##VIDEO ID:uJrxx47mMDU## gript uh and I'm off mute okay so as a preliminary matter this is Jillian perast I am the chair of the finance committee please permit me to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me uh Finance members when I call your name please respond in the affirmative Linda yes can you hear me yes we can hear you okay good good okay my video is not working that great okay thank you you look okay to us we can see you yeah it's everything's does look that great on my end but anyway uh Nathan yes uh n yes Nathaniel yes hey Peter can you hear us hi yes hi sorry had to zoom had to update for me I know I dialed in early because it had the same thing for me too um all right so uh I'm just going through the open script so um everyone has responded in the affirmative from the committee um oh and it looks like Katie just joined sorry Zoom made me update my update that's all good that happen to a couple of us um all right so uh all the finance committee members are present can be heard and can hear us um and I see Natasha that you're also on um can you hear us okay today I can awesome thank you all right um so I will go through the introduction now um so good evening this is an open meeting of the mayard finance committee it is being conducted via Zoom speakers on the agenda will be participating remotely uh and the chair may allow for the public to provide comment um the uh committee would like to hear public comments and if there is further action required by uh the committee the chair um will add the matter as appropriate to a forthcoming agenda depending on the comment the uh committee if they are able within the confines of open meeting law will respond with information as opposed to needing to deliberate on the matter please note that while an option for remote attendance and or participation is being provided as a courtesy to the public this meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast to individual attendees unless required by law accordingly Please be aware that other folks may be able to see you so please take care not to screen share your computer anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording this meeting is currently being recorded and it will be um posted on the wavm um Zoom um YouTube channel in the future um meeting materials can be found on board docs um and we recommend that you follow along on the agenda um along with the board do documents unless I note otherwise um and now we will be turning to the first item on the agenda um and all right I think that that is the um all the stuff I need to read today okay so we will turn to the first item on the agenda so um Natasha I did see your email so the first item on the agenda is a potential Reserve fund transfer request so um we don't currently officially have that request yet um but that's something that we for this topic will be like officially moved to a Future Finance meeting um but if there's any other um information you'd like to add at this time Natasha uh you're welcome too uh no just thank you for the committee I had um some medical stuff last week so I'm a couple of days behind in catching up um and I will by the end of this week I just need to confirm a couple of things with the costing string that uh Wayne and Brian are intending um any potential allocation to go to before I can set send over the documentation um but I will have uh the invoice and all of that provided by the end of this week with uh a formal request and we'll send it over to the select board as well just to keep them in the loop because I know that was also a concern yeah that's great thanks for um thanks for addressing that so obviously we're we're meeting today instead of on the 11th since it's a holiday um and then our next meeting would be the 25th that sounds fine and I I imagine it will come over um it will you'll have everyone will have awareness of it before next week the quad board meeting so it may not be a discussion point that will the fincom per se will be able to deliberate on but you'll have some um Insight on it as the select board ahead of the Quad board meeting okay you all right that sounds great were there any other questions or comments from the rest of the committee on this topic for a future meeting um is it still roughly 47,000 or thereabouts is that so what you're expecting correct yes um based on the last figures that I have it it's $ 46574 that will be sought um from the reserve fund so this will um this will subsidize the 30,000 that the school will be using from funds they've identified internally um the 76,000 that we just had sent over or allocated and whatever is remaining from last year's um so there's a couple of uh funding sources that will total the amount needed to to get the second um HVAC unit ordered um and also my understanding from our last meeting was that there was a bit of a Time sensitivity on this and I'm feeling that the temperature Dro in the last couple days so is this something that can be you know delay bcom meeting I spoke with Brian this morning about it and he seemed seemed okay they have um replaced one which was the more uh recent one so there is heat it's not like they're down to um so he felt it would take anyway um it takes like months to order so I don't think two two more weeks is going to actually um change the outcome of getting it here before winter um it would be be great if it does but basing on the last um unit it took like five months so they ordered it in in the spring didn't get in until like September October so this will allow us at least order it um and hopefully we can sure the sooner the better but we'll not sure when it'll come in all right okay if there's no further um discussion on this topic we can go to the Joint board meeting planning for November 12th okay um so I have not yet seen that this meeting has been officially posted yet uh but when it when it is I will share that information with you all but we're we're sort of expecting it to be at 6:30 pm is that right yeah so my understanding is it'll start at 6:30 like some of the past meetings have um I need to also put a quorum notice up for us um I'm going to make a note of that and I think it it I don't think I know that it will also be hybrid like the past meetings have been so there'll be the option to go in person or to dial in um but the agenda hasn't been set yet um we did as um as you were requesting Peter thanks for reaching out um directly about topics at the meeting so it sounds like uh one of the topics might potentially be or discussing some comparator ounds and other comparisons um so and I think it sort of this this topic for me and sort of the next topic on the agenda the future planning sort of go a little bit together um so I did circulate it was a little bit later um than I anticipated but I did circulate sort of the newer spreadsheet um that you had put together Nathan so uh I wanted to sort of touch base on that and also Capcom shared with us a spreadsheet um that they're using to do some projections as well um so I can kind of talk through a little bit on that um depending on which one you want to start with so I would say since Nathan you you've made a some of the spreadsheet there do you want to start with with your topic there or I can pull up the Capcom chees sure um let me uh let me show what I have for uh the newest version the future planning document um sure all right so I'm gonna make you a host so you can share because I don't know how to do it otherwise so just don't don't hang up the call on us okay okay can everybody see this yes all right so this is the newest version it is updated November 3rd because uh Greg got back to me and he was able to give me um the the FY 25 budget information um and I'm pretty sure it was amended for including the special town meeting Peter so I don't think you need to um you know do your thing with like the PDFs and I'm wondering if we might be able to get that kind of report from uh from Greg in the future um so this is all updated these are all real numbers for fy2 um I made a few changes since the last time I started keeping track of what I'm doing so one thing I did was H I made a salary adjuster um so there's a tool down here we can change it for for any upcoming year to see how it affect the expenses so you know if in FY 26 we're expecting um 55 million 55.4 million um if Town salaries only increased by 2% it' be 55.3 million or they were increased by 3% overall go up to 55 four five um and it still has in this feature here which I've shown you all before with the uh you can put in up to four um new debt issuances uh so like if we were to build bleachers if we were to build a DPW garage um we can put the full sum in here for the first year so let's say DPW garage is 20 million and we're doing it next year um and that so that Updates this and all future years and it fills that information in um let's see here under uh Debt Service so here's the new debt that' be you know roughly um roughly $1 million uh principal and interest payments together um for like the next so many years um I also got information from Linda that she got from Capcom so I was able to update all of our debt service all of our current debts are here um and I have information on them running up until FY 32 and I'm not sure what happens to these ones whether they continue on in FY 33 or 34 um but you know you can see that the libraries going to be paid off FY 26 the police station is going to be paid off FY 28 uh and so on um which you know also brings in I added added a bunch of extra columns so I can you know theoretically just like keep adding on columns um to this as far out as we want to uh and if we if we know if we hear from like any Department you know Public Works that they're expecting um to like have like new hires or something and you know FY if we know that a a Justin is getting like a pay raise at some point you know we can put in 5% that year uh and then if we adjust the salaries for everybody else down here um that would stay at 5% and everybody else's salaries would good go up to I guess 3% here is where I changed it um so those are some of the the new things that I've added in here what I would like to do going forward the biggest thing I want to do is figure out how this all translates to um like the average tax bill the average like real estate um payment for like your you know $500,000 house or whatever it is because that's that's the number that you know we always want to have to present at Town meetings it seems to be what there's a lot of interest in I don't quite understand how to translate this into that at this point yeah and I think the feedback I've gotten from the assessor and from Greg in the past is that it's it's complicated and I was like well is there some is there some like back of the envelope calculation and I think there's also the split tax rate but maybe they can maybe with all of this information together there can be something that they can give us instead of well it's hard now um there was a calculation done for Green Meadow School that I think is what the Capcom used to come up with estimates that they presented in July I think everybody's kind of feeding off of that um which now you know the Green Meadow School would have been three four years ago that the estimate was done um but I don't think it changes that much but um I mean it might be worth so Capcom had numbers um when they did their presentation and they may have a better way to do the calculation or it may be that they just you know said if 20 million is X then 10 million is y and it's just an even ratio um but I'm not sure if that's how they do their estimates or not but they had estimates in July okay so I could maybe uh talk to Capcom to figure out what they're doing yes yep you're muted Linda this is fantastic so fy2 looks good right yeah that should be Revenue minus expenses do you is that showing in the black 1.7 million uh it is um I I'm confident about the expenses here yeah I'm not confident about how the revenue is calculated and actually we we were in the black in FY 24 okay and then FY 26 that's based on your model not on what we went over last time of what Greg is projecting for the budget it's just based on your model yep is it okay yeah okay so you're showing my because he had a much more dire number yeah yeah so basically what this should be doing is it unless we have any other information it copies uh the the department expenses over and it add and it increases salaries only based on put down here yeah okay and already you're projecting for FY 26 over 10% for Debt Service yes yeah okay and that yeah green the green met numbers look good that's this is fantastic um and we could you know Library other supplies if if we knew that you in previous years okay they had a 10% increase here it's as easy as popping in 10% there and then it updates and it carries forward every year yeah um I mean this is great I don't um just to note I don't think the fy2 should have a surplus I mean what we did at Town meeting was to spend all the money that's why we did the additional Appropriations the special town meeting so I'm not sure I I assume there's some thing with the uh Revenue side that's quirky or something and isn't quite showing up right um I I would love to uh review the revenue section either like now or with you know one of you who knows who knows more about this than I do to try to work that out because like I said like expenses you know I saw the numbers from like the budget and put plug that in but the revenue side um it's the prior yeary limit plus 2.5% um increase plus whatever New Growth is plugged in here um and that's probably the biggest like fudgy factor and then that the total of this gets um put into like the beginning of the year it's it's the Green Meadow number it's the 3 million it's down here yeah that's definitely it so should um I I mean that probably is the correct number once everything is bonded but I think we're only you know we're only paying approximately a third of the total cost this year so you know we can only put we would only have Revenue in to cover the third okay now that's going to generate some you know 100,000 $300,000 deficit so I might not be I I don't know it's exactly a third but I mean we shouldn't have the full three million in there because we don't have the full three million of expense okay well this is the number that I got from um from Greg uh what's been like a portioned for this year it's a [Music] $982,500 yeah pretty much yes all right that's going to then be a $300,000 deficit I don't think that that's not right either but okay um and prior debt exclusion that's another thing I had a question about should this equal you know all of the other like uh a portion like principal and interest payments is that what that is um it is the principle and interest on what's called excluded debt so the debt was that was sub subject to a debt exclusion vote um I'm pretty sure the capital planning committee has some good information on this so as if you go down a little bit to so I can see the list of projects um isn't there like a side so so if you sidew project I think is not excluded and I something called LTD principal interest general fund so that is from Capcom so that includes the excluded the non-excluded and the total debt um from 25 until like I think they went they went all the way out to 2032 okay yeah yeah I remember that from that's the document that I got a lot of this stuff from and I ignored those uh four rows on the bottom that were not the exact thing I so I'll go back to that document and that will film in on that yeah so they highlight which one specifically the different bonds which ones are excluded and non- excluded um and then the total debt is is all of them excluded and not excluded so if you I mean I can show you sort of how that breaks down but I think if that's helpful to the group um this could be a very silly question um but just for the the prior year debt exclusions um I guess if those are the principle in interest um on sort of the excluded debt uh I'm just again very SL question but I'm just a little little confused as to how that would be sort of the the revenue if it's because interest is like interest payments is that right um that uh row 22 Yeah dead exus I'd like uh I'd like a a clear explanation of this as well I'm I'm a little confused on what this represents wait sorry I I didn't quite follow the question can you ask it again sure yeah I'm sorry um if the prior year debt exclusions which we see I guess in in row you know 16 and then row 22 if there's a principle and interest on excluded debt how is that Revenue because isn't interest like interest payments um so you're talking about line 16 there which is on the revenue side right yes okay so when we vote to do a debt exclusion we authorize the town to charge the residents as like a sirar charge on your property tax bill although it doesn't really show up separately for the cost of that debt and whatever year it is the cost is both principal and interest so it's the cost of borrowing so okay the Green Meadow School in fy2 cost us 982 th000 we as a town voted to increase our taxes overall by $982,000 exactly in fy2 and then FY 26 as that number changes and we have more borrowing to sports School building then the amount we're author you know the town is authorized to add goes up okay and as the debt gets retired or should it you know I don't know we we we refinance the bonds and get a lower interest rate then the property taxes charged to cover that would also go down okay so it should match what's in the expense side right so it's then sort of the tax revenue um that we raised to to offset the principal and interest cost of the excluded debt yes okay gotta thank you and the and the town also occasionally issues debt um that's like non-excluded because it's like a small enough value that that it doesn't need to go up to a vote is that the idea and then they just like find the money somewhere else in the uh in the general fund well it's not it's not that it doesn't need to go to a vote it's that we don't need additional tax revenue to support the project right right so kind of by definition at small projects um and this is you know when Greg talks about wanting a capital line in the operating budget it would be that the operating budget you know could either pay for some projects directly or could you know F pay for a bond that would let you do something bigger but that it wouldn't be done via an override it would be done out of the operating budget yeah and just to sort of reiterate that really great Point excluded and non-excluded has to do with the 2 and a half% over like every year it increases so if it's excluded it's not it can go above the two and a half% the prop two and a half percent because it's something that we voted on as a town um sort of again potentially a silly question but um but for the special town meeting um since the town was Voting um on whether to fund the the bleachers um would that have been like an exclusion Vote or or no yes okay that yes yeah that was a dead exclusion to build the bleachers so I can't remember the numbers now but it was three and a half million you know say it was $400,000 a year we could if we had moven the operating budget just you know pay for it out of the operating budget but nobody could come up with 400,000 so then we had to go to the taxpayers and say we would like you to pay additional taxes to cover this project that's you know what a debt override is so just to make sure I'm mapping that um correctly I just plugged in $3 million debt issuance here um and then that automatically calculates what our annual payment is based on 15 years at 3.5 um and it adds you know 267,000 as a new exclusion uh so is that does that seem correct it does just can you go down does the 267 should also show up as an expense yeah it shows under a new debts new debt number one 267,000 y y that's exactly right that's why when I say you know things like Green Meadow or um bleachers or Senior Center don't really affect the operating budget I mean it doesn't affect the net income or the Surplus on the operating budget because essentially we you know have equal amounts of income and expense it certainly messes with things like you know to the degree we're concerned about the debt service Ratio or you know how much taxes people have to pay but if we vote to do a debt override it doesn't add to or subtract from the yearly deficits I think the only thing you have to be careful on the spreadsheet is that it's not factoring into your two and a half% increase in the revenue every year yeah so um it does not because this is equal to this which is the sum of this so this gets added on top afterward great yeah that's right yep well so then gez I'm still off by uh $340,000 here um could have to do with like the new growth no because that goes in the other direction might have to do with net local Aid that's definitely not something I've updated and I know that that changed around this is and I think this is uh oh that's a fixed value um the local Aid was how we had extra money that we did at special town meeting was it 126 or 176 I forget wasn't wasn't 300 but it was about one something um you try um let's see can I step back for one second are you thinking you want to present this at the tri board meeting and thus want to have 25 nailed down or is that I don't remember if that was on the list for the tri board or not yeah I mean I think we could potentially present this uh at the tri board meeting um or you know ideal if we had some sort of like visual if if we were able to show you know something easily digestable off of this um so yeah it would be nice if the numbers balanced but I don't think it's critical they balanc because I everybody understands that this is just an estimate yeah the issue so the revenue becomes tricky and you really have to trace back through the you know Greg Johnson spreadsheets that lead up to town meeting we we we don't vote formally on the revenue assumptions and so they never get quite as formally documented and I know from doing this for fire years It's tricky to tra track down what Revenue assumptions we were using um but I think it's doable I would have to waave yeah I I'm pretty pressed with work through November 15 um so I can't do this for the tri board but would be perfectly willing to help do this after November 15 um and I think we can figure but you know Greg sometimes will balance the budget by you know upping New Growth 25 $25,000 or upping the local receipts $25,000 in some line and exactly you know tracking that so that we have exactly the right income assumptions but I mean Linda's right we had you know extra hundred and something thousand of local Aid and we went and spent every penny and in the fall so you know we we're not creating budgets with any surplus in them and we're not allowed to have them with deficits so whatever the assumptions were they tied to that town meeting number and we just have to kind of recreate them I mean Greg you could actually ask I mean Greg should be able to do it so you know just say you know if you go to the bottom whatever that total special t meeting spending was um the yeah the 5289 um you know he should be able to give you a revenue breakdown of what you know what is supporting that and what are the revenue assumptions yeah which I wanted to check that is that did you tie that to the town meeting warrant um what that is tied to is let me see if I can pull up yeah do you think does that look right or off to you um that is off so I'm sorry I was just pulling up my copy of the warrant so the warrant budget is 51605 226 and you know what I was doing the back years and gets tricky you know what do you choose to include and how do you do some of the expenses and you know issues like actual New Growth versus projected New Growth but one of the things I was trying to keep is that our expense line tied to the town meeting warrant number I mean that is the official voted budget of the Town um I have a question so how how do we treat free cash because we are generating is that count as Revenue towards the next year so we have a budget but then no our free doesn't count as a revenue for the next year because it's we we're always reporting the budget not our actual expenses correct um um let me well right just as an as side on that for one free cash we treat as a separate fund so I mean we could say we want to dedicate you know 400,000 of free cash to the yearly revenue and then include it with the operating budget but it's generally poor financial practice and so we don't we you know spend it separately on dump trucks or whatever we spend it on um so it's almost like a separate little budget a separate pool of money that we can you know appropriate or not appropriate um wait can I ask you daon where did you say you got these expense numbers from uh I got it from Greg sent me a spreadsheet and I think there might be an error on mine because it adds up to uh 51 625 083 and 17 cents on the document he sent me which I think is the number you quoted it is not but it's much closer it's about 20,000 off okay um so I'd be curious where he's different but um yeah I don't I don't know if this makes sense to hash out on a call with all these people but I mean I would do it I mean if you take his numbers and then you know subtotal it by the various line items at town meeting you know they should they match to the dollar generally I me I think I have one thing in the history where I was 50 bucks off and couldn't figure it out but you know so that would then lead you to say well you know your peg access the budget said 361 but you have it in as 385 or you I don't know what it is but you have to you know break it down into smaller chunks to figure out where the difference is um I did notice that um for uh fiscal year 2025 the employee benefits uh amount on the warrant article is more than 10 m okay so that's right there and I guess I just if you go higher um um in the row 74 for some reason that's slower but I guess that maybe is being added to something else 74 the pension assessment okay two rows below that is that 75 okay so that's just been changed then okay never mind I'm sorry yeah you um you have I'm on the October I think yes yeah like yesterday so it's slightly different another if you look at that total benefits on line 7 I can't my eyes aren't that good line 75 the 1075 030 that is the number that's in the warrant yes okay um so I mean that's the kind of checking I that um I suppose we can start looking actually no I I I think I know where the what the difference is um I think it is here in um the education department uh yeah this is like I don't know like the it's like a single line item on the budget um and I don't really know in Prior years I have how it's like a port all these like different things um in this year it I just had a uh Greg had 22.9 million um and I had previously broken that down because uh the superintendent um made a presentation at the June 11th quad W meeting where he broke down the overall salary number and the overall expenses number um and I think maybe those numbers it were like the school spending including drawing from revolving funds or drawing from uh you know state aid or something because those numbers add up to 23.6 and the number on the uh on the like the general fund is 22.9 I think yeah I think you're right um I guess I would also ask um is that education manard number in row 60 I guess is that is that combining what the warrant has between education mayard and education asbet or or no then um that is not yeah is education aset is is that did I see that somewhere above row 40 maybe is down here two down here okay okay yeah um I'm not quite sure what to do here because on the one hand I like having this number from superintendent hos because it's like it's more specific and I know okay there's a new teacher contract so we can expect it to go up up and up here um and but it doesn't match up to what the general fund is in the end and either way it's still not as specific as I would like it to be I think um Natasha was mentioning that like the there other contracts that are up for like different positions in the next year or two and I'd like to be able to like map that oh uh Natasha hi so um I I'll just add from the education perspective which I know can be a little tricky because generally when the budget is allocated to the school department it's just the one lump sum then the school committee has to allocate we have we have which is doesn't align with the town account we have cost centers there's about six of them and then we allocate within those cost centers so there's one like for facilities there's one for wages um but they don't come out to exactly this level this granularity this level line level isn't what um is approved by the school committee or so the superintendent could for instance if there's like wages he could move anything around during the year to different Lines within the wages so they're never going to actually we only have Authority for the school committee to make sure like he can't he can spend this amount on the wages for whatever but the town wouldn't have that awareness so he might give some general information like looking at what we've historically spent but I don't know if I would um put that preemptively into a forecasting model per se because um it doesn't line up exactly to the lines that you have here if you're looking to forecast that way if that makes any sense sometimes there are positions um that might get put to Peg access right we have like wavm so there's funding there sometimes sometimes there's preschool um so there's a lot of Shifting um a little bit so I just wanted to clarify I think what what Peter was saying earlier is usually we'll just see the the one line like that what the the school was allocated from town meeting that 22 whatever whatever because that's really all that town meeting Authority really has to do is just to allocate the one line over um but we could potentially you know again highlight when there's certain contracts that are up you know and that might be awareness you know so you have okay which ones are coming up in particular years um not that it's going to get you any closer to a dollar but you'll you know my teacher one which is the larger amount that staff you know um and we won't we won't have we won't have much much information at the quad board about that just because it is yeah under uh for the par professionals and the custodians it's in a um right now we're under um I can't think of the word now um negotiation thank you sorry so um so I guess my first question is we I have these account numbers and like these like names of accounts and information for them from like fy22 and earlier do you know if there was there like an accounting type change in FY 23 no so what happens is um at the end of the year the school works with the town to close out the year so this is this is one collaborative moment we have to send a report to desie or the school has to send a report to desie about the end of the year so it looks at all the expenses and so there's financial information there is a collaborative effort where um Wayne has to get reports and information from the town and so I'm guessing this is why you'll see it for the prior years and as they're closing out the years we get you know we get the information from historical of what the how it was maybe expensed but that's more of a in the aers after the fact not necessarily how it's budgeted that way okay um lot of massaging to get it like in a way because the schools expense lines don't align up um or how Desi requires don't allign up to how the municip U Municipal codes are for different ones okay but um would that be available up to what like fy4 FY 23 uh I'm guessing you might have 23 might be somewhere so if I don't know if um where did you get that sourcing from that for the prior years was it Greg provided that or um I think I got it from uh Peter oh yeah Peter was that from like the end of the year like the report d yeah I don't think so actually I was just looking back at my spreadsheets trying to figure out where the heck I got it from um I would have gotten it just from the spending reports and ah so maybe yeah I mean it yeah I think there was something going on with fy19 through fy22 that the schools must have done something to break it down more so prior to that uh in 18 and 17 it was just more I mean it was split between the uh salary staff Transportation athletic expense yes and the cost centers were different exactly so the the cost I don't know why I don't know why the town came up with this detail for 19 through 22 um I'm not sure I mean we can see like athletic yeah instruction maintenance they kind of align um with some of the cost centers that the school has so like at a high level you know there is a a one bucket that is like you know admin then there's Transportation so they looks like it's almost trying to align with the cost centers that we've expanded for um like the maintenance education maintenance of plant that's one cost center by itself um but I'm not sure I probably have to ask Wayne just to see if maybe he's he's sharing something that is more granular um when he closes out the year in some way I'm not sure um how long has Wayne been here um probably since around 19 or 20 so maybe that's when between him and Pete yeah there was um well it was um there was Irene who was like one year she was like an interim and then there was Michelle before Michelle so Michelle was like before 19 um Michelle rendez right and so she probably had just the four different or whatever those four or five and then it might have gotten expanded between Irene and and Wayne but I don't know why it wouldn't show for 23 because that's a little I haven't heard of him doing anything different no you said that the um you know uh the superintendent can move you know funds between different line lines to meet needs uh is that within a specific cost center or is that like exactly no no not the whole budget so if he needs to go so for instance if there is like you know one year um we have unbudgeted we have a a lot of more unexpensive or something he'd have to come to the school committee and and seek our approval for that type of if you're transferring from cost center to cost center so he's um superintendent's allowed or the school is allowed to move within that c Center so if they need to do anything within a a certain amount but when if it comes to a totally separate type of expense it has to come to the school committee approval and we haven't seen them do that um in recent years so they've been it seems to be working pretty well now sometimes they might um what may happen is um depending on a revolver or something to that effect you know it might be that some of it might get written you know charged to a revolver and that's part of the issue is that we've needed to rely a lot more on our revolverwing accounts over the past few years so that might be why we we're not seeing it because it's you know it's going to a revolver if it exceeds a certain cost Center and they don't have it you know like like transportation is one it which is highly subsidized by um the school choice revolver in particular I guess I have another question about the cost centers but uh Linda um oh I I was just gonna ask Natasha so we've got F 23 24 25 the budget what's the best source because this is going to be really important going forward I think in 26 that the town and we understand the budget and what is driving it increase in the school department so what's the best source to get this information do you think Wayne or super well there's there's a couple different ways that we we could we could do that we have um like Wayne just provided us with an end of the year report so that was kind of closing out um the prior year but then for the future like for Budget planning you know for this year like you're in the middle of fy2 you must have a to know yes we do we have so we approved we approved we approved a budget before like right before um annual town meeting or right around that time and then when the special town meeting that $76,000 got approved we just amended that particular cost center to add it in to that maintenance cost center but everything else I can send you what like what was previously approved and this is where we have budget hearings so I don't you know whoever you know is the liaison for the school like when you hear about like coming to their budget presentations and stuff uh the the budget hearing this is where it gets exactly that grant for the public so so if we even looked at the school committee we might find those documents online in your in your agendas and yes for our budget hearing you would you would see prior um any budget hearing you would have something that's posted that shows um you know what we're doing or what we're discussing and how we're looking to approve and it um to get public feedback on it as well I think that's going to be really important for what as we look forward to FY 26 to understand all these cost centers that you have yeah yeah it's um I can send over just some preliminary what the cost centers are just so you have some awareness of what the descriptions that um we operate in for them and then um but then there's a whole you know a whole bunch of Lines within them that talk about you know like particular special education you know curriculum all those different things um and those can change during the year with even without us necessarily um having awareness as long as they stay in that I think it's the T it's the same for the rest of the budget right I mean things change you make best you make your best guess in your budget and things are going to change um you know and you got to deal with that within the fiscal year but I think going forward as we're planning for FY 26 good to know what we think we're going to face in FY 26 yeah and it might be so if I just had a thought I think the cost centers might be a good place to start if you're trying to get some like these are the this is what the school committee has approved for these cost centers now what um as I mentioned before sometimes there's the funding outside of the cost centers that and that's the part that the superintendent um which he's going to be working on or he's working on with Wayne um to do I think a very quick high level for next week if if we have a quad board meeting I think um but to show like if we take what we've been relying on for those revolver accounts and pull it back into the operating budget that's where you're we're going to see that huge that the expenses grow from the operating expense because it right now if you look at our expenses the it's not really a it's it's kind of misrepresentation in a sense because you have these other accounts that are being um that are outside of the the regular allocation that are funding expenses that are really operational expenses I mean it's just like the to we have to understand where we're getting money from and where it's where it's coming in and out right and I know for fy2 the school committee was very clear we're drawing down these bank accounts right so we have to really see I mean I think what for us to you know look look at this I think it will be very helpful so thank you yeah yeah no I I we do have on our website I don't I don't know if they've posted it yet but we've been posting our quarterly reports um that kind of go they also look at the balances for um for the each of the accounts as well and how we are monitoring that um so you know just some food for thought as the conversations come up naan did you say you had another question for school yeah so did you say there were six cost centers um I think there's six I'm actually pulling them up right now and I can email them over what they are and but I guess I guess in your opinion that' be the best thing to if if we want to like break down this number a bit further cost centers is the way that you have it organized and that's that's the way to look at it I would say it's probably a good place because that's how we're approving it like if it falls Within These certain buckets this is what like how we're approved it for the for the school to move forward if it if it um they would have to come back to us to change you know to request moving of those lines um which is not a normal occurrence and then if I'm trying to fold that back up into you know the single line in the town budget that um uh is it going to be like you know 2 plus two plus two plus two and equals like more than what's allocated because you're also looking at State funds and revolvers um or we would now we wouldn't look at State funds for the the planning of the budget so that comes separately you don't want to that's considered um um like a supplemental um so it shouldn't Sur operating so if we get competitive grants or things that um entitlement those aren't always exactly known when you're kind of forecasting for the budget so we don't um include those funding opportunities in um in with this is purely the operational budget of what we what we have here um and then whatever we can rely on our our revolving we do but um the it depends on the trend right of what what's needing like this year we're taking out some you know the school choice 30,000 for the second H you know what I mean like those kind of things we you know we need to have a little bit of and the school choice one in particular is the most flexible um where it doesn't require like there's a the um some of them like circuit breaker it's very specific for special education you know that kind of stuff so some of the other ones like um Nathan um my recommendation would be that we try we don't try to get granular with the school budget is this spreadsheet um think it's too difficult to maintain they are there to my mind there are too many times that there are other funding sources involved with the school budget that won't tie back to the town meeting appropriation that at trying [Music] to you know get this spreadsheet to reflect the level of detail that then you could say something like okay if power professionals contracts goes up by 3% this is the impact it just I don't think it ties that well and I think you tear your tear your hair out trying to make that work um I do think there's more we could do on the school budget or you know think about with the school budget but I would do it more so they do have you know kind of a line item budget similar to the town light item budget if you will that goes through you know teachers by school and you know principles and you know separate stuff I I don't know if I sent that to you Nathan or not um I don't think so or if you did then I wasn't at a place where I could process and understand at um we should talk about what I mean I have a couple of years I think the most recent thing I have is actually FY 23 the other issue is that for projections it gets very difficult I mean I think the superintendent and the school committee don't really deal with the line item budget in specificity until they know the number from the town so you know they get the number from the town There's you know I don't know Title One or other funding sources and then you know potentially some of their revolving accounts then they come up and say okay this is how much we get to spend and this is how we're going to break it down and I don't think they do that until well after town meeting um so it I don't know that it would help us in you know trying to look at FY 26 for instance they wouldn't do their FY 26 version of this you know likely I'm you know Natasha I'm sure knows better you know like July or August of 25 we the numers we would do it um so we usually do it in April or May um because we have to have our public hearing on on the budget um and by then we would know like exactly to your point though like what we were getting you know not much is going to change from then till town meeting um yeah and so we would break it out to those call centers there's actually um actually I Moke there's eight call centers um eight or nine so I can not the car centers I'm you know I'm looking at the budget with yeah to get more granular yes we would not we wouldn't have that exactly with 362 line items in it yeah yeah no and that's you know where it gets down to and that won't happen probably like July or yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah I just I I would just like to have something that's more detailed than a lump sum of like $23 million uh it's whether I guess my and I didn't say this very well but I don't think we will ever have enough detail in this spreadsheet to make it useful to put in the detail um is is my short version I guess that we should take the I I would almost do the 23 million as a lump sum and then separately deal with the 23 million as a separate budget we should look at but that you know the idea that we're going to project you know specialed English English is a second language supplies a Green Meadow School which has a $500 line item um you know that that's going to go up to 525 in you know some year it's just I think that's too much detail and it doesn't reflect reality of you know anything it becomes an exercise just to make the spreadsheet well because yeah it doesn't account for really also the student population right it's just making assumptions that expenses in the same places might arise you know every year in a certain way but the student body you know you get more El students and that's really what's going to inform you know where you need to shift your resources and stuff um I'll email you these budgets that I have and I may have more than this but I have 21 22 and 23 um and then yeah probably need to follow up and try and get 24 and 25 because it would be nice to have them cool yeah I think I I I take your point uh Peter about um about utility for future planning uh and you know making a spreadsheet just to make a spreadsheet because I I think I I'm like oh I'll just get all of the numbers and if I put all the numbers together in one place some something's going to emerge and it might just be a lot of confusion yeah the maintenance of it becomes so hard that you know trying to get it I I think there's some value in trying to get it to tie to the town meeting warrant just as a baseline that you know if you're looking back five years you're say well who the heck came up with who said that was the budget you can go back and point to the warrant and says that's right there that's what was approved and I think that's a useful thing to have with you know trying to you know keep so much history to you know as authentication of the history if you will um and I think it just gets way too hard trying to include the school budget all right well I have a lot of notes about uh school budget and uh some of my other questions did anybody have any other any other questions about what's on this future planning thing or any feedback on what direction we we should take this in Nathan my question is is relative to next week do we think this is ready for like a preview to say what we're working on and some of the questions we have um and get some input or just I I guess that's I mean it's fantastic it's you know helps us learn right the structure of it helps us really learn and understand the town which is really great yeah I uh I'm I'm not I'm not sure what to like present exactly um this like I If if we knew specifically what you know Capcom was proposing for or you know what the you know what the Council on Aging was suggesting exactly as as for the new Senior Center rent or when we wanted to build the DPW garage I feel like I could bang together like a model and make like a little graph or something pretty quickly um but I feel like we're gonna learn that at the quad board meeting but I wonder if that might be part of the dialogue because I think this could be really useful for the Capcom right is to say okay if we're thinking of new debt would it really make sense to are we seeing debt come down in like three years for the DPW garage or when should we stack up these projects to keep I mean I think we almost want to keep rather than having the debt come on and off keep it maybe steady so people are used to taxes um and even the senior center people could you know see okay this is I mean I know you said you know one thing we want to do is integrate this with more of like what's the impact on taxpayers but that's where we're going and um people could say yeah this is really good and would really help help us plan all these initiatives one thing that I was thinking of especially in terms of the visuals um was just kind of tracking I think maybe The Debt Service proportion and maybe some of those hard numbers too but I think just you know putting those on a graph you know yearby year I think could be pretty helpful so I'd be you know happy to to you know take a stab at that and certainly have that ready before the uh the quad board meeting too cool um yes maybe we could like throw some numbers together and Nila you could like uh make a couple charts and yeah could be fun yeah uh and then how do we um how do we get that ready for presentation of the Quad board meeting like I know other places have like a slideshow would we have like one slide that shows up or would we like do a share screen like this and show you know this is what the future planning thing looks like will we share like a screenshot of it in a uh in like a PowerPoint um a couple slides might be might be easy like yeah just like screenshots on slides basically of you know one or two graphs or however many we end up with because I know I know that some of the other uh boards are doing slideshows right so we could just do that in the past we've also done sort of like a live lunch and learn is not the right word but like um sort of going over it um I would say though we have to be mindful that it's going to be a multi-board meeting so I would say we're not going to be able to go into the depth like we gone on to ad here for like you know 30 minutes to like an hour um so I think it's important to think about what the messaging will be um and making it sort of bite-sized to introduce it to people because my my personal Vision as one member would be to sort of just to introduce this tool to people and to get them excited about it because at the end of the day if people don't want to use it um like if you get them excited about it they'll want to use it is what I'm trying to say H if we if we dive directly deep into the details like people might glaze over a little bit which the details is the important part but I think just selling people on the vision to begin with would be an important first step it that's my opinion is one person so um you know someone at the meeting might be like oh this I'd really like to see this type of thing modeled and you know you can of course go through the spreadsheet very quickly do that um and show them so but I don't know J yeah sorry sorry if you have more to say I don't mean to cut I'm not trying to cut you off but I had a question on the tri no I meant yeah go ahead okay sorry um but is I I haven't really seen the agenda for the tri board and I haven't either so I'm kind of like what's happening um frankly I'm Leary of a tri board that is like you know three different presentations that take an hour and a half and then you know essentially the meeting's over I mean I wouldn't call a tri board meeting to talk about this for instance if we're doing a tri board meeting to talk about this I don't think we should be having a tri board meeting at least you know not quite yet that you know we're not ready to present this in a formal way and I mean if we want to do a five minute update that this is what we're working on that's one thing but I get concerned is the tri Bo meeting devolves into you know like the February budget meeting it's just a bunch of presentations that everybody could read at home on a PDF and why are we all sitting in a room together yeah I mean I think the important thing is to reflect on how all the different committees are going to be kind of sort of looking at the same thing so like the same rate the term the the dates the amounts for like whatever projections I think a couple other committees are using projections now but I think that could potentially be served by having a joint meeting with Capcom like we have in the past um I feel like we're sort of the two groups that that dive into some of this stuff pretty deeply I don't know that we need to do that at a quad board meeting okay yeah I mean I would agree I mean I Nathan I'm gonna try to sell this short but I don't want to I don't want to do a half hour presentation on this and have that you know be why we're all sitting together no offense but taken but I do think it really ties into that the what we were talking about in the past is education of of the public on different matters and I think for me for me as one person the big take takeaway here is The Debt Service percent which I think the Capcom sent around another spreadsheet to us that I shared um as well so I think you know that would be one takeaway for me is that we're pretty close to that 10% and being mindful of that in the upcoming years for potential other overrides is important um like that would be an important summary for me to take away from this um you know and that if we're thinking about other potential overrides operational or Capital that that's something we should keep in mind I think that's valid um and would prefer well I don't I would prefer have the agenda Topic at the tri board be what is the appropriate percent and then you know we could show this and say look we're getting close to being over 10% and you know most of the guidance says that's not appropriate um rather than you know spending the time going through this in detail but I think when we're at a point where we're you're comfortable with the spreadsheet it's definitely something I think the Capcom has definitely said they would be interested to sort of collaborate together with us or at least learn from what we're doing on these spreadsheets um so like I think at some point it would definitely be something good that would be to share the actual document so people can play around with it and learn how it works um and we can maybe do a a Road Show you know maybe go and talk for like 15 minutes or something at someone else's meeting about the spreadsheet and how cool it is and how it's really helpful for predicting um future Trends I'm I'm just not I'm not sure how much we can dig into it at the tri board meeting so I think we need to go with a very clear message if we want to present it and for me the message would be hey if 10% is our number we're really close to it jayen would it be like a violation of open meeting law to have the spreadsheet on like a one drive to enable sort of multiple people edit okay as far as I know you're not supposed to share documents that everyone can edit at once um I think the only exception is the clear go account that we have so um that I think I've shared in past meetings where you can log in and you can see all of the the potential projects the capital projects for the upcoming years because that is like a a budget planning tool and we only have read access we don't have right access but it's hard to say we couldn't you know post the spreadsheet as Excel or something and let a bunch of people download it and then play with it that right that's what board do is yeah appropriate we already did that I mean it's out there there anybody could download it and use it yeah which is great yeah I think the version I sent around though was something October 30th or 31st or something I actually didn't send this this version around yeah but it's really close yeah I'll uh email this to you um after this meeting Jill so you can you know circulate it um yeah because up updating fy2 it's it's very similar to what was estimated but it's it's different and another thing I should point out um before I forget again is one thing I'm doing is I'm trying to normalize accounts to whatever like the current year is going backward so you I want to get your your all's opinion on whether this is a good thing to do or not but if we look at General government um let's see here the 's like a new utilities account that a lot of like the electric and uh heat that was previously either under facilities or like the police department's heat was under the police department what I did was I took the current year and then I found the related account that was previously under like the police and I copied all previous years under the new account number and I deleted needed it from the police department so if we were to look at the real budget from like last year uh the police department's actual budget was higher than what it's showing for that prior year in my future planning uh in the in this version um I think I and the reason I did that so that we can kind of compare like to like and see like how much heating costs have gone up over time um and so there isn't just suddenly a huge drop off in like five different departments and then a new department that appears out of nowhere does that I mean do you all think that that's a reasonable approach or should it be shown as like different accounts are you asking whether it like makes sense to have all of the utility accounts grouped together or no yeah like should um all these utilities because this is like a new this is like a new department that didn't exist before y so in reality all of this information was Zero nothing I see me yeah I mean I think it makes sense just like group that together I don't I don't see an issue with that so um so I I also struggled with this and try to do spreadsheets like this um my instinct is I think there's some value in being able to tie to Prior years it I don't know maybe it's like the accountant in me or something but the to be able to document you know where the fy22 budget numbers came from um now I don't know nobody's does anybody ever really care but I could you know foresee where we start moving stuff around too much and then we've lost it and we can't really tie back to the actual warrant number um I don't know I I get what you're saying and it is very true all of a sudden you look at this utility thing in general government and say wow that's a huge increase but it's not really um I I hate to even say this but I mean is there some way to like keep the underlying thing that ties to the town meeting warrant and [Music] then you know have this have it labeled as an adjusted budget for fy22 or something that that does the changes the way you're talking about there is and in previous versions of this that existed I was keeping track of those separately and that and at a certain point I was just like I'm just going to go with these weird Consolidated accounts that I've been doing I'm gonna yeah and I I get the value of them um and I don't know maybe I'm just weird and thinking that some of you are going to come back and say well you say the police spent 600,000 but when I look at tell meeting it was really 700,000 and it's because we moved 100,000 of utilities maybe nobody's ever going to never have to answer that question but I mean conversely if this is like really this is the future planning spreadsheet and it's not about you know having a like the everything Finance spreadsheet where you can look everything up and it's you know ties out to the right account and everything then I think it makes more sense to have the normalized accounts yeah yep I get that yep I don't know if Excel works if these like pivot tables work the same way as coding works but if you put the dollar sign like when you're coding in front of something it won't actually count it in your code but you can like have a note there so it'll be there I don't know if there's something where you can have it in both places but only actually add to your sum at the end like instead of being a value you can make it like be like this isn't actually a number this is text don't like add it to your calculations or it could totally derail everything I don't know um or Nathan do you have like an original account and then like the FY 25 account I was keeping track and then some places got really clunky and I stopped yeah right originally I was keeping like a note on all these and then I was just like I'm just gonna goad go back to the FY 23 like accounting and then the FY but then so okay I move this to F for fy2 because you know it's going to it's going to come up for FY 26 you're going to move something around yeah like if you just put a letter in the cell before the numbers like that it won't count it as a number and then it can be in both places at once but I don't know if that's actually hold value to you because then it's a text and not a number I think it might mess things up like I just did this here oh and it does exactly what you described jel but yep it'll think it's a number and it won't think it's a number anymore but like the line it'll still be there in the line but I don't know if that's useful if that's what you're talking about yeah that would be good for the everything spreadsheet yeah Ian at this point I I'm like now I'm feeling like uh like well I I did the thing and it's be really hard to go back so I kind of want to just argue in favor of doing what I already did but yeah I do I do see the value in having all the all the separate accounts listed it's just it gets confusing I mean another thing I'm doing is um if uh if there was an because like the original documents were um that Peter sent me went back to like fy13 or something and I was including all of that originally and then there're just all of these like dead accounts basically um and and it just made the whole document way more complicated uh and I was trying to streamline and make it more make it easier more legible so I you know cleared out years earlier than fy18 and I removed any rows that now are just like zero the entire way through so yeah I guess I I've been kind of like mucking around with with accounts in um ways that probably aren't like totally uh uh like 100 % correct accounting practice well I mean I think the that's the goal of the spreadsheet is to be able to use it to like predict Trends I don't think it's supposed to be the be all and all um accounting spreadsheet so like at some level we need to adapt it to meet our needs because if it's too complicated it's it's not going to be helpful but if there's not enough detail it's a Goldilocks problem yeah yeah and you know I technically if we deleted everything prior to fy15 everything's 100% correct again um like that really the only value in having this older stuff here so that we can see so that we can see that oh this uh you know The Debt Service went up 15% uh for fy22 that doesn't really tell I'm not using that information in any way like um like in the spreadsheet you were doing Jill where you took like the average of Prior years um increases um in this one yeah you're doing it in a more sophisticated way which I like well it in some ways more sopic in some ways like stupider because it's just it just assumes everything is flat unless you tell it something otherwise you know um but I don't know I don't know that's I think this this is a really helpful update and appreciate all the hard work you've put into it I would say at this time it sounds like we're not proposing to make uh future projections a potential Topic at this tri board meeting but um we're definitely open to sort of showing this or at least mentioning that this is something that we're working on we're happy to share it with other committees does that sound like a fair summary of what we've been talking about I I think is there is there some burning thing you want to present um I wouldn't mind since n's like volunteered to like throw together like a couple charts like even just like punch in like you know this is this is our estimate for this is what the Council on Aging told us a senior center might cost us if we do like an override so this is what that would look like on the budget this is what um building a DBW garage three years from now would look like um and this is what like maybe like one that's like The Debt Service percentage and and be like hey this is this is what we modeled these are the numbers that we put into it but you know we can use this for you know any fiscal year any like uh uh interest rate any you know uh override or debt we just need the numbers to plug in that way we're not doing like a 30 minute presentation um where just we're not getting like lost in the details but we're we're just kind of like giving an example to say that hey we're working on this okay so I can request like 10 15 minutes for going over some charts detailing the feature projection spreadsheet tool as a useful planning tool and sort of asking the goal would be to ask the various groups for sort of consensus on some of the numbers or scenarios to do to make future projections with yeah I think that sounds good okay awesome all right I I'm going to reclaim host um oh it made you stop sharing oops I didn't know I was going to do that okay um well that's great um are there any additional uh questions or topics uh for this um the future planning or The Joint board meeting planning I sort of feel like we we tackled that in one cell swoop today all right so I am not currently hearing any additional topics in that area um I did have one thing to let let you know um so one of the Capcom members whose name is Ben has been doing some um you know understanding about the future planning as well for their committees for different capital projects and um I did want to let you know about some updates so I think we've had questions in the past about the golf course and how to like model that and things like that so I did want to give you all an update that um the town's contract with st golf for running the course and the pro shop and and some other things that goes until 2026 of December so um that's something to keep in mind so that's the current contract um so we have options to renew it um for like one onee terms like two consecutive one-ear terms where we can like make another agreement um we can Sunset the contract um so that that because I think there were some questions in our last meeting about what can we do with the buildings um are we going to you know repair them are we going to tear them down what are we going to do so um the current contract with Sterling golf goes until the end of 2026 so I thought that might be something for the future planning to keep in mind too so that's one so Julian you're saying December 31st 2026 not December 26 this year December so all of 24 25 26 so two more two two years and and one month okay yeah yeah okay y um so and I think as we've talked about in the past the golf course land was um bought with CPA funds um or CPC I think the acronym is sort of interchangeable um so that's sort of like the lands are in a trust so I don't think they can necessarily be built upon um but I think there's some trying to understand what exactly can the land be used for and what part what can the clubhouse area be used for and things like that are something to think about and I hope will be also a topic at the tri board meeting or quad board meeting however many boards there are that are going um so I did want to let you know about that so that was sort of under the future planning um okay that that was my only other topic I had for future planning so um did I miss anyone else who wanted to mention anything else for this type of planning no all right um I believe that's all of our agenda topics we're on to the routine agenda topics at this point um so I can jump into the uh minutes of the prior meetings to approve them so I have two prior meeting minutes here so I'll pull up the first one so this was our meeting on the 28th of October um I would put um maybe in parenthesis that I arrived to the meeting late um I don't know if that's typical practice or not but I was late for personal reasons I don't think we need to put the reasons in just that I was late okay are there any other comments or suggestions on the meeting minutes of October 28th okay um so I will take a roll call vote um if someone would like to vote to approve them or I will move what was it I will motion to approve the minutes of October 28th um as amended saying Joe was late um do I have a second I'll second all right we got Nathan is seconding um any further comments questions or discussion no all right so I will take a roll call vote to approve the minutes uh Nathan yes Mel yes um Danel yes Peter yes Katie yes Linda yes all right so that's yes um all right and Linda will you you took those minutes right would you send those to the clerk or do you want me to take care of I will I will I'll send them and I'll just um make a note I'll make a note that you arrived late do you want me to make that note uh that was yeah you can just next to my name in the the roll call at the top of the not put in parentheses yeah R I'll send I'll send to the C yep thank you I'll make the change send to the C perfect uh okay so and I also have minutes from September 30th for us to consider all right so notes from September 30th so I believe that Katie took these notes um so this was including for the public hearing so this was for the special town meeting public hearing oh the minutes from the past I think I think I sent those to the clerk but that that would be a good thing check Jillian I will check I will check on 26 and the [Music] 99 um okay y perfect do we have any other um any questions comments or discussion on the minutes from September 30 is no all right do we have a motion home motion I'll second all right so all right so I didn't see who seconded was it Nathaniel yep okay so we have a um a motion to approve the minutes of September 30th and A 2nd uh any further question questions uh discussions comments All right so I will take a roll call vote to approve uh Nathan yes M yes Nathaniel yes Peter yes Katie yes Linda obstain all right and I am a yes so um one obain and the rest are yes um all right um Katie did you want to send those to the clerk or do you want me to take care of that no I can do that definitely okay thank you so much yeah um all right all right so that's our minutes um the other topic uh our next topic is updates from chairs and members so uh I'll open up the floor if there's any updates from your various um other committees that you leaz on to or otherwise you can go first oh thanks um I had a just a very brief update uh from the EDC um which is that they're um planning to to I think request uh uh their own budget or fund um so what they're going what they're planning to do uh is ask for a portion of the hotel and restaurant tax um which I guess comes from a larger at made Crossing um these tax are these taxes are I think presently uh going to the general fund um but the economic development committee is going to ask to have some yet undefined portion of them and then they also mentioned that the Cannabis search charge would be some funding for that as well but just this is that's pretty far in the future but just I I heard that so I thought I would bring it up all interesting thanks for caring so what would those funds be used for um so it's uh to to take on initiatives um is basically what's what that's for um but it seems to basically be like an operating budget um for the committee but just for like their initiatives basically um I was going to talk about the school being constructed nothing really that affects us but everything seems to be going on track um I've not been attending most of the meetings but I've been reading all the minutes afterwards uh the that access road is being worked through I can't remember if they approved it or not but I believe that'll come out of contingency anyways so again nothing that's going to be affecting the overall budget or affecting us on our end so looks like it's going smoothly that's it thanks for that update um I did have an update so I think at one of our last meetings it might have been the the public hearing meeting where we were talking about the STM stuff there was a question about that trash bill um and I followed up with Justin Demarco and um we it's estimated so the question was when is that like when do we think that billing might actually occur um so the first billing for the proposed new Enterprise might be um as soon as October 1st in 2025 um but that depends on many factors and decisions to be made um particularly what that fund might look like and things like that so I did um want to share that as sort of a post meeting note um I also wanted to let you know that we got um half a million dollars for Powder Mill sewer upgrades from the state um so that was um that was a press release there was like an announcement on October 20 think it was October 23rd that we were awarded this grant um to do those the patter Mill sewer upgrades or to help in the funding of those so that should help um I think that would be what do they call that stuff storm water maybe um but it will definitely help with the sewer too so I'm not I'm not entirely sure if they're the same or different or um co-mingling but I do want to let you know the town did get that um award which is great news um and we also got a $25,000 reward to support development um for improving traffic and pedestrian safety and access in the downtown so it's proposed um proposing to narrow the travel like the travel Lane for cars um on Main Street in mayard so they're proposing potentially to widen the sidewalks and do things like um like sidewalk seating or something like that and instead of having that be like two lanes make it one lane so that's um that's something that is hopefully will provide um some economic development um and increase attractiveness downtown as well so that's um that was something that bill memer let me know about I believe um so that was a planning committee maybe I forget exactly which committee it was but um I did want to share with you the news about those two gr got um and I believe that's that's all the updates for me does anyone else have any other updates all right not hearing any all right so um it sounds like for the future meeting agenda planning is um our final topic of the night so uh I have our next meeting will be on the 25th I'll triple double check that should be the fourth Monday of the month you um so our next meeting will be on the 12th which is the quad board meeting um so that I'll post a quorum notice for that um and that is hosted by the select board from my understanding so they'll post the official agenda um and our next meeting the fincom meeting will be on the 25th um so I have on that agenda the school transfer request um I'll put on debrief um of the squad board meeting um are typical topics so um that we always have um and then I can also put a future planning on there I think we can also start to look forward and understand um the upcoming budget cycles for different departments so like if we want to invite the DPW or um I guess it would maybe be a representative from the select board to better understand what might be happening like if we have further questions with these um the Enterprise funds that might be done um but I think Justin could also be or Greg even could be a good resource there so if there's like particular questions we can start to think about who we want to start inviting to our meetings coming up because it gets it gets pretty slow around the holiday times um but the the next big meeting will be the February budget meeting so um I see Natasha you have your hand raised uh yes I just wanted to um mention I can't remember where I've mentioned this already before but um we're going to have um our state representatives come to the school committee meeting jimie Eldridge will be there uh this week Thursday and Kate Hogan will be believe on the 21st um to talk about expenses and you know the ASA um amsa is um looking to increase their enrollment um in their Charter and so we'll have an opportunity to um weigh in on on that but I also wanted to share um I know we'll be doing our road show for our budget and just to kind of put it out there if there's usually I think it's in sometimes in uh January we would we would come to fincom so maybe at the next meeting uh when we we can get a date penciled in or when that might be that would be super great yes awesome all right um okay so uh all right so I'll put a like a future planning topic on there too or a future um however I said it in this current agenda future the future spreadsheet scenarios that might be under like the debrief from the Quad board meeting SL future scenarios because I'm assuming maybe they'll give us some ideas of things they might group different groups might be interested in looking at um I I liked your suggestion earlier about meeting with um Capital planning um to talk about future planning yeah um do you think they might want to come to that [Music] meeting I can ask and see what their availability is um I'm I'm think both uh for future planning I'm also curious about uh I think they they have a line item now in the budget and um I I'm curious for feed I'd like to hear some feedback from them on like what they would be doing with that and whether you know that's something we should be advocating to be larger for um FY 26 because it seems like there's a lot of really important projects that could be funded okay and I think for planning purposes so this meeting next meeting will be on November 25th which is the week of Thanksgiving the following meeting will be on December 9th and then the next meeting will be on December 23rd which I think we could have but we might want to cancel because that's a pretty busy holiday week so we only have like two meetings left I would say unless we schedule an ad hoc um so I can ask um I can ask them if they're available at that meeting or the December 9th meeting um and we can go from there does anyone else have any uh topics you'd like to propose for our next agenda no all right so oops I'm not seeing or hearing any so uh I think we have covered all of our topics for tonight so be a good time of it but so I would entertain motion to adjourn if there's no other further topics tonight for discussion I move to adjourn all right so we move to Linda moves to adjourn at 8:54 PM I will second to adjourn 80 Seconds all right great any further discussion no all right so I will uh take a roll call vote to adjourn Mel yes Nathan yes Daniel yes Peter yes Katie yes Linda yes all right I am also a yes so we have adjourned thank you everyone we'll see you next time