all right welcome to the wenber finance committee meeting March 6 um here Hall and requirements of meeting La advised this meeting is being recorded Ando Public Access Channel and on Facebook
live on the public access Facebook um and it will be uploaded to lunenberg access YouTube after the meeting uh the agenda which is at lunenberg ma.gov under the calendar um
has the zoom link and the telephone number um and with that if we could stand for the pledge [Music] to the flag of the United States of
America and to the repu stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for [Music] all all right
um the first thing on the agenda is announcement ments um the one I would remind everyone is that on Monday is the town caucus uh several open seats um that are
important to fill for that and that is the easiest way to get on the ballot uh the other way to get on the ballot is um you col collect signatures so um I forget what time the caucus is at but 7 7 and it's at the high school right yep
in the auditorium in the auditorium uh with that is there any public comment from the public good evening everyone uh John Bowen 162 Highland Street uh lunenberg I just wanted to highlight some things I
know that um you have a plan to uh go over some Capital plan items and I just wanted to give some history so in June of last year the cemetery commission uh uh came before this board and uh they
said that uh they wanted to have a discussion about rules and regulations regarding Perpetual care sale aots uh in an email to Ezekiel and Adam Costa um as Cemetery commission chair I have asked if we could have both of you join this
meeting in expense uh of the town for a board that doesn't know what Perpetual care or sell wats funds are um just as a reminder uh it says I do not have the experience or the knowledge and expertise on these matters regarding the
state of Massachusetts and because both Ezekiel who's here tonight in experience uh I have requested that you both join this meeting this is a problem when we have a board member who doesn't know what they're operating or what they're running allow me to continue if you would um Adam Costa comes at a serious
cost to this town as well as the time of Ezekiel who's being paid to be here tonight and these are costs that should never be incurred by a board that being said I've have gone over the board with this committee before about the waste and expenses of the wasteful expenditures of the cemetery commission
spending money to cut grass and to do all sorts of things I've also brought before this board information with regard to rules and regulations that are prated without first taking into the financial effects of those of which uh Bill Bernard back in uh I believe it was November brought before this board a number of different issues and
circumstances situations that need to be done with the cemeteries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars including roads uh in uh sou Cemetery expanding the North Cemetery uh new area okay and now the cemetery commission has recently
voted um at their last meeting uh which was a couple of weeks ago that they're not going to take any money out of the sale of lots fund that they would usually take even though they have a balance of 9439 466 in that account they also have an unexpended amount of funds of the
$10,000 that we allot at an annual town meeting um unexpended funds of $4,650 because the cemetery commissioner herself Miss Nancy yosco wasn't able to attend a meeting for five months for a personal matter even though the rest of her board had a quarum so I just want to
remind this board that when you make financial decisions for the community we should make those financial decis decisions based on the efficiency of the boards themselves and whether these boards are warranted to be able to have access to this money to do these projects now the expansion of the cemetery in the North Cemetery is not a
serious issue we still have some 80 plots in the North and South Cemetery that we can give we're not we don't bury 40 people a year here we bury like maybe three to 10 maybe 15 maximum I've seen is 20 and usually most of those people already own plots so the selling of 80
plots is really not an issue so I'd like you to take that into consideration about the expansion it does need to be done but the funds need to be expended appropriately and when you have a board who says Let's collect interest off of our sale a lots funds by not taking any
money out of it when the interest rate of the sale a lots funds and Ezekiel can attest to this is 1.8% same thing with the Perpetual care fund of which they receive roughly about 4,000 to 4 4500 annually when their account balance in the sale of lots fund
is 29 $19,000 which has to go to the state treasurer and they give them the interest to use for Perpetual care they have an interest balance in their account of $2,787 a capital plan item for $50,000 to peac mail a section of land
in the North Cemetery is appalling for anybody to spend that kindy money on a peac mail basis they're going to put dirt roads in there uh they're going to do some Paving and stuff like that and I know this was a request of C okay but it's wrong it's financially
irresponsible okay the capital plan request of $50,000 okay is ridiculous now if we take the cost calculated from the $96,000 and we subtract $50,000 4,650 of unexpended funds that's for the skirt in
the South Cemetery they need to repair that they put on hold because Miss yasco was on vacation I'm sorry forgive me she wasn't on vacation she was handling a personal matter okay and she wasn't available even though her board had a quorum to be able to continue situations she said stop all work okay there's
minus $4,650 minus $20,000 which is what the DPW gets from us allotted every year for the cemeteries out of our tax levy okay equals 2,439 27 would be left over in the sale of lot fund have we subtracted all of
that from the sale of lots fund the cemeteries are unsustainable and a cemetery Commission Direction where they're at it is going to continue Bill even told us he needs one more cemetery worker to run two machines we have two machines one sat
there all last year okay that's another employee to run a machine that has to be a union employee it's Union equipment has to be a Union employment that's $80,000 okay what bill is asking for is the right approach bill has a good plan he has a yearly plan all the way up to
2032 this is the plan we should be paying attention to and we should be oring all else when it comes to the management and maintenance and leave it to the qualified people who happen to be William Bernard and I would suggest that William Bernard did ask for 50,000 okay
for the cemetery project but if you take Bill aside and you ask him is it better for us to take $225,000 and take all the needs and fix them would that be a better use of money over a period of time where we have an inflationary rate that's going up 4.5%
every year that $225,000 is going to turn into a half a million in four years I just wanted to make sure that this board is aware of that and that they take actions okay they take actions that are efficient okay with regard to fiscal responsibility not
regard to a need we don't need things in the cemetery like crack filling that's a paint over tape that's a paint over tape okay we need roads we need curbs okay right now I have sent you all a PowerPoint presentation with you should have received in your emails if you
haven't and you're having difficulty okay reading it okay you can read that PowerPoint by copying and pasting it into your browser and it'll pull up a you know it'll pull up a PowerPoint presentation if having difficulty some people in town like the town manager had some difficulty reading that but I just
wanted to just inform you that in there we show the immediate needs right now for the cemetery for the work that needs to be done that's actually laid out by the cemetery superintendent in the DPW we're at $532,000 and if you read my PowerPoint presentation that I sent to you all
you'll see we don't have $532,000 do we taking a peac meal approach to fix something by putting paint over tape is not a suitable process to hold $96,000 back to collect $1,800 worth of interest in a year is not a suitable process for the handling
of funds of which this board holds and I just want to let everybody know thank you for your time thank you John and thank you for giving me a little extra time Mr chair any other public comment from the public and if you have any public on the zoom just raise your
hand all right any public comment from the board all right um one thing I did have um that I wanted to pass on is I I did um reach out to our representative
scar Dale um and she got back to me um budget related things the one thing she uh would encourage everyone is she she calls it a call to action for the community leaders on what is called
project uh 211 I think project 211 is the 2011 communities that are at um hold harmless levels as we respect to uh chapter 70 um I did get invited to a a
webinar of some sort um I think um some members of town were able to get in I wasn't able to get into it for some reason um it was an odd Zoom length um she also said with regard to helping um she says I hope you are
familiar with the budget asks of project 211 which I help craft and there's a three-prong Solution One supplemental budget to get funding into the districts for this fiscal year an increase to the fiscal year 26 budget that the house is about to take up and a request to
establish a commission to make recommendations for changing the problematic school funding formula um so I think one and two would probably be Band-Aids um in reality uh but number three uh might try to really solve this problem for a formula that really
doesn't work for a lot of communities um so I did want to pass on that communication um from um from Margaret um she also you know Works closely with um representative C merik and and Senator
Cronin all right with that uh public comment is done um any Town manager or Finance director reports okay all right so let's um go on to uh scheduled meetings so this is the
last official scheduled um day for our department hearings although something tells me that school department may have a a number two coming up but um but uh we we've done that before um so the
first one up though is uh Council on Aging um with our new director uh Deb goodsall did I say that right goodsall yes right and Paulie Roy who's our Outreach going to be joining as well here sit there or up here but that works
for sure and let me just um get this all right I think there's a little delay on the back shows us what wonderful over to you thank you thank you for having us here today um I just
wanted to uh go over a little PowerPoint with you and just let you know a little bit about the Council on Aging um the mission of the lunenberg Council on Aging is to advocate for improved quality of life for all seniors through Supportive Services programs and education so that's what we do on a
daily basis when we look at this um if we go to the next couple um I just wanted to introduce myself um Deborah Goodell and Pauline Roy is from lunenberg and she's been at the center for seven years
now so she's helped quite a few of your seniors here in town so um they have experienced what we do have to offer I was actually at the Clinton Council on agent for the past 10 years and I'm sorry if I'm a little nervous it's be nervous this is all new I never had to
do a PowerPoint before so um when we look at the statistics for the town of lunenberg you've got 11,705 residents 3767 of these are over the age of 60 so
that's 32% of your Town's population are seniors so the senior population because of the Baby Boomers is going to continue to grow over the next 5 years they expect it at 2030 to kind of level out and then we'll see start seeing a
decline but the number of seniors will continue to grow over the next 5 years when you look at the summary statistics this is basically at the Council on Aging we have a system called my um Senior Center so we can pull statistics
so from January to December these are the amount of individuals on the right on an average daily basis so you're looking at anywhere from 50 to 75 people a day um which over the last couple months that has increased as well we had
40 people for go today we have 40 people for Women's Club tomorrow um and those are just two programs when you look at the congregate meals and those are the meals we prepare on site we've got 255 people during that year participated in
meals at the center um 264 of those went to Fitness classes and then you have a summary on the other side so we serviced when you and this is a number of those who checked in there's a lot that come in that don't check in at the chaos so
you're looking at 1275 residents were serviced by this Council on Aging last year so what are the needs of our senior population basically um our budget we did very minimal and it's just to support these needs nutritional services
including the on-site meals support in Social Services which is a lot of what Pauline does as far as health insurance hoarding scams uh financial assistance legal re referrals so there's a lot of that
that we do um food assistance helps help with um housing applications there's a lot that we help out our seniors with that is very overwhelming to them uh educational programs exercise well-being programs socialization which is key
those people who socialize are healthier they their mind their body um so just over the side just the social Services tells you some of the some of the things grandparents raising grandchildren um I did a letter for um senior connections
today regarding opioid use there's a lot that's going on with our senior population uh nutritional services and socialization the number one issue for me this year is nutrition because even if a senior is
able to make meals themselves at home they're not always doing it and they're not always nutritional so um you know just as an example every night my grandmother would have a piece of cheese on a cracker because she didn't want to make a meal so this way at least if we
get them into the center we can serve them a healthy meal they're socializing and they're getting their basic needs so that is one of the things if you go to the next um slide we're looking at our mail site manager
currently is 19 1/2 hours we're looking to increase inre that to 36 hours and be able to offer meals at least four times a day uh four times a day no four times a week um breakfast some lunches even
maybe a dinner on Wednesday evenings when we're open later and also we'd like to um there's no kitchen staff that works on Fridays currently so Meals on Wheels goes out on Thursday and we don't see them again till Monday so that's if
there's a Monday holiday we don't see them till Tuesday so uh Meals on Wheels is not only just a meal it's a wellness check so it's a a big gap of time that we're not putting eyes on these individuals um so basically what we want to do with
the budget this year is we we have an opening for an assistant meal sight manager we're not going to fill that position we want the full-time meal site manager and then we have two kitchen AIDS that are actually in the budget as well so our budget this year is a modest
increase of 30,000 over last year and that will take care of our needs in this next next next fiscal year um so basically um at the end here I just want to thank you um this breaks down to
spending $72 for a senior in the town of Lunenburg and thank you any questions questions for Pauline oray um sure and you did a great job so thank you um just for um newer members and and
maybe the public this this request did come forward last year and we had some questions about it um and in the end um the request was not brought forward so um in my you know personal opinion I I do think it's a good idea I think the
the council and aging is not a huge budget item for the town um and it does serve quite a few uh people in town so um with that I will open it up to any questions that the committee may have
have any questions M can I add one thing absolutely this was a need last year it's still a need this year I mean if it if it wasn't they said if it wasn't needed last year we wouldn't be asking for it again this year so just
so you know that it is definitely a need okay um so the Meals on Wheels um is that something that's happening every day now Meo Wheels is Monday through Thursday Monday through Thursday okay yeah and that's going to continue that
will yes yeah mealone wheels is for homebound so that's not in the center itself they're delivered through Mock and we have volunteer drivers and we package them up and they're delivered to their homes um but like I said we don't deliver now on Friday Saturday Sunday
and if there's a holiday on a Monday There's four days they're going without somebody checking on them right okay um can you tell us what kind of programs you've run with the uh your programming you have an line item that you're
increasing about um you know you're increasing from 5,000 to 7500 right can you tell us what kind of program you yeah so used to run since you've only been here for a couple months the type of programming is basically socialization and
entertainment uh we also have um you know educational programming where they can come in and you know learn about something they also have um education like if you have heart disease or you have diabetes we can have an educational where we have somebody come in not all
these these people are free right also too when we have an event you know we do have um you know if we have the memory Cafe which we have once a month we have an Entertainer come in because and a lot of times it's music because music uses both sides of your brain and those
entertainers range between $ 150 and $250 for the hour okay so the entertainers are more expensive the um supplies are more expensive we're doing um more um exercise more Fitness we're
doing more crafts um you know Hands-On um dexterity so we're doing a we're going to be adding a lot more programming to our already full schedule okay and a lot of those costs are going up each year too people are asking for
more right yeah um do you find that these you know you gave us a statistic that you serve about a third of our total seniors is that 1275 32% of the population of lunberg are seniors you find that these programs kind of help engage seniors and bring them into the
center and that kind of opens up for relationship absolutely absolutely there I mean there's in some individuals that um I had one gentleman come to me this week he said this is this is my life this is what I do all his friends are there um he comes for the meals he comes
for the entertainment he comes for you know socialization um to keep their mind sharp even pitch cribbage you know they're they're using their minds they're keeping it sharp book club uh we're doing the community um read coming up we've got all the St Patrick's Day
programming coming up um you know we have there's just so much going on and and it's their place right it's where they go it's where they feel comfortable and it's also where after coming each day or several times a week they feel
comfortable going to Pauline and saying hey um I gave this guy on the phone my credit card number and now there's $22,000 missing from my account right you know so like I said they feel com comtable if they weren't coming on a regular basis you know um I don't know
if they'd feel as comfortable as yeah you got to build a relationship right in order to build that trust and yeah no no that's good well um have you talked with the Tom manager about your request uh briefly all right what was her her
response she's kind of new yeah I'm supporting the request okay well that's good to know okay well I I think it's you know something that had been requested before it uh it seems to be all your request is on realizing that position it seems reasonable um and last
year this committee uh the finance committee requested that anyone who we bring new to be to not be half hours right I think the proposal last year was to be 26 or 28 hours to to be 30 you know to be a full-time position yeah I
think you know the discussion we had last year was that you know the moment you go over um 19 hours it's now a benefit position right so there's kind of a lot of costs that come with if one takes benefits that if you're only going up to 24 hours there's a lot of cost for
those residuals so right um so it's good to see that you got to 36 hours and um and the employee you had spoken with the employee and she's she's ready to go for yeah our current meals side manager is agreeable to going to 36 hours Perfect all right that's how I
got anything that was my question um um I just want to let you know that I've heard through my own mother-in-law who attends this program that since you've been there this has been a Hu there's been a huge Improvement of programming so I think the community is already seeing that um and I I just appreciate
it so yeah you you always ask all my question we should switch here no I want so yes so just thank you did a great job and this is a real huge asset to the town and some of us are getting near that 60 Mark so you don't have to be 60 right you can be no the lunenberg adult
Activity Center is 50 plus oh well then that's it and I'll tell you their launches are fabulous because the dessert is just superb Tom any questions Jean thanks Deb thank you guys valuable service thank you we're all
set yeah well normally what we do do is we open um it up to the public if they want to ask any questions um so is there any questions or appraise from the public Bron delissio 181 Reservoir Road I just had one quick question I heard
that seniors can go to any senior center in the state and you keep track of all your visitors I was just curious how many come from other towns most of ours are from lunenberg um
once in a while and some of our from lunenberg go to towns in they go to Fitchburg um and some of those Towns come here as well um but most of ours are from lunenberg and like I said we do have you know depending on what the activity is we may have some people that
come over that from L from towns in or correct seniors kind of find the activity they love and they'll follow it to all the senior centers okay they play that game of oh is on this day here and this day there I was just curious about how that yeah Bingo work Mondays in lemonster Tuesdays in Lancaster
Wednesdays in yeah they know they know exactly where the things they like are okay that was it thank you thank you thank you so how uh competitive is the cribbage oh very very all right um
Karen good evening Karen Menard 672 Page Street um I just had a first of all you had a great presentation um I had the fortunate pleasure of going in last week and and meeting with Pauline and meeting the new director so that was that was a great um introduction to the um Activity
Center because I hadn't been there in quite a while I do have a couple of questions um now that we are ages 50 and over are the numbers that you presented today did that include those you know the the ones that are between 50 and 60
is that everybody the um your total participation no the numbers here are 60 plus okay so that so your numbers could actually be a little bit higher Karen can you get close to maybe your mic
or yeah it's not me is that any better no is that any better Anna I think de for like the seniors in lunenberg yeah 3700 I think that is 60 and older
as to who's coming to our senior center I would say the majority are still over 60 there's a few people here and there but it's definitely a minority number okay and is there um I know years ago there used to be a nominal fee to
Outsiders um using our um our facility is that still the case or is is that is that no longer in existence currently it is not but that is something that I did at my previous Cent so if we had a craft
and say it was $20 and this the seniors are paying 10 lunenberg seniors are paying 10 we pay the other 10 out of the program budget in order to make it cost effective for them but we wouldn't pay somebody from
fitchburg's extra $10 out of the Town budget I don't pay for other other people from other towns out of our town budget if it costs money money so but I mean eventually we probably would charge a nominal fee for those who are not from
lunenberg because like I said this is lunenberg Town budget and you know they have their towns have their Town budget great thank you so much all right so that's proof that I'm not the only one that can't hear my wife for the record I can hear you just
fine I don't know why you can't hear me um Dave pasos yes thank you Mr chair um I was just uh coming on to tell you that I believe you all need to get closer to your microphones when you turn towards them on my end anyway I can hear you
clearly the minute you turn even a little bit away from them uh I cannot so uh after my many years of experience up there on that stage and at the conference table uh I believe you need to be closer to those microphones uh
appreciate it because we're losing quite a bit of the content thank you thank you Dave all right so I think with that you and enough free thank you thank you very much by the way we're talking your wife
into doing crafts I know I know and do you need a bingo collar still is that one no we actually had like I said our first Bingo and it was really great today and there was we had Pate Pate called Bingo it was
awesome okay so but if we do I call all right um I know I have school department next but I would assume Monte Tech is going to be a quicker maybe presentation discussion but might ask that we we flip
[Music] those yes you can go yours did you send us a present you did yeah okay uh well so do they have the thumb drive in the okay um just want to make sure I have
it like a PDF thank you thank you okay okay okay thank you I will get it I pulled up this one that was my [Applause]
thank [Music] [Applause] you you're special low seat all said or should we wait give me one second yeah I I got it it's just
opening thank you it's there all right [Applause] okay all right great well good evening everybody uh my name is Tom Brown I'm the uh very fortunate Superintendent at
Monte Tech and I'm joined by who I will humbly say and I hope not depending the greatest uh business manager for school district ever uh Tammy Crockett um very fortunate to have her as part of our team um can you pull the mic a little closer certainly can bring it right to
me all right so um I'm quickly gon to just kind of go through give everybody an update of of some of the um overarching themes of of what we try to do in terms of our budget at mon Tech and what's going on at Monch and then Tammy will walk everybody right through the full budget so um very quickly you
know if the first slide um which I'm sure will be popping up uh we just want to make sure that everybody sees that you know with we are a district that is very mindful of um the impact that this has on our towns and when it comes to De
developing our budget um we're not somebody or a district that's going to go way over um you know it's it's it's net School spending or anything like that and the first chart just kind of shows it's all the various vocational um Regional Vocational districts um you know Monch all the way down at 23rd in
terms of per pup expenditures again um trying to stretch the dollar try to be um as uh economically uh um careful with in terms of our uh Town's money um how we really take care a lot of that and supplement that is grants um we're very fortunate I have a wonderful grant
writer um I have a great administrative team that finds those grants um obviously you start off with uh the first uh the first grant slide that talks just specifically just about um the general grants that you uh were have eligible to us through um Federal support um the Perkins Grant is a grant
that spe spe or speaks specifically to um vocational training uh and and we we do have some Personnel that fall under that um the Ida Grant uh is the grant that supports special education um again we do have some staffing that's along
with that uh that are part of that and obviously Title One um supports uh is funds that go along with supporting families uh of low income um so yes we do have over a million dollars in those federal grants and obviously as everybody knows if you watch the news um
some of the conversation supposed be going to be happening to that um hopefully that won't be the situation but uh obviously that would have an impact um on our budget uh in terms of competitive grants um so far this year monitech has been able to
uh earn $2.7 million uh through competitive grants you can see that's a nice growth over um uh the last couple years and then the following slide there kind of breaks down where what those grants um fall into so there's you know cyber security Grant uh the partnership
planning and the implementation grants uh speak to a program that I going to talk to a little bit about a special program that we started uh called MVP Academy um Equitable access Grant is a grant that's just helped to support students of the special populations um after they've been enrolled at montech
to support their needs on the clean energy center Grant again will be part of MVP I'll talk about that a little bit I I'll talk about some of those other grants um in in some other slides there um we do still have two outstanding grants that we're hoping that we're going to hear from so we're hoping that we're going to be able to say that by
the end of um this fiscal year that we've had uh form million dollar uh that we've earned in Grants so I I spoke a little bit about MVP Academy and I'm going to try to be very brief about it everyone I'm sure or most of you are probably aware of the concerns that are
happening at vocational schools in terms of capacity uh Monte Tech typically has an incoming Freshman Class of around 350 360 students yet we have 850 applicants so we are saying no to the vast majority
of the applicants to Monte Tech um so a few years ago just after I became superintendent uh we decided that we wanted to try to see if there was other ways to support those students um and we started an initiative called MVP Academy we earned a lab modernization Grant
which typically is used to enhance a a particular shot program uh what we chose to do was to we found a uh Warehouse about a mile and a half down the road from mon Tech uh we have leased that warehouse our students are currently
completing our students instruction uh converting that warehouse into three vocational training programs for um currently uh house carpentry electrical and eventually we'll be adding Plumbing um and we we partnered with three of the of our uh sending districts
uh who have had significant weight lists um Fitchburg Gardner and narraganset and what we put in place is we've basically created uh a new version of what's called an after dark program after dark programs vocational schools obviously
the kids leave uh at 2:30 and they were wide open so why not use it for Workforce training so selan districts were working with their sending districts to have you know a dozen you know 15 students come over um in the afternoon and get a couple hours of
Workforce training we decided to enhance that um because when we T talk to those superintendents they let us know that they their kids couldn't do something after school they're they're they're serving as the child care care for their siblings they're doing a job that their
parents need um so we said let's do it during the school day so we're the first district that has a program like this we have currently 80 students from those districts coming and accessing the the house carpentry and the electrical training the most important thing is
those students stay enrolled in their sending District so the Chapter 70 money remains in their District the only money that mon Tech accesses is the the small amount of money that comes from those students being chapter 74 which is vocational trained um so that's a
reimbursement that comes back to Monte Tech um we truly believe that this is the way to address the capacity issue with vocational schools we truly believe that other just checks hopefully uh will do this uh we are very proud when a member of the of Commonwealth
corporation which is a state level organization that does a lot of Grants to support Workforce training uh referred to that they were looking forward to see the mon Tech model might become something that other people do so we're very pleased with that um and you can see the numbers of kids that we had from the different towns and everything
else um but a great program but very much because we have those grants a grant that we are probably one of the most proud grants we have uh is uh this young adults with disabilities Grant again coming through Commonwealth Corporation um Everybody deserves the
Dignity of being able to get a job and Workforce training for folks with uh especially Young folks with disabilities is relatively non-existent there's some great organizations out there that are doing a fantastic job um but unfortunately a lot of these folks are being ignored and montech uh this this
grant was offered we were the only vocational school in the state that uh stepped up to do this grant um we provided uh Workforce training to about a dozen students last year uh this year we've doubled that we're up to 25 students the goal of this grant is to
complete with job placement uh we had some great uh the Haniford in town here uh helped up and and and did a fantastic job supporting our students Stillman Farm stepped up they hired some of our students at the end um of this program I call them students they're they're they're older folks uh it's anyone from
18 to you know early 30s um but it was just fantastic and watching these kids get their certificate and during the the program uh at the end of the program was fantastic so again a great Grant uh sometimes we have to bundle grants uh I'll just quick go we we need we truly
are are one of our um both of our uh spray booths are super old but one of them basically was built when the school was built um we had goals of replacing that um spray booth and we when we put it out to bid it and came back we had some pretty good sticker shock when that
came back and realized that's not going to happen um so we sat back and we just went looking for more grants and we took some Perkins money we were able to earn this dony grant um and just most recently we were found out that we had the funds and we could start the process to get that so again the goal is to get
these grants and not have to require the towns and we also uh most recently did get an anous donation that's allowing us to also get some more some uh heavy equipment operators is a huge piece right now um and getting that training
through simulators is going to be great uh want to make sure everybody knew you may have been seeing it in the newspapers there are some talks about um admissions where it stands right right now uh on the left of that slide uh I want to make sure everybody understands that monitech has been adjusting its
every year for the past four or five years Monch has been adjusting its um criteria for how to accept students um making it much more uh able for folks to uh score their full points on the selective criteria most recently we
expanded the grade from 100 to 70 um would get you full credit for points and everything else however just these past couple weeks if you aren't aware um the department of Elementary SEC education has a proposal that would change admissions policies across the Commonwealth for vocational schools what
it would do is it would allow districts to use two um selective criteria attendance and discipline uh attendance number right now they have is 10 absences for per year uh over the two years um of middle school and discipline
which would only allow to be assessed things like what's essenti called The Big Three from chapter 37h and a half which is assaulting staff um bringing a weapon to school or um drugs and sale of drugs and in substance abuse um
thankfully in most of our towns thank goodness you don't see a whole lot of that happening the middle school so basically the vast vast vast majority of students get full credit for that that would then allow if those students make it through those two hurdles that would allow um to have a lottery so it's a
qualified Lottery um that would be done as long as your District agreement specifically spells out how you're dividing things up it would be done by town so what would happen is we would have some time in lunenberg or we would do a one one uh that just have people
come in and do it all around at mon Tech uh the students would apply if they qualify for the lottery um literally it's a random Lottery pulling names uh and you know the count for students uh that whatever that is Again by Town um that those students be the students that
get in uh the most important piece of that is that it's by town because if it was just random the biggest concern would be you have no idea as a community how many students you would have end up going at mon Tech um Fitchburg you know
obviously is the largest of our towns you know 250 to 300 applicants you can only imagine what would happen to their budget if it was 88 kids is what they typically have but let's say just because the wear the balls fall fall they now have 110 kids going to Monte Tech that would devastate their
community and certainly something similar could happen to lonster or to lunenberg but the good thing is is that um they do allow they will allow us to do it by town so you'll be able to keep track and know what your approximate number is going to be in terms of the budget um Co-op is a huge piece we want
to thank all our Community Partners uh that support our students Co-op allow students instead of spending time in shop they go directly to the real world in terms of Workforce we have lots of Co-op Partners in lunenberg that are supporting our students last year we set a brand new record of 235 students out
on Coop basically one in every three of our Juniors and seniors was out on Co-op uh this year we're already at 228 so we're pretty confident we're going to set another record so we thank everybody for that um we gave you a couple charts that have just the post-graduation plans of our students um you will see because
some people have concerns about well you know are there's some kids going to college well yes we have programs where kids have to go to college when they finish the example that I keep going to is you're going to see when you if you look at it um our kids from our health occupations program when they graduate
they have their they have their CNA they could go and become a CNA and they could have a job but as many people know the salary for a CNA is nothing spectacular it'd be hard to live on that job so for them to in order to move up they need to go to college um so we do have shops
that go to college we have if you look at our construction trades the vast majority of those kids are going right into the workforce I want to make sure you're aware that we do have a wonderful consing Ed Ed program called montech kns um the best part of that is we offer no
cost um Workforce training for adults um in most of our different uh trades certainly our construction trades um this is a program that goes through uh Mass higher uh which allows again people to get no cost training it's it's goes over for several months
excuse me uh and this is an example of some of those graduates that we've had and we're just about to go for round 10 so we're we're looking forward to get that Grant and for what it's worth you can see that all the different towns that participate and uh lunenberg actually is our fourth uh highest
participants uh rate in terms of all our programs that we have in uh currently in continuing ed and last but not least uh haven't met Jennifer but I'm going to make sure we have that happen we love to do community projects if there's a project that needs to be done around the
town please reach out to us should excellent good um you know last year we did a wonderful um energy audit uh for Town Hall our our HVAC uh Property Maintenance kids uh came out it was the first time they were able to use that equipment because we earned that again
by a capital skills Grant um but if there's stuff that we can do give us a call so I'll turn it over to Tammy thank you I get the not exciting part to talk about but nonetheless so on the the PowerPoint slides that we gave
you I'm starting off on the foundation budget rate section um it's was a separate section because because our um I talk about the importance of the foundation budget with our budget because we spend so closely
just to what our foundation budget is I thought it's important just to start you off with what what is the foundation budget what makes it up when we talk about rates the this spreadsheet shows you the rates that the state assigns to
11 categories Administration instructional leadership classroom teachers uh going across the top you can see those then going down the side they assign rates for each grade level um as they get older gets more expensive to
educate those students and as you see Vo ational education is the most expensive form of Education excluding special education so for regular type Ed vocational gets the highest rates and
I've highlighted those rates for you couple of um categories to point out is vocational education gets a higher rate these are per pupil these rates that you see here um in classroom teachers well
because our trades because of of safety concerns we have we have smaller ratios of students to teachers so we have um more costly for um teachers another uh large difference between the foundation
rates between um comprehensives and vocals are in the instructional materials equipment and technology and again we're purchasing pieces of equipment like a lathe that could be $150,000 and there could be four of
those in a shop so our equipment um and just our general supplies of wood copper all that is tends to be more expensive so we get higher rates per pupil there as well as um in operation and maintenance of
course we we sustain all our own operations of Maintenance so all our plowing everything is done at the school level as well as maintaining all the equipment so there's some differences there so you can see that just at the
base level for vocational education we get $1 1,354 29 per pupil so when um Mr Brown spoke about that mvp program and he said we get the difference between the
regular education student and the vocational student the bill we sent we will be sending the communities is the difference between that 17,0 354 per pupil and the 11,714 that you can see below it which
is the high school level the the numbers above it are what's called above Bas so you get additional funding for these types of special populations so you have your special education lowincome eel's
you can see for for each student that you have in those groups you get what's called incremental incre inrees so you can see those numbers below and we happen to be um as a school in lowincome group six which is based on
the number of free and reduced lunch students you have in your District so we're group six so we get additional 5662 per pupil that kind of makes sense now those numbers come into play when you look on the next slide which is
Monte Tech's specific Foundation budget so you can see in column 7 we have 1,488 vocational students that's our foundation enrollment so what Foundation enrollment is made up of is the students
that live in our 18 member towns that are actually enrolled and attend monite Tech the students that live in our 18 member towns that attend another Vocational School under the school choice program as well as we have a
postsecondary uh practical nurse program that is also chapter 74 so they're count the pupils that live in our district towns are also counted in there so that's the 1488 then what the state does is they
just multiply out those pupils by those rates I showed you on the SC um slide before by each category so the administration category gets multiplied out so forth to give you that first
number in row 12 column 7 of the 25 million the other to the right columns 8 through 13 as I discussed those are duplicative counts of students but they're the above base I like to point
out that in column 8 it says specialed in District 74 we have well over 74 special ed students at Monte Tech we actually have in the 230s but if you look at the legend down on the side of this it says
special education is an assumed it's an assumed percentage of enrollment so for non-vocational K to2 regions they assume that number at 3.97% of your enrollment if you're a vocational school they assume it to be
4.97 Which is far fewer than non voke schools have and voke schools have but in any event that's the additional bump you get there we have no students who are special ed tuition out um you have to be able to attend monitech to be a
student there we do have short-term placements but they can't be in um long-term residential placements so we have nothing there moving over to column 12 we have 14 El students at the school that is actual and you get the above
Bays for those and then our lowincome pupils 484 and you get the above base for those so they add all that up and they give in our foundation budget that's the number they calculate for Monte tech for FY 26
it's calculated at 30, 99,1 14 if you divide that out by the number of pupils you'll see that our foundation budget per pupil spend is 20,8 27 now
Foundation budget in our case is synomous synonymous with required minimum net School spending so that means that's the minimum we have to spend on educating our pupils and it cannot count meals Transportation Debt
Service Capital expenditures those are all outside of that and above um so those numbers come into play later that's why I like to point those out the next slide is a brief summary of our
Chapter 70 state aid for this year so I'll briefly point out Rows 2 through five I just showed you how our foundation budget was calculated on the previous Slide the next Row three the required District contributions that's for the 18 member
towns of montech using the wealth or the wealth model that the state uses to come up with each community ities required contribution to their school districts so for mon Tech of all 18 communities it's calculated at that 12
227609 they take the difference and they come up with your foundation Aid or Chapter 70 for FY 26 in our case that's an increase of 29,5 N7 if that number we are not hold
harmless this year we talked about the hold harmless with the 211 um we were hold harmless in FY 25 and what that means is the difference in your state aid
coming in in row five is less than what they would give you for the minimum per pupil so in our case the minimum per pupil this year would be 11,600 so in some instances your Aid is
calculated to be less than what you were getting in the current year and that's why they call it hold harmless they're not cutting your Chapter 70 but they're not giving you any increases to it above the minimum that's set for that year in
this case it's set at the $75 per pupil we are more so we're getting that $2 29,579 Foundation enrollment the budget we talked about the district contributions we're going to see that in a minute we just went over how Chapter
70 is calculated in our required net School spending I want to point out here you can see that our required net School spending goes up by $872,000 from 25 to 26 we're only
getting 290,000 in Chapter 70 increase so the real burden in gets put on our communities through the formula you can see communities are already going up 580,000 at the minimum that's that funding situation we
talked about or it's not adequate funding for school districts communities the next slide is our fiscal year 26 budget summary so I break it down into the categories of spending so
we talked about I'm looking at 20 six now we talked about our net School spending requirement on the previous slides there it is transportation our transportation costs for 26 are
2,544 520 that's for the 30 buses that bring our students to school every day and bring them home we are going into our fourth year of our contract which is an optional year we do a three-year contract with two adopt two optional
years and this was a pretty low increase for us um as well as we were able to eliminate one of the buses so you can see going up only 28,000 in that regards was very favorable to the district our
above net School spending is proposed to be 60641 that is 1.9% above our requirement so again we keep it very close close to our actual net School spending Capital 450 and
vehicles 500 the two of those make up approximately a $10,000 decrease from the current year so you can see our total budget for 26 34 m6411 344 which is an increase of
3.51% which a lot of that being driven by our net School spending requirement going up 2.9% % the next category is our Chapter 70 we saw how that's calculated which brings us to the required minimums which is titled one
the 12, 227609 again that number is determined by the state the next section is is the other component of the assessment so here we take our transportation plus our
above net School spend and add those up from that we subtract our estimated Transportation Aid which we're estimating at 2 million based on our charry sheets we have a regional transportation fund so Regional School
Districts receive reimbursement back for transportation we're looking at approximately 78% reimbursement back for 26 if we get above Mony Tech gets above what we've estimated in the year the
school committee vot votes instead of putting that into excess and deficiency which is our free cash similar to T they vote to put a piece of that into what's called our regional transportation revolving fund that monies have to be
used in the following year to reduce Community assessments for our transportation component so that's what that 200,000 is we're proposing putting 250,000 of our excess and deficiency
account against this category leaving net transportation and operating to all our towns 7,930 which you'll see how those sh go our capital budget 500,000 we propose putting
250,000 to from me and to that leaving 250 which leaves a total assessment for all communities 13, 178 539 or 6.11% the next slide talks about our our
balances which I like to point out a little separately so certified excess and efficiency I have TBD because I cannot tell you our certified balance it's still with the division of local Services Department of Revenue but I can
tell you we can have approximately 1.6 to 1.7 million in our end account we can hold up to 5% of our operating budget in that account I estimate that we will have
somewhere between 1 million and 1.2 million in our certified balance but I can't say that till I get word back from do and we're proposing using approximately half of that or 500,000 to offset
assessments we put a small amount each year into our stabilization account so you can see the balance there 37174 3 we try to maintain a stable capital budget each year and fill in what we need for capital building
projects in those amounts we are buil slowly building the stabilization account so that those mid to higher range projects that we have coming down the pike like our electrical main gear we can tap into these the stabiliz funds
so that we can still maintain consistency in our assessments to our communities as well as our opep account we have just shy of 50,000 into that we put nominal amounts into that each year
as well um as you know that's the other post-employment benefits that we have to fund for future health insurance and other fringe benefits for employees and retirees the next slide gives you a
breakdown by function of what goes into that $34 million budget so you can see couple of actual years the appro approved FY 25 budget as opposed to what we're proposing in 26 and I'm going to
talk about a c quickly about a couple of the large increases there I'll also point out I just spoke about opep and stabilization you can see at the bottom of this this page transfer to opab 20,000 for FY 26 and transfer to
transfer to stabilization 30,000 the next slide speaks to some of the larger increases or what makes up that that increase we have a 3% Cola in our collective bargaining that's already
been agreed to for FY 26 and with step and column movements that comes to uh 500 8,731 of an increase our fringe benefits we're
estimating a 5% increase in that for and that's 438,000 of the increase utilities and insurance so the insurance component of that would be um your property your comprehensive your
liability those type of insurances we're looking at approximately $96,000 increase in those and then AC academic and Vocational programs equipment and supplies we we slashed what was
requested from our um shops and academic programs quite a bit but still comes up to a approximately 103,000 of an increase over FY 25 and again we're purchasing steel
wood food um so our supplies do not get any cheaper each year they go up just to run the programs and have enough the students the next slide shows you the
this is the required local contributions by town and it shows you a quick glance at the changes so focusing on lunenberg you can see that the foundation enrollment goes from 99 to 102 101
excuse me increase of 2 students the required minimum contribution goes from 1,172 254 to 12771 or an increase of
98,0 457 the next two slides show you how that's broken down and that's and how the state calculates that and that is by the community wealth model that I spoke of at the start of the
presentation so every Community get has this exact calculation done for them to find out what the state figures they can afford to pay for their schools they use two numbers at the base the property
values and the income levels of the residents so you can see one rows 1 through three they're using the 2024 equalized property valuations for lunenberg so you can see the number they multiply that by the property percentage
that 3243 is used for every single community that percentage they come up with the local effort for lunenberg from property that's 7, some percentage of 1.56 N9 again across
the board all communities to get lunenberg effort from income 8, 96443 they add the two of those together and they call that your combined effort yield that is what the state says they feel lunenberg can afford to pay for its
all its school districts that it it belongs to 16, 6081 199 rows eight and nine eight is the foundation budget attributed to lunenberg so it's lunenberg portion of
lunenberg public schools Foundation budget as well as lunenberg piece of mon Tech Foundation budget that's the $24 Million number they take 82.5% of that because every community no matter how
wealthy at least gets a minimum of 17.5% of state aid Chapter 70 so they come up with a value there and they say which number is lesser what the town can afford to pay or that 82 A5 so for
lunenberg the Lesser is what they've calculated you can afford to pay 16 million we shoot over to the right side they say what's lunenberg currently paying to its for its required local 13768 233 they then multiply that out by
the municip Revenue growth factor which is 4.08 for lunenberg that number varies by Town calculated by the Department of Revenue so they come up with lunenberg preliminary contribution 14,
32997 s they compare that to 10 what what they think you can afford to pay or um and they say there's a shortfall there which I've cut down to roow 21 this a shortfall of
2,278 222 or 9.42% so in row 23 it says if the shortfall is below 75% we're going to add two we're going to multiply 2% onto what we calculated
for you and add that as well to your required contribution so that's how they come up with row 26 l Lunen BG's required FY 26 minimum contribution to its school districts of
14605 342 the next slide shows you how that gets a portioned between lunenberg public schools in Monte Tech so I'm looking at rows 5 through n because that pertains to
26 so you can see the uh Foundation enrollment for lunenberg 1603 Foundation enrollment from H Tech 101 what's Lunen BG's portion of each of um those communities Foundation budget
you can see the numbers there lunenberg or Monte Tech represents 88.7% of Lunen BG's total Foundation budget so we get 8.7% of that 14 million 605 342 which
they've calculated out to be the pre required minimum as well as you can see lunenberg public is represents 91.3 so that's where they're 13 334 631 comes into place the next slide is a breakdown of
Lunen BG's two years assessment so what's happening in FY 25 as opposed to FY 26 Foundation budget which is the the number of pupils times our
2,820 per pupil spending that's with a 2 million the required minimum contribution we just showed you how that was calculated lunenberg portion of monx operating assessment so lunenberg
represents 6.79% of Monch operating assessment that is calculated and it's in your budget book by lunenberg Foundation enrollment account of 101 divided into our total Foundation enrollment number that's
where the 6.79% comes into play the capital assessment for lunenberg is is calculated by your school attending children number in grades 1 through 12
so my office reaches out to the school district every year and gets your school attending children number from for lunenberg grades 1 through 12 we take that number divide it into the total School attending children in our
district and that's how we get the um apportionment for Lunen BG's Capital piece of Mony Tech which is 6.49% FY 26 an important note that's also lunenberg quota number for The
Freshman Class of um incoming freshmen so you get 6.49 9% of the freshman class that was just voted on last evening by our school committee of 360 students so that's how your assessments calculated
so you can see where the proposed you the breakdown of all our communities how the assessments look for all our communities um which I don't need to go into detail for you because I've I've already pretty much showed you how lunenberg shakes out but that is the end
of my speaking piece and I apologize if I took too much of your time but I'm happy to answer any questions you guys understand all that y actually yes you can pass out the quiz oh good and I apologize for time's sake
I didn't want to take too long but I do apologize I know I went a little long no and I I appreciate the the recent where are you on the budget of you voted as your school committee has voted on it yes voted last evening last evening
yes all right um any questions down the Mike no I mean this is all state mandated essentially most most of of the budget increase is that's why we remain very close to our required net School
spending number um fortunately it's because of those grants that superintendent Brown spoke about at the start we're able to purchase an $800,000 spray booth from Grants our budget and our even our entitlement grants if
grants are caught even entitlement grants our budget would look very different different we would be we'd either be making Cuts in the district we wouldn't be able to purchase the newer equipment so we've been very fortunate in our grants that's all I um so I appreciate
that you're going through everything and you know you guys are going through the formula um we sit here you know we have to balance our all the priorities and um you know you know sometimes we ask this question to different apartments because
you know the Departments come and present and they're like they would like everything they would like and you know when we talk with them you know we have to balance you know do you know is this really a reasonable request knowing of The Limited funds that the town has you
know we push it back that's a gentle push back yes my question for you you know and that's what's hard you know your assessment has gone up by 6.85% % um last year we had to pass an over an override to to support our school
district we have another you know big deficit and we can't just I'll tell you they're getting close to half as much with extra money how you in the community of vacational schools how do you see this playing out for small
communities you know like us um I also saw the general spending so while we were paying um 11,840 uh dollars per pupil one of the columns that you had out of the same
column Fitchburg pays $4,600 yes um you know and and I don't want to I mean Sterling they're paying $6,000 per people I mean how how do you see this being sustainable for communities like us how can we keep
investing in more in some students and not all great question mhm it's not sustainable it's not no I and we that's why we have to keep um advocating to our
legislators to because our budget the schools piece of of Lunen BG's increase equates the part we have control over equates to about $112,000 of the $10,000 the rest is from the state
formula which to your point based Bas on the wealth Factor Fitchburg has a lower per pupil AOL has a lower Harvard Holden they are paying 16 18,000 per pupil lunenberg
14 um it's not it's not sustainable we agree with you we have to agree 100% And we work with the legislators too to right I mean project 211 that I was mentioned earlier it's it's what needs
the steps need to be taken um I know the the the word is that they're forming a commission uh to take a look at the formula uh what I've been hearing is the earliest they would expect the formula to change be 2029 it's a long way away
um so you know again we Mas um massachus Association School Superintendent is a big support of 21 um because we do see that this is as Tammy said it's something needs to change what I worry um is that it's going to be a breaking
point I mean lunenberg I think our school our children I think is about quarter of our children are under poverty line um so our numbers are definitely going up um but you know you have a town that has you know when when
the property value is being assessed for for everybody well a quarter of our population is not living in those properties with a really high value and and what I worry is that it's going to get to a Breaking Point and if we don't
you know it can get really ugly if we get to a breaking point where we're fighting you know trying to provide for our schools but we're mandated to do elsewhere and it'll be great if um you know if there is forces coming from everywhere trying to help these small
communities speak on that note certainly yes that's it I have a question um when you answered Mike you said most most of the expenses are State mandated What expenses in this budget are not State
mandated yes so if you look at the um the budget summary on my presentation we are above net School spending by 66,000 so that is not
mandated as well as our capital is not mandated so that's 500,000 so for the 500,000 of the capital piece we're putting back 250,000 of the school's savings account
we'll call it so the assessment the net assessment to the communities that 18 is 2 250,000 for that piece and the other the other piece of the assessment takes into account
Transportation which is mandated um but but the 66,000 we are above we are and that goes that kind of goes back to when superintendent Brown on his very first slide very first showed you where we are
in spending against vocational schools in the state it's because we want you to know that we hear you we we do and we're spending in the bottom third of against our peers so we're really trying to keep
that as tight a rain as possible and I hope that answered your question it does so is there a percentage of wiggle room in what we need to pay because of that those expenditures that are not State mandated so if we say
cut 100,000 from that above lunenberg would see us 6% so you would see 6,000 of that decreased okay yeah I I just had uh I just looked at um um the budget increase for the entire
school yes is 3.51 yes that's pretty good how did you do that how did what was your uh did you have to cut programs did you had to cut things get to that so for fortunately or unfortunately we did we
did Slash approximately 1.8 million out of our first version of the budget as a vocational school we're fortunate that when we make our first set of cuts it's from supplies and equipment so somebody a shop wanted a
$60,000 piece of equipment we said sorry not next year before we have to go to faculty we didn't add faculty um we we do have the MVP program faculty but those everything that's associated with MVP is fully Grant
funded so we use no chapter 7 or no Community Monies to fund that program um so we're able to before we go to the Personnel we're able to go to the supply and Equipment well which is where we
went what was your health insurance increase was it so I'm projecting 5% our health insurance plans run from December 1st to November 30th so I already know what our first five months of that
fiscal year health insurance is because it's part of this year's so we had a we had a 6% increase this year we are self-insured um so this is a very
optimistic conservative budget increase for Fringe for health I I know um so to me that's the number one thing how are you spending the money and it seems at a 3.5% total with you know it's it's with the way things are and what we
see in our town level at our schools and our other departments that's uh um pretty good I I I congratulate you on that um as far as how what we pay is as you mentioned based on the state
calculations and if we don't agree with the state calculations we can talk uh but you guys and us are both kind of stuck yeah in the system and that's kind of where it is um do you have any suggestions to what
we should be asking our state reps and and Senators to do find more yeah basically that's what it comes down to the state the state needs to take more resp responsibility uh for the fund the general Chapter 70
funding money um you know when it pours down to the towns and as you said and it can be the slightest you know we we know in you know lunenberg is example of a town where you know suspense went up all of a sudden on properties uh that had a huge effect on on your folks but as an
individual you know homeowner that's not necessarily your fault year it's it's whoever came in and assessed the property and everything else uh so factoring in taking taking a look at how that impacts people that that's the big piece thank
you any questions um who who's your busing with so we have AA we have D and we have McCarthy we bid by town we put root
packages together um because I find that a debus Who services the Fitchburg lunenberg area and have their garaging there they're cheaper whereas a McCarthy who has um who has their garages in
hubad and they service those areas and AA does our WUSA region as and they do the wusd schools so we find that we get better pricing when we do it that way because we're so outstretched okay but you do say that um
there's one more option you after this fiscal year yes yes you expect a pretty big increase I think we're seeing big increases no again it's approximately 5% but it's
a it's a option that is solely in the school's hand to decide that's why I only ask the school committee to approve one year at a time because I'd like to see what the market looks like at the time if all of a sudden I don't think it'll happen but all of a sudden
competition came in and they were sharpening their pencils and that's the issue lack of competition in some towns they know only one bus company is bidding on the roots so they feel like they can go up um so I wait to kind of
see what the market looks like closer to that time frame so this time next year we'll be looking at should we go out to rebid or use the rates is there any way of comparing the deal you're getting from d with the deal
we're getting from D so it's uh certainly is public information to ask what we pay per bus per day so I'm happy to share that happy to share that with the town manager to share it with you 100% okay I don't know if I guess my
question is more like is there a way to have an Apples to Apples type comparison on it I mean you are our busing setup is different than you I will imagine you have teered um because you your your Elementary grades
your high school you probably have two or three busing each day where we have one one bus each day um to and from so it might not ever be a full Apples to Apples but I'm always happy to
share any information you're looking for do you drop students off at their homes or at a one location no we we we explicitly tell the amilies when they first enroll is that you can be up to a mile away and we we will take that mile when we need to yeah unless it's unsafe
we look at Case by case if if they're on a main street or there's for some other safety reason but our rule of thumb is no because we have so many kids we're picking up so far apart that our our buses would start at 4:00 a.m. do you do
you find as it is our buses are rolling just after 5:00 a.m. do you think that that factors into the cost of your busing as well well it could it could because we require you as a Regional School we're required to pick up
students within a mile of their home and these are high school kids so you know that's a different story than a little um so that could because there's less pickups yeah I I I find it crazy that buses stop and then go to the next
driveway and stop and then go to the next driveway um it's a different world I what especially when you're behind them yeah yes true true story it it maybe you mentioned it you got high school kids
which are 14 to 18 versus 5-year-old six-year old 7y old that's totally different yeah tomato juice yes yeah you know the percentage of students that ride the bus as opposed to those who don't who may drive who may be older whose parents may bring
them we have less well handful of parent drop offs um we have approximately what what do we have like 200 students that drive yeah and we've definitely seen an increase in in student drivers to the point that we attempted to expand our
student parking lot and found that if we did that we were going to have to install a drainage Pond and we were not going to go about doing that so unfortunately we still lack the parking but uh these last two years we've seen an explosion in student drivers so do you have data like per Town how many are
unrolled and how many use the busing system yes we do have that because when we do we have to attest that at least 75% ridership but when we do uh bus evacuations we do actual accounts we
start the year with everybody officially gets a bus stop so we plan for everybody then as the year goes on we see we we have limited part work so we can only allow our students who are on Co-op or who have a designated need to have an
after school job they support you know their families or help the families um so so we have to limit we probably have more kids driving as well if we didn't have limited space but we certainly have those numbers of riders ships based on
our busy vs yep and I'm happy to share aw you know it great happy to um um I'm looking at the programs that you offer are there programs that you would like to add trades that you would like
to add and are there trades that you know that are falling out of need favor um so uh I guess what i' say in terms of the the fing IDs only thing I would say is there is a set of of vocations that the state has identified
as I think the phrase they use is declining um we do have one program C cabet making uh that falls into that category um the reality is with cabinet making is that with the onset of CNC machines and so forth that you know that the the person the person doing the
actual cabinet work is being replaced by a machine in in many ways um but we still know that there's need for that you know that we in especially in the communities areas that we live now um to be honest we don't talk a lot we did just add the veterinary science program
uh about uh at this point it's going to be about seven years ago um but the one thing that we know again going back to the capacity issue is if I sat down here and said that montech is looking to build a brand new school and uh if you don't if
you didn't hear the last year wi year um proposed a new school and it was going to be $455 million I don't think that I'd be getting a good answer if I sat down and propose that to everybody right now uh so to be honest we don't really think a lot about adding new program
because we just don't have the space okay all right um any other Gob backs for the I don't think Jay have joined any questions from the the community we're just glad they there
yeah no I I mean yeah trades yeah trades are very important I thank you thank you thank you very much and thank you to uh lunenberg public schools for being gracious having us letting us come first
so thank you all very much call me we'll build something I don't suppose I can remind you that we're looking for a superintendent right is that form you no no sorry no thank you both you're welcome thank
you all right thank you we're on to schools thank you um I this from their um just added it into minutes ago yeah even some is about
a minute ago literally yes working hard over there [Applause] Chris uh do you want me to call the lunenberg school committee to to order yes
okay all right do you want the budget overview Brian need to call us oh okay sorry Brian do you need to call yes it is 8:36 p.m. and I'm calling
the lunberg to order thank you thank you Brian into the booth we still can't really hear the zoom um I do not think this microphone is on so or the speaker I guess is on
all right H so I think we'll start with the um the overview page that's the three col the Four Color one yes um
all right and the link was sent to the you're talking the summary one right yes okay a link was sent to us all of us right or was it just me I'm going to share it with you again right now should have something coming into your
uh email inbox no I have it I okay I just didn't share it with everyone I guess it's in that file yeah okay yeah everything's in there okay like 10 things in there okay I find it again my
[Music] [Music] apologies [Music] okay we have it up in front of it I have it up in front of me at least and it's being shared I don't know if I can zoom so I guess we can start with introductions
okay yeah let's do that um so hello good evening welcome to the new members I'm Kate Burnham I am the superintendent of schools uh I have Juliana hansam here who is our director of special services she's a familiar face here at the table
the last couple of years new to the district this year Dr Gilson is our uh Director of Finance and administration and Dr bookis is our um director of teaching and learning uh so hopefully we have everybody that can
answer any questions that you might have about uh the budget this evening so we can start with that onepage overview um if you start with um our starting
point uh for developing the budget for FY 26 um back in uh the spring there was an override and the school committee on June 5th uh voted and approved their budget lines for that uh override
budget uh which was 24.8 Million um back in the fall because we uh lunenberg was um received additional Chapter 70 funding with the final state budget uh the school committee requested at special town meeting
that those additional Chapter 70 monies be allocated over to the school department budget uh so that gave us an additional uh $3 31,8 to so our total adjusted budget for
the school department um for fy2 is uh 24, 883376888 there's questions about how the override whether it was part of the budget and everything else um by law it has to go
to the school to the stated purpose the first year after that technically it can go elsewhere right um so I think there's a there's some questions that have been asked that can have a technical answer
and a practical answer I think the Practical answer is the way we we budget in town is we always start from the prior Year's budget so when you're talking about percentages that override will always be
kind of in the school budget even though technically it doesn't have to be so yes there's no bait and switches going on it's not that we put it into the schools and it you know it's going to magically show up anywhere else so um I just kind of want to get that out there because
I've heard some questions on that I've seen maybe some um you know again technical answer versus practical answer so 24883 376 is um as you said the starting point
correct so um we H we had an original number from the interim Town manager but then uh more recently we got an updated figure um from our new town manager and
that new Revenue number for fy2 six uh is $94,900 increase from what we have um currently in fy2 um side by side on this overview chart you can see um that there are two
other budgets for compar Arison um I think uh we'll go through and talk about um uh all of them sort of simultaneously so if we um thought about
um relative to Personnel uh included in each of these different versions of a budget there are uh 28.5 FTE in Personnel reductions in the town manager version of the budget
7.9 FTE in the needs-based budget and all positions would remain in a level service budget when we take a look at the level service budget relative to the salary increases um we're looking at Apples to
Apples so if we were able to keep every position that we have currently in this school year next year so it's a comparison from fy2 to F FY 26 level service um it's um the salary lines
would be an increase of 5.5% or a total of 9449 I have a question um what happened to the $29 million budget because I thought what you presented yep so it
because it would be helpful to me if we could stick with this comparison of the level service so the level service that I talked about back in um January and we talked a little bit about um kind of like that worst case scenario because
right about that time is when there was um a Federal grant freeze that was announced and people were concerned what would what would happen to our budget if we didn't have our federal monies so that two 29 figure was um with the gap
of a 3.5 was if we had level service and we had zero other funding applied to our to our budgets that situation to the best of our knowledge at this point is not something that we're anticipating to be happening so
the level service numbers that you have in front of you now apply all of the things that are listed here that original number that was put out did not have revolving funds applied as offsets anywhere it did not have the typ title
uh grants applied as offsets and we apply those as offsets in in every single budget year this is the presentation you gave to the school committee on 2E 26 this is the presentation that I gave to the school committee last night I'm
I'm talking I'm I when I ask you yes oh yes the slide was part of that that discussion however actually I think that was part of the uh the February 5th discussion well I'm looking presentation from because we included all all of those
numbers from the previous two presentations we pulled uh information from those in what I'm what I'm trying to say is this information that we presented last night and that we're starting with tonight is really what we think is the
most pertinent updated uh numbers to be looking at with different versions of a budget I I hear you I just hope you appreciate that the town has been living in the fear of of a $29 million
budget that you know and until you know about 10 days ago this was the number had been given to the town and so so that evening when I presented that slide I I actually stated that that was not a number that we were looking for in a
budget that that was not a scenario that we were looking at or planning for but that was to answer a question relative to what would what would our budget look like if we did not have those other
funding sources I was I was pretty clear after I put that up that that was not a situation that we were looking for that was not a number that we were asking for nothing that we were planning for okay thank you okay so in the context of this
overview document there are links to the Personnel cuts that would be attached to each of these um I will say that the school committee has not yet finalized um which particular Cuts would be part of the Town manager's budget
however they recognize and they're committed to that we will have to figure out what personnel reductions are made in order to get to that number it's a matter of fine-tuning um adding
another cut and removing a cut that is less desirable uh to reach that budget number so if I can just one second who who watched the school committee meeting last night on a and I did as well all right so just um if you have five hours
to spare tonight um you you can watch it but the end you know the the my take on it is that they are still
working through how to prioritize where to cut whether there's fees that can be applied um and they did not take um a vote on a on a budget that is
typically taken prior to come into to us last year and this year we have found oursel in a situation where we have have potential significant budget shortfalls so we've we have done kind of a a two-step maybe even a three-step as it
relates to the to the budget but as it stands today the school committee has not um taken a position on this on this budget so we're kind of hearing a little bit of um in progress um at this point uh that is going to lead to maybe a
future discussion when we talk about how to get from here to town meeting and some of the upcoming steps that we have um but um that's kind of where we are today that is everyone agreement this school committee okay
okay so I guess my my point of clarification is for anybody who clicks into these links and and takes a look at the list that list is there's potential that that list will change when the school committee makes their their final decision on which
positions or later in this uh form the expense lines that they cut um relative to the health insurance um as you know we had the 14.84% uh
increase um to all departments in town and you can see what the various uh numbers are within each of these different budgets um the lowest figure is actually in the town manager's uh budget and that's because there are that
many positions reduced in that budget in the um the middle budget the yellow budget the needs based budget with fewer uh staff reductions you see that that number increases and it's actually the same for the level service because even
though there are positions that would be restored for for level service no cuts the positions that are on the cut list for the uh needs budget um none of those particular staff in those positions
currently are taking health insurance so that's why the number is exactly the same um if if I can stop for one second so I think for Clarity on this form it it should probably State increases associated with each of these
because sometimes it's budget and then I think sometimes you you you say the increase yep but if we do like a walk from where we started to these items it would probably be best to have what the the increases from the prior years
budget so I think the the budget sheets that you have this evening have been modified uh from the the version of the sheets that was provided to the school committee and posted last night and it
does show um a dollar value increase as well as a percentage increase line by line in that which this the health insurance line as an example is in each of those those budgets as well okay um and did you verify these numbers
today we did so do we want to get to that now or do we want to whenever you want to um you can continue going through this if maybe we do a quick finish through with this and then we can come back and and address that one for you um
there are offsets that are included in all of these budgets um we have federal grants uh that we receive annually those are entitlement grants we also pursue um state grants
some of them um competitive and and we've been pretty fortunate uh in recent years to have been awarded several grants uh that are issued through the state um but what you have here if you click into that link it'll give you the
breakdown of those federal grants that we receive every year um as well we've given you a breakout of the dollar value that we have applied as offsets in different portions of the
budget um all against um salaries from our extended day revolving account our facilities revolving account and our athletic revolving account in the case of the Town manager budget uh no athletic revolving account was applied
to salaried positions in the needs or the level Service uh budgets relative to Transportation costs because that's another one of the bigger drivers for for the budget increases um dbus is our general education bus
service the contract rate is going up 7.6% um so you see that line increase uh compared to fy2 and the dollar value there uh 69,3 um vanpool is our special education
transportation service their rate increase uh for next year is a 7% increase and that applies across the board to the Vans to monitors for the B the Vans um however you'll see that in the budget the line has actually
increased 27% % roughly 120,000 um and that's in addition to the percentage increase on the rate we had to budget for additional Vans and monitors so
that's why that line uh is up more significantly um Athletics uh in our budget athletic transportation is up uh and we can talk more about that but the the general over view on that is that
our athletic revolving account really is not robust enough to sustain the the cost for transportation um so we're moving the costs for athletic Transportation into the local budget um we can talk more
about that if um anyone wants to uh explore that a little bit further um there is some offset to the Athletics transportation line in the town manager budget That You
Don't See in the other two that's because uh in order to hit our um our Target and um to be a bit more Equitable across the board and seeing uh Cuts in all areas of the budget um we
have a huddle subscription service that uh we have cameras that record and capture um different games on our field as well as in our gymnasium um that service is roughly about 9,000 a year and it is currently
paid out of the revolving account but if we uh don't keep that Subscription Service uh we can apply that 9,000 from the revolving uh towards the transportation line in the budget to help reduce and get to that town
manager's um Target out of District tuition that o tuition that special education uh tuition placements out of the district um we had to make a a rather large
increase in our initial look at budgets back to to January and early February um based on information that we had at the time um as situations continue to evolve and we get more clarity um knowing what we
know about the individual cas es um we are able to reduce that that line by $310,000 so they're we're budgeting for additional students but making an adjustment based on what we anticipate
um the number of uh placements and the location of those placements I just want to be clear on this so this says a decrease of $310,000 from last year's budget compared to the initial budgets that we put together there's been an adjustment in in that line so if you go
back and look at the um the budget sheets from the February 5th meeting you'll see that that that line is down in this newest version of the budget and that's because we've we've secured additional information relative to the
um the enrollment and the placements that we've been anticipating and budgeting for okay so again I like this sheet yep but it is it's kind of all over the map with respect to the information line by line I think
everything we probably should do is probably with respect to last fiscal year so are you asking for an increase do you need an increase from last fiscal year we do need an increase from last F schal year I I understand the answer y I'm just saying as we project the
information I think it should be um consistent as to what you're sure what you're communicating um as we speak I'm just adding a little notation just for clarity and you probably should use like standard accounting like parentheses for
negatives and um so that it's just it it's easy to it's easy to see CU I think we'll be using this sheet okay I I don't know I'm Su I suspect this is a good summary it's the cheat sheet yeah yep okay kind of hits the
highlights of um the important big elements um driving the the budget this year okay okay um there's a little summary as well about utility increases um the line for electricity was slightly
underfunded this year um I was advised last year during the budget cycle that we didn't need to fund that line to the level that we were funding that line and as it turns out we really should have funded that line at the level that I initially thought that
we needed to fund the line so we're increasing that line not because we're anticipating a large increase rate increase for electricity but because we do need to have that money in the line um gas uh natural gas we're not looking
to um do a a sub a significant uh projected increase there um that's after consultation uh with the facilities Department here in town um as well as um talking to the the vendors um water we
are going to increase the line there um we're we're thinking that that might uh cover us uh it may not be fully sufficient we may need to um eventually apply some revolving funds if that line
uh goes higher than what we're anticipating um but the increases that we've seen in our bill of late are really more a function of um the irrigation that we were doing on the grass fields through last summer because
we were trying to do some restoration work on the fields uh the fields take a beating and they're pretty well worn and for the last two summers we've attempted to um to do some restoration to those really worn areas uh which again led to
the irrigation running and the increase to that water line so we think that that 7,000 in the line should be enough to cover um any regular types of uh increases to the water usage we won't be irrigating to
the extent that we were for the last two summers um each of these has um uh an area here for expense lines the only place that we put expense line Cuts is in the town manager version of the
budget our think think relative to the other two versions is that those may serve as a foundation for a conversation should the school committee want to have a conversation about override and it doesn't make sense for us to severely
slash our expense lines um if we're if we're talking about an override um that said if that conversation happens and we want to make adjustments to expense lines as well we can do that um but all the expense cuts that you see there
again not fully endorsed yet by the school committee but that's what's on the table to get to the number um so what you see there there may still be adjustments uh new things added other things taken off relative to the list
that's embedded here um salary Reserve we are um in contract negotiations with one of our um employee unions and uh there is a salary Reserve built into the budget uh for that um the Sal
Reserve is adjusted in the um the needs and the uh level service because there are more employees that would be carried in those budgets therefore the reserve for increases that should be settled in
a contract negotiation would have to be uh we'd have to include more more um more employees in the line which Union is it uh we're currently negotiating with the par professionals Paris um Chapter 70 uh this number is based on
the governor's budget um as of uh January and the circuit breaker uh offset that's been included across the board all all versions of the budget um that number is exactly the same and that's a 75%
uh rate so essentially if you were looking at the Town manager budget that Target uh comparing that to our needs based or our level Service uh
We've outlined what the Gap the dollar Gap would be um again that's more for the context of a conversation relative to an override if if that discussion uh were to happen um so that's um sort of
the the big picture overview um we can go back now and address the question relative to health insurance okay okay so turn it over to Dr Gilson okay um I actually have a handout if
you'd like it like a hard copy in front of you would you okay let's do that and if you want to pass it out to anybody back in the audience too you you could um as an employee of ludenberg
there are four different health plans and um when Once people are hired here you have an opportunity to elect your health plan as a benefit and the um review took a look at what each benefit
was for those four plans it's there are monthly rates that are paid out by the town um and specifically the school department calculates those um monthly they assume those monthly uh increases
as part of the budget um if you are to look at this uh sheet that I've given you um the plans are identified you can see HMO blue um which is the family plan under that there are 48
employees um that would select that plan for example and I want to focus on this is the page that describes the town manager's budget then you can uh look at if you see HMO blue again that's there
29 individuals that have elected that plan there is a blue family plan um seven PE 17 people are on that and then there's a blue individual and then a blue select so if you look at that table
the fy2 monthly cost to the district was 1, uh8 85211 if you multiply that um and to give it applied a 14.84% increase um and again um so you take
1852 time 1.1 1481 and you get the figure that's in red under HMO blue and that number is uh 200 uh it's uh sorry it's
2,1 um $126 92 96 cents okay um then what is done there is everybody that has elected the ho HMO blue plan is calculated monthly
So based on that new increase um we're we're paying out per uh per month for those 180 employees $229,700 um so um looking across that table there
um if you look at the bottom row that says new monthly FY 26 uh total current health insurance participants if you summarize that entire line with the um with the funding that has been applied
on a monthly basis you're going to come out with uh the number in the green that is red and that number is $35,100 90s and so if you take that number and you multiply it by 12 months in the year
you come up with the FY 26 annual cost per the plan which is um for the town manager's budget we're spending $ 3,661 for in 462 uh
46200 dollars approximately okay so um that is part of our needs based calculation if go to the last page um and I I actually had created a whole
Choose Your Own Adventure to have a little fun and um you know and anybody could do this on their own time if they want to verify the numbers for accuracy but um if you take a look at um the FY 26 number that is computed based on a
14.84% increase that was the correct number in the town manager's budget for insurance if you compare that to the fy2 insurance expense um the dollar difference I have
the dollar difference listed but the percent change is 16% uh 16% uh based on that actual number okay um if we go to the needs-based and the level service
budgets uh we had very few this is all dependent on the number of the headcount that is selecting insurance as part of their benefit as a member in the lunenberg Public Public Schools or town employees so if you compare the FY 26
insurance number we had very few um people in the actually there were none uh that is why the number is is the same for the needs-based and the level service budget same people on the same plan in both or same people on the four
plans in both um so again the percent change was 21.88% there so that is that is our look our detailed look it is a 14.84% uh
14.84% increase but the increase is based on the monthly rate for each one of the four plans and so that is how we got our calculation and if you like math you can calculate it yourself for every one of the plans
everyone should like math yeah um so this was one thing that I kind of asked well through TJ last night um is I I did see that on this needs base you know it's it's a 22 %
actual increase um if we were if we were to state level service um so it's was kind of shocked by that number um so that's why I had asked for kind of double-checking it and and making sure that the the other thing that's a factor too um when you take a
look we went back when we had the override um monies uh and they set their their budget um June 5th with the school committee and we made adjustments to
reflect the health insurance enrollment as of May the previous month our our most upto-date numbers so when you're comparing fy2 you're comparing to the headcount of the employees and the options that they had selected at that
time compared to what our current employees in current enrollment and while the head count may not be different same number of positions the people in the positions are different people have come and gone
um sometimes people who um leave weren't taking insurance but the person we hire to replace them may take insurance or sometimes um they're taking a single uh an individual insurance plan versus a
family plan um and even the employees that we have uh during a year because of a qualifying event like the birth of a child they may move during the year from a single uh plan to a family plan so
that number increases our our health insurance enrollment numbers every single month there's fluctuation in them so it's while we are saying it's fy2 compared to you know FY
26 there's so much uh that changes in this particular uh portion of the budget it's hard to get a really uh succinct comparable uh value there so um
and we have just family we don't have employee and spouse correct employees and it's just the individual family yeah have we looked is that I think in my it's I I'm doing renew for my our
company and uh it's not even worth it not worth it it's really not the price like we actually have a Harvard Pilgrim the a couple is it's almost as expensive as a p an adult and a child see I had
the opposite experience with that it was like but almost half to go from family down to spouse yeah so I mean it's I guess depending on the plan or the provider it can be what they offer to
your teers to your group like yeah I'm sure were you going to say something to too or I think we talked about this last year oh there's people over there but oh okay Mary this is this is a she's
our resident health insurance expert I cheer the PC can you come up to the this is the best thing about like working around teachers they like have the answers and they right I only have the answer cuz I chair the PEC uh so I chair
the PEC uh and most times when we negotiate uh as part of that process it's it's actually a really collaborative process with the town uh we do look at all sorts of options um and it's actually something um I represent the teachers uh our our
largest unit in the PEC and it's something that staff asks about an employee plus one plan uh and the last time that we negotiated a a a Ag and looked at it uh the issue is that the health insurance companies offset to offset those costs they it actually
increases the family plan costs uh and the last time we looked at it we had that many more people on a family plan than who would be seeking the individual plus one that we didn't think it was fair to be um offsetting that cost on the families that's an Essence what
health insurance companies do um I'm sure we'll survey members again uh to see if that interest has shifted at all but it just we could not do that so the people on the family planet we just thought it was too much of a cost burden to them when's the next time a decision is
made relative to uh our contract expires on uh June 30th of this year okay I I mean I I know there's been a lot of discussion on this but we have to get somehow health
insurance under control or else so actually the town manager and I have just set up a meeting uh one of the unique things about lunenberg U this PEC that I keep mentioning uh is lunenberg falls under uh different legal
legalities around health insurance than other towns because we have that PEC agreement so for example in another town um and we got there because lunenberg uh employees gave up a lot in order to get this agreement
um at the time gave up a lot we probably moved off of 9010 before other municipalities did um but um as part of of that agreement that we have for example in another town um there's a negotiation around the premium split and
that's the only negotiation uh our PEC agreement includes negotiation over plan design so it's actually a bit more of a complex negotiation as well that we go through uh but there are a few more legalities around our agreement than other towns would perhaps have okay so
do you happen to know either the monthly or yearly Associated employee yeah so I'm I I'll use me I'm on a family plan um and I think I pay something like $618 a month for my family plan 618 so
68 I that's a a rough estimate because someone just asked me that the day which family plan is that cuz they're so I know I was actually just going on my computer to look through things um because I think most of AR the HML blue uh I got to go look and what that at that other one is like I should know this with the back like the back of my hand but I don't it's roughly a 2575
split it is a 2575 split yep yep that's our split and then just um do you have like autop pocket maximums and we do we do and and we have a a deductible it's a small deductible I think it's 250 per
person with a 750 family cap don't know what our out of-pocket cap is it's like well but I don't am I am I not answering your question correctly well did you say 750 was your max is for for a deductible but yes um
but then um there are some prescription out of pocket caps and things like that but people have to spend a lot of money to hit those or this is both medical and prescription yes yep it's not separate for those correct it's not a high deductible plan it is not a HTP no
right okay and I I know there has been discussion around an hdp and and we will survey people I'm I have my concerns um I'm not so sure that we'll have the number of employees and I could be totally wrong
uh switch over to an hdp I don't it depends you know on what it looks like but I I'm not I'm intrigued to see how many people would be interested in that yeah it's the worst marketed name for a really good plan no and and I know I I know
that but I will say one of the one of the one of the few fin I don't even know what's financial um one of the few Financial benefits in lunenberg and we know that on the whole employees are underpaid uh compared to Lake towns is our health insurance is better than most
towns um but I know like you have the FSA and everything like that uh com with an FSA HSA yeah yeah HSA HSA FSA different yeah yeah yeah I mean it's Triple Tax advantag and you can invest in it so it's it's actually a really
good thing if you if you dig into it I don't know if there's a savings though so right right so and that's something and and I will say the the PEC has been been really diligent and past years we looked at the GIC to see if that would would be C savings it's really been a collaborative effort um I I will say I'm
a little nervous I you know we pay for for July and June open enrollment needs to be in May uh we all separate bargaining units have to go through the ratification process we are on a very tight
timeline uh for negotiating this deal speaking as someone who chairs this committee is also on the superintendent search committee so it's a fun year yeah yes all right thank you thanks
okay was there anything else you wanted to brief or do you want to go to this is a kind of I think a good overview of where you are and I understand there's still a lot of um work to be done with school um committee um if there's something you wanted to bring up we can
or else I can just um do you have any other presentation to go through I wasn't sure we don't but I will tell you that the um there's a really lame y slide Deck with lots of embedded slides within the slides because there's just there's a
lot five page one there yep there there are a lot of people that ask questions they need context for things they're looking for additional um data information it's very comprehensive there's all kinds of information in it um including impact statements for all
of the cuts that we're going to make um you know data on case loads for different special ed uh types of service Prov providers our Behavioral Health uh social workers guidance counselors those kinds of things um so anybody who's looking for any background information
there's lots of it available embedded um in in that large slide deck okay so why don't we do this why don't we again go down the line and if there's any questions
um comments or anything else so Mike uh just out of I'm not sure about it what was the override last year amount wise it was just under a million 948 it's on the sheet I think right oh is it um
maybe not I think it was 948 okay you have a tattooed on you it's like the worst tattoo ever well it's actually not I'll tell anyone what we saw you're uh you have a no increase in your
natural gas costs did you do we have like a contract cost locked in or is are we trusting our utilities not to rack the rates again at this point based on what we know um we think we
think that we're good with that level uh again we did reach out to uh Chris Ruth facility director for town uh to see how he was approaching it as well and and he was level funding we were pretty pretty
close this past year are we kind of overshooting I think we're pretty close yeah I do I think that as well um again the one that we were concerned about is um in the current
year is the electric line because we it it it is it's underfunded um again that was a conversation last year with the town manager at the time
uh relative to the rates and she felt that that line that I originally submitted was overfunded um and based on her recommendation we we lowered the line but in reality uh what
we're seeing coming through for for the bills is we would have been pretty on on track with what we had originally put into that budget line so we are short this year on it okay um and then rough numbers you
have CBA increases in the contracts for this year percentage wise what was that you know um roughly increase for the ones that are settled for this year or the ones the salary Reserve that we're working on right now well I mean
you have a line item here contract CBA increases steps longevity I mean what would go into that what what do you know of that increase for this year like from last year so if we break that down um there is a block there relative to all
all salaries um that increase that dollar increase from uh to the level service assuming that you keep everybody uh $944,000 I think roughly 5.5
800,000 roughly I think is uh connected back to our largest uh Group which is the teachers which the teachers contract covers more than just teachers our nurses are part of that contract um
guidance counselors are part of that contract it's not just classroom teachers it's almost all of our staff are part of that group how much you holding in your salary Reserve in the budget um the salary Reserve in the budget for this year um in the town or
the for we've projected in terms of the salaries Reserve if I'm looking at the the town manager budget we projected um 90,000 7
$769 to to be held um and that's for the par professional contract negotiations it is for um one Administrator negoti salary negotiation um so we and the superintendent yes salary negotiation yes there's a little bit of
money there not a lot anyone who's yeah it's not the same as like you know last last year we had um you know the teachers contract was a major um thing that we needed to settle um and we held 379,000
dollars basically in the salary reserve for last year but that that also um that salary Reserve last year also was U designed for the Paras we were actually negotiating um contracts should have
picked up um for the the the teachers and the Paris this should have been year one of a a new three-year contract for both groups so that number was supposed to be for for both of those groups um we did settle a one-year deal with the PA
Professionals for this current year um we're back back to it with them um to try to settle to do a three-year contract now I have a question on your 95 page
presentation on page 83 you had fy's 25 salary percentage per category yep yes and then on FY 26 you had you know the same thing for FY 26 is that with the same number head count no
that's for the um the town manager's budget with all of the reductions so but you don't have the reductions finalized how did you estimate this we had proposed Cuts in the budget that we presented so it
included those proposed Cuts okay just to negotiations is everyone paid higher than minimum wage no it's not um which I know you don't have to
yes but is you mean for our for like our PA professionals yeah okay we got anything else no good well I read all your presentations thank you all your data I have
notes um I saw a lot of um we have shifted our Behavioral Health we have added social workers instead of just school counselors and I made a note
um is is are any of those expenses uh that we do for Behavior Health reimbursable by health insurance and is there a way to maybe shift that model to you know where we bring in you know there are providers that you can bring
in someone to do that independently and they can maybe bu like is there a hybrid model between you know offering what we do in school and something that we can get maybe partially re reimbursed by health insurance since we know every
child the master choose it's has health insurance do you want to speak to that in the past model what we're doing now so in in the past we did have a model where we had agencies come in to provide services and once we had our own
social worker on board she who and she was from the private sector she had um advised us and I think we did check with the attorneys too back in the day um that we needed to really have an agreement um with those agencies to make
sure um that things happened the way that they should be happening in the schools um and keeping everything as it should flow um so we drafted with our with our with our Council Town Council at the time um an
agreement um and neither of the agencies that came into our district to do that service wanted to sign the agreement um so then at that point then I think Co pretty much hit um and then and then we shifted to
um with the Esser Monies to be able to hire our own um social workers and mental health um workers for the district so that we were able to increase that need plus we also back in the day too we we brought an interface um so that was something that was brought on board uh quite a few years
ago for families to be able to access interface and that was kind of a broker that helped people access Mental Health Services through their insurances um and families it wasn't just open for school for students in the town it was open to everybody in the town um and then since
that time we've also changed from interface to care Solace because after covid what we found is that it was hard to find providers and Care Solace opened up a uh they were more Nationwide with more virtual um counselors that were
available for for our faculty staff um students and the town so um do you know if there are any other Schools Massachusetts that have uh they still have agencies coming
in I haven't looked at that but it wouldn't surprise me if there are some schools that have those agencies coming in there's just a lot of a lot of a lot of factors to take into take into account and again if if that were something that our school committee
wanted us to look to pursue again I would again involve our Council and relook at those agreements those memorandums of understanding um to see if we could come to that that agreement it I will say in in a few cases it did get a little dicey at meetings where we
would have um some outside providers maybe not being as collaborative as we would like um so there was a little bit of a of tension that would that would come on board um even with our own providers sitting at the table so we didn't find although it was great for students to be able to
access those Services during school time right when they were available rather than having to go go to that I think that that was prior to what we have available now for some students to be able to and families to be able to access with the virtual um with the virtual
Services yeah so the virtual Services something excuse me um is a virtual service something we are paying or is it paid through their health insurance we pay for care Solace um but those chart what they do through care so care Solace
is is again like a broker so they hook people up with their insurances um they find out which people are accepting clients um they help manage that where they they might give a parent a few names to call um help them set up appointments and then and then they
follow up with the families afterwards to see how it went um but then those charges were charged towards the ch toward but the the service you're providing into the schools is not something that you don't you you you don't see how we can make it that those
services are being provided and being reimbursed by the health insurances it doesn't sound like you not at this point no because the providers weren't willing to sign the memorandums of understanding that we had put in place okay all right um
so I have a lot of notes I'm sorry so we now we got that all the grants are in and the budget was 27 the lavel service 27 um so I I've watched all your meetings all the very long meetings Along being
meetings here so I I made notes while watching the meetings um so I'm gonna just share some of my thoughts as I went through it um not too much you know you guys have very fluid meetings so my thoughts are going be
sort of fluid um so you know we're in a budget crunch it's it's like second year in a row um generally speaking I feel like last year you know the kind of came at us you know really hard and the community kind of got together and we we
passed the override I can tell you that you know there were four votes from my household um that supported that and and it felt like that's what we needed to do um but you know I do feel like and I'm I'm watching the school committee because these are the school committee
decisions you know we have two members of them here um but it it I I am curious to see where we're going to end up with some of those decisions because I do feel like Town residents have you know shown up for the schools where I needed
um but I I see some of the reluctances on some of the things that it's coming up um in terms of you know should we do this should we do that and and you know and we get a we get a
what it was that uh SC was saying everyone needs to get a haircut um and my kids just graduated you know less than a decade ago my daughter was the last year of the old high school my kids never went from New School in lunenberg um when my kids went we didn't have
middle school high uh Sports um all of that system was supported by the school uh by Youth Sports League the you know there was a lot of assistant coaches that you know volunteered their times there were you
know the structure of the athletic department was very different and I do think M Mr moli was a teacher as well he was not a full-time ad am I correct on that correct okay so miss mcalli was a
not a full-time ad he acted as a as the ad that was a part-time secretary and now we have a fulltime ad we still have the secretary we have expended services to have midle school sports and when I look at the enrollment
for the schools is still about the same that was when my kids were in school um we were in town when we had the know we went through the Great Recession and I think it was in 2009 2010 there was established School Bus
fee and one thing I can tell you about the school fee the school bus fee is that not just it's a little more income for the schools that maybe spays for the half a teacher but it it disincentivize people from just using the bus as a backup because I'll tell
you I live on Main Street and there is a long line of cars picking up kids every day the emergency situation we had at the primary was because their parents there picking up their kids so I think there is a little bit of a I understand needing to get the kids to school but
it's you know we got to be willing to make some hard decisions they're uncomfortable I mean we just saw multiac here just saying we're going to pick you up in this location that's it and the parents need to be ready to sign up so there's a little bit of a both sides from the parents and the school
committee community that needs to be willing to do some of these things it's not always going to be easy so I see the school busz fee as something reasonable something we should Institute and something that hopefully will desent decentivize people from just using the
school as a back plan because it's still lunenberg is a small community people can always find someone else to help that is the teen center for the older kids you know the high school so there are means to do we don't need to have this blanket you know let's offer school
to everybody and be you know have this long line of traffic on every entrance to every school with parents picking up the I mean if we can reduce a bus that's close to a teacher and that's important um
the you know I saw one of your slides that you had on that this 95 page thing was about the average school average class size and initially it looked like you had you know like a high school would
have um you know from five to 17 key kids and then you look at the primary it's 23 um but I also because my kids I know how the high School uh schedule works are the the student loads that teachers
are taking at the high school at a similar level as the primary school because that wasn't very clear like you know I remember with my kids in math because they were doing the advanced math one class would be like 25 kids the
next class was 14 but overall the teachers tend to have a pretty even out number of students that they have to take care of so it's a little bit different um you know I I was a high school teacher M um
and my my total roster for a year was 125 students um whereas a a first grade teacher their total roster might be 23 students but they have to teach all subject areas I just had to prep one subject area right um so they will have
23 Time 5 okay right right um and I think um it's it's challenging to find the best way to represent the class siiz numbers um at the high school level
um in a way that's accurate and fair um because you know some advanced placement classes may have 22 students in them others may have nine um we have you know you can see when you if you
were to run a list of all of the different courses that we offer you might see a a French four uh honors and you might um see a French four uh College Prep level um and
the numbers might be low but those two French four courses are actually being taught simultaneously by one teacher in the classroom the classes are combined okay so when you run the numbers the number
of kiddos taking this version of French 4 versus this version of French 4 looks really small but the teacher actually has both of those in the room at the same time and is differentiating um there are different requirements for the kids who are taking
the honors level in that same class um so it sure it's a challenge we we we have a small school we want to offer a variety um and you know we're fortunate that there are teachers that are have a lot of passion for this subject area and
want to be able to offer all of these things and are willing to combine a college prep level with an honors and just differentiate um in the classroom so yes you you'll see that the the ranges of class sizes for each subject
area can be as few as five and upwards of 20 something um but until you really dig in to see exactly what that looks like it it's just a challenge to try to represent it accurately I I think when um what caught my attention was one the
slide and uh Mr Peter beore when um when uh the principal from the high school came to talk about the catalogs offering you know like lunenberg chose to not regionalize we accepted that we're going to be a small school district you know if we're
offering um a whole broad of cataloges of offerings is something we would love to but we chose not to by not originalz so we just got to understand that you know we got a we're a small school we got to behave like a small school we're not going to have all the offerings that
larger Regional Schools have and and trying to achieve that I don't think it's feasible so we end up you know not using our resources es in the best way and that's been the thought you know small school and and that was a little bit of my thought regarding the Middle
School sports and I I know I have heard that you know it's only $6,000 you know whenever we as a small school and that goes for a small business through you know you don't you're not going to do everything you got to really focus on what you do and do extremely well you know we never
going to be a Powerhouse in sports we should try to have good Athletics but I don't think we should have have every sport Under the Sun I understand things change and interest interest shifts but you know and that's the kind of thing that I think we need to
be cautious about and not overexpanded because you know in the core let's say and I'm going to just use the the Athletics as an example my kids were there 10 years ago we had an ad that was a teacher did an ad and he had a
part-time uh person now and youth sports was mostly supported by you know youth organizations or parents if they wanted they took their kids all the way to New Hampshire or whatever to do you know their sports program you know it was
just it's just where we are we are a small District so trying to expend our offerings too much we're just not serving the students the majority of students well if we just keep expending trying to expand our offerings and both
of these kind of fallowing my same my same type of thinking um the it so I know the uh curriculum director is a new position that you reestablished when you came in or with
Co no it was with Co it was it co okay we had to it that year teachers had to teach online we didn't have online curriculum resources for them to stream their instruction right there was a lot of pivoting going on we had to vet a lot of new materials provide a lot of
training for teachers um it was going to be really important to have somebody oversee and make sure that the quality of what we were using for online resources um also met some of the safety standards that we have to be able to
provide um for for our students so um that's when that that position came in and initially it really was connected to making sure that we could um deliver the best quality that we could under very strange circumstances sure um are the
instructional coaches also a CO new Co positions um they didn't come in uh during the covid year they came in afterwards um in in part uh there were some other grants that were available to
us um and we used uh some Grant resources for those positions um but um you know when you look holistically at um trying to uh build in the right kind of
infrastructure for a district to be able to focus on student achievement uh student progress student growth um ensuring that you have the strongest whole class instruction is one of the
best things that you can do to minimize the number of students that struggle and need additional support sure um so the coach piece uh in that regard is really important but the coaches um that's just one part of the work that they do and
they work with the teachers not the students they work directly with the teachers in some situations they work directly with the students as well um they they run data analysis from our uh benchmark assessments and and screeners
and such so that the teachers get these breakdowns and reports so that they can use that information to um Target the design of the the instruction to reach the students that they have in the room how many instructional coaches does the
district has right now we have two okay um a year ago we would have had three positions because we had enough grants um to to fund those um but then um with reductions in funding that was one of
those positions was aim ated as part of the Esser reduction even with the override budget sure last year so you know we're talking about three curriculum related instructional coaches
one thing that I offer is you know Massachusetts teachers are the best educated teachers in the country um we are cutting teachers and there's a lot of teachers that we're cutting I can I mean it's it's scary I you know I know
we were we went through the period that we went we needed support but I you know going from zero in 2019 to now must have three while we're cutting you know teachers by the Dozen yep I find and I
and I I definitely have watched your meetings I definitely saw everything you it's just you know it's it just doesn't seem you know is it an nice to have yes but it goes back to to what I was saying that we're a small school district we
got to act like a small District yep and it's hard clarification that we go from zero and doing well to now we must have three highly paid positions so we don't have three anymore we cut one we don't have three I'm culum director plus a two
instructional so the curriculum director is not the same thing as the coach but they they are there to support the teachers on teaching the classroom um yes but but they also um really oversee and provide direction for um the entire
District relative to curriculum and instruction um that position in particular has been pivotal in securing a variety of grants that help us fund what we're doing to improve the quality
um of the materials that our teachers have access to the quality of the instruction in the classroom at a K12 um level um and the the coaches again they've all been funded um through Grant monies so they
are not now even including next year okay they are Grant funded positions um and as I've explained you know um Title One Grant monies I I can't use to restore a second grade teacher there are
parameters around how those monies can be used um so it's it's not as if we could get rid of the coaches and just apply those Grant Monies to put back a third grade teacher and a fifth grade teacher
as an example um so I definitely watch your meetings um you went on this 90 page presentation you had quite a bit of you know information and you had you know your direct um staff and you talked
about a lot about your leadership team and how you guys came to these um to this to this the recommendations that you made one thing you know I I couldn't help but be thinking over and over you know we're the teachers part of that um
you know teachers are the people that we number from going to school more than anyone and they are the most impactful people in the student's life you know and and again Massachusetts have the best teachers in the conert period so you
know when I saw your presentation you know it felt to me like maybe not everyone not every party had been represented on that plans um because it was the leadership you know it felt much like a silo uh
recommendation and of course you know when you're working with people who you work who thinks allow alike you guys going to get into a a plan that you all agree to so I actually would well invite you to bring this agreement to some your
planning uh bring other assure you that there is there you go and you know bring other stakeholders to the to the planning because it it didn't it it very much felt like one-sided and I I was itching to hear what the teachers felt
um so you know I don't think we can support the Athletics at the level that we've been supporting we have definitely increas increase the support that we have had since 10 years ago I think we need to be we need to just realize what
it is to be in a small school in a small athletic and you know and yeah some parents might drive their kids far and some parents might may not I think in the end of the day most parents won't won't because life is really hard most
parents are having to work two jobs they it's limited our ability to be driving kids around um so we we just got to really you know show their take austerity measures everywhere because when we go to ask the town for more
support we got to be able to show that we did this due diligence so you know a nominal School Bus fee one that you know with logic why we doing you know making sure that what we we're not expending offering offerings that we don't need to
because we're a small District I think those are the things that will put us into you know getting us into a position of possibly asking the town again for more um for more funding outside what
they're already paying it's it's really hard and no I had parents but I am a parent and I just had kids in the school but it's hard when I hear the school school Committee Member saying that we can't eliminate uh uniforms from the
budget because last year the booster club was going to buy and they said no it will be in the budget last next year when we just asked the entire town to put their hands in their pocket and take an extra average $200 a year in order to
support what you have it's hard to ask the town to do that again when we have not raised athletic fees in 10 years so you know I hear all the passion that the school committee members have and about you know the ability to offer school
school you know free school for everybody but we need to realize where we live something else that I'll say to our parents out there and school committee is that lunenberg has about 11,000 people living in town our school
our high school graduating class is about a little over 400 our high school is 400 kids right roughly we have graduating classes usually about 100 100 yeah y so we have wford which has double the population to lunenberg their
graduating class is a about 800 kids it's about the double Lumberg so their High School is 800 so they're usually graduating a little over 200 kids wayand which is where my other business is you know it's the same thing it's smaller than lunenberg has a much bigger
graduating class than lunberg one thing that's interesting and I know you can say house prices and everything but our average our average single family household taxes for lunenberg is about 6,500 Westford is is over 14,000 whand
is 18,000 if we don't keep a diverse demographic in town the cost of sending kids to school is going to be much higher because everyone is going to have kids just like they do in Wayland just like they do in W so there is an interest for the school community
community to kind of wanting to keep us engaged the empty NS you know I'm an empty Nas I'm not even 50 I'm going to have I could have another 30 years here but you know you got to convince me of that and when I hear this you know we
already put our hands our hands in our pocket but the other side it's not willing to do some of these small measures that will be it's going to be less than what they're paying extra year on their taxes and they're asking me to do it again it's very difficult um the
last thing Mr chair I'm going to just read I actually wrote wrote this because I didn't want to be saying this next part without um having ritten because I can get a little uh excited um I want to express my exasperation over how late the Tom the
town was made aware of the challenges with the school budget once a once again this year last year we faced a significant shortfall du due to the expiring federal grants and Rising health care costs in response many residents work hard to pass it override securing an additional million dollars
despite that effort now we are facing an even larger deficit I had written more than 2.5 because I was basing on the 29 million but I guess it's more than 1.9 million which was first P publicly presented on the February 5th meeting
the 1.9 was presented yesterday a second meeting on uh February 26 explored potential ways to address this shortfall but the timing of this discussion is troubling by the time this deficit was brought forward options were already limited and the ability to engage our
stakeholders in a meaningful way had been significantly reduced to say that this dis lay was caused by the transition in town manager position is a weak explanation we now all know the town is limited to increasing our tax
revenue by 2 and a half per. a 5% will never increase a five a two and a half perc is what we always should be planning I'm frustrated that the school committee did not request a premilinary budget from the superintendent last fall and work on finding the best way to
manage this staus in a way that would benefit the most students had this been done there would have been more time to assess the situation weigh different solutions and make informed decisions that best servants service our students and Community instead we are now in a position where we are faced with tough
choices that must be made under pressure and Which is far from ideal and I think that's what we're dealing with now moving forward I hope this serves as a learning opportunity better planning earlier and having the discussions earlier that that way it will help ensure that we are not caught off guard
in the future budget budget Cycles we need to be more proactive uh in our approach one that follows for transparency transparency thoughtful decision- making and meaningful Community input I I really don't understand why this budget came so
late I and I think ultimately this lies with the school committee it it's their responsibility to set the priorities for the for the district we should always be planning for 2 and a half% increase and again you know in West for the
superintendent there sent uh their his budget and his and his memo for the budget on December 9th and that gives us time to discuss and to make the best decisions versus now we are 10 days away from the from the warrant closing so hopefully next year we won't be here
thank you thank you Tanya I don't think we should be comparing our schools here to wesland uh Westford or Wayland it's a very different Community um I'm comparing the process
which just we sure I'm not comparing the schools yeah I'm comparing the process they want true yes but it's it's a it's apples and oranges different communities um I also think we need to look more at the data on what Athletics does for our students middle school and up um what
confidence gives them for you know for their future and what coaches can do and what having a full uh full-time ad can do so I don't think Cuts there are good might be able to to look at the busing I think that's a a good place to
start to see what we're doing um but you know that's my two cents I'm I'm I'm I grew up you know here and I've just moved back here from a a you know a city so it's different so I'm still learning and I'm learning a lot from you
every day um one or not um but you know that's just my my opinion on a couple of things that you know you said um and yes the school committee does have a responsibility to be a little bit more proactive in bringing things forward um but I think
with a a new town manager and you know new people on the school committee like I see a process that's going to be improving um so yeah what about you uh well I just like to say uh first
thing my view of this whole thing is that I am not an educator I am not uh I I'm on this board I understand budgets I understand money I understand numbers uh I have family that are Educators I my kids went from
kindergarten to graduation in lunenberg and had a great education so um my comments are uh to the uh to the school committee and to you guys is to
continue your process I think it is a difficult process it is a very messy process it is a um a lot of people have a lot of feelings we're talking about our kids and I know that I understand that and
people have strong emotional feelings there are PE uh and that is normal however what you're doing I think is moving in the right direction trying to get to where we can say okay we don't get everything we want but we get more
do we need to do an override okay maybe that's possible maybe it isn't I will um this is what we need to do need to talk about it need to discuss it and need to have uh uh thoughts about it I remember last year there were 40 budgets out
there and we what budget are you talking about it's and and I I was frustrated about it but I understand that we're trying to get to the right answer everybody wants our kids well educated and does that mean we busing fees or
athletic fees uh the only thing I will make a recommendation is that we think about the kids that parents don't have a lot of money and how do we if we're going to set a fe up how do we do that maybe we work with uh uh parents teachers and say can we you know get you
know Advertiser fund or whatever or other things you guys can figure that out but you know we're not a poort town we're not Wayland we're not Westford we're not but we're not Fitchburg and we're not uh AOL uh not there's anything wrong with that
that's just we have a little bit more resources so whatever it is that you guys school committee and you guys can come up with you know uh as long as it makes sense I will be supporting it thank you like to say the same thing uh you
know just hearing those students last night what means to them for their mental health for their growth for teamwork to cut Athletics I don't think is the right way
to go and the same with music there have to be some tough decisions made and I don't envy any of you having to make those decisions but the closer um we can get to a final number
the better it's going to be for all of us because if there does have to be another override uh question it's better to have the
justifications and be able to show people why why it had to be this way so I wish you the very best in in making these decisions and I hope
that it goes well for you thank you um I asked some questions this morning got got some of the answers I I I do want to point out though that you know salary increases Alone um are 3.6% increase over last year's budget um in
in our normal steady state that's more than we typically dedicate to the so that left no room for anything else um and I don't want to get into an argument about you know whether our teachers are underpaid and and everything else but
um I do think we got to take that into account as we're negotiating negotiating um I do kind of resonate with a lot of what Anna mentioned um I I do think you know sports are important my kids all played
Sports um I played Sports in in um in high school and and growing up and I do kind of think though that like at that Middle School level and and Below we do have organizations that can do that um I also want to say and I I think I
mentioned this I don't know I forget who I talked to today but um you know sending kids to the Reggie Lewis Center every weekend is an exuberant expense and and I don't see the need for it um
um my son did indoor track and they went to Fitchburg and if it's all about a banked track to shave off two10 of a second on your personal best if you're really that level of an elite athlete you're probably doing um
you know the equivalent of aaou or club sports or something like that so um you know the the benefit of that is rather low I do see the benefit of sports I do um um let me see let me kind of go through
this I I do though um agree with you know the position that you know the school committee has not gone through their process yet um and I appreciate you know kind of giving us a heads up as to where we are
a heading check again we're going to have to come back you know once a budget is is finalized to to present it to us in a Delta fashion um so one question I would have because I've been talking with Town manager about how to kind of get through the budget season in in two
annual town meeting is when do we think we would what what is the plan and I guess that's you know Brian you're on the on the phone there when do we think that might be yes uh we do have a meeting with the select board on Tuesday and then we have a an off can you hear
me I can't hear him at all no can't hear you can you hear me now I can hear you yeah okay so we do have a meeting to stay schedule with the select board uh and then we followed that up with another uh meeting a special meeting on
Wednesday and we hope to finalize it on Wednesday she saying next Wednesday we do yeah we have a meeting next Wednesday hopefully we'll be able to finalize it okay so based on Thursday's it sounds like the best one
might be like the 20th that would give you a week to prepare because next week we do have municipal building in here Marshall Park on other moneyed articles we'll have to make a determination whether we're doing
um Capital plan tonight or next week um it's getting late um okay so we'll have to work through the other question though is um when do we collectively make the
decision as to whether um um we're pursuing an override or not because that has to factor into um the warrants um it has to factor into our voting um it has to factor into the level of discussions
we have going on you know whether we so um what what do we see as the timeline on that that is that part of the discussion for next week at the Tuesday yeah I would expect that that conversation happen on
Tuesday what I I can't hear I don't I don't think these speakers are on and I say that all the time from what I [Music] understand that will be part of the discussion between the school committee and the select board on Tuesday evening
I am not sure if there will be a resolution that night um but uh the warrant does close on March 17th talk to about some options um that we may have
in relation to the warrant uh one of which is whether or not we can still place an article if we don't have a final figure um that answer is yes although it becomes complicated okay we're g to talk about it Tuesday and then necessary talk about it more on
Wednesday but there's not going to be a lot of changes so I don't think this is going to drag on the conversation okay okay um lost my thought oh um
yeah I kind of we don't usually schedule other departments when school comes on but I think it was um kind of fortuitous for of Aging to go right before you um because I'm retiring and I'll have something to
[Laughter] do um I am eligible to go to the council you know to senior senator myself humbling thought um uh no they are there's a couple of
our smaller departments that are asking for some increases um and I hope that even though the schools is going through their second year of of some problems um that we that we do support that some of these other departments do need some growth
and it is small dollars and specifically the ones I'm thinking of is um is Council on Aging go into a full-time um you know so um I hope there's not like push back from you know the school and the extended school
commit you know that that that's not needed the other one that I'd like to see is um is um the rec director going to a full-time um and there is kind of the hatchlings of a plan that that
ultimately becomes a um self-funded position um and and I do want to say along those lines the ability for that to become a self-funded position is that that position does focus on
Recreation uh summer camps Etc Etc um I heard last night the schools looking to potentially augment their budget with a summer camp I would highly recommend not doing that if I could uh offer some uh
thoughts on that um I think the kind of camps that we're talking about aren't aren't necessarily camps Limited in that scope um in the past um they've they've done sort of a an abbreviated summer
league kind of a thing this this would be for our high school student athletes um not so much um running running camps per se uh for little guys to come there might be a clinic kind of a thing that
are um that are uh captains from each of our teams they've done that before where they've kind of done a quick round robin thing where they Expos the the little guys to the different sports that they would have access to at the high school level but um you know it's in the past
it's it's really been more about the high school athletes um that that ideas around a a camp have come forward so I think potentially there's not conflict there yeah um because I I'll offer my my
thoughts Angela Clement is doing a phenomenal job um she's been great to work with um and she's putting together great things for the kids um we about great things for the kids um
so we definitely would want to see whatever um program expansion that she could be doing um take off um because it it benefits the kids okay so I I think that there's still room for us the youth the youth things that you're talking
about the round robins leave that to the recreation department the High School athletic camps to improve your high school athletes stays with the high school yeah I think that we can find ways totin split there coexist okay and not be in competition with each other
okay yeah um okay that's certainly my ask and and I obviously there's discussions on that that would need to be had and and again I I had the same discussion at one point with the library right I do not think the library should be offering wreck departments and doing
it for free when the rec department is trying to to to fund you know charge for it so um so again my only point being that there are other needs in town there's other plans that have been long in the
making um that may not come to fruition because we're having such problems in the in the schools right so um we have hard decisions this year ahead of us you know there's going to be a do we need an override do we need an override for both
both schools and the the townside we know the fire department wants to add a at a shift which most of the state has moved to um we know that you know Marshall Park has been planned for years and has had a lot of support up until
the point where we were having huge budgetary problems and we know that this building and and Ritter are up for for items so this year is going to be kind of a a year that lunenberg is really going to decide what it wants um for its
future right so maybe that sounds a little dramatic but I I kind of believe it right so um but I do I I thank you for just saying that you do support both of those um absolutely and I've I've said before um we have great working
relationships with really all the town departments um and I've said before I I need for their most urgent priorities to be met too because if they're not then then they can't be supporting us in the
many ways that they do um and that's a loss for us when that happens so I I would not be one to Advocate that other departments go without meeting their critical needs because having their needs met they they support our needs so
it's important you know the other thing the um Monty Tech had mentioned is perhaps they have the ability through their vocations to to help with projects um the other thing I think the school has to offer is um you know through National Honor Society and maybe other civic-minded
engagements to off you know try to promote those volunteer requirements which I think are still National Honor Society requirements um towards the needs of the towns right whether it's you know uh whatever it is right let's
try to get maybe folks helping to to close these budget through through volunteer volunteer work as well so just a just a thought on that one um but again I I I appreciate you all come in tonight um I know we tried to get we
hoped that it would be a more normal budget season certainly it's not um and we'll have to work through the the remainder of the the calendar so definitely uh but with that I also is there anyone in the public that had any
questions Ron Delo 181 Reservoir Road um I had left off in a public comment to the school committee last night asking about or commenting that I favored teachers over social
workers and I had um much like Miss Lockwood I um had looked at all the slides related to the behavioral and mental health all the statistics stcs and it seemed like
16% of the entire student population um has some degree of Need for whether well it didn't specify but I assume counseling or some
type of intervention but then I looked at I thought about it the opposite way um so there are so if there's 16% that are
having trouble in this area there's 84% that do not need any kind of Behavioral or mental health support so I don't understand why they're all students are in tier one and
that we're H having that subject um they're all in the tier one Seal program and I assume those um social workers or someone similar is teaching that seal special that all
children have to take and so when I when I hear 16% that doesn't seem like a Tipping Point to where you would adopt such so much um staff to address the
problem and I was thinking very much like what Miss Lockwood said about the fact that most private and health insurance and Mass health do pay for they
recognize mental health as a a medical issue that they'll pay for and so I was thinking of how can we Outsource the problem so that children who need counseling or intervention can
do it on their own time to allow them to get through a school day of just focusing on school that was just my thoughts either that get rid of the tier one make tier
one for those students who are in tier two and then then tier two becomes the tier three so so we're not targeting the entire population when we don't have to it
doesn't appear we have to thanks thank you I know there's questions I do want to have a go back cuz something just popped in my mind um one other thing that I think I've heard and I did send you an email on this I think I've heard
is that the state there's a lot of central office and administrative effort put towards reporting and audits of the school I mentioned that to representative Scarsdale and she said she was unaware of these requirements I
think if we're going to start to look at the lack of Chapter 70 funds coming to us I think this the desie and the state needs to start relaxing the amount of administrative burden they're putting on
our Educators so with that in mind if it is true that and and I take her at her word she doesn't understand it I I don't understand the details of it I would recommend that perhaps you put something together for her on that sure and share it with her so that we can maybe get
some relaxation on this sure I just um I just shared with you another uh document and it is a document that's linked into the mega slide deck of 95 slides um
it's um it's got to do with the unfunded and underfunded mandates um this document doesn't exist anywhere we've been working to compile it it is not complete at this point there's a lot in there already but I I can't say that
it's 100% complete we've we needed to Pivot and and get some uh budget lines finalized um so we will continue to work on this document but it sort of gives you a little bit of insight as
to just the sheer volume of mandates um and the kinds of people in our school district that have the responsibility um for ensuring that those things are executed
um I will uh let both um Juliana hansum and Deb bookas speak to the hours that they have spent prepping materials for uh Department of Education Audits and we
have audits every year one type of another um so I'll I'll let Juliana speak to it first but then I'll let uh Deb jump in on uh the hours of material Gathering and um reporting
that that has to be done so in my realm there's a lot of audits that come my way um for we just finished um an Ola audit which was an office of language acquisition audit that audited our El our English language learner programs and so we had to gather the
documentation for that and submit that and then they came out and they did a um they did interviews with staff and then they did a final report and so we had our exit interview um last month um mid-February
and the auditor told me that I had to have the corrective that we did really well that we only had four areas that we needed to focus on and that that they weren't student facing areas they were more procedural making sure we had things in place um moving forward um for
areas but that he needed a corrective action plan done and he shared with me a very intensive document on how they wanted it put together and he goes and by the way that's due March 5th and I said okay well thank you for that I said did you talk to your counterparts at
desie because I'm also going through a special education audit right now to where I can't even it it's taken me a couple of months to gather all of the documentation and I actually had to chunk it I had to be a teacher again and chunk it in order to get into getting
all of the information pulled together for it and I'm pretty organized and I've gone through this before so I'm thankful that I've got systems in place I feel really bad for any new special education director out there who doesn't have the resources already built up that I've got
that being said um so all of that information was due to desie for special ed on March 5th and and the Ola the the man from Ola he goes I'm so sorry about that I said I
said okay I said I'll get i'll get this done um my El teachers are fabulous and they they help to to pull together the resources dead book is also we we were coordinating with Deb as far as our corrective action plan but that's just one instance of where I've got multiple agencies from the state coming at me
giving me the same deadlines for things and and it it can get very overwhelming um to try to get it all done we we got it all done and the state the for special they're coming out next month to audit to um to finish the audit and do
interviews and walkthroughs of the buildings and then they'll have a corrective action plan if they find any any needs that I have to address further on that and then that's going to continue um so it's just it's that's just one piece that's one instance of this year we're like I really wanted to
go through the zoom at him and say can you please talk to the guy down the hall and can you at least give me like a week in between because I was really thankful that the Ola was going to be done and like I could move move on to focus on special without them both being needing to be done at the same time we also had
an audit for Food Services um and that was uh again another lengthy Gathering of information uh site visits audits uh the um Massachusetts school building authority
they decided that this year they will going to do I what I call the State of the State of all the schools in the entire state um we had to go through um hundreds of questions um for each of
our buildings um in a survey uh then we had to get on a zoom for each of our buildings where they read those same hundreds of questions
and asked us the answers literally an hour and a half to two for each school and then they came out to tour all of the buildings to see for themselves all of the things that they asked the questions about again
hours and hours of people's time not doing the job that they're hired to do because they're involved with all of this other work Deb did you want to jump in on sure um in October we were notified
that we were being audited for all of our entitlement grants and that's Title One title 2A and our title four Grant um all of that documentation was due on February 14th that requires that we provide documentation from FY 24 as well
as from fy2 so sometimes requires going back and finding those documents making sure that um we have everything in place everything from policies and procedures to our some of our assessment results for our students to also how we engage our family am and the
community um in addition is a desktop audit so it required that we send all that documentation to the Department of Ed um in addition to that throughout the year the department will provide for us different meetings where we can learn
about some of the changes that are happening around those audits each year and some of the requirements they also often and I know Juliana has dealt with this as well they change the platform that we're working so sometimes we also have to learn the platform in order to
send that documentation so in addition to the entitlement grants we're also responsible for the student Opportunity Act which requires not only the plan but the followup to that as it's a midyear audit um that's actually due in a couple of months still
awaiting some of the the instructions um and so each year um we really don't I they give us some heads up but usually it's a few months worth of time to get all that documentation together it sounds like you have like a reaction to these audits as opposed to a
proactive having everything already together when it comes like you shouldn't be chunking things together and trying to frenzy gather things is there like a process or a policy that you guys have as a team where you have things ready to go we know we know when
the audits are coming usually a year in advance they they post them on the on the website except I'm not sure if the title ones if they still do that is not sure if it's it's more of a of a surprise we're auditing you like the IRS might um type things when special education we we have a pretty pretty
well set where they'll say you're in tier you're in group a this year you're in group b next year so I went on Christmas time January I'm on the phone because I noticed that there were problems with what they told me in the paperwork and what I was seeing on one
of the new platforms and the man from Desi told me oh you're the first one in my group who started working on this and yep we've changed over to a new platform there's a little bit of a glitch so just ignore that part on this and then fill in this and then enter it into the
document Library instead of where it asks for it and then we'll work with you on it but it's really you you're you're the first one that's called me about this because there's a there's a change the lack of process on the auditor side as opposed to it's ever changing it it is Ever Changing I was going to say like
the point of audit it's are usually not have the same process because they want to see I'm talking about their their platform information though it's their platform that they changede the the so the platform I I think we're clear that yeah audits aren't fun I think also
they're necessary they that they take up a lot of time and uh as a former Banker I don't think anybody who was a banker knows that we get audited examed more than anybody MH state federal insurance
our own Auditors our internal ex oh God that was in lending that was even worse so I get it however and I'm just saying this only to be to take the other side there's a lot of valuable information that comes from that not
only data that they can use to make things better but also to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to do and also to find out that oh you know what what you're doing there isn't the right thing maybe you should do it like this because a lot of other places do it like that that's how it works oh okay so there's value to it now I'm not saying
and I'm sure state and federal uh agencies don't run as efficiently as they could and they also uh have probably the not the best software that's just the way those those things go and you guys spend more time than you should and I get that and I understand
that but you know to just play the other side that there's a lot of value that comes from it that's all I wanted to really say and I and I do but I do as somebody who has dealt with the of guys you dealt with oh we got to get this thing done I need these 14 files all downloaded this is before scanning was a
big thing you know that was a lot of work so I and just I get it I get it but it is it is not the end of the world and it does take up a lot of time and it is a pain in the butt does and and and I can appreciate for all the reasons why you said like I want to make sure that
we're in compliance fully to meet the needs of all of the students and doing what we need to do for the state the problem is is that all of this time I'm still one person I'm not in a big District where I can ask somebody else to do it for me so it takes me it takes my focus maybe away from from some of
the more front-facing things that I'd like to be doing in the buildings with stuff so it's just it's that it's that trade-off and yes I've got a ton of folders and and like I actually work with a state list serve where we share folders back and forth so we're trying to be consistent throughout the state so
that's been very helpful and yes it is very help but it's still it's still a lot and it still seems like they continue to pile things on we'll get through it I also want to add this as a small District there's no difference in the expectations small and large districts
have the same accountability in these audits to the Department of Education so um I think they are districts just have more staff can help yeah so I think they're extremely valuable and I think
that we all learn a lot from them so the just the scope of the responsibility there's no difference in the expectation okay so if you could maybe pull something as a response back on that and I you
know I I don't think you can give a 1.3% Chapter 70 increase year after year and expect this level of auditing to go on because we hire you to be student fa facing not some bureaucrat in in either
Beacon Hill or I don't know if there's Federal audits or you know or or in Washington um we we and I don't know the value of a lot of these audits to be honest with you finance I got it I'm a federal I'm a
defense I work for a defense contractor we get an audited all the time and I don't see the value in it um so well like I said there's there's a very lengthy list of all kinds of things that we have to do report on etc etc etc
it's not just audits um and again this document doesn't exist anywhere the state doesn't have a document that summarizes everything that that you know communities are uh all
required to do every school district is required to do okay um and it's and it's a challenge right because um you know um Mr school and brini through the budget task force um we kept talking about how
to parse out what in our budgets all of our budgets are legally mandated pretty much almost everything we do has some sort of mandate attached to it um but it gets really hard to
tease out well this is a dollar we have to SP spend because it's mandated versus this 50 cents is something that we don't have to spend because there's so much crossover and it's hard to tease it apart but um it just to scroll through it just gives you a sense of the sheer
volume of of mandates that we deal with yeah maybe chat GPT could just fill them all off for you I don't all right um sorry for that interload um John you had your hand up yeah hi everyone um John Bowen 162
Highland Street um just on that conversation that wasn't what I was going to discuss uh just on that conversation alone I can say this that all those audits all that mandatory reporting requirement and all of that comes down to the Department of
Education in Washington and that is a mandate that's given to the state that the state has to provide the federal government with that oversight so that the federal government can sit there and make a determination to whether or not the state is being compliant
to uh the rule under Brown versus Board of Education and you know one law after the other that came with that so hopefully hopefully our administrative staff in school when we get rid of the Department of Education in Washington and return it back to the States you
guys will have a better handle on being able to audit your own district and then reporting that to the state in your own measure and your own means and it'll be up to the state to figure out how it's done because the state won't be able to run your individual Town that's what we call small government that being said I know a lot
of people are not a fan of that but I surely am um when it comes to mental health uh treatment um for students um and it comes to academics in the combination of the uh social academic
issues uh Incorporated with the um mental health academic issues and people's places where they are the children's places where they at I can say this just from my own experience okay is that this kind of system of
setup and trying to cut off a mental health professional saying that it's not going to work good with a uh academic professional uh that there is Mass health and things like that of course there are those things and there's medical treatment and mental health treatment outside of the school the
reason why the school has been handling mental health started in the soluchi and Swift Administration yep going back a few years just after Governor weld this is back in the 80s they recognized that the nuclear family is broken down they recognized that there were a lot of
single parent homes they were realized that there were a lot of divorces and a lot of uh multi-dimensional I guess you could say homes um and issues with regard to that that were causing issues with children to be able to receive um
Services uh because either it was a single parent home home and the mother couldn't do it uh or the father couldn't do it you know or it was a uh a divorced home where the father wouldn't do it and the mother wouldn't do it and they recognized that early on and over the
years the nuclear family has broken down in such a way that we have a lot of mothers doing things and fathers doing things but not mothers and fathers doing things and that's the issue why we have
uh people people like Stacy Campfield we have people like Lorie Shay we have people like Juliana hansam we have people in these positions that deal with the special need the mental health and so on and so forth with the children in our schools strictly
because parents weren't able to do it for a number of years and they created their positions the secondary issue is you tell me is there a parent who can stay home today in mental health their children children no we need the school
to do that and I know that sounds kind of uh I don't know government control and trust me I'm not one for big government um but you know you can't you can't take both of those things away you need both of them so if you're going to start cutting something start cutting
programs okay I'm sorry okay but I mean you know I played papuana football I was on the basketball team I was on a baseball team I did this I did that I did this and my father grabbed me by the back of my neck threw me in the car when I said I didn't feel like going he said
too bad you're going and I went do you know what I mean and you know he drove me I didn't get on a bus everybody didn't have a bus and everybody didn't go together when you went together and you were on a bus is because you were varsity and that's it you were Varsity
you were 11th grade 12th grade varsity and that's when you took a bus where you wanted to go um and that's when there was one bus for the varsity team only and that's how that worked and it worked and so when we start talking about cutting things the two things you should
never cut from school if you want to cut a pair of professional out okay that overloads a teacher but you know what teachers are pretty resilient they'll figure it out you need to increase the classroom size by seven kids per class now you're at 20 maybe 18 you get to increase by seven don't worry teachers can figure that out you know they're
very talented okay at being able to manage okay including early students okay trust me I was one so so the thing is is that you can't take away that team you can't take away the mental health in
the academics you can't separate it because it is heavily intertwined because of our environmental standards of what we basically have as a culture and it's necessary it's not getting done at home and I think Julian will tell you
that herself okay that you know there are kids that have need needs that they're not getting at home that parents are being told they need to do things the school's hands are tied the parents aren't doing them who's going to fulfill them because what's going to end up happening is they're going to ask what's
the matter with this kid and why is this kid not learning and why is this kid having all these problems and why isn't the school helping and that's what it's going to come down to so that's just to say that you got to have both you can't cut mental health professionals and you
cannot cut um uh uh teachers to the extent where you know you're you're losing uh you're losing grip and I I I just I'm just I'm trying to find the exact word but I think Juliana understands where I'm coming from and I think Miss Burns does too okay is that
if you do not have a well-rounded approach to education that is both social okay mental and academic if you don't have that and you take one of those components out now you end up with a failing scre and that's all I
wanted to say thank you right thank you good evening Laura baruan 389 mpus Road um the school committee heard me last night so I'm not going to take a lot of time to repeat uh what I had to say last night I'm here on behalf of uh nth grade band student as well as uh the
music aors um one question I had I completely agree I'd love to see that the three column color SL with um consistency I'm a CPA too so driving crazy there's increases here
there's no parentheses there it's and I'd love to see it too I think it would be very helpful as we've got to prioritize we need to focus on where the big dollars are the band travel budget got slashed $8,900 got cut we have 140 kids that'll be on the band um in the
spring concert in May but we have 100 kids that are going to go to you know a music competition we don't have a bus so gor is going to step in we're going to help the kids are going to get there we're not going to take that away from them but I $8,900 is not going to fix a million 572 or a million 970 whatever
that was I'd love to see that list by priority as well where are the biggest increases and how does that go down because it just to say expense Cuts just removed or just added there's there was there were a bunch of numbers on those pages so seeing some of those things in
order as well with a little bit more specificity I'd also just a question do we have the um the fiscal year that we're in now actual to budget has anybody looked at an actual to budget um for the the town for the
current year for the school um I do think the um the town finance director has it but as I tried to find it I didn't see but I the thing is it's you're not going to like this but it's not like it's not reconciled as quickly as likely you're to reconcile the
accounts I get it but we're starting with a budget from last year have we overspent that budget by 500,000 already like are we all like you're starting with a budgeted number from last year but how did you do compared to last year
you are asking for the school side right School side yes so so the school side do you have a so like seeing where you are you're starting with the the budget from last year and working off of that for Town manager for level set for needs but
is you're start place the right place so we we do quarterly budget reports for the school committee so are those shared they're part of the public meeting yeah they're public as soon as they're in the public meeting they public record they should be okay are they on the school committee website they are this year's work papers
too under last year's heading on the school committee they're not on the budget page they're in the minutes they're part of the school committee regular so they're in there okay yeah all right I'll try to find those and see because I was looking for them I wasn't finding some of that so I'd like to see kind of how we're trying when was the
last we're actually due to have a quarterly budget next well the next scheduled meeting not the new one that we just for the budget so I have gone through the because this year is still we're a little over six months into um I
went through into very fine detail for the FY 24 um and the school budget was actually PR spent because they um School departments they can do line transfer within their own budget um I think the schools still need to get authorization
of the school committee so fy2 24 is pretty much fully spent um the FY 24 for the whole town had a little extra but that they the town does build extra because that's their practice um because I do remember
last year the conversation about the electric I remember that specifically and like not getting it to where it it's it's actually what we're spending now that money's coming from someplace else so part of the exercise is a little bit circular if you will cuz it's going to
get have you have to pay the light bill anyways but having them set kind of where things are it's a much more realistic approach so that would be interesting to see but um thank you okay so it sounds like that information would be available and perhaps if if she
emailed you Dr Gilson about that you can provide it to her when it it it'll be provided publicly at the next school Comm meeting on your website okay okay um I think that's it so Brian maybe you
can um you probably want to end your meeting motion to adjourn yes can you hear me yep I'll look for a motion to adjourn 10:47 second all right we do a roll call vote
Miss brazowski yes yes Miss Areno yes and a yes for me thank you everyone good night thank you Brian thank you all thank you thank you thank you all right so given what we talked about earlier I'm going to skip over Capital plan I think again unless anyone
wants to try to beat our record from last week uh we have no old business is there anything generally speaking anyone wants to talk about for the FY 26 budget discussions of um anything on Warren
articles or budget task force all right we had minutes um in sent to us and they're in the folder from February 13th did anyone get a chance to look at those I didn't see them you haven't seen them I checked two days ago so if it was in the last two days
it probably was in the last two days okay so um why don't we why don't we wait till next week on those um I so those minutes I don't think Mike and I were here for those
meetings do you if you you probably will have enough to vote without us I mean technically meeting either though so but I I did watch the okay the thing on the thing so I could vote on it okay are you okay
with us voting on it I'm voting with it yeah all right i' entertain a motion to approve the minutes from February 13th I mov second second okay um uh you can I'm going to call for um all those approve um anyone object and
then um abstain so you can abstain well I'm going to you GNA vote I haven't read them so I have to abstain right no you you can vote because Mike and I technically we're not in the I part of the committee you can still vote I think okay I'll vote but whatever you want you
can abstain you can vote matter okay one of so all those in favor please say I I um all those opposed any extensions stain all right so we're um 1 2 3 4
501 when are we moving the capital planning to next week um yes I will try to move it to next week I will move it to next week so are are we going to have any other me weeks with two meetings or no a what is there any
other meeting week or two meetings I don't think we'll go into a two other two okay I think if anything we we may just schedule into into the first couple weeks in April gotcha um we're going to have to find a way to to make recommendations probably big
recommendations on um you know those those three things override if it's an option Municipal Building design and then Marshall Park those are the two that are going to come
next week and then um and then the normal warrant articles and stuff like that um we may have a path towards um getting an extra week or two for the um
the report to be finalized and our votes um we think we can uh maybe get the the U warrant printed quicker but oh okay that's good all right any actions or topics for future
meetings all right next Thursday is our our next meeting it is going to be a public hearing we will likely have to have another public hearing I've already posted it as a public hearing though we're kind of running everything almost as a public hearing um I I may change
that a little bit um cuz some of the public comments have been long um so we may need to put some um constraints a little bit on that um but I do appreciate the public com ink you
and um being part of this uh is there any public comment from the public any public comment from the committee all right um with that I would enter entertain a motion to adjourn
motion to adjourn second all right um all those in favor say I I I all right we are adjourned thank you all for bearing with