e e e e e e e e e e thank you yes okay so calling the
finance committee to order 702 um we have we are hybrid tonight so we have uh so I'll have to we'll have to be V roll call fortunately the only vote should be um you know opening the meeting uh approving minutes and
adjourning uh so uh let's get started then um Mark yes uh Joe yes Emily yep Ian yep Jeffrey y Ed y andry yes John yes
and Joe caran present so that is everyone so uh this is our month as finance committee um we're going to see a lot of each other over the next four weeks um it is going to be all four weeks almost certainly um better not be five um four
weeks we should be able to do it's it's five though if we go if we have to meet April 2nd yeah so let's not but that I thought that was the the hearing where the public gets to talk about two Deion PR it's not our um
that one's not our fault uh yeah I guess it's not our meeting we have to be there I I I imagine we will be there but we'll get to that later um I imagine we'll probably even have to post for that so uh yes so we are um we have our our sort of standard opening things of of we have
uh approximately zero public we have a couple folks on Zoom um actually we have exactly one nonmember non-staff person on Zoom um uh but I do plan on giving the public the opportunity to comment at each of these
meetings um and our third of these four meetings is the one that will actually be the official public hearing on the budget has to be advertised a little extra um we'll have to vote to close the hearing and all that stuff um but yeah
so it has been a while since our last meeting um Tom um so uh I would ask people not to report on everything in their area of their liaison areas but if there are uh
liaison reports especially ones that are relevant to the budgets we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks I would love to hear them uh go ahead John so recal has an anticipated total cost of the senior center community center of just under $28 million which would include 4.7 for
contingencies uh that is estimated to add between 90ish and $265 per year to the average homes property taxes depending on whether that is over 15 or 30 year time frame there will be uh hearing from them
uh at our uh next Wednesday um we'll be getting presentations both on recal and killum em uh super quick from uh Jenna and Company the Parker Turf is nearing the end of its us usable life so they're going to look to shuffle some Capital at some
point in the very near future I think $18 million she said something like that oh no I'm sorry I way misspoke 18 years old okay she did not she didn't have a quote yet okay sorry that's why I kept
the text open because I knew I would say something wrong yeah already got enough bad news but um um um I'll leave the the um killum stuff to to Jeffrey but in terms of um
something sort of monetary as many people know the select board has been voting on the use of kiosks in the downtown and they are retaining them for lower Haven upper Haven they voted not to use them and there has been talk of selling them I don't know if that's
going to happen but I have heard just being on the Melrose community board Melrose is looking to put in Kiosk so maybe we'll have a buyer so maybe that will be some I don't know if we'll recoup our expenses and I don't know if selling them is really a possibility set up a bidding
more just can't have Melrose be the only one take we need we need to create some Buzz gosh all right used Barely Used Kos like like almost almost fresh out of the box you might have some Scorch marks
from some of the uh discussion around them but anyway um all right anybody else I was actually not planning to talk because we'll have the school folks here but um you know since Maran mentioned the Kellum project that's the msba
number came in a little bigger than I think the previous number so $40 million and the oh do you want to no I'm on the between the two of you I forgot as the expert it's like I didn't know as this
the new inter Director of Finance for not yet I was hoping for an introduction um but on reports and that probably be the very next thing go ahead uh yeah so yeah um similar what um John mentioned for um
um recal um on the kilum uh kilum School building committee um we've actually at this point um voted on um uh the to move forward uh to the msba um for U in and with moving forward with
schematic design total project budget um this is the you know the Topline number before any M msba reimbursement is uh just under 130 just over 129 million sorry um the um as Jeffrey mentioned the
uh reimbursement rate um um for eligible cost um has increased um so the you know the anticipated excuse me the anticipated um you know kind of msba
Grant is uh right around uh 40 million um and so there's there's a few you know kind of different um um uh calculations as far as incentive points that we've earned uh that we can earn and then there's also uh some other pieces
related to um um Ira um uh incentives as well um that are not part of the 40 so there's you know there there's some other pieces there that um uh that we can um uh still pursue um but
from a um Logistics sto um we we go when this goes out to um a vote it it's actually at the at the total project budget level um um all of the uh reimbursements come on um after the fact
um but when you um when we go to the vote it's for the total project uh budget Ed can I just ask a quick question I don't want to get well beyond the scope but has anything at the national level with new policies changed such as that maybe Ira is going away or
different green incentives have we know that it do is in flux but is anyone taking it how much of the whole budget is that if that had to go away is that a big amount it's I mean I think it's a I if I we've seen a couple different you know we've and we've C we've done a
number of different um scenarios and iterations around it um and the the tough thing about some of it is that um what you'd be reimbursed for either by msba um or um from an IRA
perspective ends up kind of because you work through the cap you know I mean so there's you know so you're kind of capped on what you're going to you you would receive so some of reimbursement you you even if it was a bigger number you're already passed through the you know you're already you kind of eating away the cap so you don't
get 100% of it um but I think the numbers related to Ira which would be and and one of the pieces where this is relevant is because there is a geothermal aspect to um um what we're looking at from an HVAC uh perspective
it's a hybrid uh system um but I think the numbers around there you know kind of uh total cost um and life it's I think it was was between a million and $2 million it wasn't you know kind of a massive number I mean still you know kind of very impactful um um but it's a
lot different than if it were like 10 or 15 million or something exactly and um and I think we'll have you know um the one thing is from both from a um project management perspective um that um they're monitoring that and and I think
in in all of these discussions and all of these you know uh pieces we're looking at this from the most conservative you know uh perspective you know kind of anticipating that um um you a more conservative versus a more
ambitious number if I understood you correctly you were saying that that that that 129 minus 40 um those numbers don't include any uh the IRA incentives or any of the other Federal incentives that are related therefore at risk and and so but
your question is very good Maran and it's questions that we asked in the committee and um and I both from the design team and the um OPM perspective are all you know kind of I think constantly inquiring as far as viability um things of that nature I
think one of the questions that kind of came from the committee is that okay I think once you're in um I I I I think anything could happen but I think what everyone has anticipated up and through you know kind of last month
is that you know if the the money is encumbered at that point so you you know so you whatever that incentive is so we already we beat the changes no so I don't think we have yet um I'm saying like but I think if you've kind of passed that you know kind of threshold
then you're in I mean anything but that's why we go to the voters for the full amount in case it doesn't come through we have voters that have agreed okay we're willing to take on this Ro around I guess that's we'll discuss that more at our meeting but that's probably the ex point that we'll keep making
yep thank you goad thanks for rld I'm going to be very quick um new rates for for residential will be up uh 6% and Industrial and uh commercial is going to be up 7% they also had their annual
review for the general manager PS with Stellar uh comments and there was only a little constructive feedback on communication but pretty that's it that's all I had for um I have an idea I I have a quick question also nationally like I've heard about tariffs on stuff
from Canada do we get energy does rmld buy from Canada is that going to impact R most of them is within us okay good sure thank you only other things will still get more expensive though but yes all right
um uh for my part the um uh Community preservation act study committee has continued to meet um we taking our time because they uh we're targeting um we're going to recommend voting on it at the November 2026 state
election um I mean there'll be congressional seats up too but they always call it a state election and uh so just getting reports right now from the various areas on the various areas where you know CPA funds could potentially be used U we did affordable
housing on Monday this week um I learned a lot and uh do Recreation next month and so on and so forth anything else all right on to the main event uh school department school committee recommended fi 26 budget
presentation uh Tom ahead one of the toms uh this Tom okay pick Tom I think Jackie is helping us out tonight too so all right good evening everyone nice to see you and thanks for having us tonight excited to present the foo 26 school committee recommended budget uh as as always I'll
start just by thanking both the fincom and the entire Community for your continued support of the schools I'll tell anyone who will listen that we feel we're really fortunate and readying to have a community that uh deeply values and supports public education and we feel that reflected both on the finance side just and in general of other types
of support too so thank you as always for the work that you do and the support that you show for our schools um I'll lead tonight just with the I think the two major headlines then you can tune out if you want because you this but um the two headlines being first of the budget is that this is generally a level
service budget which for us uh we're actually encouraged by given where we've been the last couple of years which it all get into which have allowed us to have some significant ads and also if you look around at uh some if not many of our neighboring communities they are facing some pretty significant budget
cuts and difficult budget decisions this year I think we're one of the few right now who feel like we're in a solid financial position both for this year and the future so uh we're actually encouraged by that statement of us being generally a level service budget uh second headline there are two ALS two agile see in the budget which we'll get
into tonight uh one of them we are uh extremely excited about which is finally the transition to uh Universal tuition free kindergarten for our community that has been a priority for a long time in this community and thanks to the advocacy of many in this room and others that it's finally a reality in the FY 26
budget so we'll speak more about that tonight but those are the general highlights to kind of frame the presentation tonight uh in our presentation tonight I will open by giving a little bit of context of where we've been the last three years which as I shared there were some ads I think are important to set the stage for where we
are now I'll uh then dive into our two FY 26 budget editions the 1.0 kindergarten teacher and also Universal tuition free kindergarten uh and talk about a few of the things that did not uh make the cut this year that are priorities for us if there were to be funding available as well I'll then turn
it over to Phil little hail uh to dive a little bit deeper into just uh the budget by cost center uh Capital pan review other funding sources as well and I think the majority of our time will probably be in questions and conversation gives me the chance to introduce Phil little hail if you haven't had a chance to meet Phil our new interim CFO uh who's done a really
great job since joining us a couple of months ago uh Phil has over 15 years of experience uh in the public sector as a Director of Finance and CFO prior to that experience in the private sector as a CPA as well I think very quickly we have come to appreciate his expertise his experience and what he can bring to
our team so uh thank you to Phil for all his work and excited he gets to shine tonight with you all here so um all right so we can go uh jumping right in as I shared generally a level service budget uh but the last three years the we've been really fortunate to add uh
close to 35 positions the last three years many which have been new positions but also many of which have been positions that have been uh rolled over from Grants onto our operating budget I'm going to go through these really quickly and again just want to highlight for the community uh sort of the Investments that we've made the impact
that they've made in Broad Strokes uh stard FY 23 a uh 5.0 School adjustment counselor as a metco coordinator this is split between our district operating budget and the metco grant as you may know uh this is a prior to this Edition there were not any school adjustment counselors in our elementary schools I
think we can probably all understand that these have been really impactful additions especially last couple years and we think these roles have been important for not only our boss and Resident students but serving all of our students uh in every school next slide Jackie also an FY 23 uh we also added the 1.0 Direct dor
of academic achievement which now has been folded into a new assistant principal role who has taken on these responsibilities uh and duties you we're starting to see the kind of bearing the fruit of this role which is now if you follow along the high school now five Innovation Pathways uh close to 200 students who are enrolled in our
Innovation Pathways with dual enrollment opportunities uh senior internship opportunities uh I think that this is something that has uh ex changed the high school experience for many of our students so I think this is a role that not only in Grants has sort of paid for itself but also in a lot of ways just
the impact on our students continuing on Jackie still in FY 23 uh we added 1 Point uh two staff me uh St 1.2 FTE in our MLL Department we saw in that over that time frame from
2018 to 2023 we saw uh going from 42 MLS to 74 as you can imagine that number continues to increase and that needed to we needed to make sure we could meet all required Services by both by Desy regulations and by just what our students need and also an increase of 02
in our Stepping Stones program which is our our program for students returning from either hospitalizations or any sort of out of school uh setting or need and that moved from a four-day week program to a five-day week program it didn't make a ton of sense to have that program only running four days when the needs of
our students was really there all the time continuing on in FY 23 next slide uh we increased our uh counselors at the middle school level uh through both a school counselor and a social worker in our reach program which is our program for students with social emotional disabilities at the at the middle school
level uh Jackie next slide and also continuing on with a 1.0 F nurse which that moved our uh high school nurse to be able to become the director of K12 Health Services instead of doing both the Dual role of being the a nurse at the high school and also the
director and then also app point for a district data specialist to better support a lot of the teaching and learning initiatives happening in our district Jackie next slide that brings that was all by 23 shifting gears to 24 uh continued on with uh an increase in
Staffing in our MLL uh Department continuing to now I would say in uh FY 24 it was not only an increase in population of our mlls but also an increase in level one MLS which if you look at sort of des's regulations about time on learning minute requirements for our level one which are our newcomers is
significantly higher so adjusting our staffing to be able to better support our mlls and an investment that had been discussed for a long time time was District k to8 math coaches which is a we think uh the best type of professional development we can give our staff is professional development that's embedded in their day-to-day work uh at
the elementary level last year we had our best uh uh student achievement outcomes historically in at the elementary level we think that the math coaches have played a pretty significant role uh in there shifting on Jackie to continuing fy20 also an fy2 24 adding uh
5.0 Elementary assistant principles again a long-standing priority for the community was ensuring that we could bolster up the leadership in all of our buildings given the day-to-day needs as you know uh of all of our students not only academically social emotionally parent communication anything that's you know kind of happens in all of our uh
elementary schools continuing on in FY 24 uh we also moved from having juster at metco sacs at the elementary level to adding a 1.0 Middle School adjustment uh metco sack at the middle school level who is now shared between Parker and
coolage and a 1.0 1:1 ner which was required for a student medical need is now transferred into a float nurse across our across our schools continuing on uh fy2 24 a position that was fully is fully funded out of the Meco budget which is a Meco
coordinator at the high school level not a school adjustment counsel been a coordinator to support the day-to-day needs of our boss primarily our Boston resident students and then two special education teachers one at Joshua Eaton and one at coolage uh to make sure that we can meet uh comp you know be in compliance with contract uh required
Services based on student IEPs continuing on uh last on FY 24 also additional counselors at the high school level and uh 2.6 Special Education team chairs Jackie continue on and then two
roles were some of the roles that were recommended through our program reviews uh through our special education program reviews if you may remember uh each year we've done a pretty extensive uh the last couple years external review of our uh substantially separate special education programs a couple of the top
recommendations were around uh continuing to bolster up our bcba staffing uh and also working uh on hiring a transition specialist who can support our students for their postsecondary goals uh and opportunities shifting on to fy2
shifting again to meet student needs a speech language pathologist from point4 to 1.0 uh an elementary lead program teacher this is our I know the communities talked a lot about our language based program which we feel strongly if we can uh build a a stronger program in District we'll have a much
better chance to support the needs of our students with uh language- based learning disabilities uh in our in District uh so not only just you know a way to better support students but a way as a as a costs saer as well and we've been encouraged by the initial Returns on that role and then also a high school
admin assistant to uh kind of match the Staffing model in all of our other schools continuing on uh shifting a couple of roles from the Esser Grant which as you know sort of closed out uh those are two point two FTE secondary guidance counselers and one middle school special education teacher and a
one-year uh Pat Parker met co-coordinator that was fully funded out of the Meco Grant but again a one-year position to support some of the student needs at Parker all right so with all of that I think we wanted to share that context to um first of all give some color to why
we believe that you know we're encouraged by sort of a level service budget as well and also to say that we feel that those invest ments have not only improved the day-to-day experience for our students but are starting to show and translate into tangible student outcomes that we started to see over the last couple of years I think most
recently this past year um leads us to the two Investments this year or the two ads the budget this year one tuition free full day kindergarten that's always a mouth I don't know if it's tuition free Universal whatever we want to say it I really encourage if we just go back Jackie one slide to give a little bit of
a history to the community too uh back to 2020 2021 we were one of 23 communities across the state to charge for full day kindergarten not a list that we want to be on and we were second a highest tuition at that point $4,450 which I remember my beginning of
my time here a family Al saying I had twins at that age I you know the $99,000 hit for families was just is pretty significant for families to be able to uh you know recover from for kindergarten so I I appreciate all the support from the town to help us find a way to move to a model this year produce
a model which allowed us to get to now uh 1450 for this year and then next year tuition free so thank you to the town leadership thank you also huge thanks to Tom why sitting right here who helped us develop a model to help us kind of you know ensure that yearby year we can move in a more positive direction and do it
in a way that is sustainable and again really encourage that now we'll reduce the burden on families for the upcoming year and also we think ensure access for all of our families to be able to uh be in school for that full kindergarten time which is so formative for their experience and then second the next ad
Jack you can go next slide is an additional 1.0 kindergarten teacher and I'm just going to put like a little Aster to this at this and I'll kind of give some context on why you'll see the projected enrollment for kindergarten next year is higher than what it's been over the last couple of years 3 40 and
we calculated that number a little bit differently than what we had in the past in the past we've we've used uh primarily either census data or the mck the McKibben demographic study which was done a couple of years ago to help us project what kindergarten enrollment would look like those have been
relatively close the census and the mbon study in terms of projection the projection for FY 26 was 313 now we moved that number up 27 students because we had 20 students who we knew were eligible for kindergarten last year who notified us they were
holding their child out for one more year they just didn't think their kid was ready they wanted a little bit more you know time to develop we also had seven families contact us pretty early this year who were not on the census that we said okay if we're not accounted for we want to make sure they're reflected here so we thought this 340
number would be like the high end of where we would be um if we ended up at 340 we would need an additional kindergarten teacher at this point we are at 287 and we've already done our major push to tell families if you want your priority School you need to make sure
that you are uh fully registered by the beginning of February so we think that we found most of the students and the families who are sort of kindergarten age out there that number could you know continue to go up a little bit over the next few months it also does not include school choice does not include Meco but
I don't think we're going to get that 340 number um if we don't if we kind of stay where we are right now we can do without this additional 1.0 kindergarten teacher if we you know go in that direction with school committee at this point we thought that that money would then go to our non-personnel lines which
we have kind of kept level for the last couple of years to allow us to absorb some of this what we know our increas in costs in our non-personnel lines um if you want even more detail on this right now like our numbers at barrows are sort of close to being full and capped at barrows at three classrooms for next
year we have a little bit of space still in all of our elementaries and most of our space are going to be at at J and kilum where we have sort of the most open space have we talk more about that after too all right if it's 287 that would be like two classrooms less then right but
it's not not why did even land to correct So It's Tricky right if you at say say you have you know 70 students right that's you can't really consolidate that's going to be you'd be maybe 23 for kindergarten which is a little bit higher than where we would
you know have historically been but so it's not really enough to go down so you kind of want to fill up to that next level if that makes sense yeah just a quick question um you mentioned this doesn't include school choice and metco numbers so what how do you decide how
many of those to accept is it we'll accept enough so that we don't have to hire an additional teacher like to fill exactly okay so as an example right now uh at Birch we are at 54 students for three allocated classrooms so we feel
like we could add a few students there to still be in a pretty you know but that's how you direct where the student metco say metco or school choice students would go correct in the largest spot we have now for example is we have like you know J who is at
66 we have we could do three class at 22 my guess is someone else is going to move into that neighborhood pretty you know throughout the next four or five months and if that's the case then what we would do is allocate some of our new Boston resident students some of our new school choice students and then get that number closer to 80 which would be kind
of a better range for you know four classes of 20 so we do for those we have some choice and autonomy over where those students rep placed out of curiosity so there um I don't remember Barrow having an empty classroom that's not being used for anything right now uh so what would the
you know facilities implications be of you know having another CL kindergarten class if we do have to go that way that's the million-dollar question I think the principal of barrows you know this guy was like if we have to have a fourth class we will figure it out we will you know have to change some classrooms around you know maybe some of
the specials placements we've talked about maybe some of our sub separate classrooms that's why that's the spot we prioritized to say we're g to you know trim that number down if we can so for example that number was actually at 68 we then talked there was a a few families who had already requested to
transfer based off of just like being on the line to another District having a cousin and we approved all of those to bring us back down to uh 62 we're also now told families if they're not registered we're going to kind of hold tight on barrels being sort of full so I
I we hadn't determined where that fourth classroom would be but it was going to be a big problem and we don't have it as a big problem in other sites right now than I'm not going to go through all these one at a time but I these are in the in the presentation and in the budget book if you want to look through
these are just either priorities that have been elevated by our own staff by the community or by our school committee on things that uh you know should be on our radar in the years to come uh we haven't put these necessarily in any sort of priority but we did on many of them try to give an estimated cost so
the community could have idea of what it would look like um if we are in the fortunate position at some point later you know on to add one of these we would certainly um collaborate with our school committee and all of our constituents to decide what direction we'd want to go but at this point these are sort of a wish list of things uh down the line as
well so at that point at this point I'm going to turn over to uh Phil who's going to uh give a little bit of breakdown the budget by kind of an overview first and then jump into right by C thank you Jack you we can keep going
so is this like Siri or somebody behind the scenes yes Siri our own reading Siri Jack you keep going yes keep going okay that's good um just a couple things I want to say before I start one is I live in Melrose
and since ear he had a $7 million hole for next year's budget I don't think they got the money to buy anything right now I the override failed there last year yes it did but I just saw in the community page they were speculating on kiosks
right make M they're not actually a money maker but anyway don't get them going you know when you live in a town that's 98% residential and there's absolutely no space left to build anything on you the reality sometimes comes and hit you um beyond that that's enough of my
editorial comments for this evening um I know I I'm going to do something slightly out of order and I want to talk about the small elephant in the room right now which is what do we get for federal grants right now so people have some context for it so when we talk about the federal grants we're primarily
talking about our entitlement grants would be Title One title two title three which are actually shared with somebody else and title four as well as the special ed grants um right now the biggest Grant we get is special ed which is the 240 idea Grant which for this
year is uh just under $1.2 million and that Grant is primarily used for two things one is for power professionals and the other is just for supplies and other needed things within the special ed program the next one we have is Title One title one for this
year is uh just under $90,000 and right now we use that primarily I don't know if we're use it for two par professionals or for one teacher in a par but it's basically Staffing the other grants that we have are all much smaller we have a Early
Childhood Grant of 20,000 that goes to preschool um we have title four which is all the way up to $10,000 and then we have title 2 which is $43,000 so in total this year our federal grants are just a little over 1.3
million now if you look at the history of the grants over the last say 10 years for the most part most grants are flat lined I mean you're really not seeing a whole lot of change if you go back to 2020 the title one for writing was 120,000 now we're down to 90 and that's
been the case in all the districts the amount of t one money is shrinking and it continues allocations continue to go down um special ed again is determined by numbers St have in special ed and other factors um so you know this year we're up to one one one yeah 1, 170
Which is less than we had in 24 which is just under 1.2 million and for the most part it's been around a milion 50,000 for the last 10 years so you know again the Reliance on grants relatively speaking continues to shrink in terms of the the federal
grants there is one other thing one other it's not really a grant but it's the national school lunch program the federal government still you know up until 3 years ago you know the federal government was paying for all the lunches and they went back to the way where you have to count your lunches by
the categories of students so for free lunches you get a very little reimbursement from the federal government for free you get more and then for um I mean for reduce you get more and then for free they cover the whole thing and then the state has stepped in to fill in that Gap so that we continue to have the lunch program
where students don't have to pay so right now uh we get out of the federal program about a quar of a million dollar out of the $2 million of Revenue that we have so whether or not that falls under the umbrella of Grants or falls into all
the I'll use the term loosely funding games going on down in Washington right now I don't know but just to give you a sense as to what other Federal monies are out there for the school department other than that other grants that we get are oneoff grants and so if they're not exist we don't rely upon them do you have a
plan if say the 1 million goes away or most of it goes away that makes next year's budget even harder to figure out how we're going to do because again you know if the million dollars special ed goes away um whether or not the state steps in does something with circuit
breaker or something along those lines I don't know um of course we'd have to work with Tom and the teachers to figure it out I mean we're talking this year that thing is funding 32 or is it 24 I got my numbers
backwards it's it's funding 72 25 and 30 special ed Paris so I mean it's a big number so you know it's on the list right now things to be concerned about for 27 have we gotten down into nuts of botht to how we fill it no we haven't
yet you know I want to try to get through 26 first and get that all done but you know we've already thinking about 27 when we talking 26 it's in terms of how we're going to be able to sustain what we're doing in 27 you know we all recognize the funding squeezes
that every city town has every year we're trying to be cognizant of that and figure out what we can do to make sure we keep those costs contain as best as we can so I just want to put that out there in terms of um not not really a grant but on the Met Coast side for the
reimbursement rates have they been pretty constant or have they changed yeah Jo uh Meco has been level funded the last two years which has been a significant challenge for Meco districts given the escalation I would say both particularly in transportation
costs for district have skyrocketed and we think a lot of our special education costs have also gone up so districts are really struggling right now with that being a level funded uh program there's been a lot of advocacy that was actually just advocacy an advocacy session with our house and Senate reps the other day
at the state house trying to advocate for a $3 million uh increase above what is now a $30 million program so we'll see but if there is not a uh you know an investment from the state and Meco it's going to be really difficult to sustain a lot of the work both in Reading in our Meco program
and also uh across the state thanks just just one last question then oh go ahead sorry just real quick it's not it's not a reimbursement right it is a grant it absolutely is a grant okay 850,000 give
or take yeah little and that's always like there's always a timing difference too I guess technically it is a grant but it's always in ARR or no no you get in the same fiscal we get in the same fiscal year the one that's always in a rear is a circuit breaker which it isn't called circuit breaker anymore I forget what
they're now calling it so we don't confuse it with the circuit breaker on the income tax returns so so just to follow up you were saying um it's two questions one is one is quick and one may not be relevant that you said title when grants are
going down but I keep seeing in our student in our Desi data that the percentage of students that are low income are going up is it and usually title one is in part based on the average income level at the school right
like Joshua Eaton was traditionally a title one school or parker was a title one school or killum at different times but our grant is going down is it just because even though the percentage of students is going up the total number is going down no it's because the availability of Title One funds is
shrunk oh so we're having more need but we're just getting less money if you go to any District I was up you know prior just as a newort every year title one was doing this even though even though the kids are getting po y tile one tile one's been an issue for a good number of years now in terms of how much is
available in terms of the overall funding so okay and the last question and this may not be pertinent is we saw that we had to add teachers for MLL and with the various crackdowns on the borders do we think we're going to
have not as many MLL students I don't know if that we also get money for that but you try to think of all of all there's so many impacts like that just are can be unpredictable do we think that is going to at least be flat for now or I I couldn't tell you whether it be flat or not all I can tell is we're
budgeting based on what we think will happen leaving out the noise that's going on up there do we get State money to support very little very little very little I think our title title three is mtle okay I think it's about oh $110,000
so that's Federal that title three is federal that's probably but it it's very small going away yeah you it used to be that there was a threshold to get title three when I was at a charter school in Boston I think the threshold was 100 students and when we hit 100 students the grant turned out to be
$15,000 so it's that's nothing okay thank you so that's one of the things so you know it's sort of the good news bad news the good news is outside of idea we don't rely a whole lot on federal grants the bad news is is not a whole lot there for outside of the
idea grant for Federal grant money so so I just want to put that out there put some context around it um so I you know I could try to do this any at the school commit to say that you know the guidance that we were given was three and a half% our budget is three and a half% so are
there any questions I mean we we did hit the guidance but so anyway we've hit the guys at three and a half% for the overall um I'm sorry I've got two different sets of glasses and the ones I need I don't have with me so the total
that we've come up with is 58 mil 491 591 for the general fund request from the town what is her name Sher Sher thank you next one Jackie Jackie Siri that's what your one I'm I'm Jackie I'm so
sorry so um for this year for the the budget formatting we uh we changing a few a few things up I want to try a couple of different things but since I got here kind of late the process didn't get as much as I would have liked you those in terms of the cost centers we now have eight cost centers I broke out
the last one which used to be the amalgamation of the four small ones it's only because that's the way things are set up in munus and it wasn't an easy way to group it all back together so that's why you see the four you see the Athletics um good Lord I wish I could
see that far away extra thank you health services and Technology yes so that's why they're on there um can we go can you back up please so the one thing I want to point out you look at one of the things we added this year were FTE which I noticed when I got here there weren't any FTE in the budget except for
something that near the end of the budget book which was printed out of des's website for your Staffing numbers so worked with um our assistant business manager Kate to really go in and get our hands around the FTE to see what's going on so when you look at this you're going
well gez that's showing an increase of 10 FTE well we're not increasing as you know from what the superintendent said we're only going up by one the reason why you see it here is that remember this is talking about the general fund budget does not include positions that
are being paid for by grants and things like that so what this is reflecting is that we've had the shift approximately nine positions off of Grants into the general fund budget to pay for them that's why we go the next one please this is in your budget book I
believe it's page 27 it shows you an excruciating detail how we got from the numbers that we started with to where we are now you know we had nine pars that we had to move out of the idea Grant into the general fund we had a couple positions up in regular Ed that should
have been down in special ed so we had some shifting within cost centers up there overall it says it's a 2.1 uh uh FTE increase so one is the kindergarten teacher the other one is a position that we missed in this year's
budget we missed the position so it's not really an add to staff it just wasn't account for last year's budget and the other 1.0 was a slight rounding change that we had to make so I really want to make sure we got the FTE in because I want to make sure the public
sees the number of positions that are being supported by the budget and I thought that was something that missing in the past budgets now we're going to continue working on that uh and going forward but also at the bottom you can also see that we've also listed the FD
being paid by the various grants again that was something that was I found when I was going through the budget book that wasn't there previously just so you can see you know I've lived through when I first started as a business manager every District used to get a grant from the U State grant for
paying for power professional at kindergartens and it was a half and then suddenly we all hit the cliff and it went thud the grant went away suddenly I was in salale and I had 24 par professional positions that suddenly I no longer had funding for so want to
make sure that everyone can see you know you try to minimize the number of positions that are Grant funded because you never know what's going to happen with the grant money you know we know that the uh enement grants are there but what they're going to be funded at that always is the wild card so you again
that's I think it's page 27 in your budget book okay next one please so now we're just going by the uh budgets by cost center there's nothing really exciting going on here again overall the overall budget's about um
was a 3.5 there's some odd things going on in here oh I would say AO one of the things you want to look at is if you look at regular day the over increase I believe is uh two i63 what is it 1.63 sorry 1.63 and I know the question had
come up um why would the salaries only up about 2.4% for fiscal year 26 when the salary schedule for next year is going up by 3.5 and the reason for that is is that we had a lot of turnover this year so we
brought in a lot of new staff members that salary levels are much lower than what we had budgeted for um and also we had some again we had a couple some positions that shifted out of the regular day budget down to the special ed budget but we also have an inrease in some of the offsets that we
have if you look through the budget book you'll see that the overall offsets that we're planning on using um is about 2 U trying think 2.4 million compared to about 1.6 and 1.7 that we're doing this year so we have more offsets that we're
using in General Ed to cut down on that overall increase and so that's why I hate offsets because it really starts to mess around with the numbers especially you look at facilities facilities says that your budget's decreasing well that's because we're using more offsets one of
the things that we've changed for this year is we are charging off part of the custodial staff's time that they use in cleaning out the cafeterias after lunches we're now charging that to the food Ser the lunch program same thing for um we're also charging off some par
time the lunch par time is also being charged off to the school lunch program the reason why we can do that is right now the school lunch program starting this year had an overall balance of about .2 million coming in and there is a rule that's out there that you're not allowed to have a
balance that's higher than 4 months worth of your average revenue so we do we run a $2 million program which is 200,000 a month which really means our balance should never be higher than $800,000 so not that I'm an advocate of bringing that down but it does allow us
some more flexibility in terms of what we can use it for but also talking about food service program just for a moment it also allows us to do some Capital expenditures as well you know we're going to be replacing some of the ovens coming up in a couple of the schools as well so the Food Service program has
really benefited from the fact that the students don't have to pay for lunch anymore the number of students who are utilizing the utilizing the service is up and the more students we have we utilize it the better we get spread out our fixed costs so okay um next one sorry okay so it's this is
Administration I'm not going to spend any time on these because there really isn't a whole lot going on other than special ed so if we go to the next one so if we talk about special education um as you know the biggest challenge of special education continues
to be out of District tuitions um if you look at the last three year for fiscal year 26 um OSD came in I think it's a 3.69 or 3.89 for fiscal year 26 and so if you look at the last three years you look at the 14% that they did in 24 I
forget what this one is but over three years uh a of District tuitions approved by OSD have gone up almost 25% and so that's been a a challenge for all districts in terms of trying to cover that the other wild card that we have in special ed is transportation
Transportation costs are just out of control regardless of where you go there's not a whole lot of competition out there and even the bus companies that are out there have difficult time getting drivers and that's just driving up costs across the board so we're again
I think we're up to about 1.3 million in transportation for special ed which is up about a half a million dollars over the last couple years and that's going nowhere but continue to go up all right can we go to the next one again for regular day you know again
most of the money regular day goes into salaries and I talked about the reason why the increase looks a little lower than it is so we're good with that go to the next one Athletics is there's no change there there you know we are keeping athletic
fees unchanged for the upcoming year because I believe you folks uh they went through was a last year a review of all the fees so there's no need to go through that for 26 okay we have the next one extracurricular again nothing there
and the next one Health Services uh it's overall changes 7.5% that's primarily driven by staff increases we have a lot of uh our nurses are still on step and column so they're still going up a step and they're also then getting a 3 and a
half% on top of that so the average increase for the staffs for the nurses share was about 7% on average and then finally the last one which is it it nothing much going on in there um I
have had conversations with the superintendent about making a budget change right now we don't budget explicitly for um technology repl replacement what we've done historically at least for the last number of years is we wait till we get to the end of the year and see
what's left and then we go out and do our replacement cycle I want to start doing an explicit budget for that budgeting for that within the budget itself because we know technology is an expense it's going to stay there you know a lot of our equipment right now is about four years old so it's it's it's
reached the end of its useful life you know four to five years is what you're going to get so we've got to uh start planning for that and and next facilities oh and Facilities so facilities look strange again the reason why is the offsets are
going up again as I explained we're charging off some of the uh custodians time to the Food Service program and the next one Capital plan so I don't have a whole lot to say
about this other than that um we're looking at perhaps making some changes to that for example we have some money on there for um Food Service improvements we might be able to fund those out of the um Food Service balance that we have we still would allow us free up some money hopefully to do
change some more capital for it because we do have some big it expenses coming up that we're going to need to be focusing on so we need to do uh some more review of this and fine-tune that going forward but it is nice to see how much
is already out there next and other funding sources so this is the the offset summary and you'll see as I get as I said I believe that first Callum says like it's like 1.67 six
million and then we're going up to 2.3 or thereabouts it's about a $600,000 increase sorry I misspoke earlier so it's a $600,000 increase in our offsets um half of that is coming from what we're charging off the Food Service the other most of the other is coming from
an increase of what we're going to take for an offset out of um The Rise program the question have been raised can we afford to do that the answer is yes rise started this year with a balance of about 500,000 our revenue for this year
is going about 500,000 we've only budgeted to use 350,000 as an offset for 25 which means we're going to end the year with about 600,000 in as a balance and so next year we're going to plan in 2016 to use 500,000 these offset basically we're
going to use as our offset going forward what we're taking in that year pretty much for Revenue so that's the other big change that we have on there the other one um talking about um full day kindergarten mountains again um we're still following the plan is that it'll slowly go down to
zero as we use that to help support the elimination of the uh tuition that we've had over the last couple years I think I maybe to squeeze an additional year out of that given how things are going so I'm hoping we can do that okay next one
oh special Revenue funds nothing exciting there the next one again this is just recap of our federal state grants you know we've talked about the entitlement grants we've talked about Meco there's a whole lot of other one-time grants or that uh
the district has done a very good job of going after um you can see where we are with those and we continue to apply for lots of Grants which is nice to see next one and I think is that it yes that's
it any other questions I'm sure there are questions I know this group who wants to go [Music] first I put in some questions to the school committee meeting so yes okay um
so just trying to find the um the table so on the administration um it so the administration call center summary it went up by 5.3% and most of it is driven by the um professional salaries and
clerical salaries are this un are these positions unions unionized or no non so nonunion just they got a 6.5% increase over the prior year wouldn't say it's all 6.5% but generally it's one of our most challenging cost centers to make sure we keep the right people in pres a
company and the other one that I had was there was a line here was kind of strange um on the regular regular day call center there is a line for technology I
believe so that's classroom technology so this is on the other expenses line so other the expenses line there is a technology line for 2020 22 it was 732k for 2023 it was 363
363,000 and then up FY 24 actual is 400k and you are budgeting for it only 136k so those numbers are kind of wacky so well yeah because it I'll the superintendent correct me if I get this wrong a lot of the numbers you see for
technology reflect those yearend purchases when we get to the end of the year is we see what we got left cuz right now you're comparing you're comparing the actuals that we spent to what we've budgeted for if you go back and look at those budgeted numbers they're going to be more in line with
what we've budgeted for so what you know what historically the district has done is go get near the end of the year and say what do we have left what do we need to do and then they go and they have spent a lot on technology over the last number of years so that's why you're
seeing some wacky is that an approach that you until the end of the year and you say well we have this bunch of money let's spend it or is it more that goes back to the statement I made earlier where I want to explicitly put into the budget real numbers for technology so
that we're not waiting till the end of the year so that you know the technology folks aren't sitting there in June suddenly they got to go and put a lot of orders in so we can utilize the funds that are there I want to have a more orderly process to it so that it's explicit in the budget and we're not
playing I don't want to say again but we're not doing this end of year you know runaround trying to get that stuff done I I just think it makes more sense to get explicitly in the budget go ahead um can I can you back go back to the slide with the special Revenue funds the revolving
funds I can't but can um it was one of your last ones you kind of said oh there's nothing to see here but I F I saw some things to see here okay let me do this yeah I mean I can ask you right
from so one of the things I see here and maybe it's nothing right so extended day program ah the extended day program it shows you know FY 24 almost 500,000 at the beginning of the year f 25 163 and
then it lists it as a loss of 335 correct and I'm sure there's a reason why it's expressed that way I just want to know is exended day running at a loss did we have too much money and we bought a bunch of stuff to spend it down tell me the story behind those numbers so the
the story is I um the story is there was a waiting list for students to use the program so last year because they had a large amount in the bank so to speak they went out and they bought some additional programs to One open up space
so that we could get rid of the waiting list as well as trial some programs obviously we overspent because we ended up spending about 2 million but the revenue was only a million6 so that brought down the balance in the account from you know over half a million to
165,000 at the beginning of this year I've been working very closely with the um after school program folks to make sure that we get the program to break even this year because again uh we want to make sure that we can service
the kids that are looking for the use of the program but also want to make sure we do better job of matching up what we're going to offer in the expenses for those things you know last year was an experiment that from my perspective probably didn't go as well as we would have liked to have gone so this year
I've already met with the folks a couple of times and they're already prepared they're going to have to cut back on some of the outside programing they were thinking of doing because the revenue is still not going to support that this year so um we're going to get that program back to break even so I'm I guess I'm not understanding extended day
I I had always thought there was no after school so oh extended extended day is not the same as after school program I know the after school used to be if your kid was in elementary school you could pay and take same program you know magic science or whatever then there
extended day which is like kind of the daycare which I always thought we had a wait weight less this isn't dayare not daycare you know what I mean like after school care for after school care okay or before school care right right but to I mean I would I wouldn't categorize the same way that Phil did necessarily I
would I would say you know we made a conscious decision to open up more spots when we were significantly over subscribed and the way to do that was to offer additional programming through other outside providers things like Sport Zone and and whatnot right
multiple other types that did mean at the time we thought the overall balance was too high so there was a spend down to bring the balance down maybe it's slightly more than we should have but I wouldn't say it was like egregiously wrong now it's a matter of how do keep it to a balance that is reasonable going
forward and still offer the services we need for that F okay so I I guess I just didn't know we had so many kids and we didn't have enough providers so we brought absolutely the problem we had we had way we we could not meet this the demand from a child's perspective uh at that
point in time back in 2024 we had a pretty large weight list right I want to say like 80 kids or something something large like that right and we didn't have the turn staff or programming to say okay I'm going to hire five more staff at one at each
school and I can that means I can bring in 16 more kids per school or anything else so the means to do that was then to say okay outside providers that potentially could do like karate for a day or you know computer programming for a day that would allow us to do
additional adult supervision on a program during extended day would then also help to keep the bring the balance B back to where it should be because it's one of those things you shouldn't have the balance out there for too high so I mean at the time you hired them you knew they cost more than the teachers
but you it I were you hoping that you would get some non like regular extended day kids to sign up to help pay for the cost and that didn't happen no it was it was to fill the 80 kids the 80 kids that we mentioned to so was the solution this year to not have as many kids so that
they match the teacher those are some of the things that we're thinking about right now but the challenge is like we have a lot of families who like for I'll give example of a program like SNL there's a lot of kids who like love the work that SNL is doing and that's brought like a lot of excitement and a lot of opportunity to some of our schools too so I think where we are is
just figuring out for the future do we offer more programs that we think are going to be able to bring in more kids and be able to kind of get us in a better financial position or do we have to trim back and I think those are um still decisions we haven't really made on certain programs yet they constant Supply demand matching yeah long as this
was like a onetime thing and not an ongoing and I I mean Mar and just we're clear right you probably remember this right right before Co we had this exact same problem almost exactly the same problem right before Co we were way over subscribed we went out and had to do some bidding many of the same PE
companies bid at that point in time helped us bring the numbers down from a you know outstanding demand perspective but also from a you know financials in the in the account perspective Here Comes Co and you know there's other things that happen and scribes up certain things and we have to balance it
out back again okay and just just I think you address this a little bit with the reallocation of custodians is that the school lunch program you know made money and now we're reallocating things but why did it make so much money in its revolving account why did give us a lot
of money okay because the program is we didn't spend what we didn't need to spend it on food we just had more than we needed we have we do a great job with food actually really great job in the Food Service program is like any you've got fixed costs and once you get your fixed costs the more you sell you're spreading out your fixed costs the only
expense you're incurring would be your variable expense for the food for that meal so if you look at how the program is running the um participation rate has gone up considerably so we got more kids eating um so it's increased our U I hate
to say it but our you know our profit margin has gone up so it's a very well-run program yeah I was trying to understand that because it the lunch is free and I so what are they paye to the kids but the millionaire tax coming from the state to provide a significant amount that's the the
primary thing millionaire tax is currently doing is providing free lunch for kids yeah one thing I'll add on that fi too is like our you're pointing to our numbers continue to grow up go up in 2022 we serve six about 60,000 meals and then in 2024 we served about 88,000
meals so like we're on and and we have fewer students probably but we're serving more meals SL few but but our staffing hasn't really gone up that much in that same time period as well so you know you're getting the benefit yeah got to get them
to run the extended day maybe because have cooking classes combine it all thanks thank you you can ask a few more question exended on the extended day program every time I hear a weit list I think about there's a demand for
it so that clearly there is a need from our community for that type of program so my question is what is the plan going forward um are you I I would love to hear that there is no waiting list for this but is that
feasible is it does it cost money what what what's preventing us from not doing it yeah so I think actually I just have this conversation Chris Nelson that the waiting list already for enrollment for for next year is actually is is pretty the weight L is pretty small we think we'll be able to trim that down so we
feel like as of next next year we will not we believe we can you know remove a weight list with kind of the current model now we also have to be mindful of just what the costume on the program would be on that too but I it is that balance of trying to ensure we have no weight list but also ensure that we can
sustain the programs too but as of now looking at the numbers we should be in a position next year with no weat list and I and I think part of this the the challenge for us too was a couple was when we talked about you know we made an effort to say we want no weight list like we have to build more programs
we're not okay with having a weight list of 80 kids there's a demand from families so we're going to do whatever we can to build out more programming I I still think that's probably the we can we'll do as much of that as we can well I mean ultimately it's always a it's again it's a supply demand conversation right right how how do we meet the
demand whether it's external programs whether it's more Staffing what does that mean from an expense perspective what does that mean from how how much we charge the family if we chares too much the demand may go down it's the constant economic thing right so all of that is the balance that that the district working
[Music] through question um is this was extended day or yeah so so the um um so I see what the the the fund balance line that Maran was asking about I found that um
is the amount I mean you mentioned that you know spent 2 million got 1.6 million in you can infer the size of that Gap from the change in the in the fund balance but is that um is that 2 million in here anywhere or is that no because it is being funded out of funds as it
gets back to and I I think Mr wise had mentioned in terms of trying to improve our budget or better the budget book by making it more comprehensive again what we're focused on here is the general fund budget because that's what you folks or you know the town meeting
approves town meeting didn't allocate those $2 million because this is an outside program that's not part of what D money go on yeah it's a revolving account special program it's a it is in theory a self-funding program just like your school launch program should be self-funding because if anything if you
have if you the only time that affects the general fund is that if it turns out that they do have a loss then you've got to get money from the general fund to uh plug the hole and we never want to go there we haven't in recent yes I know if you look at it's been food service has
run very well for the last 20 years as well as the uh extended day after school what I'm I'll call it wrong for you the closest we had was extended day during Co where we had to make some cuts at that point in time uh okay yeah so I think you you kind of
address this but for the like regular day cost center the detail so teachers are up say like 2.4% but next year you need like 3.25 right for the contract is that right contract wise it's I think it's three
and a half um as as the Thea right off the top of my head I think is 325 okay so 325 but I think what Phil mentioned before is the it's it's turnover related right so if you have somebody that's going out
that's off the steps and they're up higher and then you replace them with somebody on like step four or step five the difference is pretty significant is there any like Risk like the replacement cost of new teachers coming in could be coming in higher too or I know you can't control that but it's we technically can
but we go ahead well at a minimum the teachers required to have by desity you know regulations requireed to have a mentor which you have to pay a certain IP in for which is say a couple of thousand dollars on that but you would also argue that the training the professional development all of you know that support is probably a pretty
sizable investment too harder to quantify than just the simple you know teacher you know the additional stien for mentorship but in ter I mean I think he was asking about whether we cap you know what what level we bring people in at this replacement cost or something like that we we budget every year for
replacement being like a Master Seven right but there's a lot of positions where that would say in some positions are really hard to fill positions where you're getting people generally higher I would say like school psychologist positions are really difficult to fill and you're generally getting people above a master's 7even I would say in
some of our other positions you know you are getting a you know 80 to n 80 you know 100 candidates and fing a bachelor's one you can make up some pretty significant ground there too so I think the constant conversation with principles is we want to bring the best possible candidate that we can and be
really mindful of what the cost is going to be on the District budget too and we uh if there's a you know going to be going over that Master 7 those are conversations that we have you know internally too but um there were some positions where if you look at our our salary table where you look at sort of the trade-off of a bachelor's one versus
a you know you know far you know bottom right of the scale I mean you're talking you know 60,000 I mean $40,000 generally of you know potential swing there too so then two years it'll just be more of a challenge right because it'll bump up again right to
like 4% or something is that right correct so you want to I mean I guess that's also a good question Joe asked asked us before and I'll let you take first piece at is how do what are we doing to ensure that F FY 27 is sort of as stable or sustainable as possible I don't know if you kind of want to talk about some of the things that we're
doing now to position us I was considering retiring but money well depends on how you you calculate the return on your investment um so you know one of the things is when you look at it you know if you go
between a 3 and half and 4% overall increase if you look at the just on the teachers right now our teacher base is around I'm going to round up call 35 million so for you know 1% of$ 35 million is $350,000 so if it's from a three and
half we have to budget for four that's $175,000 um differential that we got to figure out how we're going to cover it so you know overall is a big number yes is it gone to the point where I have to
violate um one of my guidances which is I don't like making promises I can't keep um yeah you know superintendent and I have had many conversations already talking about the 27 challenges and what we're going to what we need to do and you know we need to look at it again um and hopefully you know we get the
turnover savings that we've been getting and you know the special let out of District doesn't come comes back at it where it's been historically prior to 3 years ago around 2% as opposed to four or 5% % you know that saves money as well um the other challenge that we have
for 27 is we really have to look at our non-personnel costs or what we're budgeting because those things have been flat for at least three years now and we really need to look at that because there's some things that you know we we need to look at in terms of what we need to buy so you know and then we get the
technology refresher and all that so like any budget year there's always challenges but as a superintendent said we are fortunate that we're not in the position like a lot of other districts are right now where they are trying to figure out how they're going to pay for their budgets you know reading has been very fortunate like from personal
perspective my opinion those districts that manage their Esser funds well are having less of a trouble in terms of coming back to life without Esser if you put too many positions in Esser a lot of districts have had trouble with that cliff and manage that Cliff down yeah if
you manage the cliff you know everyone's going to get a cliff whether it was going to be like this or like this really depends on how you managed it so you know that that's my personal opinion so anyway you know we we've got some challenges for 27 we know we were already talking about them in terms of you
know strategies and things like that you know we're just going to try to position the district as well as you know make sure the to we get positioned as well as we can to you know take on 27 but got to get 26 approved first and then we go from there I would think just ending 20
a couple things on like he mentioned ending 26 strong a couple things are our Focus areas for us are continuing to invest in our special education Reserve fund which will allow us to have sort of an additional uh you know Fund in case of you know things really go arai with you know uh un unsuspected out of
District or special lend cost in general to continuing to prepay as much as we can as you know we can prepay uh for a lot of our special education programs uh for up to a quarter of the sort of the tuition and so continuing to prepay as much as we can at the end of f26 is really important to us and also
continuing to as much as we can absorb build up our our school choice fund as well which gives us a little uh you know kind of a uh some discretion over how we use those funds that allows us to you know kind of be a little bit more thoughtful for FY 27 too so that piece about me you know FY 27 being concerned
there are things that are on our radar here at the F end of fy2 to try to position ourselves to be to absorb that go ahead um just a shifting a little different conversation only Capital plan on fy2 FY 29 there is um uh
475k for vehicle barrier for old school is that is that a repair or is that a brand new one so is that that sounds like a final step of the overall security plan that was executed about four or five years ago the the some of the the big uh barriers about in front
of the school Bing which would prevent you know a vehicle from being able to move in through the front lobby area yet all that sounds like a safety I would say yeah that's why it's there sounds safety Advocate to move it forward we're talk about every time I
see stuff like that I'd say do it earlier but that's just me personally thank you a capital plan my understanding is that the light lighting system in the Parker Auditorium failed it did so and
that that's a significant Capital item isn't it it is is that are there plans to replace that yeah so I was actually just first of all that the lighting system did go down a little bit earlier than we had anticipated we knew it was sort of on the end of its useful life which is a challenge right before the Parker of musical so I just want to able
to Joe Huggins was actually just texting me a few minutes ago about the capital plan he said he's happy to jump on and answer any more details so I can you want me to get can I phone a friend on that see if failed like the lights don't work at all or the light essentially yeah that you
can't have assemblies never mind you know drama production where you want to control it but like the yeah the lighting control system was Hey Joe we uh we are going to take you up on your services here with a question so I don't know if you want uh it was around sort of the Parker uh you know Auditorium lighting system going down you want to
hop on Zoom or you want me to put you on speaker we got the email [Applause] can everyone hear yeah we can hear everyone can hear you Joe so I think you're good all right good Jeff the microphone yeah bring up closer I was I
don't know if Mar we do have one member on Zoom all right so the question was around s the the Parker system right going down earlier than we had anticipated how we're going to be able to absorb that in the capital plan so the the lighting system that is
in the Parker um Auditorium we started having problems with it a couple months ago we've had some repair work done to it and right now the capability for dimming and do performances in there is uh unavailable
so next week we're gonna have actually it's on the 11th we're having our electrical contractor come in to bypass the lighting control panel and so that they can regain use of the space for like speakers classes and things like
that we're also engaged our house doctor contract um has a um an electrical engineering firm to come out and look at the current system and to spec out a replacement for it I don't know the
final where it's going to land as far as like the total cost to do this um but what we first need to do is identify you know um first of all what we have right now is all running on incandescent lighting over there there which is an
older technology the new systems they have out there mostly run on LED so there's a big conversion and that's what happen so what I'm hoping to have in the next month or two is some sort of number that I can give to um to Sharon um to
figure out where we you know what the dollar number I would imagine it's going to be well north of $200,000s to do this yeah follow up any other Capital so we're trying to
obviously put that in for so that Parker could have their Auditorium back next year right so that that would be you know it's not like oh at the end of the fiveyear plan five years from now we'll get an auditorium back but how do we squeeze that in for next year even or over the summer right
Joe that's correct but like right now we don't know enough to I I need to be able to give Sharon an accurate number on that and to do that I need to do we we have a lot of work to get done before I can actually request the money and then
make it happen so yeah the hope would be to have it back up and running for the spot of next school year I just can't give you guys an answer right now if that's gonna happen a high wire act y so is there some Capital project in our plan I don't know if this is the town manager decision or or superintendent
decision that can be shifted or delayed that's kind of like on a repair cycle but not urgent you know carpeting or or some some other thing that this can bump up ahead because it's failed so soon there might be and I and I could have that discussion with with Sharon
but like I said the biggest the biggest issue I have right now is I don't know what exact that what exactly that number is what you're trading now I want to beest you guys make sure that I come in
with a real number and that's the goal to come in with a real number on this thing so but we have been working on it's taken up a lot of time trying to you know figure out a way to convert what we have there using existing wiring remove the panel and then do the the upgrade to it
um so we we are working on it I just don't have a final number as to what could be switched out I do have a few ideas of what possibly could be switched out but that's really a Sharon you know what the capital plan can withand is is
really no more Parker of roof money left the irony but that prioritization they were joking that there's no more Parker roof money left it was it was waiting with the Parker
wiring I think Joe McDon had a question too like sure that that prioritization though is it's it's not just within the school it's school plus town right the school is not locked into just 280 Capital it could be more or less right maybe there's there there's got to be something somewhere in the budget that
is not is urgent if something is completely failed we mean at the end of the year we'll see what's available too just came up um the details but we actually sent the
panel itself down to New Jersey to get worked on the company that made that panel is long gone out of business we found a guy in New Jersey that still works on it he bought a lot of spare parts from the company before they went out of business and we thought we had
the hill Mary and so so believe me weed some we expended some money on this thing trying to salvage what we have just to get us over the hump you know what I'm saying so right it's tough to do while we
appreciate the the resourceful effort even if it didn't work out yeah thanks Joe any other questions for Joe bet rctv with giving up their Studio liting Joe thank you for jumping on to if you guys need me we'll try to leave you alone yeah we try thank you
for jumping in all right thanks thanks yeah we'll be back in two weeks for the town budget so all right other questions on the school budget Bo just um please I know you think about these things all the time but like on special ed and
school um transportation trying to take more of that stuff inhouse I know you've had discussions on that over the years but yeah I'm just saying like it keeps going up and just I know it's easy for me to ask but we have had conversations
about busing for the regular District as something we'd want to do but it didn't make any sense in the last conversation we had especially it becomes even less sense because many times it's almost a one to one case going to a specific school right you pick up one kid you
deliver that one kid so you know unless we had a fleet of 20 or 30 Vans and 20 or 30 drivers to pick up one kid and drop them off then pick him up the other day and bring him home it doesn't the financi don't make sense it's it's a capital intensive business and you have
to be of a certain size to do it and we're nowh near that size so that means now we're at the mercy of you know the companies that are out there yeah is there any like way to do synergies like with other close I don't know woing or another close well you know we're part
of the um SE seam so in fact there's a meeting coming up I think it's next week to talk about U some of the transportation that team is providing so yeah there is some of that Synergy going on but again you know it's tough out there there aren't a lot of vendors and one of the things that we're seeing
within transportation is there been a consolidation of Transportation companies you know nrt um and a number of them have been bought up by vanpool and it's under the heading of what is the it's it's a big
company so a lot of the local companies have been bought up they're still being run under their old names but they're now owned by by what is what was originally vanpool out of central MK that you know they're trying to turn themselves into this Company's trying to turn themselves into the next first
first student so you know there's even less competition I went out to bid up a Newber report last spring for our bus contract and our current provider had also been bought up by the same company so they weren't I wasn't going to get a bid from both nrt in um my current
provider because they both have the same parent so now I I got one bid so you know that's what we're running into it's like the trash consolidation exactly like the rubbish consolidation it's you're running into an monopo agree that's what I've read about with the fire trucks why they're costing us so
much money there's only a few Nationwide companies only two companies in the US that make fire trucks so you don't like the one and you don't get the other then you know yeah uh Beacon Mobility is that the name thank you Beacon yes for the win there if you're very interested go in in and see if you
can get a hold of their financials they're a very leveraged company they got a whole lot of debt on their balance sheet because they bought a lot of companies over the last three four years know I still think in the special education piece is still for us is build the best IND District programs that we
can have and that's our best way to keep costs down and that's worked over the last few years and it's worked especially I would argue in our elementary lead program I would say also there's if you build the program up not only do you have the should you be able to keep you know kids in who you should be able to service right but also you
may be able to tuition students in we actually had we had a student from a neighboring District tour of our student our schools this week for one of our sub separate programs so you can keep kids in and potentially tuition in that's you know that's a but that's all predicated on having a Model A good strong model uh
for your sub separate programs I'll go back to a word we've used from this room many times and or set of words invest to save how many times have we talked about that in this room y we've been very very strong at that do we expect like a lot of the earlier identification in
kindergarten will at least reduce more out of District placements and even if they have to start getting Services earlier it's going to save on and out of District placement where we can't service them or have failed them or something what Dr meski just referred to that's where our lead program is really
starting to kick in Kick in well in case you didn't see it we had a really strong review of the lead program recently top 5% in the state so cool do you I don't say actively recruit but are
like other districts coming to you or parents from other districts like how how do like you network that or okay I know a couple I think couple things one is we we were very intentional saying let's talk about our lead program for a minute we didn't think we could go out and start like
actively marketing our program until we felt really strongly that our program was one that was you know we would you know could put all of our weight behind saying this is a top tieer program had the having the evaluation from MGH who was you know kind of one of the leaders in the field say that we are you know he
said one of the you know top 5% you know uh you know 95th percent programs in the region was the was the language uh that's encouraging for us and they broke down a lot of the ways that they think make us a a top tier program having them sort of have that having that evaluation
I think allows us to then say okay let's you know leverage this to be able to Market our program we did just put out a video that you may have seen floating around that um with Dave cartoon and from cartoon you it's about a 10-minute clip that highlights our lead program and we blasted that out sort of on social media we blasted out to our
families uh and that has started making its way around some of the like you know the parent special ed groups across the state and we think that sort of has been a strategy for us to Market we do also connect with all of our local special ed directors too so our director special ed says hey we feel really confident in our
program here some information about our program here's a review we got if you have some you know students who could benefit let us know and then also we do feel like obviously Word of Mouth to so it it hasn't really been until the last couple of months where we've had you know I think more um uh tangible
strategies around marketing our program because we didn't have that review from lead until recently but it's definitely yeah for we all add to it things like we we held the event in the fall for the right to read film and we had probably half the people in the audience were not read okay and we had a couple people
come up to us at the end of it asking about what would it be like to tuition in to reading it wasn't even a thing on on dyslexia technically but because the conversation and the forums and whatnot they were impressed with what we were doing so we'll see oh that's great
thanks said comments or questions we have to take a vote now no we're not we don't we do it all at there it's a I have to go back to the St agenda uh a couple in a few weeks vote on you know one line for the entire
school budget as part of the overall budget the fact that they give us all this detail is strictly a courtesy which we appreciate um but uh we don't vote on any of the details I know it's just been I just couldn't remember the procedure if we had any yep so all right
um okay well guys yes thank you very much see you at the killum presentation I guess a few imagine we'll see a couple of you next Wednesday so all right um speaking of next Wednesday uh
the next um uh item on the agenda is future agendas um I think I mentioned this outline uh four of um uh four meetings we did school this week um the project
managers for uh the schedule worked out such that the week to have the big projects was next week March 5th so we'll have uh uh people including I think project managers and attendance for both kilum and recal um to come talk
to us um uh and then we will uh resume with the town budget the following week and presumably finish that and cover the warrant articles the uh any other Financial warrant articles the following week so so no uh quick question no
voting next week correct just attendance and are you're thinking about zooming in uh I've been more than likely okay all right that's fine we we'll let that slide but I but I but I will couch it and I can watch it no it's it's the the fourth the fourth and final meeting when
we vote on every line in the budget is the one where like you know we'll just disconnect if you happen to lose right if you happen to lose like like Jackie can you make me a host hold on hold on I'm just gonna oh it looks like this person disconnected now all right um that's that's a shame uh yeah seriously
I think actually PR sure I think last year for the votes I was out with the flu and I believe endry did the he voluntarily disconnected uh yes thank you for your service um so yeah hope sorry to be obtuse so the
fifth is recal killum correct the 12 is town is Town part one and 19 is Town part two voting yep and anything else that's Financial in the warrant great so then nothing on the 26 and then
something on possibly the second I think is what that yes so that's just that's worth mentioning it's not I guess I guess technically it's a future agenda because we'll presumably post for it but on uh April 2nd which is a Wednesday I hadn't thought about the fact that it's our time slot but yes um we thankfully
won't be meeting by then um uh Matt cornelis is trying to organize a uh a pseudo Financial forum is a forum it's a forum about big Financial things but uh it's it's not uh we're not being asked
to put it on um and it's going to be at the pack um trying to get a lot of people in to uh hear about more about um killum and recal preown so it's preown meeting it's kind of a pre- toown meeting exactly but my understanding is
town meeting has to put debt exclusions for each one on the ballot so it's a way right well so it's it's there's going to be a special meeting at the start yes we're get we're getting into the mechanics of this which I think we will be discussing next week so but that's
why we're having that that's a way to educate the public and have them ask a lot of their questions in town meeting members right I mean that that's that's true and yeah it is I mean the select board has already voted to call an election for the for both of these even
though town meeting has not yet voted to authorize any debt for these um uh presumably the election becomes a very moot point if town meeting doesn't approve the debts still has to occur but the election will still occur which would be the a super weird
election I actually asked that question in our killing meeting um was um we will even if town meeting votes um you know um doesn't pass it no and the
town could still pass it and then then we would just have to have another town meeting then we hold another town meeting okay that's a good point and then it would be um cuz we'd be uh the town wouldn't yet be authorized to take up the debt but if you held a special town meeting a couple weeks later you could fix that and it would be a weird
world in which the town had voted for something and the town meeting still said never mind so yeah get it but that would still be bad because I understand that part of the timeline is being driven by um uh there are cost Savings in starting sooner so yeah I I didn't I
didn't give it as part of my uh Lea on I'm sure uh whether it's Carla right yearly aison update is the excuse for we say well I just say this is on topic for the meeting exactly try not to talk about things that are not on the agenda yeah no there there's there's a there's um uh I didn't go through it on the
leison report but um um I I've been you know kind of super impressed with uh the professionalism of uh of colur the OPM and um LBA on uh from the designer that they're they're they're working great
together um but um but and and and Carla has been um you know kind of running point on a lot of this is trying to figure out like there's so many moving Parts um you know they're even talking about moving the modular um you know and and trying to figure out uh
time frames um and trying to milk out as much time as possible so that we can have this school be finished you know kind of on time um even early um on budget and then uh and have the students start you know kind of a uh in kind of trans over
um yeah so it's it's been really really you know kind of impressive and there's a lot of places where there's opportunities to save money as well and and it's that's been you know kind of really refreshing and that you have people that are not part of the Town
thinking about spending you know spending money judiciously um and conservatively on that side so it's been it's been really great they they've listened to what important um I think we've done a good job of you know kind of communicating and and the community
and the abutters and so forth have' talked you know quite a bit about what's important we spent a lot of time on traffic spent a lot of time on a lot of aspects of it so it's been um it's it's it's been you know kind of a really um helpful thing but I um I would you know
um you know for I would recommend for for for next week um you know kind of asking questions to dive into that I that from from a committee perspective is you know um asking a lot of questions as far as um even some of the things we talked about during the liaison report
as far as where the savings come from you know um um you know some of the um and and and the scheduling I because I think there's there's there's a lot of great um great things I think that's the best way for us to help educate anyone
that's going to be watching is by asking those types of questions that makes me think of the question that we got um there was a question posed to Maran and I about of how much from from the OPM about how much detail we wanted and you know my my response was um basically as
much as we can fit in the time uh we don't want to be here till midnight and we've got two big projects to talk about um but that you know my my experience with this committee is that we will eat up as much detail as you give us and we will ask questions about it yeah I mean it's probably you know you're probably
better off getting more ahead of time and then you know there maybe there's maybe it's the summary that you get um in the presentation but you know the more information that we have to you know to kind of yeah dive into I think is I think it'll be um I I I think
everyone should be I I've been you know again i' especially someone that's not I know nothing about buildings you know I mean you know and um and but the you know the whole permanent building committee they're they're excellent um and um we're lucky to to have them um
but you know kind of hearing as an outsider some of the exchanges that kind of happen between the experts you know on the committee and the OPM and the designer has been fascinating um especially talking about um you know um you know the geothermal piece of it
where where where you like we're getting down to like where you put the wells how how you know how far apart are they I'm talking about solar so there's a lot of different pieces there to so there's a lot to you for folks to dig into okay like on the contingency right well I can
ask this next week but material cost like can we protect ourselves any way there or I doubt it um you know on you know uh on the I mean that's just and again this is completely you know my opinion and nothing that's based in any kind of fact I just think you know
you're going to be subject to whatever happens when you start to build um and um um you know kind of Mike has mentioned that um you know in uh in you know you you try to build in as many things as possible you know kind of you know kind of flexibility um within the
budget but you you you can't predict the future and you don't know who knows in the labor yeah who who knows who knows how it goes by the time we actually break ground you know I mean and and where we need steel beams and or whatever else we you know we kind of
putting in there but there's been a lot of um questions from the committee about you know the sustainability of the materials and how tight the envelope is and it it's you know it's it's it's been really you know kind of I mean and and
they're drilling down to that level of like you know the windows shape and and um and functionality and and everything so it's the amount of detail that's you know that's that's in there is pretty impressive but I think there's to that question I think it's it's really hard
um and and and again three months ago you wouldn't have thought that you know we'd be having thought about it differently yeah you would thought you know differently about like okay well would we have tariffs on steel you know I mean you know you just didn't know so
and and and who knows where that's going to go in six you know there's I think it's everything's so fluid so right so I'm trying to stick to Future agenda topics is there some time before the may
vote where we as a finance committee are going to be able to give the town a fair picture of expected to the extent we know um expected Town budgets and a timeline for when another override might
hit before these votes I'm very concerned about that because I remember what happened when there was the 2012 and 2014 Library votes and then in 2016 we the town went for a first override there were a number of reasons why that
override might not have passed but there were a fair number of people who expressed a concern why didn't we know about this this coming when it was a 2014 Deb exclusion vote and eventually you know that override got scaled way back for 2018 we've certainly the town has done a
good job making it last but if in 2028 we are going to be coming you know we we've seen the Run rate on our free cash supplementing the budget we're hearing about health insurance increases I don't know where this fits in because there isn't another Financial Forum I don't think we can just hijack next week's
meeting I don't know if it's the time for the second would that fit in before May 13th I would talk about this my sorry for jumping into Jo I would think that's Matt's meeting you know the one before what August 2nd or 5th
what I mean it's Matt's to do or Matt's meeting is the time to do it I I think Matt's meeting would be the time to do it yeah I mean that I mean again I think that's probably for you know leadership to be able to massage that message to Matt as far as want to feather that in
get asked yeah so so where where I mean the first um uh the place where we hear about it because we've heard bits and pieces and and and Sharon sent you and I the scary health insurance numbers um uh spoiler alert um she's told some select
board members too so I think it's out kind of out there and it's it's um uh you can publicly request emails from Sharon sure whatever anyway the point is um that that uh um health insurance numbers are coming in way over projection for FY 26 and and doing that
in every other Town we're like in better shape I mean Winchester already acknowledged that their health insurance numbers are 20% higher so we're not that bad but you know yes even if you scale it down it's not good and then as I've told some people here uh does anyone
want to guess how much of an override stonum is asking for okay $14.6 million in April and now that's after North Reading failed at 10 million and Melrose failed at 7 and a half those are peer towns and
maybe we're in better shape than them but if we're looking at something double double digit in a few years that doesn't mean it's going to pass yeah so we have to so in terms of future agendas that should be somewhere in the mix you say what's the rough number for health
now that you started that so uh I think she say have like 133% and she planned for seven when okay um so uh 7.1 or something something 7 point something and uh I might be wrong it might be eight but in any case it was it was a single- digit number was planned a
double digit number has come in low double digits so better than other places but still um so there's uh you know and Sharon is doing the Sharon thing and finding other places to you know move money around so that she doesn't have to immediately turn around and ask us for the entire shortfall out
of free cash but some asking is going to happen um and we'll we'll we'll cross that bridge when we come to it of course but regardless of how we decide to handle it the overall situation of benefits costs going up again we got we got I was
looked back at this by the way benefits costs were like only going up like 3 to 5% a year for five years there or something which is part of why this job seemed way easier than it actually is um but remember before all this when when bobes was Town manager and were these 8%
increases in the town was debating whether or not to join some certain pool and then we didn't join it and worked out and the pool was higher and I don't know if that's still an option coming back I don't know but thing costs we know costs are going up and this is just one typical thing we know trash it's
going to go up so so getting back to the the um like I think we should plan to hear about this first and learn and discuss it ourselves in two weeks from now um that is also going to be the public hearing on the budget and I think we can and should make sure that gets
announced in more than just the statutory minimal ad in the uh you know Chronicle or whatever um uh I would you know certainly welcome the public to that Public's always welcome but that one's going to be interesting um and then uh and then yeah the Forum on the
second uh unclear exactly how we'll be involved but by then we'll know a lot more and that will be all about trying to communicate what we know out um well I think there's going to be you know calculators of you know this debt exclusion would cost the average house
this much this debt exclusion because Sharon presented numbers at the select board meeting but then we would say you know just like they had override calculators in a few years you know this other we have to we have to tell the public that because otherwise they'll
just wonder maybe it won't be as bad but the public has to know should we be telling who should we be telling though Matt or Sharon should we assume that they know because sounds like we want a discussion of free cash right I mean if we just say look we've been you know
this year she'll someone will see it's like 5.6 million and a percentage you know we had to ask everyone to come down on what percent and next year maybe look we can you can only have your budgets go up one and a half% instead of three and a half and I'm making that up but then
they all have to deal with that we had years where it was like that yep yeah you know y we survived but it's just something 100 it's part of the business cycle so somehow that's if it's not on our agenda and it's in that meeting our guidance to the town was to use $5.8
million of free cash and they're come back and ask in two weeks about um 6 million so an additional 200,000 and we're not having that conversation now but we will have it in two weeks and then whatever falls out of the conversation will'll probably have implications for what you know to tell
people on April 2nd as well so I mean this is you know look looking ahead and and planning and being prepared is is is what we're what we're doing and that's good um so uh anything else obviously there's a
lot on future agendas but is there anything else that needs to be included in future agendas good um because already our our plate is already full right I just was we're not going to re in light of all of these things I think we had talked about revisiting policies of what percentage
of cash to keep and percent I don't think that this is the time for that no I mean it's it's uh a policy discussion around we do one weird thing and I understand the history is that like before the last override our the amount of money we had in the bank was so small that didn't matter it was the
stabilization fund or free cash because there wasn't any um but that built back up after the override um and uh our theoretically your stabilization fund is supposed to be your buffer and your free cash is the stuff you spend on whatever
but that's not actually we have a token amount in the stabilization fund and all the money is in free cash um the vast majority of our of our of the the town's um you know liquid resources there so um you know the the the question earlier
was like should we actually put the money that we want to have as the buffer in the stabilization fund um uh which you know if it doesn't matter it doesn't matter but um it is curious if we do do it that way and I'm certainly up for talking with Sharon more at Future
meetings about why it is that way and what the implications would be of of you know actually putting some money in the savings account and not just keeping it all in the checking account so to speak I think I think the reason why we want to we want to know how much we want to keep in there because I know with regard to the debt exclusions I've heard people
suggesting well maybe with recal an alternate way to finance it if it doesn't pass in May would be take some out of free cash and somehow have it in the levy and have a smaller project because they you know kill him is what it killum is what it is senior center I've watched the Council on Aging
meetings and they talk about well if it fails we're back to the drawing board and what if what if it fails sounds like a great topic for the discussion next week yeah no that's but I'm saying pattern here how we set up a policy of free cash would impact how people I
think theorized financing it you know the the for the when we get back to the town budget two weeks from now and uh Sharon comes and with the the bad news about the health insurance and asks us to discuss what to do about it um I
think it's also fair to ask for a um I mean I will I just took the AI I will ask about an updated um uh free cash projection spreadsheet I think that's a wise choice you know because that's the um and uh and then that you know should
likewise be you know because that spreadsheet probably will show things that people don't like um I think it would be good too to get um we've talked about this there's been like a number of these over the last like so now it's health insurance it was gas what was it um natural gas
natural gas gas we have rubbish y it would be good to see these you know kind of like a series of inflection points that have you know kind of um you kind of um you know kind of hijacked um you know some of the budgets and they come
at different times um but I think it would be you know it'd be interesting to say you know to to have that as a you know as a talking track around not only are these happening they're going from single digits to double digits um but
we're seeing these at a greater frequency you know as well so like all of these things are indicators that you know we're heading in a direction that um um that um if you if if you play this out and you just say that well there's you know there's another line item
that'll happen next year and and maybe two the year after that and then what that does to free cash right so that just and that has impacts on budgets I guess will will we have time to get to that with Town budget discussions I mean maybe it would we'll have we'll we'll
have as much time as we need to answer Sharon's question about whether she can have $200,000 yep like we should that's that's a big question um and U Town Meeting votes it right or is she asking for our reserves well I mean it would go in the um no not asking for reserves
although there is also a reserve request um that I think will come up I can't remember if that's next week or the one after um but Matt did send a reserve request yeah I think I saw that so which is snow there was snow removal and oh I
forget I'll tell head the other ones were hold on I can actually probably find this in my email um I thought change in the and this is going to be a future agenda item so it's uh I just need to find it in fast and
loose with this agenda item right now yeah well I mean this is this is actually we really are talking about like do we need to have a free cash discussion on March 12th yes that is a question of the agenda for March 12th um
nobody say what they think but we could say whether or not we're gonna talk about it yes we're GNA talk about it all right um Joe are you gonna send an updated spreadsheet of the free cash oh that's actually I'm going to ask Sharon to send that to all of us um because I don't
have I have an updated Financial forecast elections oh was that's right there were election related that's why they want money all right there's a free C yes there's going to be a um thank you got a quicker than me um so yes at one of our um I can't remember oh yeah March
5th so next week on our agenda will be a reserve request um that is some snow removal and but it's mostly actually election expenses um and I will not comment on that because that would be next week's discussion is there anything
else to add to to next week's agenda um uh uh reserve request no all right cool Jo for like two weeks after that though yep it's tied to the agenda but can we request like how the town presents the
information like that they'll have the score cards and the FTE because sometimes in the past like it's been like inconsistent the way they presented by apartment it's confusing to fall I don't know if you guys it might be too late at this yeah it's probably at this point to get it into the it's probably
we're going to just get a mini rehashing of what they presented to the select board in December that's usually what we get and sometimes we don't even get that level of detail we will get the budget though we'll get the budget dock what they did December was like inconsistent this will be no I think
line items I think it's a really good idea I suspect you know but I mean I would suggest um you know we could certainly Reach Out to Matt we can talk to Matt about at the meeting and um we can reach out to him outside of a meeting of course any of us can um you're certainly welcome too I can if
you want me to um uh maybe it's best actually talk about it when we're looking at it to be like this should look like that um okay because I I agree I think that I thought the presentation of um uh from today's discussion I thought the presentation of FTE was useful for
understanding sometimes I was doing that math in the past or just like guessing what the salary is and dividing but like that's a we've been through so many Finance directors in like the last eight years and everyone has a different style it's really interesting and and the amount of information you got yeah from each of
them yeah so School side on the town side we get we still have Sharon yay all right okay um let's keep moving with this agenda um it's almost nine um the meeting minutes motion to approve the minutes from the October 30th 2024
meeting as presented with thanks to Jackie second all right uh any discussion it's been a thousand years is it really the last time we met
yeah I mean there were you know meeting entire holiday seasons and you know flu outbreaks and some stuff happened at the national level a few things have happened since the end of October um
so yeah I guess gonna take the vote we you got your second I don't think anyone has any comments nope all right let's do it um roll call vote uh Mark yes Joe yes Emily
yes Maryann yes Jeffrey yes Ed yes Andre yes John yes and Joe yes I will entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second thank you Ed thank you Jeffrey uh Mark yes Joe yes
Emily yep Maran y Jeffrey Ed yes andry yes John yes Joe yes thank you all see you next week for