budget for curricular needs um we do have a nice civics grant um that that comes into play um the big one if you notice
the skills capital technology and equipment grant that's to allow us to build pathways which will keep us competitive um such as um environmental engineering environmental science of health healthcare um it's outstanding and that that money is really helping us
build that program uh you might see the 18 discovery program and that's clearly to design applied learning and we're actively in that a way to help increase student achievement the emergency assistance program is a separately funded area so
we do receive state aid although that is running out um as we know the shelters will be closing down and the funding from the state that this will be over we have two more allocations so the positions that we brought in to help support the EA programming emergency
assistance programming um was funded through uh state funding so and we also know that as numbers change and certainly the demands and needs change it will shift our staffing as well so we're preparing for that although there still will be a need for ESL programming
those numbers have increased aside from the EA program um transportation reimbursements for the Mckenny Vento for for those that are homeless that funding is coming back and helping us as well um and whatever money is left over we're still able to move that forward for
another year so we've been working with our Desi Connection for that for the next two allocations which will help us close the gap and see what we can utilize for next year to see if we can move anything forward for next year but we've been making preparations to downsize that to make it work but we still have those needs strategic
planning for the future again special education really to us is more about not only providing the services to keep students in district but make sure that whatever we put in place is sustainable is able to really work to dig to the root cause of what our programming needs
so one of the areas the audits that have been we have a number of audits for our uh learning center programming our autism strand we have one for therapeutic coming up we have a language based one uh those that may go to Landmark and other places so that information is allowing us to really
build the programming and ensure that what we put into place can stand the test of time uh the regionalization of the transportation is critical um and really looking for ways we can reallocate staff when possible to build programming so we're still in the
process you know we've added some BCBAS to behavior the certified behavior analysts um we're looking stu school psychologists that can help with some of the specialized programming um and again we're connecting the current program strategic planning which as you know is in progress creating that vision for the
future the portrait of the learner which really takes and digs down deep into the competencies for kids when they walk out of our schools to be as best prepared for success after high school um I did put the slide in for the high school resources and I did did that for a reason because I know the narrative is
that enrollment has dropped you know shouldn't the staffing drop as well and in some cases sure that could be but as you're trying to preserve and build programmings and more specialized uh it's important that we're very smart with that um we have 20 advanced
placement courses you know which which as a high school former high school principal that's substantial and we need those to keep and attract students also innovation pathways the smaller courses that we need that address um the computer science and other pathways
through uh project lead the way which is hands-on learning uh the performing arts which I think ours is really one of the strongest around particularly in music uh drama they're outstanding and our visual arts are strong too their early college program which a lot of people don't know about which really helps a
lot of our students uh make that balance to uh transition to college and our special education programming looking to bring students back and improve uh future programming dan if I may just while you're on that slide I know you did um the budget request does indicate
there are some um small decreases in the faculty at the high school this coming year through through attrition and retirements we're able to as the high school schedule is not linear like the elementary right there are multiple it's a a matrix so to absorb any um attrition
due to retirement you know instead of running 10 sections you you could probably run nine or eight sections and really see a negligible amount of a class size so you're able to absorb that and we're not really seeing any negative impact on the students in terms of their participation in in some of the you know
it's not the one person teaching the particular quirky AP class or anything like that that's why we have to be very careful about that piece and when you look at communities around us to be able to maintain level service and yet hold the line with that that I think makes us
attractive and keep students here because we do offer as you mentioned those uh advanced placement which might run one section possibly depending on the demand right but it's important to have that but also some of our other specialized programming and a lot of our special education programming which
would be smaller so um and that's why we have to be very careful with that and see like what do we need to replace what can we switch down because that brings down the bottom line number um thank you the next slide is that this is the thanks to the town and these are the positions that we were able to put into
place last year with the additional allocation the 6.41% last year and these are critical positions a lot were pulled off of the ESER account which that's gone away um a lot to support our schools and the other part too is to build special education programming um
we're very thankful for that and and it they've really we've gone actually above and beyond the positions allocated we're able to move some things around to add more positions uh but they're woefully needed um you can't underscore when you have you know you're building an autism strand program you know the amount of
support that's needed to ensure that the programming is is where it needs to be for our students to have success as well as the therapeutic and the language base so um we're thankful for the allocation that uh and I know that I knew coming in you would probably ask you know what is
the update you know what did that yield um and I did ask for some quick bullet points from our from our team um and remember we have a whole new administrative team our district coordinator is new we have two new assistant directors and a new director that have really hit the ground running
July 1 um we've taken the results of the audits there are seven key areas that we're working on the autism strand um again we're able to create two tiers of our autism programming moderate and intensive and right now as we the majority of the elementaryaries at Smith we're able to line that to really
maximize our resources and to really streamline there's still one cohort at Riverside that will age out this year Holton Richmond and the high school so that's important that we have a continuous strand through for families as they understand the continuity of programming is critical um and we have
about 30% of our students that are on district placement that are on the would fit this category so it's important to keep building this one um so we have cohorts of students that move along and that's attractive to keep kids here our therapeutic program most of that is at
at Thorp we have one uh cohort left at Smith that will age out not this year but the following year we've allowed them to stay because we it's important they age out through that but that allows us to move the resources back we're trying to balance major programming as we said last year at each of the schools uh except for Highlands
which is too packed to to house a program um so the pathway there is important and the language based is really really important that's at Great Oak and it's a smaller cohort um and really about 10% of our students at our district are in that that particular uh
disability strand but that's a huge one where we can get some results on that so um again next steps are to continue building the programs using existing staff um particularly at the middle school we're looking to really build that this year stronger as well as the
high school um and we're trying to move things forward over a couple of year programs for that um the special education requests coming up are are modest right now we're really trying to look within take the audits and try to build with what we have and see other areas that we project out we're going to
need um the BCBAS we know that we need another one school psychologists that can give a higher level of service particular in the therapeutic strand um also team chairs that's something that's important that we're trying our best to to add them because that will change the
way we do business which that has to happen all right next slide so we're looking at some areas too where we still can see some potential savings to help help us this year but also next year as well it's still uh out there for the
um supplemental budget in terms of this chapter 70 funding there's still a possibility that we may go from a 75 to 104 which that money comes into the town um that would be about 96,000 which would be great circuit breaker the transportation reimbursement is not at
the full 75% it's at 44% um that's in the supplemental budget we hope it gets through as well because that would be an additional 449,000 that would really help us um and that really we've done a lot of advocacy with Sally and Joan at the state level um and that's that's
that's really important the uh potential savings in terms of our overall transportation we added a transportation coordinator this year right and I don't know if I mentioned this last year but um previously we had two administrative
assistants that shared that duty um for the the you know 2.5 plus million dollar budget um by bringing in a coordinator who has industry experience and has done a wonderful job hitting the road but I believe that his savings has already offset his salary already um and he's
projecting out for next year a 10% savings overall with the multiple things that we're trying to do um and we did a modest increase to our prek tuition this is part of a two-year um increase we increased last year then we added a little bit more this year that'll be it for a while that'll bring in a little
bit uh there as well so some of the short-term transportation um I did mention this last year the town helped us with two non7D vans which allows us to transport athletic teams uh transport special education during the day non7d would be
not to and from school but for extracurriculars our band program utilizes it um performing arts we've taken groups over from the high school to the middle school to work with some of our students in a mentor program every time we do that that's one less
time we have to rent the bus or van from um Salter or from from Beacon and that saves us quite a bit and we've already projected over that savings well over 30,000 at least probably more than that um by adding the second van that for our
7D transport for special education in district um and that came February 24th you know right now we've saved roughly um for the rest of the year about 26,000 just by adding that van so that might seem small but that's just for even part
of the year we have the second van that'll be more savings uh on the warrant from last year we're purchasing a bus we're going to add add another bus into our route that means we take one less from Salter so the cost of us running our own bus is a lot less than
renting the one from Salter um and we know right now just the increase from Salter for just the regular transportation the yellow bus will go up 24,000 by adding a bus into our system that takes a route takes one of the buses out it's about 57,000 so that'll
offset that increase um again we have David is his name um he's going through all the contracts of the individualized special education which a lot of that will go through the regionalization that savings as well so now we have a person that can really make sure like were runs
really fully filled um if there's a student that's absent we shouldn't be charged for those runs so we have oversight now in that area and that's not knocking the people before they did the best they could but he's also collaborating with the YMCA um he has an outreach to the council on aging we've
reached out to Essex Tech any collaboration we can do is important because even if we look at ways we could possibly utilize after school transportation right so right now we have the two vans but we also could use a bus after school as well to transport
you know not only our teams but we could transport others as well possibly we want to make sure that we're we're not we're keeping in mind the needs of our district first but those are just the small thumbnail sketch of the work that he's doing and I think that's important to note
Okay next is which did we go over to the Am I off of slide Pam probably did i'm talking so fast so again this basically sums up the previous slide sorry no before that before that before that
yes this right right so if we add the vans consolidate the van routes um cover more prek transportation as well the van contract um with vendors and out of district you know looking to save you know overall 10 10% which is substantial
thank you Pam i'm sorry right i'm not good i used to be a coach made it hard to believe but it used to be and you know so when we break it down the proposed increases the non- salary for out of district and transportation and the non- salary requests for our um
supplies curriculum materials contracted services um the obligations which gets into all step scale the 4.05% 05% that total is 4.9 million and then offset that with we're dipping in the circuit breaker uh a little bit more this year
but we can um it's not ideal but we know we need to and we've saved staff with the overage of retirements as you mentioned the collapsing of positions over 470,000 and that could be a little fluid too as retirements come aboard uh for the offset of a 2.9 million and that
breaks it down into our the old pie chart where we know most of our money goes into salaries which is most in most schools and personnel um you know most of our costs are 95% of fixed costs so our next slide please you know the
offsets and increases the 1.9 million is a 3.8 over um over last year and if you break it down over the course of the last 13 years the 13-year average is 3.87% 87% again we weren't looking at percentages like to have to be here but we knew coming in we wanted to really
look from within what can we do to maximize our resources also provide the level services that that that that we need uh but also know through change and transition being responsible i just knew I couldn't come back and ask 6.41 again
you know but I will tell you that you know there will be a need at some point you know we we just can't predict what next year is going to bring in the next two we know it's going to be challenging but it didn't seem to make sense to us to really you know come back with another big ask add some things then in a year if there's tur we wanted to
survive the turbulence but not at the expense of providing services for our students and supporting our staff um so you know the 3.8 is lean um you know and again we had some tough meetings with our admin but you know I think we see the bigger picture we're looking to
build um again not anticipating some of the turbulence that we might see but I feel we're in a better place than many of the districts around us at this point so I think that's it i did the best I could didn't need a water yet so it's coming i feel it but anyway
thank you thank you well um so with your union contracts are we going to be just a steady 4% over the next few years that stay steady how did you negotiate those so um this year for
the teachers uh next year will be 3 325% the following year 35% and we went with a 4-year contract for the teachers uh the fourth year is a 325% increase um and pretty standard increases for food service for instructional assistance and
behavior techs as well as our admin assistance so we did a lot of analysis were all of them four years no oh um sorry just the teachers was four years and that allowed us to put that one off cycle um and it actually wasn't our idea
going in but it worked out well for us uh the other contracts are three years okay um and you're done with this can you explain like your uh student retention uh versus your after dark with uh with the tech and your savings there
so the student uh retention is it's important because that's chapter 70 funding that comes to us you know and we were we were down a few this year overall but holding steady enough where at least with the tech you know we had fewer kids going to the tech again we're
not competing directly with them but I think the programming that we're building and improving at the high school and also looking to stabilize the middle school which I believe we're doing a good job with that uh is hopefully leading to you know retention in those areas so retention is is pretty
good right now uh with that but we have to keep an eye to that to keep building our programmings improve um student outcomes and also being able to show you know what is the end result if you look at the college placements you know uh you you would be pretty impressed with
where our students went last year and where they're looking to go this year um as well as opportunities for eighth graders coming into the high school and now we're really looking in I think to your point Wall-E we really need to look hard at the fifth graders because decisions are being made much earlier for for families there are options out
there um so we need to look you know what is our brand we've been having a lot of discussions about that what are we doing to to show that these are the great things we do i don't think we're great marketers we're trying and I know I talked to Ted about that a couple times last year and it's something that we need to improve schools just aren't
built for that public schools but I believe the proof is in the pudding and we're looking for ways how can we you know um you know we we kicked off a showcase of the high school it I thought it was a good start but I think we really need to start looking earlier because families as I said they have
decisions and we want them to come to Dammer's public schools and um I think I gave you a long response probably longer than I need actually had one you didn't touch but I already after dark program yeah I could talk about that so we met with Essex Tech um and they have a program that would allow students to
attend your school for the morning for the core classes and then go to Essex Tech in the afternoon for the vocational classes right um and right now I I'll check with the principal but we had a great meeting uh we're looking to market that even if we can get a small cohort to go over next year there's a little
cost with that but it's it's it's great for students that still want the programming that we offer and to participate in extracurriculars at our school such as performing arts and sports so that's moving in a good direction and to touch on this subject then um
with the federal government dissolving the department of education uh what's your best guess on loss of funding through that if there is any well I will um probably give you the answer that was given to us by our legislators when we had a legislative
lunch where you know they're right now looking for direction as well they're building their budgets and the federal budget comes later as we know um and they're really not getting much indications where that's you know obviously if the the funding from the feds is less than received then there's going to be some sort of a piece
something has to give um you know if we look at our overall and I didn't bring I meant to bring that sheet tonight but it's actually in the back of our book how many of the federal entitlements we receive i think it's like 1.7 million somewhere in that vicinity a lot of that is built into title one and IDA which is
for special education uh title one is to help um for those that students that struggle and need help in performance um some of those areas you know depending on where if if there are cuts i get this question a lot you know some of them we might be able to absorb but some of
those bigger ones we would need to really look from within and and obviously have some conversations how we can work through that but the legislative group that we met with uh not long ago obviously they're earmarking a lot for the supplemental budget to get us going and I think they're all waiting for the same answer
that we're waiting too but um you know there are real needs and a lot of that is tied to the Student Opportunities Act um which you know is still there but um I tried my best to give you the best answer I can you don't have an answer not really but I'm just teasing we're
looking really hard though in terms of internal like what will we need to do but there if if we received significant cuts like that it would be it would be detrimental to our district and something we'd have to come up with absolutely yeah so that's uh that was my question but we're all walking the line
in public schools because you know one of the things that we have to instill is confidence and that starts with our staff that starts with our families and absolutely but the reality is you know if there would be changes we have to be ready to make that pivot on that so we are looking for ways like if this X
happens but it's hard to project that out because you know you wouldn't want to um look to make any type of um timing isn't good either it may not even be move maybe a move point but I know last year coming into you know this school year every year the the federal
entitlements were always on the piece where whether they're level funded or level serviced and this year I believe they were level funded so that this is an area that's that's been discussed over years not necessarily dissolving the Department of Education but the federal entitlements okay thank you i
try my best ted um I have a couple questions the So the Chapter 70 from the Can you clarify that the funding per student it's it wasn't a universal reduction in funding there's like a grid
sounds like there's some sort of matrix where if you score in one category you get $100 and if you score in another category you you get $70 we just scored it's a huge formula um it's one that would would take a PhD to really I think
fully grasp um but there are components of it a lot of it's built on enrollment okay and a lot of it's built on that piece where um particularly the um the foundational budget piece the the 70 uh 4 versus the 104 70 yeah that that piece
is built on enrollment so enrollment for us the the if we keep it steady that helps us in terms of at least the funding um and also too there's some other mechanisms built in for the free and reduced and those of economically disadvantaged as well that have brackets
that go into the formula so if there are more students in that bracket it could increase that foundational which I thought we were close um and I know that the legislators we met with and talked with um I've referenced we we had a legislative lunchon a couple weeks ago with all the superintendents in the
Northshore and they were talking about understanding that that formula is basically needs to be updated but that's a long drawn out affair but also knowing that the foundational for 233 districts at that level when there are great needs um to them they said "Well we should
really try to bump that if they can." So if we can get that little bump that would help us okay um then so what happens so I I I I know we went over budget this year on the special education transportation where where does that money come from Rodney
or Dan so like if we're $400,000 over budget where does where does that come from over over budget it depends on the I think in the slide it said that our projection for this for if I'm not mistaken this year was 2.1 million and
the and it's act the actual is going to end up being 2.5 like we're we're able to get recoup some of that from circuit breaker which is important and that's why that that one slide that mentioned the 44% to the 75% reimbursement so tuition's reimbursed at the 75% but the
the transportation um is not fully reimburseable at 75% so that's that huge uh piece that we could utilize that would be very helpful for us so
that so the the cost to the town what was the net cost of the town changed this year versus the budget there was no our appropriation remained the same again they did Tinder so then we also so again a couple years ago if you remember
actually I think two out of the past four years we had to do a free cash supplemental um because again we had already been tapping circuit breaker we had a lot of moveins um and again so again between trying to get circuit breaker to a level standpoint so it could absorb these costs as they come up and then we'll
talk about a little bit more at the end of the month but increasing our special education stabilization fund as well in case we need to draw on that and if we um I want I just want to focus on the this year because I think it'll be illustrative of the bigger issue what so
of that half a million dollar $400,000 overrun how much of it was additional kids needing transportation how much of it was just rates getting jacked up even more than you anticipated and how much
was it like like changing in the types of like you know a very specialized type of transit versus four kids that just go on a bus combination combination of of the increase of rates but also there were times when you know there may be x amount of students going to one that one
required going in their own transport um those things add up quickly to that and that's why the regionalization uh is going to help us immensely it brings some we hope stability to that type of funding
um yeah i mean like I I just want to spend a little more time on this because like honestly it's tripled since 2022 and I think Yeah and I think for people in town this like you guys are educators
you're not logistics experts the kids that we've and and tasked you with getting to the schools they aren't even going to our schools it's like I think it's something that the select board p DPW like it's a
this is a town issue and like educators shouldn't have to figure all this stuff out um what So you mentioned the vans um what was my question going to be are kids able to be driven in non-vans like if one kid needs a ride to
a school and there's no one to share or collaborate with are there other like do you have to use a a huge 14 seat van or can somebody be transported in a in a passenger car you mean in terms of one of the special education students and such um I mean it's up to us to find
transportation so we would use a service for that okay but do they offer like passenger carb based service i have not we haven't we haven't run across that no they're typically vans smaller vans some of the larger vans we have been working
with DPW because they may have another vehicle or two that may not be a van but a large like like an expedition or a vehicle like that we we're looking to see if we can add to our fleet possibly but that hasn't been uh part of So what's the con like it's what's the constraining factor on the vans like
what can we just buy like I I guess I should ask you said you're looking to hire drivers and we were able to hire one what are what are the requirements of a driver do they have to be full-time are are they are there collective bargaining like it's a stated rate and they can be part-time drivers parttime drivers yeah so if we could find someone
that wants to work from 6:30 to 9:30 and Yep 1:30 to 4 and that's part of the reason David's reaching out to the Y and to the senior center because they have drivers and we might be able to collaborate with them possibly because it's you might be able to run a route at the school run a route for them possibly
but it it's definitely a flexible piece and we're looking to be as competitive at the rate as possible i can't remember what the hourly rate but you know we I think we bumped it a little bit um and you know adding the bus was going to help us as well for next year too but I
think for the other vans Ted the um the non70 those require just the driver's license and a good record um so you know for the coaches that drive or during the day that's really helped us quite a bit we've been considering if we we might be able to add a third van would that help
us or would a 7D van the 7D really gets a bang for the buck because those are pretty high rates from a private company versus if we were to run that but we also have to be careful and work with the DPW and the bandwidth too to be able to manage the fleet as well so that's a
balancing piece is is the management of the fleet um and they've been great the DPW we had a great partnership with them but um it's that piece where we adding but we want to be you know we don't want to bring in five buses I don't think we could manage the five buses but by
adding one bus to the fleet would be a big savings for us there um how many kids total is it that are like on average would you say that are we're transporting in that 2.5 I don't I don't have that I can get that for you Ted I don't have that off the
top of my Okay um I think that's it i might have other questions pop up but sure i'll I'll let you go for now thank you Arthur first of all Mary um thank you for retiring so you allowed you allowed Dan to be under
the 13-year average so we could take that salary off so it's very nice of you cuz I know you weren't ready to retire yet but uh no they're going to miss you over there i know well I know what you do over there so um and you're too young to retire so I don't know what's
um so first of all you know just kind of following Ted I mean I look at that transportation special ed transportation and I've only been out of there out of there i've only been not working in the with the school department for 3 years
it's three times what it was when I left i don't understand i mean I is it just is it just literally they the rates have gone through the roof is that what's happened that competition um so just to give you an insight lack of sound like there's competition actually right yes
lack of I should have but I will tell you that just looking at the um the regionalization the company they're going with they have a fleet of 200 vehicles so um for the price they provide it so they'll have more opportunities to you know so if there's
a needed van it's under the cost yeah which I mean I I I kind of know it's just the cost of just my my concern my concern is that they'll be the ones that'll re they'll give you a 10% discount and they'll have one driver instead of three and say that you're
saving money and really they're just my like like that that's nothing not that we can control it today but my concern is that if they have every vehicle they'll they'll give you some token discount for combining routes but they'll sit there and laugh all the way
to the bank i mean it looks to me like that's what's going on but that's why you hired your your your person right so and that is that the increase in central office when I look at the the we did and we we also added to um the an admin assistant to uh student services uh we
we certainly saw that that was an area that we needed one more admin assistant just to balance the load i I don't know how they were able to do with what they did but that was part of it as well I guess but I mean I think you need to have somebody dedicated to this because of the increase in the cost so I think
that's good so I also want to say I think I think you guys did a great job as far as the contracts um I think the four years was a good thing it gives us cost certainty over a longer period of time yes um and also I think the the
increases were reasonable um for both sides but in light of what we've seen in some other places so I think that that's a a positive a good thing that that that's occurred over the past year um you know there's not I've been looking at these budgets
for 20 years now so there's not a lot you can do you have 94% of the budget is salaries and special education and salaries they are what they are and special ed is you have to provide it and you just hopefully can can find ways to
decrease those costs and I think we're starting that process i really didn't expect that there'd be a lot of change in the first year of of developing um programs um I think it's a long-term investment i I think I said last year I don't think you're going to pull people
back i think kids that are at places that are doing well are going to want to stay at those places and I don't think we should be in the business of not letting them stay in those places if that's what they want but I think you can keep people from going out but we're going to see that over a longer period of time um so I think that you know
we'll see how that works but I'm sure if with what you say that you're doing and and developing I think that's going to happen so we should see a benefit to that over the next few years um I really didn't see anything else um I the the special education outplacement
was down a few hundred,000 because of just less kids or or what what was that there were a few less but but that that's a pretty fluid number yeah I know i know it was down it was actually down exactly the same as the the the transportation was up i
think we had four moveins and one went out but yeah some students age out as we know y but no I think it's a reasonable budget i think you you definitely want to maintain you don't want to obviously pull back um and and try to keep developing those programs and and so
hopefully that's going to work over the next few years um and you know hopefully we won't also get additional hopefully get some good news coming forward and not bad news but as it looks now I I I think it's a good budget thank you i I remember my question can you explain to me the
circuit breaker i know like so two Okay so I'm looking at the slide $2.1 million then now it's $2.5 million that's the actual and then we're saying it's going to go from 44% to 75% reimbursement on transportation so right
now the 2.5 million for this year is that net of the circuit breaker so it's really 2.5 million divided by44 is what we're actually paying or is there a or is there a circuit break where does the
circuit breaker money flow back i'm going to turn this over to as I said a phone a friend this has made my eyes bleed we've been waiting to hear from Pam all night so best practice so we receive we receive income this year revenue this year that is
based on it's a reimbursement of expenses that we had last year and we are allowed to carry it forward from one year to the next to a limit best practice is that we use the revenue that came in last year as our known offset
for our expenses this year but sometimes you can't carry all that money forward because you needed to sort of spend it as it was coming in and you can't carry that full amount forward that $2.5 million
represents spending beyond just the amount that's being carried over meaning that that 2.5 million is revenue that will come in from the state next year based on our expenses this year that we need to spend sort of as we get it in
order to close the gap in the budget so the that $449,000 of increased circuit breaker revenue that we are hoping for is money that will come to us this year based on
actual transportation expenses that we paid last year and they the state budget had so much money um allocated for circuit breaker that they did all the reimbursements on the tuition first and then they used whatever was left over to
um reimburse as much of the transportation as possible the goal was 75% of the transportation they only were able to fund 44% because of what they had available to them so now the supplemental budget is going to make that pot whole on the state side which
will allow them to increase the reimbursement to Damverse for what we spent last year on transportation and if that happens then we will get the $449,000 in additional revenue this year that will be available to us to spend
next year okay c can and since our costs continue to grow our circuit breaker revenue next year will be greater than our circuit breaker revenue this year because it's going to be a reimbursement of a larger number so so Mr chair does that does
that allow us in essence when it comes to this specific set of a special type of revenue and a particular set of expenditures are we sort of able to carry over year to year whereas normally we would have to take action at town
meeting to be able to reserve and and play out so no it's a reserve fund under the control of school department and correct me if I'm wrong I think the cap is the prior year's amount correct so if they got 2.5 in FY25 and FY26 they couldn't carry over more than 2.5 the
other part you can't build it up over years and get up to six or seven i guess the other question I have too is because these are these are basically unlike internal expenditures in which we obviously they get paid out on every second Thursday of the every other Thursday these are bills that come in
and get come in get paid sometimes so So do we find ourselves occasionally sort of behind in terms of paying those bills or we is it more likely that what we're doing is using money that's not necessarily assigned for that bill but
paying that bill knowing that we paid another bill from 6 months before with other money not that that's an accounting problem but it it's just a rolling process of state aid coming in
bills coming in from the transport companies and the and the and the out out of placement schools and we're just making those payments as best we can as they sort of roll through i'm not sure I fully understand the question but I'll take a stab thank you
yeah I think it's more that again they plan here's how much we're going to use in circuit breaker so it's not tied to a specific bill they have a projection but essentially it's its own separate budget yeah so basically we're getting we're getting a set of revenue that's based to some extent on bills it's coming in we have bills that come on board that we
need to pay we utilize that money as best we can to be able to make those payments and at the end of the day what we hope is that we don't have that much of a delta between the two that will require us to to dip into um so for
example moveins then cuz again I think they have a pretty good handle on the cost you know next year based on if these were all the students here's what we project the cost would be project in the increases on our district but again if you have one move in or one student who was here who now needs to go out that's where it really throws off the
concept of budgeting for special education sorry I went out of order and I know Erin has a lot of stuff so I apologize that's okay um so go ahead Ted you can keep going so the 2.4 million is the
gross number the gross billings and somewhere else in the budget is the circuit breaker money netting out that's okay okay okay thank you does anybody else want to go before Aaron
thanks um I want to say you guys did a great job with the contracts i think the four-year is wonderful i think it held a precedent to the other issues that we saw this past fall into the winter and so I'm glad that we weren't in that same situation i just want to say thank you um I think what's lacking around the
elementary school level um and between the therapeutic and learning center within the district is transparency and communication to to families um it seems like I would like to understand the difference between therapeutic and learning centers and maybe what Smith
School is becoming a specialty of what Thorp's going to become a specialty of and understand how you know we can call that equitable distribution of learning across the district if if one school is going to become a specialty and you know a learning center and that's going to be spread across the classrooms how is that
going to be I guess compensated um for the other districts and how can the students of Smith that maybe not um participate in those programs benefit through either making sure that MTSS is followed through with or maybe there's a real true vice principal in the program
so that way staff isn't leveraged too hard as it already is it's a real concern um staff has leveraged already too much and so to know that there's going to be even more strain on the resources within the school I just don't think people are communicated um properly there's not proper transparency
in the district it's a concern that I have um and I really would like to see more help within the elementary school classrooms you know through age uh grade three there's no aids um required for each class when you have class sizes
that go up to 28 classes and students per class and there's no aid you know and and that's kind of what we're seeing for estimated numbers for next year it's a concern right um so I just want to make sure that although the contracts are done great there's still strain
within within you know the requirements of what we need and it would just be great if we could you know have more transparency sure and last year we went to the effort of aligning the programs um with the idea that we should maximize
resources and increase collaboration because we found that as programs were splintered across the different schools you know if a teacher was out or an aid was out or there were different shifts in staffing it created an enormous strain within that building for sure um
so we last year we planned it out to divide as best that we could for example all the prek is at Riverside and so we moved all the pre-K staff there and we had some extra money left over to do some internal work to add some bathrooms and and needs that to be a code for the
prek and then will be the therapeutic program that'll house there smith will house the learning centers and Highlands really just doesn't have any room to put anybody it's it's it's a tight fixture and then Great Oak will have the uh languagebased so most of those programs
are already housed in those buildings so all the pre-k is already at the RI Riverside School at Thorp um like I said there is one cohort that is aging out of Smith before everything is is fully at Thorp so we moved the language excuse me
the uh learning centers from Thorp to Smith for a logical reason the it's a much better setting for what the programs need um there's much more space and there's a lot of areas that can improve the programming that is just it's just tough to make any type of
additions and changes so we shifted basically move that piece around um and part of the thing that right now if you look at the amount of pair of professionals we call an instructional assistance at at Smith um we we have a pretty good number that we've brought
aboard and a lot came over through the funding last year as well um but we also were looking last year we met with the staffs and said we're moving and we're making these moves um and there was a strong sentiment to allow cohorts to
stay in their school which I understand and we had a heart-to-he heart discussion with the faculties because they really have embraced the students um so instead of moving them in grade four or five allowing them to finish out the cohort uh that puts some stress and strain on us in terms of the staffing
does because it stretches it out and we did that at Riverside as well so Riverside the uh learning center cohort is aging out this year and those resources will move to the middle school as we look to improve that programming so um in terms of transparency you know we're doing the best we can i'll try to
continue that piece um and in terms of like what supports I think your question is like what are we doing for all of our other students all the students every student how are we making sure that every student has equitable access to their learning and be able to achieve the highest level and making sure that
we're not just focused on you know um the requirements for that classroom right so I don't know the 28 i don't think we have any classes of 28 no but I think the numbers are showing that they could get there if there's additions right so the looking at it I think it
shows that next year there's 24 but 25 and grade what grade five there's 25 and there could there's so we did it in um across are you talking to Smith specifically so just Smith there's three classes that in grade five there's two that have 25 one that has 24 right
that's a pretty large average class sizes at elementary school levels for um there are studies that say it should be average of 14 to 15 students 18 to 22 right so what we did so those numbers are included but those students that are in the learning centers spend you know
we try to use as much inclusion as possible where students can get into the the mainstream courses and with their support as well but many of them are in their sub substantially removed uh courses or or classrooms as well so we did a breakdown of the class size per
the district because we're really looking hard at that because the school choice issue came up um and did a breakdown of that so in terms of the percentage um the average class size across the district I think our largest um class might be third grade across the
district and it's like 22.5 um and I think the fifth grade might be 19 i don't have those numbers in front of me but I think it's fourth grade what are these numbers e so I'm looking at E2 so we broke down um when we take a look
at the um students that are included into the grid many of them that are in the subsearate classes are listed in in those class sizes yeah but it's all inclusive so that they might have they might start in a it's all inclusive these are the students that are in a
class so we're saying grade three 24 students for one class grade five there's 24 25 25 i see that okay it's kind of it's sort of even throughout the district right smith has the capacity to
hold another what four classrooms per grade i'm just wondering at what point do we go back to Okay you guys say average class size should be 18 at what point do we add another class per per grade at Smith so that way we get to those lower class sizes
right it's it's a concern it's a concern and and I can tell you as a parent at Smith um having all the learning centers being brought to Smith is just not being um spoken to it's just not something that's being communicated clearly and I can tell you that MTSS and those things
are not being monitored closely to make sure that everybody's um being offered what they need it's a concern if you want me to respond to the uh additional we chose not to add anymore the plan was as we were looking to shift our
programming around to maximize resources we're also considering adding one one class per year at Smith for to reach the capacity we chose to bypass that as we want this to settle in in terms of learning center and once a therapeutic moves out as well to balance that out
okay thank you you're welcome Eric let me try and go quickly here we go you mentioned a little bit about um early ed do you have any additional
early ed plans i know many districts have looked to their early ed to try and uh bolster or reinforce or get an early jump on enrollment you know to really try to stem that any thoughts future thoughts for that right the the talk is
to increase I I thought it was to get up to 25% increase over the next couple of years that's been the discussion with higher ed um we're looking for ways that we can expand that um I mean we have a cohort right now we have a a a person that oversees that in transportation so
we are looking to see can can we add to that but at this point we're trying to kind of stay kind of steady right now with that okay but that has that has a huge upside because obviously we have great resources with Northshore right there for us
you mentioned um marketing and communications do you have any and I I heard a few things about great things that are going on and it is uh not an area that schools are necessarily great at right and we we we
see that we experience that how do we then attack it or address that any Where are we going well you know one of the things um we're looking at obviously as we finalize our portrait of the graduate and start to align like what what is our
our brand and what is our vision as we we've come to pretty almost finished with that part of it u but also in terms of social media in terms of how do we get people into our buildings for example the showcase was great but in feedback um again the staff did a
wonderful job but that should probably take place in the fall we talked about having it earlier when you know students are making decisions then also looking can we create a similar showcase at the middle school right I know right now there's outreach to the fifth graders we have students that will go to the fifth grades and and talk with you know the
students about options and opportunities but getting them into the building is an important thing so families can see you know what is there so I think being able to do that but also just getting the word out more and communicating better across like what are the great things that we are doing uh on social media is
a is a good part of it too and we look for ways like even who manages that for the district now the social media and and website so we have a few stipen positions that um that work with that we don't have a full-time communications director okay that's get to the point
let me um do these very quickly any tariff related concerns on the supplies line i was looking at the supplies budget just we we discussed that two meetings ago where you know we have a onetoone well um uh our our technology
program or our laptop program um and you know obviously we're in our lease phase so we were saying well how much do we really need to you know will there be a 15% markup on the Chromebooks so we're really looking at that carefully uh right now there's not a lot of this uh
the lease itself is not up but we are talking about you know is this one toone program we have the right program you know can we make adjustments to it that can absorb you know and be able to be um more self-sufficient if possible the technology we have to we have to make
sure we have the technology but how we're doing it um is there a better way that we can provide the technology thank you and then my last question um if you could succinctly you talked about the multiple revisions in the budget you know what's your top one or two things
that just didn't make it into the budget well ideally having team chairs would be a wonderful thing to have uh and Aaron pointed out you know assistant principles at the elementary would be nice because you have you know it's really again it's not knocking they're
doing the best they can uh but you know it it's challenging to be an instructional leader when you're dealing with lots of items that pop up in all of our buildings uh they're doing a great job but that would be a nice to have but those you know those are pretty big chunks but that's stuff that we're
trying to build out over time okay so ideally you know two team chairs would be great to add one at the middle or the secondary level and one at the elementary that can really and target and certainly take pressure off of the buildings and allow our school psychologists a lot of them run the
meetings and that would free them up to do more so that that is what we're trying to change uh on that piece thank you there's a lot more that was on the uh the Well I know there was a lot that's why I was like just Yeah well the regionalization transportation
regionalization um when do you expect that to actually start is it this coming year this fall yes and what what communities would be involved yeah thanks Wall-E excuse me yeah i'm sorry what
communities would be involved with that so uh not every there's 20 members I believe in Northshore consortium 20 districts um out of that there's a pretty good percentage that have participated those that didn't participate I think want to try to get in now because they actually see this
coming it's going to happen right so I I think I I don't want to give a number but I know it's probably like 12ish if I remember correctly from the last board meeting but there are other districts that now see this coming to fruition and say "We'd like to get in on this." Right uh
the is when you set this up is it going to be is it is it going to be part of the each school district's vehicles or are you going to be talking about going out to a independent contractor independent independent contractor okay y So all
right all right that answers one of the questions and that would if you'd if you'd like just for you know that would allow us to let's say if we have uh students going to one particular out of district placement and along the route maybe somebody in Beverly somebody in peey along the way allows us to
consolidate with v the various communities in the consortium that are participating in this strict but still through the independent contractor correct okay and now you've talked about the uh team chairs structure in the um
special ed department mhm i think you're you're talking about elementary middle school and then high school all right could you describe what their responsibilities would be and how you know what their job description would be if if you were fortunate enough to get
those in place in the next couple of years right so um it would allow us to do several things one they would be involved with the initial meeting right so after the evaluation takes place the initial meeting comes down to whether a student is uh determines requires
services or not and navigating that meeting is is not easy right you have a lot of emotions and you have a lot of factors so that person would would share those meetings would also chair the annual meetings the three-year uh reviews uh they would also help ensure that the IEP document um all the
accommodations are where they should be uh ensure that the accommodations are do not exceed the needs cuz that can happen as well they would also serve it as administrative piece where they would do evaluations of special educators uh for example at the middle school we have a
number of co-t talk classes um they would allow to be able to work with the special educators to ensure that that's going well um and they also would would really put a lot of program development as well so for example the therapeutic program at the middle school that we're
working to make some revisions this year they would have a huge piece in ensuring you know that transition goes smoothly and if there are issues they would deal with the day-to-day things that do pop up with students need um that that always happen you know particularly also
with our autism strand as well um so they would take an enormous amount of pressure off because right now we have our assistant director at the secondary basically works with both schools and that's not efficient we have an elementary that works for five schools
right that's not efficient um and that's the model that coming in that's that's the structure was really having the school psychologist you know chair the meetings particularly initial which is a challenge because that's not what they went to school for right right i'm not
saying they're doing a bad job i'm not saying that but in terms that would take enormous amount of pressure off because then um those the psychologists running in the meetings would be freed up to really do deeper level services for those particular programs right um and I
would say that over time you know looking at where that pressure is at the elementary you know we'd be systematic about where we add that because that would provide relief for the principles at the elementary level yeah and speaking of the principles now you how many um of the five elementary schools
do not have an assistant principal none of them not one assistant principal in any of the five nope they have assistant to the principal it's a stipen position uh that can do extra duties and such but they're teaching a full full course load mhm
right okay um this is I don't know if you're ready for this question but you're going to get everybody's giving so go ahead i got water so I'm set let's take a drink then right this is Take a drink okay what is
in that by the way that cup water okay water too right it's a red cup you don't have to answer that Mr super this is question uh if you had a a choice or if you not a choice necessarily but a an opportunity
to get one thing in your budget that you don't have in right now that wouldn't be a budget buster okay i believe that's already buster okay i didn't qualify yeah no am I all set to
go who's following me by the way is there time for the Yeah just teasing what would that thing What would if if you had an opportunity to get one thing to help yourself regardless of what it is in the the school public schools what would do you have any idea what you'd
like to have the team chairs yes team chair and I'm looking currently we're trying to there are a few things that we're working through our own budget with areas that we can make some moves to do our best to make that happen well that'd be great yeah yeah hopefully get them be not one year at a time but by
this time you know maybe next year we'll be further advanced let's put it that way rodney okay and the last thing don't look at me like that i'm not looking i didn't dare look at me i've
waited a long time to get something mary congratulations and thank you for all you do but I can speak personally because being associated with the human rights and inclusion committee how much the schools have helped us with all the programs not just Martin Luther King but
on and on and on and on anytime we've needed help Mary's been there and so has Dan and the whole staff thank you thank you so no one's asked you this question yet but if you could get one thing the uh um I I will just say this
from my familiarity with the with the Vulc budget the Voke um transportation budget is very much apples to oranges but the VTEC budget in total is $2.6 million they own all their own buses they they do all their own
transportation which just so I'm not sure you know 2.5 of ours is spee I think our actual within district is about $700,000 so um you know part of me thought well maybe if we just bit the
bill bullet and went out there and invested some substantial amount of money to be able to buy the buses we'd we'd be able to do it for cheaper but unfortunately I think what like that OP trust Yeah the OPED yeah let's use the OPED trust but the uh but I think what
you're trying to do is what we have to do in this situation which is is do it much more peace meal and to try to find savings whenever we can so that's been great um again another question that that you probably won't be expecting but um can you talk a little bit about user
fees with the athletic department absolutely so in anticipation of this question I think that was foreshadowed last year that it would come back again uh we are right now we have a a joint labor management committee that's actually reviewing the stipens that was
part of our settlement with our teachers but the offshoot of that is to take a review to our user fees with athletics because there's one particular sport that I know you mentioned last year that years ago when it was calculated um a lot of the the gear requirements came from the school that no longer is in
effect so we're taking a a deep dive into those user fees in terms of you know where that is ensure that we're equitable with our user fees so that that will take place uh over the summer and then hopefully come back next year with any adjustments that would be as equitable as possible that's good cuz I
I promised my wife that once I cured the inequity of lacrosse being overcharged especially girls lacrosse being overcharged and I accomplished that at the Voke Tech I was able to get their fee reduced um and once I've done it here in Davvers I can retire and feel as
though I've truly accomplished something in my life so and yet cats across the town are still unleashed they're still they're still un unregistered um the uh the the only other question I had was looking there's a relatively sizable
from a percentage standpoint increase in regards to textbooks it looked like um and I and it and I there was some discussion in the in the in the narrative about about the use of workbooks in the in the purchase of
workbooks with it which just to maybe go down Bill Bradreet's avenue a little bit do we do we find an advantage especially with the young kids utilizing sort of pen and paper type of workbooks over
doing it off of Yeah so that's so that's something that we should anticipate that it's a productive and very good thing for us to be expending that money even if it's if it's on an annual basis those books are being sort of thrown out after a year because those kids are using them
and it's a real valuable part of their education every time I'm in the elementary the usage of the individual sheets and the students doing the work they do they do some work on the laptops when appropriate as well yeah uh but they're still utilizing that and um we
talked about this today in our central cabinet meeting in terms of one of our curriculums does not have the associated books so there's copies you have to make with that so we've seen uh some of the copies go up when you would think trying to go the opposite way to be green but it's necessary and often times they may
bundle up the curriculum packages for you may want just the uh the computer piece of that but they they don't make it they don't separate it's not like you can go in the shopping cart they bundle it together okay okay thank you thank
you anything from the audience mr bradreet good evening good evening bill Brad this is only the Yeah I'm just reminding you i know i know thank you we have rules at our meetings
a comment i wanted to thank the school department for uh addressing a personal issue I had and they have so I'm very happy with that question is uh if there's no grant writer is the grant if you had a grant writer would the grant
writer be the person who's looking for what grants are available or is that a separate job by someone else well I think the easy answer to that question is Mary's going to be looking for a hobby in her retirement so hopefully she might stick around and write some grants for us but uh Dan do you want to take a
stab at that yeah that um the the writing of the grants but also um just the implementation of the grants the reporting out on the grants it's it's a lot of work um and Mary shouldered a lot of that and our incoming assistant superintendent has experience in that area too great uh we
do have some that um some of our curriculum directors we have them help out with grants but really it's it's um and Mary has an admin assistant that helps at least get things processed so it's a lot and Pam and Pam of course she does everything well thank you for all of
your work absolutely anything else from the audience can I make a motion you can can I motion to move the budget second motion and a second all in favor i
opposed oh and we have one absent but we'll move on anyway we got it thank you um and it is after 9ine we're going to take a 5m minute break as we let land use and community services come in and get repositioned
um Dan Public Schools thank you for your time tonight thank you thanks hi how are you we were very top individually i stepped out you took the vote huh i didn't even realize you
weren't there i didn't I didn't get I didn't get to say name oh was that your plan no i'm good let's try yeah all right let's do in the
basement all right 65 page 65 all right welcome back everyone welcome back are we turning things right over to Aaron or are you chatting first i'll lead us through and Aaron will jump in with questions if that works for you
Mr chairman aaron's going to have questions no if you have questions Aaron will answer the questions i'll keep the train running as quickly as possible thank you take a look at our land use and community services budget we'll be talking about five divisions that make up specifically land use and community
services and then also recreation uh which is budgeted separately so those divisions are inspectional services health planning senior and social services and veteran services all in total it's a 1.94% increase and we're happy to walk
through the different divisions first is inspectional services overall it's a 7.4% 4% increase on their budget driven primarily by salaries and wages and that's tied to a backlog of periodic inspections so what we'll be
doing is bringing on some temp staffing to do sort of the routine work while the building commissioner and the assistant building commissioner are able to tackle the backlog of necessary periodic inspections would you like me to stop in between or
um I just have one and we can just jump in with questions through each budget do we I The only question I have on this one is when we vote on this do we vote on each one of these no we'll we'll do everything but recreation as one and then we'll come back for recreation okay uh and we'll do the one vote and then we'll talk about recreation as as as a
separate whole entity um my question was on sealer supplies how did we just get down to zero on that what are we not sealing anymore and what were we spending all that money sealing through you um recently we had to uh buy new weights and sealers
equipment so we don't hopefully that should last us quite some time so we don't need a budget line item for that next year the other is we took it in house so we used to contract out now it's a person on staff does thank you anyone else and if anyone from the
audience has a question just raise your hand and you'll be acknowledged see the damage cool okay next and next we have public health o overall it's a 72% increase um sound and wages is up 9%
driven by some contractual obligations operating expenses is a reduction driven uh not necessarily an overall town budget reduction but transferring those expenses to the DPW budget who manages the pest control for the routine uh building pest control and
maintenance great anyone i have one oh go ahead uh explain to me update and adopt new Danver's body art regulations tattoos tattoos yeah is
that's the businesses in town correct yes and if we need Mr jackaloney he can jump in but basically they the board of health wants to update the tattoo regulations working with other area towns one of the issues is that Salem's a little different than Peabody peabody
is a little different from Danvers so the area staff are all kind of working together to try to make sure that like there's just one set of standards in the area so there are no state regulations correct okay thank you that's it great
next we have planning and economic development um operation expense reduction again just cutting one of the budget lines that based on historical utilization we were able to trim in the overall townwide effort of balancing the budget overall it's a 63%
increase great good budget senior and social services uh salary wages reduction same number of staff but just the turnover in some longtime positions uh and then operating expenses and increased cost to prepare and distribute the lovely senior center newsletter
go ahead it's the resident senior that's right the abuse I take well author is too quiet down okay now uh maybe this is just a typo i don't understand it transportation on your this division
description uh it says provide transportation to seniors and disabled residents under 60 is that under 60 or disabled it's disabled res okay I got it thank you very much i apologize
i only knew that because I read it the wrong way the first time I looked at it myself okay that's it for me great and veteran services such a level budget i couldn't even come over the bullet to explain the budget so level funded operator
[Applause] anything okay all right is there a uh motion move the budgets second motion and a second all in favor opposed thank you
recreation all right taking a look at the recreation budget uh again it's a small increase related to contractual obligations on salary salary and wages and then a decrease partially based on some of our upcoming fuel estimates department total
a 2.75% increase questions anyone paul throughout some of the budgets it seems like there's a positive move to reduce the gasoline costs this
year and that's the first time I think I've seen that in the last four or five years general yeah so again we do the best we can obviously we can't prognosticate um fuel rates otherwise none of us would be here but we try to our again our equipment division uh estimates the fuel rate and then for the
rest of the departments just based on what their routine usage in terms of mileage but you probably are hoping for reduced cost i mean if you drive through town you see it but next time you drive through town it's up 20 cents again so okay that's it for me could can you
just ac across the board not to do it right now but can can we at some point can we get an indication of of the entirety of the fleet and what percentage of those are electric vehicles that we have um I'm not really
interested necessarily in who gets a car but I I didn't take the same pride that members of the select board did with the idea that the oncoming new town manager that somehow it's a great feat that she doesn't get a vehicle but yet virtually
everybody else in the town seems to get one so um I'd be interested in that and where where those because I'm sure you probably don't get one either so you know maybe the two bosses should get one and we should be less concerned about other ones but question yes i noticed that you
increased the I think I'm not sure where it was the electric chargers how many do we have in town do you know off hand or does you have them over at each like the police have some vehicles fire do they have all CH chargers there too we have one out here right yeah yeah again I
would defer to public works on Thursday to better answer that question but yeah we do have so we have one lightning in the for the police department we're proposing two electric vehicles for fire this year as well and we do we have any at public works or no is this going to be the first one public works has some as well yeah okay
yeah all right can can I ask too just just brief could if maybe if if Dave M could get up just very quickly to talk about the the June Wayne Marquee event um just chance to have him here and
publicly talk a little bit about it good evening david Mountain recreation director uh as Mr landers has stated on June 14th um coming up at Hobart Street uh I think it's 32 Hobart Street we we
built a pocket park there some of you may be familiar with it there's a pathway it's the connection to the main rail trail and the new extension um in this park we we've developed the landscape some seating some swings uh there's some intrical landscape
components part of the park that have some uh sentimental um aspects to uh Wayne and his family but on June 14th uh we will be June 14th I believe we will
be having a celebration uh at 10:00 a.m it's a Saturday you should all mark your calendars it's open to the public um we will have some speakers and a dedication and an unveiling of the new signs one for the Real Trail naming of the Rail
Trail after Wayne and also a more personalized sign inside of the uh park um that's at 10:00 a.m i think it'll be very um emotional and very important to our community in honoring Wayne and all
that he contributed to us this was uh a component and a dedication that Wayne himself um was interested in and favored um followed that we will be having a brief reception up at the Essex Tech at
the Larkin Cottage for everyone um including invitees and the public so I I encourage everyone to come out that day it's going to be a great day hopefully we have some good weather uh we've been working we have a small committee that we've been planning this event and uh I
think it's a wonderful tribute to a wonderful man and town manager so thank you thank you through your We'll have more obviously more public information as it comes available we're still nailing down the logistics but Okay thank you i have a question you have a question yeah um I'm just curious the
Riverside playground last year you needed um I think what $30,000 to fund it how are you doing with that is it $265,000 265 i would be glad to give you an update on that so um we've been working very hard with the school and the school
community we'll be before the board of selectment tomorrow evening accepting a $50,000 gift from the pack good job and that will go along with a $265,000 warrant article we have for the play structure good uh it will then as
Rodney knows we will then place the order for the structure and uh in July and August of this year there will be the site work and deconstruction of the existing playground and then the building of the new playground to be completed in August this will be a
playground equal to if not better than all of the other school playgrounds in town and uh most favorably to the um school department it will have port and place rubber surfacing that similar to what we have over at the Smith School
so we're looking forward to that it's been a long journey uh we've worked very hard in trying to get the components to meet the needs of the community and meet the needs of the school um I think everyone is happy with that and um we're we're excited for a new playground in town good job equal but it will be equal
right Dave equal not better not better equal if not better if not better I will say this every playground that we have built over my tenure here seems to be a little bit better than That's the way it goes yes everyone wants a little bit better than the next one and we that is
always a goal of ours good job thank you thanks Dave anything else on recreation um I have a quick question if well and it may not be the right place but if if stuff gets approved in warrant articles for improvements to fields and other
recreational propert areas that are you know we run recreation on in town whose responsibility is it to carry out those improvements um quick Mr town Manager would be glad to answer that really it depends on the project but if it's a buildings and
grounds weren't generally public works it's like it's it's fields it's stuff that's commissioned last year and the year before yeah so who's who it's public works it would be public works yep okay typically playgrounds is an area that I have a focus in and everything else is in grounds okay if
there's specific ones in particular we can have an update for you on Thursday if you want to let me know okay anything else move the uh recreation budget second motion in a second all in favor opposed
thank you good job thus concludes night one Mr chairman yes we return Wednesday uh same bat time same bat channel same bat location uh we'll see you all on Wednesday thank you