welcome to the March 10th 2025 meeting of the Long Meadow select board this is Select board chair Veni I'll be confirming that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me Members when I call your name please respond in the affirmative Dan
zero connect the audio he's here uh Andrew lamb here Mark gold here Josh LaVine here staff when I call your name please respond in the affirmative Lyn Simmons here this open meeting of the Long Meadow select board is convened in person and Via Zoom webinar as posted on
the agenda in Town's website identifying how the public may join there's no chat or Q&A function all of the materials for this meeting are available on the agenda posted on longm ma.gov the public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless I note otherwise this meeting will feature resident
comment for residents attending the meeting in person please raise your hand when we get to the comment section of the meeting and I will call on you to approach the microphone for residents participating in the meeting via Zoom webinar format please use the raise hand icon at the bottom of the screen the meeting moderator will promote you to
panelist unmute you and give you permission to speak if you join the webinar by phone dial star9 to raise your hand and star 6 to mute unmute residents who wish to speak will identify their names and addresses only each individual is afforded 3 minutes for comments please note this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees
are participating by video conference please remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking if anyone in attendance is recording this meeting please announce yourself now it'll be online right okay um great we will now begin with the Pledge of
Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right and now we'll move into select board announcements are we going
to have the others committees call to order or not till I I think until Jo join the meeting um select board announcements our annual town meeting is set for May 13th in the long medow high school gymnasium the town manager budget presentation and the first draft warrant
review will be held at the March 24th select board meeting the board will vote to close and sign the final warrant on April 7th for additional information please visit long meow ma.gov toown meeting nomination papers are available for the June 3rd annual Town election residents interested in running for
elected office May obtain nomination papers by contacting the town clerk's office at Town Clerk longmedow ma.gov or 41356 54103 to schedule an appointment find additional resources including open terms and the full election calendar at long meow ma.gov
elction the town of Long Meadow is seeking your assistance in creating the cover to the 2024 annual report please submit your original photo or drawing by March 14th at noon for a chance to be featured in the cover of the annual Town report for additional information and guidelines to submit please please visit
long me.gov Civic alerts the town of Long Meadow is pleased to announce the commencement of a new curbside trash and recycling hauling contract effective July 1st this contract ushers in a significant advancement in Waste Management Services with fully automated curbside trash and
recycling pickup to improve efficiency and convenience for residents the town is currently in the phase of getting feedback on sizing for carts please take a moment to complete our survey to share your feedback on what card size you feel suits your house for recycling complete the survey and find additional
information at long me.gov recycling carts all right and with that we will move into resident comments I don't see any residents in person any [Music] online yes hi Melissa can you hear us yes I can
can you hear me yes um great uh thank you for joining us if you could start with your name address and I'll give you three minutes here to uh make a comment okay thank you my name is Melissa shettler I'm a resident at 34 Ellington street I'm calling the concern I'm
zooming in with concerns um that appropriate oversight is not being given to large scale construction projects in town although it appeared that there were good intentions in mitigating traffic for the eversource project efforts have broken down significantly we were advised in Allington Street
residents on alington Street word buys only after raising the issue that a preconstruction meeting with eversource was held for the latest project and it was agreed that detour signs were not placed at that time it was indicated that the DPW would be following up with their contacts at eversource to require
the signs should be placed cardboard signs and Cones were placed on Thursday and Friday on the street of last week and were not enforced by any police officers now just three business days after traffic controls were finally implement Ed they are gone there are no
cones no detour signs no road closure signs and no police presence uh today we experienced a high volume of trucks uh as we have been including a pvta bus which was new to the to the mix um the real issues of safety exists
in our neighborhood and others from fores blend to Bliss due to the lack of traffic controls and appropriate detour signage we are now experiencing all modes of traffic on our street often two way including one incident with five 18 wheeel tractor trailers that were
attempting to utilize Ellington street at the same time traffic was halted in both directions as the drivers had to navigate the traffic issue on their own because there was Zero police presence a picture of the incident was set to the Town
Administrator um the town has been unnotice of increasing traffic concerns in our neighborhood for years and has done nothing to permanently address the issue now now do the lack of initiating a collaborative discussion to work on a permanent fix with the residents of our neighborhood and lack of traffic
controls implemented as a result of the project you have now encouraged major traffic to utilize Farmington Allington and other side streets as a matter of course to seek alternate routs uh with the Advent of warmer weather this week brings numerous children riding their bicycles or
walking to school at Peak communing times there are no crossing guards between Converse and Bliss until you get to Bel Clair on the long Med Street side and no crossing guards between Converse and Bliss until you get to Bliss on the Laurel Street side uh it has been the town has been advised of the half
painted crosswalk and lack of traffic controls uh of note uh let's see uh sorry I lost my place of note during the project Last Summer the crosswalk was dug up at alington and Long Meadow intersection it has not been repainted and a car accident occurred last week at
the intersection of Farmington and Laurel we are disappointed in a lack of oversight of this and future projects and hopeful that the select board will take a harder look at how these projects are managed great thank you so much Melissa apprciate and um anyone else
here for a resident comment you raise your hand and then um I don't know if we missed Sarah as having recording the she did not raise her hand to say that she was but okay all right
that sounds good um all right so no we don't have any more resident comments we'll move into selectboard comments Mark yeah I have I have two first of all I I participated in uh the pioner valley planning commissions a metropolitan planning organization that's their
traffics group uh review and at that the latest one they reviewed tip projects tip stands for traffic Improvement program projects generally funded by the state Andor Federal governments for the next five years as we all know there's long metal project it's called 6888 1
which is the North End of rout 5 that's moving forward for uh Construction in in the fall of this year U however there's another project the long met Street project second phase of Route 5 at 612 257 and that's for the south end of town
and I've been talking about how projects are getting more expensive and slipping well 612 257 has slipped uh it's now scheduled for funding in 2029 although it could move up theoretically to 2028 chances of that
happening are as they say in the slim to none because of the excess costs of all the projects that are already there uh I I've you know I've already when I got off the meeting I sent a note to to Sean and to Lynn about this with they got charts and graphs and
all kinds of stuff but it just says that our construction on the south end of Route 5 is being further delayed and I think people should should know about it uh the other thing is that there was Lynn Lynn reported it in her uh monthly report but I want to recognize to people
uh uh Lisa oxen at the DPW and Arlene Miller from the recycling committee they were extremely instrumental they made the application and they got us a grant uh uh for the assisting with the purchase of the recycling bins that that
that ven was speaking about earlier it's a substantial amount of money it's $888,000 that's going to go a long way toward helping us implement the the revised uh recycling system uh for people who are concerned or question it
the the numbers speak for themselves the the trash contract was bid two ways one with what we've currently gotten another with totally automated systems which included automated Recycling and the sub the savings were extraordinarily substantial in the seven figures number
and so uh that's why we're moving to automated recycling not because we want to make people's lives miserable we think it'll actually make lives easier but the the cost savings just really forced the the hand of the town to move to automated Recycling and and this
grant to help us purchase those recycling bins will go a long long way thank great thank you anything from uh selectboard remote no okay all right great um so
with that we can now move along to the Town Mander support thank you um so happy to announce that we received a Mass DOT safe roots to school school bike rack Grant Mass do announced the winners of the 2024 2025 Bike R bike rack Grant
through its safe roots to schools program this is in it this grant opportuni is in its second year and it helps schools replace old worn or damaged bicycle racks or acquire new or additional bike racks all safe roots to school partner schools were encouraged to apply bike racks are intended to be
ordered and installed within the current school year each selected winner receives the funding necessary for the acquisition and installment of two to five bike racks over 60 applications were submitted and three schools or communities were selected throughout the
state for this year uh I'm thrilled to say that Blueberry Hill Elementary was one of those three schools approved uh the natural grass and artificial turf study was completed um this as reminder was funded uh at
through a citizen petition at the May 2024 annual town meeting um there's a a bit about the background of it in my report here but I I want to announce that the study has concluded a link is available on the town manager page it's also on the homepage of the town website
the Public Presentation for the study will be April 3rd and more details on the presentation will be shared soon including the time and location the town clerk's office has been working on software to modernize the office and streamline the dog license process they're in the process
of onboarding with permit link which is the same software used by the building department we anticipate the new software um would have gone live today that was the plan uh the this is going to provide more efficiency for the department and better service for constituents you'll be able to uh renew
dog licenses online eventually we'll be branching out to uh all Vital Records through this as well as um business licenses as Mark spoke about in select board comment the recycling partnership Grant um was applied for by Lisa and
Arlene and I'm happy to say that Long Meadow did receive it and we're going to get direct financial assistance from the recycling partnership in the amount of $888,000 uh we'll also receive a wide range of technical assistance and in-kind support as we uh work to
implement uh the Implement standardized uh cart based residential curbside recycling collections this grant is going to help subsidize the town's cost of purchasing these new carts uh the town's been pursuing a municipal aggregation plan and in a
March 3rd 2025 letter to the town we were informed that the municipal aggregation plan was approved by the Department of Public Utilities more information is going to be available very soon as we roll out the plan and uh also as Mark spoke about the
Long Meadow Street tip phasee 2 project this is with um a mass stop project also in the queue for um tip funding um this is Long Meadow Street from forest Glenn to conver Street that's happening this summer phase two is Converse Street to
approximately Bernie Road there's an image in my report showing the bounds of this project uh the design consultant is VHB and we are at the 25% design Milestone once that Milestone is reached a design public hearings required and
includes attendance by mass. VHB and the town the public is strongly uh encouraged to attend and to see this 25% design and answer question I'm sorry ask questions provide feedback um and there'll be Consultants there as I
mentioned to answer those questions this is going to be inperson and virtual and is tentatively scheduled for May 8th with more details to follow that concludes my report tonight happy answer any questions you have great thank you so much Lenn a lot on the report tonight um yeah and I just
want to underscore uh the last one uh the last item the tip Phase 2 project and public getting a chance to understand this project at this point ask questions provide feedback like this is the time to do it and you know we've seen some of this confusion with some of
the recent projects and and uh you know folks um feeling like they didn't have a chance to voice their concerns or their thoughts so this is the time to do it for this project um anything else from the board Dan can you hear me yep great uh
thanks for going through that Lyn on the section from conver Street to Bernie when is that supposed to be uh started and completed we're just in 25% design so these projects take many years uh we next big milestone would be
75% uh that will probably be several years away and um we're at least 5 years out from construction at least got you thank you great anything
else okay thank you ly um now we will move into Old business and we will move right into the school department budget presentation so we'll open up our joint meetings so we'll give you all uh a chance to open up your own meetings thank you um thank you for welcoming us here tonight we look forward to
presenting you with our FY 26 school department budget um we'll Begin by calling the March 10th 2025 school committee meeting um to order um just when I say your name say here so we know you're here Michaela here
Estelle she's muted here thank you Jamie yeah and me as well thank you and we'll turn over to Dr OA one second I'll let the finance committee as well open up so I'm calling the uh finance committee March 10th meeting into order um for
just calling people on the phone uh yeah I mean you can you can so um so calling if you can um say here when I call your name Cara Stevens here okay Tim Mitchell here John Denine here
D McConnell this is hard to remember all the names Garrett Eric we're in order thank you and and thank you all for joining us tonight um and you know obviously this is very important and uh ready to hear the presentation turn over all right thank you appreciate the
chance to uh present the voted FY 26 budget to the select board this budget was voted and approved by the school committee at its February 11th meeting so I have some of the slides and here say recommended budget understood that it's actually the the voted budget from
February 11th uh so um as um the select board understands it's a it's a long budget Journey um I have um March 17th actually should be March 24th is our understanding of when the town manager will present the FY 26 budget to the
select board uh but as um everyone fully understands in this room that it's um it doesn't mean anything is certain uh there's certainly a lot of variables in front of us that need to be pinned down so uh you can advance
L I won't Linger on this too long uh but we are certain that the budget is a reflection of our strategic goals and uh in the areas of curriculum inclusive practice uh embedding the vision of the
graduate in creating safe and supportive schools um you know when you look at the planks of that strategic plan I think it probably is apparent to most that there's a lot of work that is represented there that is um really
reflects the changing face of Education it reflects the reality of educating students in 2025 there's uh so much in there that uh perhaps was not on our plates or not fully on our plates uh years ago but um you know in order to
serve students effectively uh we want to be responsive to their to their safety we want to create opportunities for digital learning we want to be supportive of all the diverse learner identities that uh join us each day in Long meow Public
Schools so to um you can go to the next slide please uh so to start at the end this is uh the highest level summary of the voted budget uh the voted budget from the school committee uh would ask
for an additional 1. 1287 million uh from The Long Meadow general fund we are projecting an increase in special Revenue which we can explain later the total B total voted budget was 44,8 52,800
that we' like to think about in terms of building the school budget uh chapter 78 which represent about 15% of our overall budget the minimum local contribution those two things taken together
represent uh required net School spending another way of thinking about the two sort of salmon colored blocks there is to think about those as the foundation budget uh and I just want to um kind of underscore that phrase for a minute because I think it's worth all of
our attention uh to to really understand the foundation budget is to understand the cost of educating students in 2025 so we're fortunate in Long Meadow that um like many many communities uh
Long Meadow supports us above what is minimally required and then on top of that are grants sometimes entitlement grants sometimes competitive grants and so those again to kind of um to hit that I just want to um Linger on that
Foundation budget for a minute because it's it's that's a figure that we should sort of track over time to really understand that the cost of educating students so we can advance um for those who prefer words to to to the pictures is essentially says
the same thing that the required local contribution plus whatever uh state aid is calculated is represents uh the foundation budget it's what we must spend in order to comply with state law it's what we must spend in order to to
uh minimally educate students as defined by the state so that um state aid is calculated uh I won't get into the weeds but the next slide depicts the uh not expecting you to at all to read this but maybe just to illustrate the
complexity of uh how the state determines uh chapter 7 a levels Chapter 70 Aid levels are essentially based on a community's based on the demographics of a student body and then the minimum
local contribution is based on a community's ability to pay it's based on wealth factors that are identified by the Department of Revenue and so um you the the the demographics there's certain allocation from Chapter 70 based on the
the the demographics of a student body if if uh depending on the number of special education students the number of English language Learners uh the number of students that are identified as lowincome these all Drive uh chapter 7 a levels so the next
slide um shows us the the escalation of the foundation budget and again if you think of the foundation budget as what the state says we should minimally spend each year uh you'll notice that the the the incline is
steeper on the foundation budget than it is on chapter 78 so the gap between chapter 78 the a that long meow receives directly from the state and and the foundation budget levels has grown in recent years and that puts uh additional
strain on Long Meadow and it puts additional strain on local communities everywhere chapter 78 has increase the state has made you know um an improved effort to provide cities and towns with additional chapter 78 but the reality is
uh Chapter 70 increases have not kept pace with the cost of doing business they've not kept pace with uh inflation they've not kept pace with salaries they not kept pace with uh Transportation or special education costs so so I think
that um this slide is really sort of meant to represent the the challenge of kind of maintaining the uh the level of support that we've enjoyed uh over the years and so where do these fiscal
pressures come from um obviously they come from some of the inflationary factors that I just mentioned but in terms of student need we are responding to a different generation of students different students with different needs who need different levels and types of
support uh we're seeing uh students needing more social emotional supports more mental health supports more behavioral supports and that obviously comes at comes at a cost it comes at um the need for additional
investment uh technology has uh played an increasing role in public education obviously the the number of devices the amount of software uh has increased and necessarily the the um the breath of the
network has increased and so all of these are things that that drive cost as well special education uh you'll see later that particularly the the cost of AED District placements has grown significantly uh as have the number of students that have been identified as
needing individual education plans Transportation has been a a significant cost driver as well I'd say all of the bullets that you're seeing here are bullets that every Community has has experienced this is not unique to Long
Meadow the the uh Transportation increases that we've seen the cost increases that we've seen uh are being played out in community after Community across the state um in the select board's uh meeting
packet I included a um a lengthy three-page statement written by the the signatories that are depicted here uh so together the mass Association the school committee the mass Association of school
superintendents various teacher unions the Massachusetts PTA and other groups came together to write um a statement about the fiscal challenges that communities are facing due to Rising
costs around educating kids and I'd encourage the select board if if you haven't I'd encourage you to read that statement carefully I think it it really paints a a very fair and good and accurate picture of some of the strains that um all communities are facing uh in
2025 so um really put that there it's not often that you see quite honestly it's not often that you see all of the entities listed here signing off on a on a particular position or a particular platform so I think that ought to tell
us something that that that statement had the support of all of these groups uh next slide thanks um to sort of graphically represent the transportation um increases the cost increases that that we've experienced in
recent years this is both uh to support regular and special education students and also to support students that are participating in a technical education program uh over in West Springfield um at the lpvc school on Brush Hill so um this has
been a significant cost driver for us some of this just simply relates to um the the cost the Personnel cost some of it relates to the cost of buses uh some of it relates to um the number of
students that are participating in Career and Technical education as well the next slide uh shows us the the increase in um special education costs for circuit breaker eligible um cost the
circuit breaker is a state fund that reimburses uh municipalities for uh special 75% of special education costs that exceed a certain threshold so if you have a placement that is uh particularly
expensive the state does provide some relief in the form of of the circuit breaker but the cost of these a of District placements has increased dramatically in recent years last year I think it was up 14% um this year it's come down but it's
still above historic levels in terms of the the costs of those AO District placements and that's a cost that is sort of monitored and regulated by the state um so these are two you know things that are driving some of the
challenges the fiscal challenges that that we're facing uh next slide please um each year I think uh the the select board tries to get some understanding of how are expenditures compared to expenditures in other
communities and you'll see that our uh IND District per pupil cost at $1 16,680 that it actually is on the very much on the the lower end of uh what we see in the Pioneer Valley so I guess I would
suggest to the select board and the finance committee that the budget that the school committee has put together is a uh sort of a a reasonable proposal it's a proposal that um I think shows reflects some of the challenges we're
facing it's it's a responsible proposal our costs really compare um favorably in a in a fiscal sense to the Pioneer Valley districts that are listed here and I guess I would add that certainly our our performance at least
as judged by the mcast scores that are shown here compares favorably so I guess I would argue that there's a significant return on the investment that we're making uh here in Long Meadow and the next slide uh tracks are per pupil costs in
relation to similar districts by relative wealth so the state will put us in a cohort of communities with a uh a similar uh wealth factor and again and some of these communities are in
western Mass some are not but either way you'll see that our in District per people costs are on the lower end of the range that you see here and again I I would still say that our mcast scores
compare favorably so uh another slide depicting the I would say strong return on investment that that we get uh thank you next slide this is meant to to show uh here in Long Meadow
the increase in students that are deemed to be either economically disadvantaged or lowincome so in 2014 2015 by the state's metric about 5.9% of students were deemed to be economically
disadvantaged phrase that's used uh more recently is is uh students are determined to be lowincome if they're below a certain threshold 11.7% so you'll see that uh the number is students who are who are in these high
needs category is sort of regularly increasing for us here in Long Meadow um I think it's it's probably something that you'll see in many communities particularly in the western part of the state the foundation budget to go back
to this um you'll see that um the the foundation budget again the the calculation of the minimum amount needed to provide an adequate education by the state's calculation has gone up here in Long Meadow by about $1.3 million and I just want to kind of ask
you to remember that to hold on to that number um in your heads for a minute that $1.3 million because it sort of ties into some of the the requests that that you'll see um below to offset that 1.3 million increase in the foundation budget we can
only expect at least according to the Governor's budget um a a hold harmless amount equal to $75 per student so chapter 78 on a on a $7.5 million fund
source of Revenue has is only projected to increase by $24,000 that means that really the the burden of filling the Gap uh between last year's cost and this year's cost is largely going is falling on local community communities and again the
story we're seeing here is a story that's being played out across the Commonwealth um chapter to underscore it Chapter 70 has increased significantly in recent years it just has not kept pace with the costs that we're
incurring uh and so that's a concerning number I'm I'm hoping that the legislature will um sort of Step Up and um increase the the hold harm amount uh last year we received
$110,000 $110 $110 per student and hold harmless AIDS so even if it went to 110 that would be um really helpful to our community um that's the governor's budget right there though to give you
some sense of chapter 78 in in recent years um you again you'll see that the increases have been um have been significant but simply haven't the the increase in chapter 78 has not kept pace
with the increases in the foundation budget if you use that as kind of a a metric uh next slide please so while the state would say that the expected minimum contribution should go
up by that 4.95% amount chapter 78 is only projected to increase by 2.77% so again it would the the the gap between those to is really a gap that um
is shouldered by local communities um Rising costs flatter chapter 78 is the simplest way to explain it uh and so to get into the details while you're all here I
suppose um the details of the budget that was voted by the school committee on the 11th uh you'll see that it in would propose an increase of the general fund by $1.28 7 million the general fund constitutes about
92.5% of our budget other sources of revenue include the circuit breaker I mentioned the Meco Grant uh regular education and special education grants some of these are entitlement grants some of them are competitive grants um and a variety of other sources of
special Revenue that um if you have any questions on we can come back to uh but you'll see that largely we are reliant on the contributions from the general fund to put the general fund increase that is projected for FY 26 in
historical perspective you'll see that the the 3.2% increase that uh comes with the voted budget by the school committee it really Falls in line sort of in the sort of I would say it's a uh in the middle of of the increases that we have
historically benefited from so that 3.2% increase again a reflection of our contractual obligations Rising costs and and uh some other things that we can take a look at
later um next slide thanks um to put the um the increases and reductions in context I would just highlight a couple things here for you tonight uh on the leand side are areas where we anticipate
reduced costs attrition refers to um salaries associated with hiring um folks who are lower on the salary scale because of retirements we are anticipating one uh fewer section in
kindergarten right now we have 10 sections in kindergarten next year we're uh given uh enrollment projections we're looking at nine sections none of what you see here they're called reductions but they're really I wouldn't say that
these are service related these are reductions that are related to uh shifting needs changing enrollment patterns this budget that was voted by the school committee is essentially a level service budget um
we are expecting some uh adjustments in special education that are listed on the left and then some smaller adjustments to supplies and services tied to some federal grants on the right um you'll see that the biggest driver of our
budget is our contractual obligations uh projecting uh 1,332 426 uh dollars associated with um expected contractual obligations
Transportation um that's one of the bigger increases I've I've seen us um needing in recent years and it relates to serving special education students regular education students and busing students to uh the Career Tech program
over in West Springfield so that that transportation number is is a um you know again reflects the the rising costs of of getting a bus on the road for various reasons a of District tuitions uh we're seeing a slight uptick in the
um number of students who will need an aod District placement in order to be properly served appropriately served um but also the cost of those aod distri programs has increased as we mentioned earlier voke tuitions computer software
um a handful of other areas that will uh that we're projecting increases in so the net is that 1.4 million increase on the overall budget general fund and and uh special funds uh next slide
please you'll see that um we are anticipating that our uh overall enrollment will more or less remain steady the number of FTE the number of full-time positions that we are projecting for FY 26 also remains steady
from the revised fy2 budget to the uh voted FY 26 budget if you're interested in class size I won't Linger on this too much but uh I would say that we place a premium on class size in Long Meadow and we've
been able to honor that commitment uh it's important to this community it's important to our staff it's important to kids and so what you see here are projected class sizes for the 252 six school year at the elementary level uh
reasonable manageable class sizes I would say across the board you can the average is a little off there at the bottom right so uh we'd have to recalculate that for you uh next slide at the middle school level um again um
in line with where we've been historically at the middle level and then finally um our overall enrollment for 20 5 26 this does not include students that are placed out of District
so altogether we serve uh slightly over 2,800 students in Long Meadow and really maybe the most important slide uh for you this evening and on the left um are some areas that
if you pulled our administrators together and our teachers together i' suspect they would generate that list on the left these are areas that if we were in a position to uh we would benefit from some investment in those areas um
fully funding Athletics continuing to make investments in what we call the mtss framework that's essentially tiered systems of support um supplies support staff additional instructional coaching a
fully funded curriculum renewal plan um so that we're we're able to sort of regularly make the renewal and adoptions that we need rather than sort of sometimes we have to pull it together uh based on available funds full day
preschool maybe on the horizon and then we always have to be sort of responsive to special education the needs of special education students and so we think that there might be some opportunities that we should explore to build
additional sub separate in District special education programs so as to reduce autod District costs on the right are many of the unknowns um we continue to be uh in
touch with the town manager and the finance director I would just say you know really hit hard the point that we recognize that the voted budget uh may be more than is manageable uh based on
our conversations with the town manager and so that's feedback that we can take back to the full committee uh at the end of the day we want to work continue to work as partners with uh with the town with the select board with the town
manager's office and the finance committee to put together a budget that supports student needs but is also responsible and manageable and sustainable and so we'll continue to be in conversation with uh with and Ian to
make sure that the the request uh the voted budget uh is one that sort of fits into the bigger fiscal picture of the Town um and these are all the on the right all the things that we're watching you know all the things that we'll have to continue to pay attention to in the
months ahead um we are working towards settling collective bargaining agreements with all of our units we're watching what's happening at the federal level this see what impact that might have for us here locally final state aid
levels could change special education we always have to be nimble we always have to be responsive based on the changing needs of kids uh and then enrollment patterns um we we think we have a good handle on what our kindergarten enrollment might be but you know sometimes you just never
know sometimes there's enrollment spikes that you could not have foreseen um fee Based Services the the fees that we still have to um sort of pin down with the school committee fees associated with uh athletic
participation uh preschool and transportation busing so lots of unknowns uh that we still have to continue to track in the in the months ahead and uh just want to say
appreciate um all the conversations and information and feedback that we've had from Lynn in the end it's really important to us to to me and Tom ma our finance uh director to work in collaboration uh because we we want to
make sure that we understand the town's challenges the town understands the challenges that we're facing I think we have a clear understanding of that and so we'll continue to stay in touch with Len and Ian just to in case any additional adjustments to the budget have to be made that we could ask the
school committee to consider so great thank you so much all right thank you um and Lynn um I don't know if you want to add anything or mention anything before we kind of open it up for questions from the Committees and sure board yeah thanks um just to underscore
what Marty just said at the end there um we have a great relationship um and I think we're fortunate in that the town is overall because when we have these challenges we come together and we Face them together and so that um that needs to just be recognized that we do have a
great working relationship and we do understand the challenges on both sides and we want to work together to make sure that we have the best school system possible um and I know that the school department wants to make sure that the town is um not harmed in trying to do that as well uh and so Marty Tom Ian and
I meet regularly talk regularly they understand that the challenges um we have to try to get this FY 26 budget balanced we're not there yet I wish I could say that we were but um uh I trust that we will be and we'll we'll get there through those continued
conversations great thank you so much um any questions comments from anyone here ER I don't know if this select word wanted to go first oh no no um so I guess since we spend a lot of
time talking about the foundation budget we are not required by the state to spend an additional $1.4 million because we're already well above the foundation budget correct that is a true statement right so we're not there's not like some State requirement we had spend $1.4 million agreed yeah and the only reason
I highlight the foundation budget is really just as a as a benchmark just to show us what the state would say is the the C the minimum cost they they would say Foundation budget is what cities and towns are minimally required to spend so you have to spend at the foundation
level Long Meadow goes above and beyond what is minimally required as do many communities so yes yeah I just it's an interesting number I would love to see if there's any science behind it yeah and knowing how long it's been there I doubt it but agree they saying it should
cost more we're saying it should cost more I do notice that um $350,000 of the $1.4 million increase is contracted services in pupil services and school admin so what are what's driving those changes in contracted
Services because that's pretty significant portion of your increase is that tied back to a number that's up on the screen or just from the the control Master file okay ask Mr Maza to weigh in for us then if you go back up a
couple slides to the changes it's really the transportation and a of District tuitions I would say is probably making up a majority of that increase in contracted Services those two charges those two
expenses are categorized and contracted services okay um is that everything that you think is in there or is there other utilities is probably the other one which is a few lines farther down on that spreadsheet which is another 16 so
and then it's you know copers printers okay so that's what falls into that line telephones all right and none of that has to do with just the general Town it stuff that's going through your budget as well yeah not in terms of the contracted
service um I would say that we there is some software increases but those are usually in our supply lines that we categorize those
expenses okay um is there and it's when you guys look at the budget do you actually look at percent changes in line items yes okay cuz the stuff you put
never has percent changes on it which makes it difficult so in future years it would be fun to see year-over-year percent changes not it's more of a question are we seen more growth in the high schools are we seeing more growth in the elementary schools is there certain particular part of the school system that is driving larger changes
than others I guess is the thing and I can see absolute dollar changes but I don't have that I can't easily calculate that so as you think across the different schools is there anything in particular that stands out like yeah high school it's much harder we just can't get science teachers or something like
that in terms of salaries it's all driven by our collective bargaining agreements so we wouldn't uh necessarily you know sometimes your applicant pools are different at different levels they probably are smaller in some of the advanced High
School classes um I'd say that what's what's driving it really is that those additional supports the the the interventions that the beh behavioral interventions the reading interventions the math interventions um the the behavioral
health needs of students and that's cuts across all levels that's pre to 12 really so I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily say that you know the high school is driving cost more than the middle more than the elementary we do see enrollment changes that kind of
Ripple through you know um that that sort of ride like a wave through the various levels in recent years we were able to make some reductions in Staffing at the high school due to decl due to enrollment declines at the high school
for FY 26 we're anticipating that High School enrollment will remain steady so we're not going to see it there at the elementary level we're going to see one less classroom because of fewer students at the kindergarten level so I hope that
answers your question maybe okay so there's not significant shifts in underlying costs well to clarify when we're talking about uh educator salary for example there isn't a difference in what a chemistry teacher who might have been harder to hire versus a
kindergarten teach the difference in Pay comes down to their level of education and their years of experience um different positions in for educators do not pay different amounts there isn't a high school salary versus an elementary salary Etc okay and I noticed that you
had um you had a negative in there for attrition do we when we have a position open do we spe specifically try to hire younger teachers or do we look for the most experienced teacher we can get and then
we'll pay we we hire the best I mean you know I I think all things being equal we would ask the principles to be mindful of who they're moving along in the hiring process but I mean the the single biggest factor in a child's education probably is the teacher in front of them
and so you know I I generally speaking it's you know probably in almost all cases the teacher that you're hiring to replace a retiree comes in lower on the pay scale because you typically aren't getting applicants with
25 or 30 years experience you're typically getting folks who have zero to five to maybe 10 years experience so it it almost takes care of itself we we almost always have savings associated with retirements this year that
attrition number is maybe a little smaller than we've had in recent years is that fair or is that or or maybe not yeah it's gone up a little bit since the last couple of years lower than what I would say our historical average has been yeah we saw you know decent a little bump in retirements probably four
or five years ago and it's kind of maybe maybe it St out and then the last question because the finance committee is really worried about um pretty much the facilities across Long Meadow the schools being a major portion of those
and as we look at this the schools are suffering from our inability to keep them maintained the same as the rest of the buildings are as you guys think about the budget and know that you are in it it's pretty much a catch all between those two things are there
things that are happening in the schools right now that are detrimental to student education that we can't address because we don't have the amount of maintenance and capital budget that we have for instance the snowstorm back in December which I'm sure you got a lot more calls
about than I experienced coming in but we didn't have staff in the town to remove snow at the speed to get kids to school that day right and so it's a it's just as you look at things like that and do those type of things come into your conversations when you're thinking about
the budget and the trade-offs in it yeah I I think that those those certainly Lyn and Ian have been um emphasize that you know that that we have some facility related needs that need to be attended to I will say on the
snowstorm thing I don't want to leave that one out there because um our DPW actually does a great job I we we're we're generally lowland flat streets and they do a great job clearing sometimes the reason we are not able to open on time or we have to cancel is because so
many people are coming from surrounding areas and our buses are coming from surrounding areas so I just but that day I just watched a lot of kids running through the snow up the sidewalks to the shout out to our DPW guy they do a great job uh cleaning the streets and getting our campuses ready and it sometimes there's other factors that cause us to
have to delay or cancel so well it was just was an obvious like looking through we would need a lot more DPW if we wanted to open the school on this day on time and so just as we go on I just want to make sure that is a discussion because particularly coming up with the new Middle School Y and it's getting
hard as a finance committee to say hey why we should we build another building that we can't maintain yeah and that's where we are right now on our um Capital maintenance budget the the needs of the DPW certainly aren't lost on US based on the conversations we've had with with Ian and Lynn that's been a point of
emphasis I'd say them okay yeah to the point that you look at that 1.4 million and say yeah maybe we should strive for 1.1 or 1.2 I mean like do you actually think of it in terms of not going for certain things that that's that's I think part part of that feedback loop that we're
still in the middle of and and that we have some upcoming school committee meetings that you know whatever whatever additional feedback we get from lenon in we would want to bring that back to the school committee to you know because I I know that prob feel similarly that we don't want to do anything that's going
to compromise you know some services on the town side great thank you Mor you um uh Mario again thank you for another presentation thanks for coming out um these are always helpful I I have
a couple of questions one um you talked earlier in the presentation about the minimum local contribution you said one of the criteria if I'm getting this right I want to make sure I'm clear on this was the essentially the the um socio economics of the town or the economics of the town the ability of the
people of the town to pay is what sets the Min minimum local contribution and I just want to make sure that that's not it's not about what are the needs of the individual children on a Statewide basis it's how much can your individual Town
afford to pay and that's what sets the minimum not how many kids you have but how how much you can afford to pay is that that's how it came across to me I just want to make sure that I'm not misunderstanding that the so the first thing that's calculated is the foundation budget sure where they based
on your demographics based on the number of students at each level your overall enrollment first thing that's calculated is the T is your foundation budget what what a community should minimally have to spend to provide an adequate
education and then what's determined after that is a Town's ability to pay and so that's based on um property tax the relative wealth of the of the town and then once that's established then Chapter 70 is meant to fill in the
difference so you're so the the the town's ability to pay drives Chapter 70 down correct okay yes thank you and I so yeah and and I would say to what what we're talking about here the the the the budget drivers are talking about they're
playing out across the state so we are a a a minimum we are getting the minimum increase in chapter 78 $75 per kid 230 communities are in the same boat as us right now which is it's it's it's
it's unsustainable to think that we can continue communities anywhere can continue to maintain services in the face of a $75 per student increase it's just it will become increasingly
difficult unless the chapter 78 formula is changed I think and that brings me to my last question on that particular subject which is what is the source of that figure is it external or is it internal do we report to them or somebody like Len or or the the or the
school committee report to the state with the figures that they need that determines what they say is our ability to pay the drives Chapter 70 down or do they have an external force that looks at us that we have no input in that
makes that number as I understand it's it's Department of Revenue data that's used to determine a community's ability to pay so it's it's not information that we necessarily report its information that the state has on municipalities thank you that's that's very clear so um
turning my attention to the additional considerations on your last page um just had a couple questions about that first is um on your potential areas for investment um did you is there any Rhyme or Reason to the order are these in
order of priority or they just sort of um arbitrarily no excellent question no particular order okay I I'd say the the the mtss framework is it's a framework that sort of defines the tiers of support that we should provide that
really is a strategic overarching goal so I I I might highlight that but everything else is sort of in no particular order I thought you might and so that was my next question that with the um behavioral supports and you mentioned this earlier um with
behavioral um supports behavioral um considerations what specific specifically does that look like are we talking about people that were hiring to help with the behavi can you talk about what you mean by behavioral supports it
might take the form of a board certified behavior analyst a bcba uh it might take the form of an RBT which is a registered behavioral technician that that's sort of a um a tier below skill-wise and training wise
uh it may take the form of um School adjustment counselors or school counselors uh but yeah those are areas that you know if if again if our principles were in the room if I'm representing our conversations accurately they would say that that's a
high priority area of Need For Us is to make sure that kids have those supports okay and just so simplified we're talking about people not books not computers not this is a person okay when you say uh behavioral
supports okay um next was uh full day preschool do you have a figure for that we don't I I think if we went in that direction we we we could only do it if it were budget neutral so we have half day sections of preschool right now um
the question is could we in a budget neutral way offer a full day uh experience for preschool students in other words combining two half day sections and make it a full day experience for kids and staff uh but I
think more and more communities it feels like are going in that direction you know and and I'm you know I hear from community members from parents that uh good preschool education is in short supply I think it it seems to be
anecdotally at least a growing need a growing interest okay and my last question Marty thank you again um can you talk about Athletics fully funding that's line item three on your bull point we have an athletic budget uh that
historically has relied on fees gate Revenue supportive booster clubs um and you know I think in our in everybody's perfect world we would the athletic budget would be more fully funded by the by the
general fund uh and less reliant on the fees that we collect from families and but there's no um I appreciate that that's I don't want to characterize yeah
is there any has there been any talk or thought about how specifically that would work like what because when you talked about the full day preschool you talked about it being budget neutral yeah um is that is that the same picture for athletics we're not we're talking
about a fully funding athletic um picture or regime would be budget neutral or are we talking about asking for something that's going to have to so these slides I'm glad you brought
these up because this slide right here is my number one concern about this budget so 1.42 doesn't let us do any of that most of this should be done so if I if it was basically you know if we didn't worry about anything as it relates to money which we obviously do
try to fit it in you know basically tells us I'm not doing any if nothing on the left is getting done unless something breaks for me on the right meaning I'm going after parents for fees I'm going to jack up all all the fees on on your sports or something I'm going to
have less kid in your garden classes we're going to go from 10: to 99 to 8 because people aren't coming to our town not good for our town something has to break on the right to make the left work I don't like this is my biggest concern over what we we talked a lot about this
and we talked we're run about 2 years now talking about fully funding Athletics so we've gone through this in years we've started to fund it and to slowly work dollars in there to properly you know fund uh it via either right now
it's being funded via boosters and different other areas aspects that create opportunities and you know basically create sporting um events travel uniforms and all of that um so we've chatted many of times to bring
that in but it would not be Bud budget neutral it would be adding a significant amount of dollars into the Athletics budget and bringing that in and you either have to increase our funding or we got to go get it from parents or you got to take it from somewhere else within the general fund meaning there's
got to be less teachers more Athletics so it's got to come from somewhere and the big problem with it not a problem within this budget but Tom Mo most of our budget it's 80 I think it's 82% of our budget is all contractual so if you have our $44 million the majority of
it's already accounted for salaries and fix salaries and whatnot so there's not a lot of wiggle room um if unless you increase the class sizes you know by decreasing the amount of staff the FTE so you know going back to the this slide
is this is I don't like having all that on this slide because I think a lot of that needs to be done including the ones that you just brought up so this the exact conversation we had in our meeting and I was the one bringing up the things you brought up going you know this these things seem important why aren't we
doing them but we're kind of constrained by that 1. 428 increase to be able to do that because 1332 of it going to contractual things so it's either cut teachers and do this or keep level Services same class sizes and don't do
this I think I thank you that's that Mak sense yeah it makes perfect sense and I especially want to thank you for explaining it in terms of one side kind of pulling against the other kind of you think of the old thing where you have one list of things and another list of things are related and you draw the
lines connecting so that was very helpful the way you explained it that that this one is kind of we have to do one to to fund the other or vice versa thank you that's it thank you KRA um thank you all for being here uh this is I'll just share some observations um
this is a very challenging Year all you have to do is read the reminder and see that all these other towns are like ammer or East Long Meadow or wil Bram they're all like making cuts and are unable to have a level service I think that the relationship that the four of you Tom Lynn Marty and Ian have is
something that's the town is very lucky to have I appreciated uh Tom and Marty inviting me to come personally explain a lot of the challenges that school committee's been having and I learned a lot from that um you know at the outset Lynn told me I think that for the town
side to have a level service she would need like the uh School side to have an increase limited to 2.75% when the 3.2% came in I know that she assiduously started making
adjustments making cuts to try to accommodate schools as much as possible um you know things like opep or basically select board policies that are basically out the window um but I actually support all of this because obviously the schools are clearly the
most important department and therefore the most important part of our town and the most important part of the budget the one I think I would remit be remiss if I didn't say what people know but I I would just want to convey what we're hearing as select board members from the
town because you guys do a great job of advocating for our schools and our kids and we're hearing not only um that but also from the whole town the one Department that I feel pretty strongly that's been mentioned tonight needs to be protected and not cut and perhaps
augmented as much as possible is the DPW and I think you know if there's one Department in our town that's the closest to being in a crisis situation it's not the police it's not the fire it's not the schools it's the DPW and you know if you ask yourself where is the best value we can get for the next
dollar we spend I honestly think from everything I've learned that it's the DPW and I know that all of our interests are aligned the DPW does so much for the schools you know it's it's and our kids they they maintain our fields which is a big challenge they maintain our
buildings and when we have a lack of resources you get issues with non-functional equipment like chillers and then mold problems they plow the streets as been has as has been mentioned so you know I really think that if there's a way and I know this is in work in process and I appreciate
everyone's efforts to get us to a the best solution but I just want to convey that that's clearly what I think that the select board members are hearing a lot about the roads the fields especially and I just appreciate you guys knowing that I mean I think we all know the DPW is important but it's
helpful I think for us to emphasize how much people are telling us about it thank you and I think Josh sorry Mark go ahead thanks re I'm learning how hard it is to be remote these meetings it's been
a while um I just want to start off with a a general Point uh you know I I absolutely agree with Jamie that there's a lot of things we we could be doing and we have
a big wish list um and we have a we got a problem to S on limited funds and as aect board we are certainly pushed pulled in both directions uh pulled towards DBW because that's what we're going to hear about and we we have a
really difficult problem um in this town and but we absolutely can never I think what Jamie said that the biggest thing my always take away is if our schools fall Slide the town slides and and then we we just keep digging our
problems so you know this will always be funding the schools to the extent we can is always going to be my focus um and I hope we can uh get down to three to help our town though because we really there are things that if DPW suffers the whole
town suffers and schools um so that's more just a general comment um and I appreciate that the presentation we got today and that we're all together and able to talk about this I think it's really important um I I had a specific question about one of uh I don't I think
it I don't know where the slide is up or down um but on the the drops and additions uh just wanted to ask what was going on with the two um there's a point4 and A8
FTE drops on uh special education and I wanted to know how that were was interacting with the uh the addition of a par educator on the special education side and this slide must be down further there it is yeah thanks so start
by saying it it shouldn't be seen as a reduction in service it really is just related to changing needs so the transition Support Services we are able to do a lot of that work this is for students in that 18 to 22 range we're
able to do some of that work inhouse in through a partnership with uh Westfield State University uh the services for um the related to the teacher of the de uh no longer needed again based on just changing enrollment and changing need uh
the par educator is a um essentially tied to fulfilling students uh individual education plans at the elementary level thanks Mar yeah thank Mark thank Dr sh thanks for
your presentation it was pretty thorough I guess I have a couple of comments or questions in there but it one of the things that I didn't see in the presentation that would be help very helpful so you highlighted anything that's been removed you know programs that become past or outdated or you know
Superfluous or whatever it is because we always see additions but we don't see deletions or any reductions and that certainly would help us understand you know we' got a new literature program here's what we took out or what whatever it may be and and that would certainly
help me the the other thing that might help me is the slide you have which is is the per student uh cost relative to it the numbers there were for 2022 it's like 3 years old already I'm just wondering you know if if and I don't need that now but you
know if there's an update clearly going back and going forward so we can see how not only where we stand relative to these other communities but what our Trends are relative to these other communities I think it's important to understand you know are they going up they going down but are we going up from
going down certainly with our with our position because a static number is is interesting but it doesn't tell as much of a story as a as kind of a movie moving number I you know the other thing that as I was thinking about this kind of bothered me was you know I listened a
lot to our state legislators fully funding junior college and leaving Elementary and primary schools according to you underfunded what what's been the interactions with the the our
legislators you know Senator Aliva and representative Ash and and the other people in the legislation writing a letter is nice but yeah generally that isn't the same as going in there and pounding on their front on their door yeah attended um uh this past Friday
attended a legislative lunch in uh Senator ola's office was repres was was there and uh rep Ash's office was represented and uh so we sat down over lunch and and talked about a lot of the fiscal challenges we're facing I think they they they're balancing competing
needs as you suggested and I think they they understand the the challenge I'm not sure um I think there needs to be a wider conversation on the mechanics of the the the mechanics behind the funding so that the formulas properly fund
public education prek to 12 and probably into H it as well they're attentive they've been supportive um I hope that we can continue to uh press for the need to increase chapter 78 for FY 26 I mean
I think we that $75 per student just puts a lot of stress and strain on us as as a community um in terms of the um the per people expenditures sort of once the books are closed and the data is
available to the state they they make some tools available that that gather um mcast scores and per people expenditures and enrollment and sometimes the tools lag behind the the fiscal years so this was the the latest and greatest uh
pulled recently from from the uh from the web from a a tool that Tessie makes available to us I I would say though that based off of all the other minutia that we've gone through with regards to uh you know different school districts and what they've done with Paras and
whatnot I would say we're I bet we're significantly in the lead now so you know from uh from uh they've gone up with their costs quicker than what we have we've gone up as well cuz it's part of this but I would say we're we're probably whether we are the lowest I
would say we're definitely on the lower side and there's probably a bigger Gap So based off of what we we've looked through kind of over over the course of the last year or two it might be interesting to figure out how how they do that you know is it because they're
not kept at at the two and a half cap as as we are and they can do I don't I don't know what the numbers are but might look at that I think the other thing I think I'd be remiss if I just didn't reiterate what what Andrew and I think uh Josh said also about you know
the need to balance our all the departments in our in our town whether it's the DPW or even the adult center or you know whatever it is with with the schools I I think that you know we we all need to understand and I think Erica I i' use a different phrase from what
she did but you know we can give the schools all the money in the world but you won't be able to open because we'd never be able to plow the streets you you know and and if if we ended up having to cut the DPW we don't we don't want to have to do that so we've got to balance the DPW support plowing the streets keeping the buildings maintained
and and supporting it and you know if 2.75% was the number we're love to see what you can do to I mean the the percentage seems like a lot but the actual numbers are probably you know $150,000 or something like that and you
know I would like to think that that uh somewhere in a 40 $44 million budget there's there's that kind of money that you could find for the budget thank you um yeah I'll add that um you know thank you for the
presentation and I really appreciate um you know informing us about the chapter 78 and how much that's lacking because I know that you know for us this good for us to know too because when we're talking to lawmakers about what our town needs I mean this is got to be at the top of the list or you know right there
um because getting that increase chapter 78 that frees up money to do some of the things that we're talking about the list at the end of the slideshow DPW all those things so that's really important um just a couple of questions just for my understanding um the circuit breaker
costs you know that obviously like really jumps out um that's about a looks like I think a $3 million increase in about three or four years what accounts for that cost is it just the number of students who are in need of these services or is there something else
that's contributing to that like rapid increase it's it's the tuition at the programs and and some of it is an increase in the number of students here in Long Meadow that need those Auto District Services um so our our Auto District placement rates I would say are
favorable in other words we we try to create IND District programs which are good for kids and good for budgets um but it's inevit the the tuition which is regulated and set the tuition increases which are regulated and set by the state
um have increased significantly in the last two years 14% last year 4% this year which is way out of you know way out of bounds when you compare it to the historical increases those areas so this is another area where the reimbursed costs are not keeping up with and and
ensuring that you know circuit breaker right now it's 75% of the costs that are above the threshold and so hoping that that 75% reimbursement rate is held that number sometimes moves as the as the
budget Works its way through the legislative process so that's that reimbursement rate for circuit breaker uh is something that we should all be tracking as well okay got and then um I know that the last two years during this meeting and also I think just around the
state too a big topic was recruiting teachers and some of the difficulties that you know districts were having with that you didn't mention it tonight so is that because we've made progress um in that area or something El I think it's
it's probably in the subtext right we we um it is a stated District goal uh to focus on Recruitment and Retention of teachers uh but it's in the it's in the context of our collective bargaining agreements and ensuring that we settle contracts that attract and retain the
best teachers we have we have high rates of retention here in Long Meadow um you know we're fortunate that when people they find Long Meadow to be a teaching home uh and that's a good thing um and we want that we want to continue that we want to continue to support um
great teachers we want to continue to attract good teachers so having collective bargaining agreements that allow us to attract the the best teachers out there is really important um so that that's that's you know to go back to that list there the the the
variables that we're tracking is is the the collective bargaining agreements that we still have yet to sell great for the 25 26 school year thank you anything else just one kind of radical thing for fun so on the finance committee and
looking at the um Havoc that uh proposition 2.5 has rre on our budget and other group budgets there is the always the potential for an override and we are at the point now where you could say we can't fully fund
what we need to maintain the town and to do some of the things you're talking about so as we get into this point we are implying a scarcity of this that we we couldn't ever sell an override but the question is is there something packaged up in that little thing of preschool and paying for athletics or
whatever that you might be able to make a case for it and and so as we look at this going forward it's not going to get any better I don't think the housing market will get a lot worse but don't think it's going to grow as much in the next 10 years as it has been because of
interest rates and other things so I don't think we should totally always take that off the table at some point to fund the level of services we think as a community we need we may actually have to bite the bullet and just admit we may have to go beyond the 2 and a half% I don't know if this is the year but we
should be ready in terms of like that list there should be dollars associated with all of that to say if we had this amount more money we could do these things so just like you know go out make the booster clubs tell you what they're spending like like get those dollars in
place so if we ever decide we need to pull that trigger and Andrew's going to say no but I just want to make an observation the reason why that it's not a great idea to do overrides for just what would you call operational budgeting is because then you'd have to do it pretty much every year right because if you increase it for one year
we did a lot of things then you would not be able to sustain that the next year unless you continue to do it and that's that's on the face of it just extremely difficult and one other thing is just that in the current climate with our Middle School um you know borrowing 80 or 90 million bucks is going to be a
little tough but that that's generally the reason why just the O an override raising the budget having to basically increase the operational budget so much that you'd have to do it every year to sustain it that's pretty much the reason why people wouldn't want to do
that yeah but at the same time um I agree this is probably not the time with the middle school coming up but we're also reaching a point where we're not going to have a choice if we want to maintain services at any level yeah I think that like the legislation to lift the tax ceiling is probably a more
reasonable a more a better solution than having towns like ours override every year to kind of maintain um increased services but I know that's but it is a but as people complain about DPW and about the streets and things like that
take it and see if they really care or not I think Eric one of the big problems that we've had historically and we probably don't have it this year but we're coming up against the 2 and a half ceiling in other words we can't do an override when you get to $25 tax rate
you just legally can't do an override and so we could do an override one year and bring us close to $25 is a tax rate but once we hit that short of legislative relief you can vote all you want to you cannot raise taxes over but that's assuming
that that's a fixed rate and because we've seen ourselves go away from it so we chose not to take the full increases for a number of years which is one of the reasons we have less funds now and so just as we do that it's it there might be a onetime adjustment I'm just saying don't take it off the table we should understand what it would mean we
should understand what dollars we would get out of it and what things we could fund from it and then decide if it makes sense so I'm going to take a different track the name um so for instance uh the
uh full day preschool has there been any thought of if we charge the parents for it could we make it a value proposition that the parents could actually pay less than their paying for a private preschool by the town offering this and
then charging a tuition for that and then my other question is on the transportation I don't know what the percentages that we charge for fees to get you know for transportation are we fully maximizing that you know fees and
for the students that go to the um the school in West Springfield for vocational training do they have to pay for the bus to get them to vocational training because they would have to pay for the bus if they wanted a bus to get from their house to the school so is
that something we choose to not do but we could CH charge that if we wish to I'll I'll hit a few of them and Mr Maza can can chime in um so preschool we we operate a preschool um uh to serve students who have been
identified as as needing special education services so if you are three and a half years old or older uh and you have been early identified early as um needing specialized instruction you're enrolled in our preschool and then those
students go to preschool with peer Role Models peer regular red role models who we do charge tuition to so there is a tuition rate applied to um preschool um our ability to compete with sort of private preschools is probably
limited because we're only running our preschool 180 days a year as opposed to most preschools which are open year round so kind of hours yeah yeah it's kind of it's It's hard to make it an Apples to Apples uh comparison the school committee is in the process of reviewing our fees the fees associated
with preschool and and whether or not you know we're we're at a we're at a at a good competitive Point um in terms of transportation to Career Tech over in West Springfield no that is not a fee based service I'm not sure we would be
able to charge students going to a technical education program I'm seeing Mr MAA say no no because we have to offer them a program and that's who are primary provider is is the lower Pioneer value educational collaborative so in order for them to access their
educational programming we have to provide them transportation to it since it's not here on site and they wouldn't necessarily need to have paid for busing to get to the high school if that were their choice because they might live within walking distance biking distance might have a parent to drive Etc um and
also the times um for the vocational check vary depending on grades and programs so students aren't necessarily gone for the whole day to those programs they're here for part of the day and then they're being transported either to come back school or to go to their program I I I have a a daughter that
lives in Suburban Boston and they the town that they live in does have full day preschool and they do charge tuition for that now granted it's not the same as western Mass but the tuition for that preschool is a lot less than what they
would charge if they were to go to private daycare and so there's like a long wait list to get into that program it's just something that that school offers the elementary level which we do right now um we're also no I'm just saying if it was a full day yeah we we
might be able to um sort of relatively increase the tuition if we were running pre running some full day sections uh again what we would have to be careful about is you your the tuition
is is likely not able to offset the cost of running additional sections for requiring additional staff you'd have to charge an exorbitant amount really to make it break even or turn a profit okay yeah so if we added if you know we're
we're careful about how many sections we run at preschool because we don't want to tip ourselves into a place where we're going to need additional staff because the fees simply wouldn't cover the additional staff that we would need yeah I think and I think I've got Dan
something uh yes uh thank you so uh Marty really appreciate the the presentation um and really good questions by everybody as well I think everyone's on the same page when it comes to uh certainly the DPW and the needs across the town uh and
being sensitive uh to budgets obviously another tough year uh in front of us but my question comes back to uh Athletics so uh Mr Garrett asked um some good questions I certainly agree um with his
points and his questions my question uh really is um I guess number one there's a couple but number one I had thought Athletics was going to be fully funded um based on previous conversations so did did something happened over the past
few weeks um were that changed and what is the total number that we're talking about if it's not if Athletics is not being fully funded and I'm asking these questions because I get a lot of questions um like Andrew had said earlier around
Fields um Athletics in town and I just want to make sure that I'm that I'm getting a clear understanding of kind of how we got to this point and really what the impact would also be because I know we do have to get creative We There are
some fees involved but there's a certain point here where you know these are these are extracurricular activities that are crucial for um our students child development mental health physical health and I think that this is an area that we should be fully supporting um
and looking at ways that we can fully support this and the town needs to get an understanding and and our residents need to get an understanding of um what do this impact mean from not fully funding Athletics yeah just a a quick question because one of the comments so Athletics
has never been fully funded in Long Meadow so at what point wa did you hear that a part of a present presentation or is that something kind of as a side note I've never heard that so it's that one's news to me no I'm saying is it not being fully
funded in terms of what's being presented in front of us no no so so you couple different things so Athletics kind of to unbundle it you have you know some that's being funded by the general fund that's in in front of you here some
that's being funded by fees that are charged parents for their child to play either on the freshman team J it's part of the fee Based Services so those fees come in then you have the funding from the general fund and then you have funding from boosters for
various aspects related to those Sports so you really have three different places where the the sport is kind of collecting funding it's creating an experience for the child the coach the parent that's fabulous but it's not
coming from One Source it's coming from three different places um we're just saying kind of create some clarity around that as to how to fund it what should be expected and kind of create a little bit more Rhythm around um the whole athletic experience so you
know they the programs the kids they're getting everything they need it's just coming from a wide range of places does that make sense Dan yeah I mean it certainly makes sense I mean I I'm uh I went through the the schools I I played sport through uh my time growing up up
here at the high school as well at long high school so I understand the funding sources I want to understand what the what what it looks like today based on that's in front of us can you can you speak to the impacts um for the future for next year at least I want to get a
better understanding because I'm getting a lot of questions myself you you it would require a a significant increase and hundreds of thousands of dollars really to to fully fund it and it would and ultimately
it would probably result in compromising other services it it you know I think we would all love to um not have athletic fees they're becoming increasingly common everywhere um it is an extracurricular
it's not part of our Core Curriculum but I couldn't agree with you more Dan I mean I I think I've always said that you get more bang for your buck in athletics and you know may maybe any other place in the budget just in terms of the the number of students that you engage after
school uh during times when they'd otherwise be creating Mischief so having kids on an athletic field is is excellent um and but to really make it fully funded so we were not riant on fees and the generosity and support of
booster clubs it would be a game Cher for uh the town's budget can can I just add because we've been we've been talking a lot about fully funding Athletics but I think just for the group we're also talking about getting a better handle on how the money is spent and really having like deeper
conversations about what our values are around that cuz I think it can't just be about increasing the town's cost to cover those programs without us really understanding the trade-offs because for athletics like as Marty said it's a great part of the experience for kids but like anything else the cost can go
up and up and up depending on you know do we pay for Just Uniforms or names on the back of uniforms or like whatever um so the conversations with the Athletics Department there have been really good and I think really need to continue um and then the other thing I would say is Marty said that fees are everywhere
which is true but we have the highest fees by far of towns in this area so and we we increased them last year we're looking at increasing them this year so we at least need to be able to reverse that Trend where we're just kind of like putting more and more of the cost on families yeah and in part that's because
some of those costs are not really costs that we can get around a huge percentage of the costs that we see increasing are related to Transportation um so there are some things that we just don't have as much wiggle room on um when it comes
to those Rising costs and trying to find ways to as as Julie mentioned figure out where we what are what are values are related to these programs and how we can make sure that we're supporting them with the limited amount of funding that we have for them while also meeting the
needs of those students and and the cost that we don't have a ton of control over is also important department and I and I would say probably in each year that I've been here in Long Meadow I think the school committee has increased its commitment from the general fund to
Athletics so incrementally um we are devoting regular Town funds to the athletic budget as a way to take some of the pressure off the fees but we we have as Julie said we had to increase fees in a few areas last
year and the school committee is right now has us gathering information so they can make an informed decision on fees for next year but it is a it is a pressure point in the budget uh that has gotten a lot of attention from the school committee and they've been asking
a lot of great questions I'd say of us yeah and I would want to add that the culture around Long meow Town Athletics is is ridiculous against any other school I mean my my husband coaches tennis over in East Long Meadow and yes uniforms are provided and they don't
have names on them and you're just handed them and then you hand them back and they're not they're not Nike and they're not whereas my kids played on the team here and they had to buy their own I'm supposed to send out these harassing emails from the booster club on field Club or for field hockey
because they need to raise $188,000 a year now that's an interesting one because the reason they need to raise that is because they need to rent the turf field over in Holo well we could pay for a lot of rentals for Holio turfield before we can build our own her field so it's like like those might be
places where you might want to step in for some specific things but there is a culture of Athletics that I think is you don't want to fund that like you're going to you're going to have to downsize the athletic experience to fund it reasonably in the town I think that and this has been I think part of our
conversations about this the fact that the funding is coming from like a bunch of different sources including boosters where it's hard to get your hands around what exactly is happening although Marty has trying really hard um you know bringing it all within the budget allows us to have those conversations I think
in a much more um comprehensive way yeah I do not think we have to change the athletic experience a jersey does nothing for the athletic experience a coach great teammates and a great atmosphere to be able to play so there's places where I agree with you where May
money is being spent outside not the Athletics but in other areas that maybe isn't the best use of funds whether it's parent funds or whatever it is which I don't think is going to affect the overall experience of the child or the parent to be able to participate in it and kind of just kind of getting a little bit more of a handle on that
that's what we're talking about on fully fully funding it if we don't go up with fees then the money's got to come somewhere else in our general fund so you know either you got to keep up with fees which our transportation and our obviously payroll of Athletics goes up
just as everything else goes up within our budget so if you don't keep up with that within the fees you're just taking dollars over here and just moving it over so that's what we're going around trying to figure it out but I I don't think we have to reducing funding does not change the experience for the child
so but it does reset the expectations of the Long Meadow parents and the Long Meadow children uh but I do not think it changes the actual experience of of of the Town Athletic program so but it takes time to look at this stuff so you know it's not something that you can
just change immediately it's going to take probably years to kind of reinvent ourself there and get organ that's what we're talking about there anything else Dan um I thank everyone for the their feedback their response um I know we're
not going to solve this overnight but uh again just something that that always comes up with residents coming to me about Athletics so I just wanted to uh bring it up tonight while it was in front of us the only other question that I that I had was because this this seems to come up as well is the the music
program so could you just whether it's Marty or someone else could you just kind of speak about um the music program and any impacts uh to the program uh in the budget no impact to the program um it'll be it'll be a level service
experience in music yeah for next year excellent thank you okay great anything else from anyone all right well thank you school committee for joining and uh superintendent and and Tom and um I appreciate you being here and you know
looking forward to where these discussions continue to go and I know we're getting our uh budget presentation from town manager at our next meeting on the 24th so for to thank you thank you we appreciate the opportunity I'm going to yep close out our meeting but thank you we appreciate the opportunity to um
hear some feedback and everybody's thoughtful questions um are really appreciated and help us to kind of hone our own process here on this as well um I will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved thank you do we have a second second thank you any discussion seeing none we'll move to a vote Michaela
yes Estelle yes Julie yes Jamie yes and yes for me as well thank you thank you appreciate it thank you I noticed your next item was the um two items from now is the
stabilization fund discussion yeah so they discussed the stabilization fund proposal we put forward two weeks ago are you actually planning on voting on that tonight I I think we're going to just be discussing it further just discussing it further okay so can I have a motion for adjournment
so um second second all right any discussion all in favor I thank you very much all right thank you all thank you for joining appreciate it thank you thank you okay um so the next item is our Capital improve Improvement program
recommendation um and as is I I don't think that we have a representative from the capital Capital planning uh committee here Lynn I think I I'll turn over to you for your Capital recommendations for the FY 2026 budget yeah thank you um we unfortunately
haven't received anything from Capital uh planning committee um we also didn't get confirmation that they were attending tonight uh the date has been set for quite a while so I'm not entirely sure where they are in their process uh but we are closing in on
being able to um submit a capit plan as part of the FY 26 budget um I am happy to present you mine although I do anticipate it may change a little bit in terms of um what I'm planning for the FY
26 budget um but I'm happy to go through it if you'd like or um we can take this up on the 24th when we' have to take it up anyway I mean I I think it would help maybe to hear tonight just you know to get multiple chances to talk about it
and and look at it um and and Josh you do you have thoughts about it can you just turn off screen sharing l oh yes thanks all right so yeah I'm let me bring it up if you can just bear with me
a minute to find it of course okay so for um FY 26 what I presented to the capital planning committee in December um it reflected um both what departments had submitted but um ultimately is just what I'm proposing to
fund uh so as you see here in this list $150,000 for project development this is what uh really is the seed money for DPW to do a lot of engineering work that uh cues us up for Grants and or future
capital projects so this has been really successful uh and so I I tried to fund it to the extent that we could project Reserve uh funds overages um generally so if a bid comes in um a you because we
start this so early if a project comes in um over what they had submitted for this provides a funding source in order for them to potentially um fulfill whatever that Financial um differences then now could you actually
share this one oh I'm sorry can you tell him out of practice here um L this was this was on the agenda no it was not cap so the way this is this the capital planning committee was supposed to submit you their recommendations tonight in absence of that this is what I
submitted to them in December um I also at that time this was historic at this point now um I sent it to the select board when I sent it to the capital planning committee but as that was a while ago um sorry just bear with me take your time
please and I can upload this after we weren't sure if Capital planning was going to come tonight with their plan that's happened in years's past okay so uh fir truck fund this is our annual allocation towards this um unfortunately I did not put any funding
in for fire or police aeds or car 3 replac I just couldn't fit those in um same with carpet replacement throughout this town and and School District did not fund that um however I
did suggest funding for Wolf Swamp vestibule this is to finish um to to start and finish construction uh we have money set aside from prior year Capital that was for this purpose the estimate has come in higher than what they have
and project Reserve won't cover it um we've heard a lot about The Chiller at Blueberry that's estimated at about $900,000 I have it in the plan as of now or as of December to be fully funded out of
capital uh no funding in here for the exterior wood and Trim Design upgrades at the police station uh that I would say though is an area that um if additional funding were available that this is somewhere where we should look
at uh Glenbrook field rebuild This was um a a multi-pronged approach we were looking to fund partial if not all out of e well obviously not all out of capital because we didn't have enough anyway um but we
were also applying at the same time for Community preservation funding this was when I generated this in December now we know that Community preservation did not uh move this application forward so um that that project will not be going
forward in any capacity we just we did not get funding anywhere for it uh Bliss playground equipment same thing this was um to fund the town share of that Land and Water Conservation Grant um we also submitted a capital I'm sorry Community
preservation application for this that was supported so that will move forward uh and I did not fund it through Capital uh same with equipment in DPW unfortunately just could not make the the dollars work and felt like our fleet
was in relatively good enough shape to continue without funding um just a reminder we did fund some out of arpa at the end of the calendar year we were running up against that deadline we were able to buy some equipment that way and
we have been doing this um with free cash as things come up we bought a u a front end loader in the fall so we are making Improv movements just not through Capital um a significant portion of capital is the sidewalk and uh road
paving um sidewalk is truly just out of capital but um road paving this is to fund the debt service related to the significant borrowing that we're doing um that is out to bid bids close on March 26th uh this needs to stay in here
in order for us to make good on that Debt Service payment um what I do want to call out for side walks though is a lot of the larger road projects uh have sidewalks built into it so it doesn't mean this is all we're going to do it just means that we've been able to look
at other projects and to incorporate the sidewalks into it and water and sewer I have no funding uh in there at all for any of those projects we are below um Reserve amounts in those Enterprise funds and don't have
any ability there to tackle those projects um this will be coming up though um not Capital specific but water sewer projects will be coming to you in part of a larger conversation the long awaited water study is coming on March
24th and we will be exhaustively discussing um water sewer infrastructure projects uh and storm water um I wasn't really sure at the time in December when I submitted this so I don't have funding here but um I
will be bringing a conversation to you when we when you do have to fully look at voting on a capital plan to fund the raspberry Brook repair this is an emergency um we do have funding in the storm water Reserve although it will put
us below policy levels but we need to have a conversation about that uh and that really that sums up the entire Capital plan it is um not very much uh for the amount of work that we
really were asked to consider um so the big the big ticket items here are the chiller that's the biggest um road paving sidewalks uh and then finishing that vestibule great yeah thank you and
obviously some of this is still in the works as we're still finalizing the budget um as well um so yeah but thank you I think it's important to kind of be looking at this you know a few times before vote on it um anything else um from the
board about this um Ian anything from no okay I don't think anything from Dan or Josh either oh Dan just real quick so Lynn is it in regards to just
communication with the the uh Capital uh committee uh please uh remind me but hasn't this been going on for a few years now where it seems like we get to this point every single year and we're just not even getting email responses or any communication back and forth in
terms of their take or their recommendations as part of this process uh yeah most of that is accurate we have had challenging just interaction that uh over the years uh this is the first year
though that there's been no response at all and and no one attending to present to you okay so can so in terms of the the path forward here um we still have to wait to get the
recommendation um ultimately it becomes the select board's Capital plan so you can um we can we'll continue to make our requests to them that they submit something just so we can close out that process but
ultimately the capital plan gets voted and adopted by the select board and and you can um take Capital planning committees if if one materializes you could take mine or you can create your your own or some hybrid of those yeah now thank you I just uh it is
a bit frustrating just because it is good to hear from other you know the other committees on on these important items and now it's almost like we're just going to have to go and uh do it on our own but it's always good to to get the feedback from the the folks that are appointed to
these committees yep um anything else thank you Dan uh okay nothing else then uh thank you Lynn uh for presenting that and uh you know we'll hear more about it on March 24th and then the next item is a continuation
from our last meeting the discussion about the operating stabilization fund policy and our conversation around uh the finance committee's proposal and then kind of um you know the proposal presented to us by uh Lynn and Ian um
just kind of you know modified that proposal a bit um and I think we had a really good discussion last meeting and wanted some you know maybe some time to think about it more and then come back um and and continue that discussion so
um you know I'll I'll leave uh or I guess let folks make comments or you know ask questions if you know if they like to share kind of where their thinking is now on this policy Andrew are we going to um are we
working from this document that was in the agenda is basically is this your Lynn's suggestion on how to change it or update it rather um if I I mean I'll actually let Ian speak to it he made the adjustments based on the conversation at our last meeting the directive that I
understood from you specifically Andrew was to change one key thing uh the interest calculated is an available re Revenue source for the next fiscal year was changed to maybe thought that was the um directives that we Reed to change it
for I see so I think it's perfectly fine to start use this document as a starting point I if we're going to do that I actually this will be a great way to just go into the discussion I I I have like four basic edits basically suggested edits um I know that only the
is the the Yellow Part the part that's new and everything else is from the prior correct um so here are some suggestions I didn't under fund balance if you go to the Bold fund balance I didn't my understanding was always that the goal was to have it between 5 and 10% of the general fund operating
revenue is that was I wrong is it 7 and a half just is the middle point and that's what so CU maybe that should be 5 to 10% instead of 7 and half% the problem that you're you're seeing is that there are two different policies there's the general reserves policy and
then there's the operation stabilization fund policy we're reviewing specifically the operating stabilization fund policy in the general reserves policy it does state 5 to 10% of operating revenues so that's where the misconception is I see so
that's you know if it's it was decided in the past by the select board and it's it's basically a mood point because of the way it's practiced it's it's fine um another suggestion just for the consideration of all is the minimum
balance at the time this was done was 2 million it seems like that might be inadequate especially since it's far below the 5% minimum that we are aiming for and certainly below the 7 and half% minimum we might consider increasing the 2 million to 3 million um another uh
thing to mention is the maximum balance there really is no maximum balance like just like we have had sometimes gone below the 5% we can sometimes like we are now above the F the 10% so we might want to just take out the maximum
balance um these aren't you know huge edits and I'm Notting to any of them the the last thing I would open up you know ask for advice on is in the yellow section where and this is the main point of how we're going to use uh interest on
the operational stabilization fund NE it says um the interest calculated may be an available Revenue source for next next year's next fiscal years capital I would suggest expend Capital expenditures and this addition of
operating budget I think that's the main point of debate for example I personally would not I personally would feel it would be good to restrict it a like in the way that the finance committee Eric is still here um suggested
to Capital expenditures which we know we are pretty much always going to be behind on and by doing this we avoid running into a situation where we're tempted to use the interest on things that become recurring essentially but so
just to make sure I understood you so we would Redline Andor operating budget and change that's a suggestion I mean I'm not Su I'm not saying we have to do that that's just my opinion at this moment but um I'm sure the my colleagues have thoughts as well yeah Mark I'll I'll uh
I'll reiterate and support that I think we should not be using interest for for operating budget and I would I would support Crossing out the andoor operating budget uh the the one thing here that concerns me is if you
state a maximum which we're actually over now how can you state that the maximum shall be if we don't say and if it goes over that here's what we're going to do with it you know I I think we need to have a
a process by which we bring it to that 10% maximum if in fact we want that and if we don't because we may not because General reserves are always a good thing to have then we should strike this maximum balance statement but it's
difficult to have a maximum balance statement if you don't say what does it take to do that does that mean we should be transferring money out of the the general res General reserves because they're over 10% and if we transfer it out where do we transfer it to because
it's onetime onetime Revenue so you know th those are those are my two significant comments the the other thing I guess I'll I'll comment on a little bit is
why is it because we need additional capital and if it is then this ought to be strictly to supplement our our capital budget my understanding is capital is two still 2. what 7% or
something it's 3% 3% of our of our tax revenue I guess is what it is you know and if and if that's not sufficient then you know that this is good but so
far I I don't see that that that percentage isn't sufficient or that we can't budget for that amount in other words if if our budget is so tight that we're struggling to find money for Capital then we should be reducing that 3%
to something else and then using this as a supplement you can't you can't say Capital shall be 3% of your operating budget and then ignore that year after year after year say it's capital is going to be targeted at you know 2%
minimum and if need be see the operating State the general Reserve policy for potential supplement to the capital thank you um so I I think that in this discussion at least I am hesitant to touch the language around fund balance because I still see these
as two different issues like what to do with the fund balance when it goes into excess of 10% and I think that's a different conversation and something that I think I would honestly like guidance or you know recommendation or the finance committee take a look at um
and I I think I'd really like us to you know focus on the interest conversation because I think that's really what you know we really got uh you know proposal from from the finance committee and from from our T um staff and what we really
had discussion about in our last meeting um I you know I think I I still kind of go I think the 7.5% that was something that we were talking about whether that was a good place to be I think that that that is a good place to be um and then I
think in terms of the actual language here I I still kind of keep I I go back to what I said at the last meeting where I really do think that this should be allocated towards Capital expenditures
but again with the reality of our town budget with how difficult it can be we may have these extraordinary expenses and when those extraordinary expenses come up I would like for us to have flexibility because we have such little flexibility elsewhere in our budget and
I think last year's uh curriculum ask um was a is a great example of that and I would have liked it if we could have funded it through this rather than you know the route that we went so you know in terms of language I still would like for it to say something to the effect
that it should be you know devoted to Capital expenditures but with you know the option of you know if there's like an extraordinary circumstance or expense to be able to put it towards that just because um of how inflexible our budget is um I'm sorry Josh has had his hand up
here so I'm gonna go to him yeah so on the the fund balance I I'm fine waiting on getting advice uh or recommendations and guidance from the finance committee I think that if it is above 10% I think we
should treat the excess the same as we're treating this interest although I do think it's kind of MOT because any Year we're around 10 we won't fund the stabilization fund and probably drop below 10 as our budget goes up so I think it's mostly moved but is I agree
with Mark that if you have a maximum you got to say what happens um but the um I think I'm I'm kind of leaning towards what benath is saying on the the Endor operating budget um I think I mentioned this at the last
meeting I wouldn't be willing to support it some sort of limitation um like a one time time uh expense or something just to give us a little more flexibility I but
I part of it is I I also think we have to just kind of trust the um the wisdom of our the board and our our future selves um and our future colleagues and
this policy will get rebuked every three years so if it doesn't work if something's if it's being we see it inching over into the operating side then that isn't good um but I don't think it will I think that
if we we know where the holes in our budget are and I think it will fall into the things that need to be done that we fall behind on which is kind of what brought this whole thing about to uh together but if if the board if the feelings of the board are we limit the
capital I I'll also be okay with that but I think I would like some flexibility if we can keep that yeah thank you Josh and and just uh your comment about the fund balance and the 10% um I also think that part of what came up in our last conversation was
that we should have a conversation about whether it should be at 10% still or whether that should increase because the costs of repairs and everything are increasing so I think we do need to just take a look at all of that um Al together I think it's a reason a great reason to raise the minimum Andrew was
saying um but yeah 10 if we go above 10% you know we're going to start talking about a large amount of money that I I don't think we would ever get to considering uh how our budget is going but also uh
if we're getting up that high would we really even put money into the oper operational stabilization fund for repairs when we could be doing uh Forward Thinking repairs now uh which doesn't I see what you're saying we're
not under we do need to be prepared for catastrophic things but we shouldn't be uh worrying about that to the detriment of not doing the things that are on our plate now yes yeah I mean I I agree with that
um generally but I I mean it is there for the catastrophic event and so I I do think that we do need to look at what that catastrophic event looks like in 2025 in the Years um going forward and what that
would cost um Mark he did I don't know he did have it up okay yep he's up he's up give me a chance go ahead go ahead D oh thanks Mark um yeah I I I I agree I
mean there's a lot of good points uh tonight I I just still can't get past personally the I just feel like we need to have that flexibility that we we've talked about and I think the like I said last meeting um just the finance committee
and and what Erica had presented to us um having just being creative again in a town long in like Long Meadow we have we have funds that are sitting here that are not that are not being used but every single meeting it seems like we have another issue popping up whether
it's the roads deteriorating um needs in our schools um other needs across town maintenance um I think probably 90% of the decisions for these funds will go towards Capital Improvements but I would I just think we do need to have that
flexibility and and uh to make the decisions that are necessary and to Josh's Point um maybe there's some you know three years from now we can uh make adjustments but I do think there's a lot of checks and balances in place already
uh within town government and um at a certain point in time and we we need to start looking at how we can uh leverage These funds and and put the money to work otherwise we're literally losing money just by having it sitting in here and I think that um we need that
flexibility so I I um I fully support having more flexibility and I also support um allowing the finance committee to um take another look um as well and provide um some more guidance if if need be um but for me it's really
just having more flexibility um we have so many uh issu issues across town that that need to be addressed and um that's that's where I stand um but again I appreciate everyone's commentary and Andrew for bringing for bringing this up with your points initially as well thank
you here Mark yeah I I I really think there'd be an issue with using onetime money for operating budget it's it's a longstanding policy not over town a long mow but of General budgets and all around that says don't use onetime money
operating budget we have enough of a capital budget every year you know it's it's it's 3% of our of our tax base and our or our tax revenue our tax revenue was $64 million so 3% is 1 Point what 1
point8 $1.9 million something like that that we can more than use this for the capital which is one time and always say that if there's a a problem we don't deal with it but I want to take this opportunity to talk about another option
I talked to Lynn about it and hopefully she's done or Ian's done his homework on it but there's a there's a line item in our budget called employee health insurance retirees this year it's $1.5 million okay we spend a million and a
half dollars on health insurance for retirees bear with me and we're getting to to a place here we also have an OPB fund that's now funded at 8,3 $320,000 as the end of last year okay
you know at at at 4% interest that spins off $300,000 a year from the opep fund way back when when we formed this opep fund one of my comments to Paul Pik was so when do we start to get the to use the interest to reduce that million and
half dollars that we put into opep funding every year and he said well you can't do it when you've got $10,000 in the in in the opep fund you can't even do it with a million dollars but we've now got $8.3 million in there and maybe
we can use the interest from that fund $330,000 reduce the line item that's a $1.5 million line item to free up money so we can fund our Capital the way we should be funding our Capital that we say we're going to fund our capital and
I don't know Lynn if you've been able to move forward with that and look at it you know that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to fund OPB so there's kind of a wash here do we fund OPB or you know not but but you know because ultimately
if opep was fully funded we'd be saving a million and a half dollars on our operating budget that would solve all of our problems right now if we had OPB fully funded a million half dollars is a lot of money so I'm I'm going to stop talking and find out is is there
potential use of $300,000 from our opep interest to offset that million and half dollar line item so um there's nothing within the Mass General law rules that state that we can't take money out of the opab trust um I'm waiting to hear back from
my contact at Mass Prim who holds the Investments for the opep trust fund because I'm not sure about the liquidity of these assets and if it's even available at the time to take it out so I'll have an answer for you at the next meeting but but I it seems to me that if
OPB was fully funded we'd absolutely take the m i mean that's why it was formed to take the money out to pay for employee health insurance all I'm saying is don't wait till it's fully funded start now when it's partially funded
because we need the $300,000 of of of Revenue that's all and you know this something maybe we could talk about at a different meeting when it's actually on the agenda I want to stay focused On's what we're talking about right now what's on the agenda I agree I mean interesting point but I think that just
just stay on target I I have a simple suggestion maybe I can get support for this uh I perhaps we could edit it to say next year's Capital expenditures or extraordinary non-recurring expenses and that would basically cover the is that
yeah I mean that's kind of kind of like yeah that's that's kind of what I was thinking too I mean I I think Josh brought up a good point where you know what is there for us to put this money towards usually than Capital expenses so when there is something extraordinary that happens like we will know um and
and and then the whoever is here can make a good judgment about that I just make one more point about what Josh said about when the money goes over 10 when we exceed the 10% I mean it this whole it's it's all kind of moot to be honest like at any point any select board in the future any town meeting can decide
with a two3 vote to use this money for something I think that all of this interest discussion all it really does is it gives Lynn the knowledge that she has the capability of like you know using it for this I'm sure Lyn would agree so any at any point this you know
all the millions that are in here right now if we really felt we needed it any Tom meting could decide to do it with 2/3 so anyway just making that point um okay so what I take from that is a couple things so if we're thinking
about this in a long-term solution of fix this as we go I I would say that there are a couple things that we want to revisit in the 3-year renewal period for this I would say should there be language that determines whether or not
we fund the stabilization fund with free cash that's something that's not within the current policy itself and that would help us determine if in the future if say we hit our maximum policy balance do we need to fund it more or once we get
the target balance do we fund it um what should the maximum balance be and what happens when you reach this and I had another point about the emergency provision but it sounds like with the extraordinary non-recurring expenses that would cover that so it would be those two points what should the maximum
balance be and what happens when you reach this and should there be language that determines whether or not we fund the stabilization fund with free cash can I ask you follow are you saying that if we're over the 10% we still have a policy of putting in like 500 whatever it is there's there's nothing
there's nothing within the policy that states that we can't so we can or cannot funds may be transferred into the operation stabilization fund from any general fund Source including taxation of free cash that is the only that's the simple that's the only Direct that's the only directive that I mean I think that
if it's over the 10% then it doesn't make I don't think we should like future select board should feel compelled to do it but it seems like there's no directive to do it either so it could we that's what I take from the discuss that we're should future select boards
be prevented from doing it I I I I I don't know I don't know that we need to make rules for things I mean people can future select wordss can decide how they think best I mean decide what they think is best in in that and and frankly what to do when it get goes over 10% which
might not last long you know there have been more years that I've been here that it's been below 5% than above 10% so um yeah there's a lot to talk about but um so just just for the sake of our time the fund balance section I do think it's
important to talk about it but it's not as time sensitive that's already passed that's existing this yellow section interest on fund balance this just to remind you everyone this doesn't exist right now your first draft of the warrant is on the 24th you vote it and close it on the 7th if you want to use
this money for something you we need some direction from you in ter in a way of either a vote tonight but absolutely vote on the 24th because we're going to run out of time if you want to use that money for a warrant article for annual
town meeting you don't have to we can wait and do it in the fall yeah I mean I I completely agree I think the fund balance like whether the the finance committee and Ian you guys can take more of a look at it and come back to us at a later time that's that's perfect um the interest on fund balance right now I
think the what Andrew suggested sounds the like the best language to me um so I don't know if people are opposed to this but maybe what we can do is I I don't know if folks want to take another meeting to think about this but we can come back with that language people can
maybe think about if you know if there's anything they want to change in terms of that language and we take a vote on this at our next meeting well I mean I feel like if there's consensus would it help Lynn to get this squared away or I mean or does it not matter to you yeah no I
would love consensus tonight on that language and then we can clean it up and bring it back to you for a vote but I would like consensus that the majority of you want that type of language in there the um extraordinary non- reoccurring expenses yeah and is this
something that we would need to run by Town Council no that language okay so Capital expenditures or extraordinary non-recurring expenses can I ask Andrew how does that differ from allowed uses of
funds is extraordinary noning expenses urgent or unforeseen expenses like I said this whole discussion in my mind is kind of mood but basically it's to your point it's excluding it from the operating budget which I think we all agree it shouldn't be so that's
basically what we're achieving with this unfortunately I don't think we all did agree you and I agree but but I I just think that next year's capital budget up to 100% of Interest earn carries that because we can always and always could use it for emergency urgent and
unforeseen expenses which to me is not different necessarily from non-recurring extraordinary expenses which is why I said so it's already there when I asked Lyn why are we it gives Lynn the go ahead ly so I would this I would say that having
sat at this seat that I was sitting in last fall or last whenever it was about the literacy I made that argument that it was an unforeseen expense and the board didn't end up agreeing there and I think
um um the language about extraordinary nonrecurring I I could see the literacy curriculum having fit better into that definition than number the definition number one there um but it's your it's your prerogative you can do what you
want um but that's just where from where I'm sitting that would be have been clearer for me so it seems to the better speak for my problem with using it on the operation fund for literacy last year was the the rest of the sentence
for which there are no feasable or alternative funding sources that absolutely could have come from the school budget general fund whatever um and so I I think that this this would just give us another tool on something like
that where there there could be another place we could pull it from but we're going to get it from here if it's a extraordinary expense yeah I agree Josh mark if I may I think what is in my mind is the
difference between the allowed use of funds and the interest on fund balance is the monies from the stabilization fund may be the principle and the interest and the interest on fund balance is only the interest I'm thinking that in a presentation to the
general public it would come across better if it was just the interest and we're not touching the principal versus the opposite okay fa Fair State um so Len is this is this enough of a
consensus if we have this language and then take a vote on it at our next meeting I think so do you feel like we have a general consensus at least enough to bring you back a draft to vote okay just just for if you go back to last
year though would the interest have been enough to pay for the literacy program at because that's all that's would be allowed by this change right and so at the time it came to you no at the time of town meeting yes a lot
changed within that time frame it was like a $200,000 speaks to the flexibility like there just isn't a lot yeah okay great all right thank you everyone um anything else or Josh do you
have anything else no okay great all right and correspondence any comments on correspondence okay um since there's no further comments I will move that we adjourn second any further
discussion and Lynn I'll let you call the wait um ven yes Andrew yes Mark yes Dan yes Josh yes all right thank everyone and we'll see everyone on March
24th thank you thanks