[Music] okay um welcome everybody uh so we've got um a few things to chat about tonight uh first of all
uh I think there's an update on annual town meeting schedule right does anybody actually Maybe I should save that for Gabe do we actually have a confirmed date i know there was two dates that were being considered is that Susie sounds like you have some end of
May isn't it it's going to be May 31st or June 7th i don't know if they decided okay the decision is going to be made at the um 25th meeting okay so it's a either May 31st or June what was that
june 7th or June 7th okay yeah of course i think they're leaning towards the 31st okay all right [Music] um so I think that
would you Susie which day did you say you're leaning towards 31st okay i I'll answer for Susie thank you no I didn't argue with you why that changed we were told there was not going to be any possibility of it changing the the what
what I guess what the the issue is that town elections can't be changed but the select board can change town meetings so town elections are going to be on the 27th of April well that's a good that's good news for us the 26th
oh 26th it is it isn't that's right this just drags on yes i think the other issue is that that um I should have flagged this i don't know why I did but that the the original I guess the 26th is the is the tail end
of um school vacation spring break for for for public schools and so that's not an ideal time to for for parents of school age children to attend a town meeting so
I think it's is a is a good a good move for a few different reasons all right uh hi Gabe we were just uh going over the update on annual town meeting
um so just updating our calendar all right why don't we take a look at minutes from March 4th I think it was yeah yes
i think Susie you did these for us right so thank you all right um so I don't know if folks had a chance to review these but are there any questions or suggestions
i took a quick look and didn't see anything um well I had a couple questions i wasn't here but I do have some questions go ahead um it look to me like item I the $6,000 for the
antifreeze looks like bullets D and E are out of place um a reference to the legal budget and the building repairs or is that just a conversation about our free cash no it just seems like those two items are out
of place [Music] i think that was part of the conversation yeah I think I think it sort of came up right in the context of
um Okay yeah okay so yeah so the issue was concern about the um oh right availability of our of our you know of of fincom reserves given some of these other
expected needs that are coming between now and the end of the fiscal year now I understand okay yeah that's fine yeah now now I get it and and then in capital requests I noticed that we listed the grater and um talked about the grater and talked about the parking lot and the
zeroturn mower but there was no reference to uh the dam there was request for a dam repair i don't think that came up at all yeah it didn't come up all right well then it shouldn't be there but there is okay although it looks like you know we might
be okay on the funding of that because of grants and CPA we might not it might not affect the budget yeah and then the very end uh well not the very end in uh number five the 20 the 26 draft budget changes the very last g uh less
free cash ded generated in FY I think you meant to say FY24 or FY25 well we were we were saying that less free cash will be generated in 25 because we are expending most of the lines fully
oh okay all right less free cash will be generated in like Yeah yeah susie you're doing these right you're going to turn these in or you want me to do it uh no i'll turn them in when we're through okay yeah i mean that's it for
me that's all I saw [Music] it was more clarification for me all right uh anybody else have questions or suggestions okay uh I'll make a motion
to approve the March 4th minutes as amended i don't think there were any amendments were there yeah we were adding to be generated in fact 25 just this one sentence I think uh and it was missing
the 25 so 5G 2B generated in FY25 that's not 2B generated instead of likely you want it to say to be generated oh oh no i didn't on mine i didn't see the 2B on it maybe I I just I
added this while we were talking so um less so this sentence here less free cash likely to be generated in FY and then we've got to put in 25 due to expected full expenditure of most lines
25 is in there already no it isn't i didn't see it no it wasn't no AJ just added that no it's on my it's on my rough draft all right okay the other thing it it said that the mean if you scroll down it said that we approved the
3425 mean minutes and that should be from the previous week yes so that would have been let's see that would have been as a test um that should
say February 18th I think yeah so that's Yeah so I think this is February 18th 218 did you turn those into Grace he did okay it's a long time ago though
i just want to make sure there's no gaps in the sequence here i know yep so I'll edit those things though as amended great okay so I think we have a second did I hear uh second by Bob okay uh
George Arvinitis abstain grove's eye oh Grove wasn't there oh I wasn't there yep really two abstains there okay I guess I I will abstain after all hemingway I
Sorry Cashew i Moer I Stein I salvador I Stein I right uh so five motion passes five votes two extensions all right
great all right so let's think about how we want to handle the rest of tonight's meeting so we've got a few things let's just kind of do a quick review and then dive in we've got to um talk about the um regional school
budget there's some new developments from last week that um gonna require some deliberation and a response from us and then we've we're going to look at
the current draft FY26 budget have a discussion about um how to how to address um you know a deficit that's
uh you know above $300,000 right now um and then I think there's some I didn't have a chance to look at that Kathy and April but I think there's some updates from the personnel committee that we ought to discuss
tonight um do we want to do that now it's going to have budget implications right yes so let's uh let me share yeah i could not I could not open that document on my computer so I sent it
along to you okay yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna share it now uh actually I think both you and Kathy sent me it looked like it was the same document but you can tell me
all right so do one of you want to kind of talk us through what we're looking at and what our implications are for the budget did you blow it up a little AJ yeah i I unfortunately missed this
section of the meeting i um but I think between Kathy and I we can certainly talk about Yeah I can stumble through it um we'll stumble through it together um what we discovered was there were six positions that were significantly
underpaid and we talked a lot about what to do um with regard to those positions after we apply the 3.32% cola for this year and um we looked at um the average column without
the high and low that George had put together we thought that made the most sense um and we had Melissa on the call um and she knew that she knew the hours for each position which is what we had been missing I think in the prior
meeting to determine what the impact would be of any adjustment or alignment that we decided to make so oh sorry i'm sorry let me just hang this up husband is at
the the Jim McGovern town meeting oh oh nice in Greenfield excellent yeah yeah um should be there so yeah I was feeling guilty not going but I sent him anyway so so anyway um we looked at how those
six positions and you can kind of see they're the ones that are highlighted in in purple um with the exception of the administrative assistant which was just recently hired um so we looked at their their pay rates
as compared to the average without the high um without the high low um numbers included we figured out what the impact would be um over annually and that's the column per year
if we increase to the full amount to the full average without the high low yeah that one and then as we talked and knowing that there's a deficit that we're already uh dealing with we all thought that it might be a good idea to
consider maybe year one doing a 50% increase to get them closer to that average and then with the with the idea that next year there'd be another look at their pay rates um and another analysis done to see if if it would be
possible to move even closer to the average is that clear as mud did I get that right April no you got it totally right it's totally right right i also noticed we had we did not include the town administrator in this and um I
believe our thinking has been that that was being hired at a that was sort of a set in stone it's going to be negotiated in the in the hiring process yeah and we don't know I probably was going to be 85,000
That's what it was advertised at yeah so I'm not sure why we do have a contract with the new town administrator and it averages out to 87 something she's getting 85 for the first 6 months and then moving her to 9500 for the next 6
months the lady is taking a $10,000 cut in pay to come to Shootsberry um the reason she wants to is she wants to learn town administration but that's a healthy deduction to ask someone to take um her
salary in Amoris is 96 so how did it so 85,000 for 6 months and then another 9500 added onto that 9500 then then her pay rate changes to 90,500 that's all prrated so in your budget you
will see it at 87,000 something because we prorrated it okay so that's what's in the the budget that you sent me yes yes okay all
right so um did the personnel committee actually like vote and sort of formally recom make this recommendation it did okay this the the that recommendation being the 50% yes increase for this year
one okay uh Bob I want to just ask a question or make a comment about your methodology because you know this methodology is based upon as you say low and high and average and then if we're below average then we should presumably
go up to average to be fair is that cor is that right yes well just to clarify it's not just the fact that they're below average that they were significantly below average and let me just complete my my my my thought which is this methodology would ensure that
rates of pay across any district is using this method would continually go up because when we're below average and we come up to average we just raise the average our numbers our number is not included in the average when I put that together I do not put Shoots's number in
it right okay well that's that's something that wasn't clear to me i'll take that in but I don't I don't like the idea of of going to averages because first of all uh I understand what they're trying to do and I do think it's a legitimate thing to be fair to our
employees but there's nothing necessarily comparable about work duties from one town to the other and that's that's sort of inherently assumed in this method and you know I'm a you know it's sort of like uh mindless to not
analyze the the individual employee the individual employees performance uh his or her duties and how they how they uh how they feel about their compensation and just use a method that's like this which is mathematical doesn't seem to me to be
sensible well it doesn't seem plausible for us to be you know interviewing the accountants of different towns and things like that you know I think we have to start with something and find a way for our town to remain competitive um so we can keep the good employees we
have and I think the assumption is we we might have heard or we might have been notified if there was anybody who wasn't performing satisfactorily i I think I don't know i'm new to the personnel board but I'm assuming that that's something that might have come up as we
were discussing the roles i I don't know well yeah certainly if you read our handbook um there is a procedure there is a process for underperforming employees employees who have for whom there are concerns i don't remember if the
personnel board's involved in that or not or would be aware of anybody well again if this if this is a method that's going to be used uh regionwide then our performance and our our raises that we provide will actually be end up
be included in the mass and in the general analysis so you know what I don't like to see is I don't like to see pressure pressure on our budget year to year this is like we're talking $20,000 of pressure being um created by this method that's a we already have problems
uh maintaining fiscal uh level funding or not level funding but level services budget and you know instead of looking for ways to be more efficient in delivering services we're looking for ways to maybe retain employees longer and make them happier but at a greater
expense that that bothers me but I think inherent in keeping really well-trained um competent employees is that there is more efficiency um I mean we have a phenomenal team of employees with lots
of years of experience and they've I think they've done us well and I think that there's an efficiency in that as well excuse me we're also seeing when we go out to hire people that the area that people are
coming in at higher salary rates across the board every position and the idea of retaining our workers who have the experience and have shown that they can do the job keeps us from going out in
the marketplace and getting an unknown at the same price or more because that's what's happening in hiring i had a quick question um so it looks like uh the personnel board
made a conscious decision to use this uh average without high low value as opposed to the median uh pay rates as kind of the benchmark to
compare our salary rates c can anybody speak to what the rationale for that was i guess you got to pick one but I'm just curious it's on you you you have the data on this chart so seems like at
some point you probably thought about the logic of using the median value rather than Yeah yeah i I I think it was just try to um to find a way to be somewhat moderate in in our
assumptions and um I think if I'm remembering correctly the and George maybe knows this better but the high was really high and really skewed the the average or the really skewed the number um and I forget what
the low was but I just remember that the high was kind of really out there it's it's such a broad range of towns across Franklin County that yeah you had some really that's why I decided to to take the highs and the lows out because
not every position but for many positions they just weren't in line and you wonder what else is going on in those towns in those positions that might cause somebody to get paid extra they're they're shoveling the walk when it snows and they're getting something extra for it and in another town you
know who knows so I put those in there but I wasn't in the meeting when the personnel board made this decision so I'm not I can't answer to why they chose the average versus the median i will say by looking at it the the fir the obvious
one that um might you might not want to consider is the assistant town clerk um certainly versus the median she's okay and then the administrative assistant it's the the two numbers are vary by
quite a lot but that's that's already been changed as it was pointed out anyways so just a question uh maybe I'll ask to anybody here on the who knows about this what towns exactly are we talking about because to my mind a town like say South Deerfield
uh is very different from Shootsbury in terms Yeah I can answer that Bob yeah no I can i Yeah we don't count Orange we don't count Deerfield Greenfield um Monagu um I think those are the ones I excluded and then there was there was another
schedule that Franklin County provides that had Petersam in it and Planefield in it so I threw those in and um one other Well those are certainly more comparable towns to Yeah no that's what I did i tried to go by population
yes susie the other thing that we know is right now um wages are very volatile lots of changes so we don't know if any of the towns in the chart are also making um corrections on their people um
because you can you can look around and see that um in the positions that people are talking about in the paper there's all sorts of salaries out there right now in all sorts of positions it's very volatile it's a buyer market if you're
an employee it's been that way since the pandemic you can negotiate salaries we've seen it across the country and in the union contracts that have been signed and we've certainly seen it in the school contracts in the valley and as Susie pointed out the recent
hires the town administrator is going to be making a lot more money than Becky was and it looks like the police chief probably will be and it's unfortunate for the taxpayer and
business uh I had one other question um and this is this is kind of more for future studies of this kind is I assume this is this data that you're getting is provided by FCOG is that yes
it's two FCOG wage and tax I'm sorry wage and um salary summaries one for Franklin County and one for other towns which was limited got it and do they provide any data on the
seniority levels yes that shows years of service okay it shows state of hire for the current positions all right so I think like you know it might be interesting in not for not for the purpose of this
year's analysis but in future years if you could add if there was a way to sort of add that dimension of longevity or um into thinking about sort of how our um employees are being paid relative
to our their counterparts in other towns of a roughly similar seniority level like that that might be uh I know that complicates the analysis and that that that might be um that might be we might be able to we
might be able to quantify it by using factors you know if somebody's over five years use a adjust their salary by 1.5 down somebody is is only a few years adjust it up by 1.1 i mean you know I suppose that's something the personnel board
could Yeah I just something to think about because I think and I think that might help um you know that that sort of speaks to the the goal of making this as much of a kind of apples to apples kind of comparison
um you know uh if if if there was a way to sort of add that dimension of St martin susie the um Union 28 schools after they hammered through the Shootesberry
um teachers contract found a software program that's in live time um that considers a ton of factors in terms of salary setting salaries because the um
the Shootsberry um committee worked really long really hard and it's very overwhelming for volunteers to consider a ton of information but they were all extremely happy because the other three towns in
the uh U28 have contracts to be negotiated and they found this tool that um helps consider all those factors i don't know if there's one for municipal positions or if we even want to think
about it but what it showed me was how hard it is for volunteers to figure out all the information that goes into contract negotiations do you happen to know the name of the program uh no i can find it out it's
probably in one of these folders i'll I'll send it to you all right [Music] um okay i don't know if this is appropriate but I think I'm going to make a
motion to um endorse the personnel board's recommendation to implement this 50% sort of uh in uh increase for these
six positions is that correct five six um yeah I think I'd like to make that motion just because I think I think we we're going to need to if we're going to need to some direction about whether to implement these changes into our our
budget um for FY26 second all right any other discussion about this um George no
i I just like to make one ask one question or make a point which is uh we've talked about this in the past that there's a notation here that most towns outsource their accounting to Furkcog and I wonder whether we should be looking into that uh just to see what
that cost it's very expensive yeah it is the accountant it's like $71 an hour and and that's our future i think when it comes time for an accountant we're probably gonna have to go to Furcog because it's that's not that's not a a
reasonable Yeah I know but when you look at most of the towns are doing it there's a reason and it's probably the reason is they're hard to come by they're hard to find we're we're lucky i mean we really have a highly experienced accountant and she's retired from other
towns and she's great it work for us right so I consider ourselves retire yeah like what we've seen with these other positions lately we're going to be in the same boat with the accountant yeah okay that's my question gabe
you're on mute herog has ended their accounting program as of this year they have totally ended it and the towns that those accountants worked for are now negotiating with those accountants to keep them
so what towns are having to do is outsource town accounting to outofstate sources that provide it i know that um Hubardston's accountant lives in Florida wow and you if you kept track of what
happened to Hadley they outsourced theirs and it ended up being a disaster so um it's definitely a problem and you can't count on fur cog anymore wow that's huge all right any other comments about the
motion all right seeing none why don't we start voting george Aernitis i Rose I hemingway I cashew I moer I El Salvador I Stein I
okay uh motion passes seven zero all right so we've got six lines we don't have to do it on the fly right now but we've got six lines that we're going to have to update
in our uh budget but let's just keep in mind right now that we are adding $10,32740 to our uh expense side of our uh budget okay uh thanks Kathy and April for
walking us through that sure all right uh why don't I tee up the um arps discussion now um so there's been a lot of I think the
the last you know that we've all kind of had specific numbers and talked about the regional budget was coming out of the four last four towns meeting where
um the uh we were looking at um an increase in our assessment of 5.61% 61% uh a couple things have happened in the
interim and uh rather than kind of like I could talk for a while about all the different things that have gone on but basically the regional school committee last week voted a budget that did something similar to
what happened last year which is they've voted to increase [Music] uh the total assessment by six and a half% and to pli apply that increase to
all four municipalities so um every town in in the in the currently approved voted budget every town's assessment is increasing by 6.5% i want to share this
uh I have a um spreadsheet that I've been using to kind of keep track of things um so this highlighted in blue is the budget that um the region just approved
last week okay so uh obviously that this has a couple of implications um I think one positive thing right which is that the cuts required in this budget has has
basically reduced from 1.3 million or just under that to $812,000 um if you've been following the uh
the commentary on the proposed cuts they were quite significant and um they uh particularly impacted the middle school um and and there were lots
of studentf facing positions they were basically if if anybody has um familiar with the current structure at the middle school they have a team structure two teams for the sixth grade two teams for
the seventh grade team consisting of four core academic teachers in social studies English math and science and um those the the proposed cut
um based on the four towns budget was to eliminate one of those teams and to basically have a three team structure and require teachers to teach additional sections or you know of their subject
area um so there's I mean it's it's kind of remarkable how similar the way in which events have unfolded this year there was um significant kind
of public comment about and and concerns raised by families and teachers particularly at the middle school about those proposed cuts the region and I think has been hearing
lots of of feedback and that I think ultimately motivated them to try to pass a budget that was going to minimize the amount of studentf facing cuts there still are studentf facing cuts in this
budget but they are not as draconian as the the ones they were would be facing under the budget that we p that we discussed at the last four terms meeting so this has two implications for us it in it would
increase our assessment by almost $15,000 meaning an additional $15,000 above what we discussed at our last four towns meeting our our assessment would
increase from $92,795 to $17,517 okay that's that's implication one so we have to have a discussion about whether we think we can um absorb that kind of an increase um
and uh for for the second year in a row it's it this would blow apart the allocation method that we've been um advocating for um and uh you know I think we have to I
think we have to you know we're going to need to discuss and sort of take a position uh on this um I'll just explain a few other things about what you're looking at here just in case it comes up in the
course of our discussion at last week's meeting the region actually uh the commit regional school committee actually considered two different models i guess technically three models one was a level services budget which they quickly dispensed with
and said that was not anything that they could contemplate um but then they they most of their discussion was spent considering these two models um and a guardrail you know they're calling them
guardrail models um the first model um you know had the same increase for the for three m municipalities the six and a half% and it increased ammerce
assessment to five basically 5.5% and then so there was a fair amount of discussion about these two and about whether you know Ammerst whether whether it was going to be viable to ask Ammerst to increase by
the way Ammerst Town council has not agreed to an increase uh above 4% i mean like that their last um you know negotiation about this was that they were coming up from 3 and a
half% to 4% so that's um that's I so anyway uh ultimately they decided that they felt like they needed to act in the best interests of students and teachers and endorse the model that they thought
would ultimately be best for the for the the the schools and so they elected to approve this this budget here so um the the I I did a couple things just to kind
of help me sort of think about this one was I said "What what if what if they actually had applied the um modified statutory method to this budget right so this total
budget with this amount of assessment required what if what would the modified statutory method have required each town to pay if we were using that allocation method to approve the same budget and so this is the
result of that and you can see what's happening right is that um they're the the budget that they passed um is requiring requires Ammeris to pay almost
2% more than um than they than they would be under the the statutory method and then all other three towns are under their method their approved budget are underpaying relative to what the
statutory method would have required less so for us but significantly so for for Pelum and Le and then the last thing and then I'll stop talking I did was I I wanted to to to take a look at what might be the
implications for next year FY27 and so what I did was I created a budget hypothetical budget for FY27 that assumed um that the to the amount of assessment
required next year is going to be 4% higher than what they just approved or voted on for this year and then I said what if we actually applied the the modified statutory method to this
assessment required what would it require of each of the towns and this is basically assuming that the modified statutory next year is going to proportionally require the same proportion of funding from each of the
the four towns that it did for this year obviously the factors that go into modified statutory are going to be updated next year and so maybe there might be some changes but assuming the formula basically you know results in the same distribution of what each town should
pay um what what would that require of each town and what you can see what that would do here is it would it would require a 5.6% 6% increase in our assessment a 2.35% increase for Ammerst and then
pretty big increases once again for for and le so that's I you know that was just I I just kind of wanted to have a little bit of a picture of what next year might look like based on what the region is proposing we do this
year okay so let me stop talking and see if we have questions or comments bob yeah i just want to say for me uh the this method that's what's being proposed by the regional school committee is is difficult to accept because after all
the work we did four town meetings all the time all the discussions and so forth and as we all you all know I'm very uh keen on us uh maintaining the modified statutory method and what they're proposing is going to get us further away from that as you pointed
out and that really bothers me i don't I would not support that uh I would prefer to I I can't I would critique their budget in this in this way that their increases on a year-to-year basis are are just not reasonable uh for towns who
have to maintain something around 2 and a.5% uh increase in re in taxes at a given fiscal year so four five six% increases are really they have to do better than that uh they have to find a way to do
better that and the thing that I that really really sticks out in my mind is that a lot of the COVID related hires are still in the budget and I don't think that's right i think that's something that should have been adjusted that those people were hired for the COVID emergency uh then but those hires
stuck and were told that they're absolutely necessary and then when somebody's going to be let go it's not going to be those employees it's going to be teachers and I don't like I I don't find that logical i think that the teaching positions are more crucial to the to the to the t to the object uh
that we're financing which is education so but again I going further out away from the statutory method when look there as you pointed out AJ there are other variables in this method other than what the particular town's increase
will be in a given year for example I talked to John Tricky for quite a while this morning after reading about this in the Gazette and uh you know his the enrollment in Pel has been increasing in the last couple years so it's completely fair that they should be paying more to the region when their enrollment is
going up uh and in addition to that they're they they rate the formula the the Q factor or whatever they call it they're a higher income uh community their real estate is higher value than than Shootsberry they don't have the
challenges that Ammeris has with special needs students either so the idea that they can't just bite the bullet and and come up and cough up some money uh it doesn't that doesn't accord with my values i think that they said they're going to pro provide $20,000 on top of
their assessment to throw into the pile why that just not willing to increase their assessment i don't know he said that that would make it that would make Leverett uh obligated to do the same thing if they did that so can you repeat what you just said what is what is Pelum
doing he said that they're going to they will support uh six point yes they they were having a meeting tonight so I don't know what they've decided to do but he thought that they would support the 4% option for Amoris to come up with 4% not the 6 and a half% and or the the
actually whatever the second option was the 5.5 but um that's that's not that's him not knowing that Ammeris will support that but as he pointed out if the small towns all agree on this budget then Ammeris
will just like last year as you pointed out AJ Ammeris will have to go with it because it's a majority rule on the budget not it doesn't have to be unanimous so uh there's going to be a lot of political heat there's no two ways about it but I I for one don't
support this this guardrail system that's being proposed and I don't I kind of resent the regional school committee coming in and doing what they did last year uh and changing everything that we we so arously worked out so that's my position yeah uh sorry let let me just
make one kind of clarifying point i for uh I should have mentioned this is um is I think one of the issues that the superintendent and the finance director have raised is they
tried to they had preliminary conversations with Desi about um the direction that we were moving towards coming out of the four towns meeting where they're sort of a differential guard rail being
um applied to you know um one or two towns right and and apparently Desi gave feedback to them that they did not like that and they thought that was not something that they could approve and so
the way in which we've written guard rails in the past is apparently acceptable to them where we say which I think is kind of ridiculous but where we say we're going to do this
statutory method um and then impose a gu a fixed guardrail and if that guardrail if all four towns happen to butt up against that guard rail then um then then all four towns basically increase
by that amount so that might be part of the logic i don't know if I think you're right that's that that's that's what he was on about I believe yeah so so so John Tricky might be saying "Well we can make a gift and that way it doesn't foul up the
um the uh you know the guardrail seems ridic even more ridiculous but there it is." Yeah so that that may be part of it but so so but you but to did I hear you correctly that they that he at least his perspective is they think they could
contribute an additional $20,000 above this I think that's the number you use 20,000 yeah okay so they're going to contribute $20,000 above the assessment from the four town meeting and they'd be willing to accept that as their base next year
he said yeah so they would somehow so they would do that as a kind of an additional gift this year george I did hear a little bit about this and then but then next year they would incorporate that uh into their base so
that um when we when we do they'd be they'd be closer to their to the statutory requirements but of course that's about the time when their their affordable housing is going to come into play so they're probably their assessment will go down yeah they got
some new growth coming good for them as good because I'm taking the minutes i just want to make sure I understand so superintendent and finance director spoke with Desi about our assessment method and they're okay with the way we used to apply the guard rail but they
don't like the way we're applying it this year is that what I heard no it's they they don't like the idea of applying a a different guard rail for
um for a subset of municipalities oh I see right it has to be applied evenly yes so option option one wouldn't have worked in the desi model option one has a differential um got it thank you uh any other comments or questions
susie I think that the process still has to get fixed i don't know if it can get fixed for this year but what seems to have happened is that the superintendent brought um some options to the four town
meeting and there was good support and agreement but there was no details yet and there's always this part where you don't start telling um the details of the cuts cuz it freaks
out the staff that's there and um that's not how you do it once those details come out the school committee the Amir school committee or regional school committee excuse me um and the parents and the cuts created
a lot of upheaval but that came um a month and a a month and a week six uh five six weeks after our uh February 8th meeting so when we leave that meeting we have a sense of how things are and then
when the details start to emerge it changes because of this separate group um the finance arm of the regional school committee and somehow I don't know what their process
is like how much members of the school committee were in designing the four town frame I don't know how they did that but we keep we either have to change our expectations that we're not
going to know until later and that the Amir school committee is going to act on um the response they're getting from parents and staff the the middle school has been um a very tumultuous place
right now they haven't had clear leadership they might not have had a clear advocate um the interim principal left um and they do need to have some
support to straighten out and get that flying right um so I agree with why they don't want to cut the um one of the teams from seventh or eighth grade and and make another model um but I wish we
had accurate expectations of this process and I'm not sure we can get them yeah the timing is not good george yeah so I'm looking at what we all thought we were going to go into
town meeting with from the four town budget and then I'm looking at this guardrail method that was approved by the school committee and so for Leverett and Pelum they don't care right it's the same number for them and it's really
comes down to what Ammeris wants to do and there's quite a significant difference in their increase right from year to year um if Ammeris votes for it and agrees to a 1.224 million increase in their budget does Shootsbury really want to
say "Well we don't want to spend an extra $15,000." you know I don't think that's going to I don't think I'd be comfortable doing that i think at that point if Ammeris approves it I feel I personally would feel like I can't get in the way if
Ammeris is willing to raise a half a million dollars or call it [Music] 475 i'm not going to object to raising it 14722 george just could I speak to that for a sec just shortly sure go ahead Bob uh I
just want to say if we all vote to support this budget as it's been delineated here with the six and a half% guard rails Ammeris will have to accept it this is what last year I voted to support the proposal that we had worked out here and part of the reason I did so
and I think I mentioned it at our meeting at the time was I was sure the Ammeris wasn't going to support and sure enough they didn't support it but they had to support it they had not only was there uh a lot of pitchforks outside town hall in Ammeris but there's they
were obligated legally to do it because the other three towns had all voted yay on it and if that happens again then we haven't addressed the financial issue here susie referred to it i think April's referred to it in the past we tried to start the process earlier this
year so we could have a more uh fluid process that was where back and forth could be hopefully uh resolve some of the surprises we dealt with last year and the difficulty it was absorbing the increases into our budget and it didn't
really work out any much differently in the end which is more than disappointing i think you know my my to be be totally frank about it at some point you have to say no you have to do with something uh financially responsible with your budget
you can't just come up with something that is your version of what the budget is it has to be uh doable by the t taxpayers finances too and we're dealing with a gap already a formidable gap we just add another $10500 to it uh our
last subject and here's another chunk of change that we're going to have to pile on where we gonna how we going to deal with this uh this is a four five six% increases every year are not sustainable uh I know that the people have a very very tough job down there i absolutely
sympathize with their uh with their dilemma but uh they don't there's not an endless supply of money i think that has to be has to be remembered taxpayers are getting automatic raises on the social security my social security went up a
couple bucks a month that's it and so you know uh I think we have to we have to be we maybe we have to stand firm and ask ask the the the school committee to do better to to to reduce their ask
i just want to clarify one thing Bob um uh only three municipalities need to pass the budget um but the uh the assessment method which is which as you know is a
separate um is a separate action even though it's totally linked to the budget but it's a warning go on its own has has to be approved by all four municipality has to be unanimous and I I do think
that um that Ammerst is I know because they've talked to us at the four towns meetings about this there are some counselors in in Ammeris that really um feel very strongly about um you know not
not you utilizing the statutory method and and they they are exactly in the position that we were in for for years right that has that they are now in exactly the same position that we were and so I I actually think it's plausible
that um regardless of what they whether they agree to make this contribution um they could they could vote to not approve the assessment method which would which would have the same implication as if we were voting down
the budget because it would be going to 112 budget and all that anyway just wanted to clarify that George yeah so I I hear what Bob is saying um it seems to me that our reaction should be I would
like our reaction to be we like we agree to the budget at the four town meeting financially we just can't absorb anymore and Ammeris will decide if they force us into this if Ammeris approves there back to what I said earlier then I would
support the assessment method um because I'm not going to get away the 14722 but I think do I guess we have to vote today or give they're asking us for feedback my feedback I recommend that we stick with the four town budget
okay April yeah I guess a couple of things one is you know the process still stinks is that rather than meeting earlier we should have a floor town meeting now i mean I think that's that that's a link that hasn't happened so
that we can talk about this um I'm also highly aware the more we do this the statutory method becomes less and less viable you know it it really skews it and and there's something important about assessing by population and
ability to pay and that part is disturbing you know I'm I if there's any way we can reduce the cut to the the school I would support that um I I highly value education and and the
challenges that uh the schools are facing right now are incredible um so I'm not sure but anyway that's where I'm that's where I am uh Susie two points I have is we asked
all school all um budgets to come in at level services and the regional school is the only one multiple years who has come in and faced a below level services cut they're the only one and it's their
only one this year um and so I think we have to uh grapple with that some what just because it's a big budget doesn't mean that it can function with these cuts that have happened
year-over-year and the other piece is that there's um somewhat the same thinking that um a big town like Ammerst should be able to do more than what the uh statutory assessment says they should
do and that's not a good tool to use um that's not a good rationale to use because we would like to be using the statutory method and when they went to 4% um that's over what they needed to do
i don't know how they can how they're going to feel about their moment of generosity going from 3.5 to being beaten with a stick to go to 6.5 and and the comment that was in the paper by Anna it's this it's this belief
that somehow because they're a big dog they should be able to exceed the um theory of equitable assessment from statutory and I feel like we need to make sure we're not using that rationale just because they're a bigger town
doesn't mean they should pay outside of the statutory formula i may I speak just I want to support and echo what Susie just said i I think that first of all they're not going to buy that but secondly it's it's presumptuous for us to make that argument we're the
ones that led the charge for the statutory method because we believe in its equity so it's not when you believe in something as being more fair-minded you don't abandon it when it's all all of a sudden less convenient uh you you stick with it and that's what that's what we should be doing and if Ammerst
you know we can't I'm not going to talk about Ammerst finances they have much more complicated and demanding finances than we do in many ways but it was clear as AJ said that there's some counselors that are whose backs are going to really be up if they they're going to be asked
to provide six and a half and uh I think for good reason you know I think what Susie said is right that we we support the statutory method let's do the math and let's pay our share uh that's a separate issue from the budget of course those things
are related but as far as the the assessment method being unanimous this assessment method that's being shown in blue is trashing the statutory method so I don't know how how we can call that keeping it intact it's it's trashed it
completely so yeah it it's like honestly it's it's you know this is kind of the same i mean I I had a discussion with Doug Slaughter about this last year like and it's sort of the fact that the fact that at some point in this
process there was math involved that um that corresponded to the statutory method is irrelevant if at the end of the process you completely throw it out and just apply it's it's sort of like you could you could have had any you
know uh arbitrary methodology that you used um at one point in the process it's it's no longer a guard rail in the way that we had talked about it when the concept was originally thought about so
I I'm I'm wondering if if we ought to if I ought to um ask Shannon and the superintendent that to to convene a four towns meeting like that that we feel like there
are too many issues raised by this budget that are really require us to negotiate with other towns um to be able to yeah to kind of proceed
without having that opportunity what what do other people think about that idea i'm just checking desi wouldn't approve the four town meeting vote right because it's differentiated not and and so unless Ammerst wanted to put in their
share under the statutory and then gift the rest of the money um is that what's So I don't even know that we have a four town budget to argue about mhm i I'm not so much suggesting about
arguing about between the four towns budget and this budget i'm actually thinking about like do we need a a different budget alto together and maybe this idea of what Pelum is doing maybe there's
something to that and maybe we should insist on le making some doing something comparable and so you know maybe we find a way to for this year to proceed with uh tech
you know for the purpose of appeasing desi with a a fixed guard rail budget for all towns but then you know we basically insist on two towns making an an additional yes contribution and then that basically
becomes part of their base next year and then that makes it easier for us to move towards statutory i don't know something along those lines i mean here's an idea AJ how about we use a statutory method just use it this year and ask Pelman
lever to cough up so just to be clear if we were to do that with the budget that at least the region wants which only reduces or which only requires
$812,000 in cuts we would be paying we would be looking at an increase that I don't think is is manageable for so this is this a little bit of we have to be careful about what we ask for right right if we ask them to apply to to do the statutory
method on this budget um yeah Ammerst will be probably way more likely to approve it because because they only have to increase from four to 4.78% but and forget about lever Impella but what but but about us I
don't think we can actually absorb that kind of an increase so you know we should be a little bit careful about asking that yeah the other one of the other variables is the budget itself so again that's I don't know if
that's sacros here but not uh yeah that's what's complicated right is that we we really like we have to have a position on these two different issues on the budget and what's a reasonable thing to ask of the the
region that's not going to have uh you know a kind of detrimental impact on student experiences that um that's going to have long-term implications like we have to sort of consider that issue but then we also
have to consider this other issue of well what what is a fair way to allocate the um assessment that's required April and then Jordan well and Desi has determined that the statutory method is the way to fairly that seems to work for
most communities i I think we've really messed it up over years by you know using the guard rail and sort of just throwing it away throwing it away and so we have to figure out again how to get back up to it and I also support not that I want one as another four town
meeting because I I just don't see how we can do it without sitting down in the room together george yeah I I I I don't like four town meetings but I agree i think that's probably the right thing to do i just I'm just thinking we should keep our head down because it all depends on what
Amoris does at this point we have a number it's the number all the towns were running with up until Friday and I just don't think we should give a whole lot of feedback other than we have a serious deficit facing us and going
higher than 5.61 is going to be very difficult for us so I I would I I agree with what you're saying George but I would add one other thing which is that we we also have uh a concern
about our region's commitment to statutory method this allocation method that we've all agreed is ultimately the end goal right or at least at least two of two of the four
municipalities or have have said that over and over again and I think the other two even at our last meeting at our last four towns meeting acknowledged that that is a goal they just you know their feedback was that they can't get there in one year but I think I think
it's fair to say that Pelum and Lever at least articulated the idea that yes we recognize that we need to move in that direction So I think you know I I think it's appropriate for me to give feedback that we have really significant concerns about for
potentially for the second year in a row completely throwing that methodology out of the process entirely um I I think that's a fair thing to say at this point susie we also have the timeline process
now that we are moving our town meeting to the 31st of May or into June i don't remember when Amoris comes up with their vote um and that I mean we could have a four town
meeting and and tell them what we're planning to do or what they're planning to do but um we won't really know the sequence of votes until we get closer yeah so Pelum's annual town meeting is second Saturday in May and I just want
to see what Leveritz is so Lever's the challenge they're they're April 27th um no that's last year uh May 3rd all right
so I think if we were to ask for a four towns meeting I think it it would have to happen really soon um yeah so how does that sound um if I if I
contact Shannon and give her the following feedback one we are struggling with um a significant deficit right now and had been
assuming and that's with the assumption that we would be facing a 5.61% increase in our assessment um and we have significant concerns about um the region's
commitment to modified statutory method and we think we and we are concerned about you know whether Ammerst is going to be able to to meet this budget number and for all those reasons
we think it's a good idea to convene a four towns meeting as soon as possible is that um do folks think that's appropriate feedback to share yes okay all right so that's what I'm going
to do um here's what I'm I'm going to say and I I not everybody's going to be happy about this but I I think we should for the purpose of budget planning I think I was going to suggest that for now we actually put in this number this
6.5% number um because I think it's going to be a lot easier for us to go backwards if we end up back at 5.61% but I think we ought to um it is the budget that the region has approved at least voted on right now so there's some
reason to think that there's um a decent chance we might end up there does that seem appropriate to folks yes so that means adding $14,722 to our deficit so right now
we've added about $2500 tonight uh sorry 14722 and 10 what was that number 10327 okay anything else on the regional budget before I pull up our
um our budget uh Gabe are you still on i am i'm listening okay so let me ask you i'd like to share the budget you um shared with me earlier today but I know that you mentioned in your email that
the um the police chief's contract has not been finalized yet so no so I think because you're going to make this a public document we need to remove that yeah should I just I
want to somehow you guys need to know that there's a figure that you have to plan for possibly and I kind of gave you a clue as to what it might be yeah so here's what I here's what I'm going to do before I share the document
and Gabe let me know if you're comfortable with this which is I'm just going to literally like block out I'm going to redact um Sure those cells yep for for um the
FY26 police chief salary i suppose if if somebody wanted to do the math the math they could probably figure it out but I do think we need to know what the deficit is yep that we're planning for yeah all right so sounds like that works
for you i'm gonna do that now okay all right so I'm gonna just cut to the bottom here and so we have actually I'm going to go ahead and put the
regional assessment number in um just bear with me for a second guys educate educate educate what is it 107 so this is going to be Oh I just closed that
can you make that a little bigger is that going to screw it up uh I will just give me one second i just want to plug in the right so the new number is 1761618 it's line 134 yeah so say that one more time 1761618
yeah but that's what I get when I add 14722 to the number that's there now is that correct also the number that's the that's the number they posted y okay okay good and then um I think it's going to be a little complicated for me to add in those six salary positions right now
yeah we'll just do the math outside of the whole thing yeah so this deficit is actually uh 10,000 more it's plus 10,32 so it's actually I'm just going to put
in the number here 392088 why do I get I'm getting a different number i'm going uh I'm adding So I'm starting with 376,000 i can't see what you have there 376 yeah when you add 10 the 10,000 to it you're
going to come up with So I think it was adding Hold on AJ I got it adding $10,327 right so and that's going to bring you to three
87043 that what you have I have 088 but that's okay close enough for handling so go with yours okay all right so that's the that's the deficit we're looking at and Um uh this does have a placeholder in
for the police chief which hopefully um is going to be close to where where we end up so I think this correct me if I'm wrong George or
Gabe I think we've got like most of the adjustments that we're going to need to make have been made right like is there anything right the only one that I still don't understand and I'm hoping George can explain it to me is um when you go
up I'm going to look at the notes here give me the line number 2011 okay so today I adjusted 198 199 and 200 I added in the budget 25 the numbers that George had me add I don't
understand why I should be removing and I did fix you don't have my new version but that dividend01 I fixed that the differences yeah I fixed that column okay good y but what I don't understand is why I should be removing the 57312
no no no yeah okay I didn't ask you I you shouldn't it belongs there what it fiscal 25 we had the accumulated amount of the lines 999 was Yeah those three were in line 2011 in total and those were zeros and so the
only thing I was asking you to do is take the number that was in 2011 make it a zero and then this is the allocation of that number so the bottom line wouldn't change in FY25 becky had all three in a single line and and when we put in the library number we put it in
that same line and renamed the line but we never move the interest on those three items right so I like it separate so you know what you're paying for um but that's Yeah well that it is now right yes that's what George has done yeah yes
yeah okay yeah that's the way I want it too yeah that's the way we had it last year and that was fine last year but obviously not and and just for your information I don't know what the actual numbers were in FY25 i just allocated them based on the same allocation as they are in FY26
you can see they're all very close i think it's close enough right that's what Ryan gave me so here that 57312 that's a debt exclusion amount and so you need to make sure and put that on your revenue side
because your deficit really isn't that 387 because But I think it is on the revenue side if we go to the revenue page I think I just Okay i just want to make sure we're all on the same page with it um mainly because I'm gonna be departing
soon and I don't want to have Yeah if you look it's on line 11 12 what's that line line 11 yeah you put it in there you put it in there a couple months ago okay so I'm I'm not messing I just wanted to make sure that it negated itself right and that plus the 34,000 on
line 14 equals the 91 so it's getting picked up in the uh tax levy okay so I'm comfortable that everything has been changed that needs to be changed um except like the what you just did tonight
okay and all the numbers are in that I'm aware of the insurance number is solid as far as the Maya number goes [Music] um the only Yeah I think right all right
so I think this sort of brings us to the question of what are we going to do to um address this gap can I ask one question go ahead before we decide that
this is the gap can we go to the revenue page yeah and talk about some of the revenue lines yeah sure so I think you know a lot of there's some estimates in here the first
estimate being new growth and so have we done a deep dive has the board of assessors done a deep dive into what this number is as far as I know he has there are a couple of possibilities but
they're not if they're not done then they can't be included so you'll see that next year um now that's the lowest new growth you folks have ever had yeah it seems so that's why the question Yeah yeah do you
personally know of new houses going up somewhere can you identify it that I can take back to him and say "What about one two three four?" Because I've had to do that in the past with assessors i think there's a new house being built
on Leonard Road i don't know if that's in his I'm sure they have a permit though i mean and there's one on there's one on West Pelum Road too yeah so your average tax bill is 6,000 yeah so two houses is 12 that's two
houses yeah that 35 is right in there and then there's the the substation work that the utility is going to be doing right i still don't have any clear answer on when that's happening but that will be significant and there was a new house on Montigue
Road i don't know if it's in last year's new growth yeah you had quite a big new growth year last year yeah there that was utility work they put up three phase lines yes that was the 200,000
yep somethingund is it 200 i thought it was 200 but that Well it's right here on the page it's 12127 121279 yes i And that's not all just the utility so so that's kind of the answer I have right now for that one
do you have others i No I you know given the situation we're in I would just like to put pressure on David to do what he can to make sure we got the most accurate number but you know he's he's pretty much on top of things and he is you know he's definitely knows
what he's doing so if he's comfortable with the 35 I I don't think we can question it but it is so much less than Yeah over the last 5 years uh 22 was the only exception just one thing about the new construction i don't think it's fully
assessed when it's under construction either so no uh that's another factor that's what he said to me is he wish he could change it but some things aren't done well I think Gab's method that she mentioned earlier you know the average single family is
$6,200 and so we have to assume that these houses will probably bring in 6,200 each regardless of what they'll be valued at um I mean you know not worrying about what they're valued at just taking a a round average it's not going to be $35,000
between the two of them yeah you're talking five and a half houses right that's right um and I know there's a big addition on on Lever Road mhm we all see that um and with the utility
though I you know I'd be okay adding $10,000 to it the utility came through for us last year and we know they're doing work this year i might rounding that number up that's fine when you do the recap sheet that's
when that number gets adjusted yes we know how that works we've been lucky actually things have been working in our favor in recent years but can't count on that every year yeah so if you're comfortable with that you know go I that would cover those raises you're
giving out right so that would be 45 yeah we're getting closer what do folks think any concerns about that no i think we should do it i wish we could double it yeah me too call your brother i know
i know there's no word of that yes her brother has got an inside track on the utility work um was there anything else on the the revenue page that you wanted to review George yes yes um so we should talk about I I just want to get this in the
minutes um okay um uh so what do we think about the state aid number i mean we using the governor's um state aid cherry sheet and history has shown that the governor's is generally the lowest
that's you know so AJ starting on row 25 and all the one right and to the right there's there's the I pasted into the budget when the governors came out the actual report and so the question is how much greater do we think the
house weights and means is going to add to this i mean can we add 15 20,000 or 10,000 i'm not sure which line we would even put it in but How what do you think of that Gabe i am concerned about the federal government pulling money from
all states with all the cuts that are going on and how will that affect um what the state has proposed that's my only concern i this is such an unknown it's such a strange climate
yeah yeah that's for sure i I I think I agree with that i'd like to also add that we should be conservative we always have been conservative about state aid and other factors that might impact our revenue and I don't see why we should start to fantasize about Well we never
we but we always went higher than the governors every year Becky would always do her little magic and she would come up with an estimate that was higher than the governors but always seems to come in lower than the final she I don't know we I'd be interesting to hear what her
thoughts would be but that's been my I've noticed that over the years being on the board of assessors and working on the budgets i've seen that i I just like being conservative about these things and it's much easier to work in the opposite direction yeah no I
I can't argue with that susie we're also going uh we're going to go with an early town meeting and we wouldn't have heard how House Ways and Means was working um I know that um AJ mentioned House Ways and Means is having
a meeting at UMass for public hearing on Monday the 24th at 11:00 at the campus center and um one of the issues they're going to consider is rural aid and I um sent out a copy of the letter that I
sent um about rural aid um I'm not sure whether by hearing what that um what they're talking about on Monday will give us a clue about whether we can um accurately push some of these numbers a
little bit um and and hopefully we can I some some of the reps on the um on the regional school committee had some op like optimism about
um I don't know if it was rural aid or circuit breaker funding but I I don't know where it was coming from but they there there was this maybe it's um something that Joe Kmerford is sponsoring a bill i think she mentioned something about that right at our uh at
that select board meeting but I'm going to uh while we're talking I'm going to send the meeting details for that uh I'm going to be attending myself sounds like Susie is um any of you interested in going that would be great did you send us the link to that meeting or is it
person i'm No I'm going to send it in the next few minutes oh yeah yeah oh I'm sorry yeah okay um the departmental revenue on 45 i didn't put a number in there
because I'm not sure what that is cuz you also have a miscellaneous so is if department revenue are your tickets and what you pull in for building permits and stuff like that then I think you could probably add
the 15,000 in that column there but the I left that blank yeah I think so i'm I'm going back to last year's um revenue sheet that from from the
annual town meeting budget and I just want to see if we had anything in there it's regional what's it called again it's departmental revenue in line 45 oh it's under local aid sorry yeah I'm in the wrong place give me one second
here i just want to see if we what we did about that um yeah I'm used to departmental revenue being miscellaneous um but I don't know if miscellaneous your investment income is really up
that's true we we have 15,800 in the budget that we presented in town meeting so we did have a value in there i don't know what that is that's a question for U Leslie i think
it appears that that happens every year so I think you could comfortably put maybe 15 in there yes that was good yes that's Let's do it i put that in the right line
you did for me departmental revenue right yeah yep was it in there last year George and if it Yes at town meeting it have $15,000 and the re and the actual was 15,08 right whatever that number is there yep so that should be in there
yeah so FY25 should have 15 in it as well no that's actual so the FY25 column is based on actual numbers used by the assessors to set the tax rate
so we don't show what we presented last year what we show on the revenue schedule is the actuals all those years you're looking at FY 25 24 23 those are actuals based on what the assessors did when they um submitted the recap sheet to
for the tax rate right so we don't know that number yet i can So we're adding So we we uh So we're adding $15,000 right okay
um is there any I was concerned about well I had a question around the uh this the payment from state aid state land stateowned land that that there had been rumors that that pilot was being renegotiated and
I is there any magical way that that could have happened because I think it's at 32,000 something now you're not hearing it from Aaron no we're not it's It's really line 44 is is the
conversation the 34 Yeah yeah that's the Yes yes the 347,000 yeah it's Aaron hasn't said boo and you know Aaron there's two there's two bills that could bring in revenue for that there's the Joe Cmerford Aaron Saunders
are sponsoring the Quabin bill which would provide more revenue because we have land in Quabin and then there's also a payment l taxes because it was determined that the towns in western Massachusetts were getting underfunded for their land
and yeah Susie's right it's they drowned the four towns i think we should Aaron hasn't said boo about those and I I I keep meaning to press him on it i asked him about one of them in our last meeting but other people have been showing up and I've been kind of keeping my tongue quiet but um I'll definitely
ask him about those and you know he knows because every time we meet I'm always whining about revenues sounds unlikely so what what if we we've added 25,000 uh yes
okay we're done all right so let's see where we are yeah so is there anything else um without touching without using cash um yeah that's it i still Yeah I'm
hopeful it'll Well yeah let's wait on the cherry sheet and see what happens with the houseways and means maybe we can get something there another 15 or 10 i don't know it's a lot of money every dime matters so AJ do you know
what the deficit is now uh 362 043 does that make sense yeah um 25 we added 25 from
387 it's not 55 it's not 362 362033 yeah 043 i have 043 yeah okay oh so
um so I know at least George and Susie had some ideas about um appropriate places we might want to use free cash to fund art um you know
uh some of this deficit um maybe this is a good time to kind of go into those but Bob I see your hand up if it would be appropriate for us to take this budget and look at it as individual members of the committee and come back
with our with our ideas about uh what we could do to to diminish the this this gap well that's that's what I would like to do i'd take some time to look at it exam it closely and uh think about it so
uh the last budget we got uh from Gabe was uh was different it was this is far more advanced so I'd like to see it uh look at it and examine it and then have an opportunity to talk about my ideas too okay
yeah I think that's that's fine we have a little bit more time than we thought we were going to we have like an extra month um so I think that's that's appropriate um I think um th those folks who have
started to think about it and if you want to share some of your thoughts some ideas I think it's it's you know we we don't have to I don't think we have to hold off on the conversation i mean we're gonna it's going to take a couple meetings to to to deal with this and and
sort it out um George conceptually you know one of the things we've always done was try to smooth increases and when we had new items enter the budget we didn't always bring them in at 100% into the budget we
would bring them into the of course into the budget 100% but we might use cash to fund a portion of that to kind of smooth that impact right now if we decided to go with this budget and just let the tax
levy pick up the 362 which we can do without an override vote because we have excess levy capacity of 800,000 then that's a big spike for the that's a big spike for the taxpayers and I I think you folks looked over a
schedule i wasn't at the last meeting that showed rough estimates of what the impact of various uses of excess living capacity would provide um so to me I would look
at new items in the budget including big increases in in health insurance and we're looking at a restructuring of the police department and so I think because it's a restructuring that and it's causing a
big increase and I would include the chief salary taking a portion of that not funding at all all that increase but a portion of the increase i think those are two big ones in my mind um that I would try to use a little cash to stabil
stabilize that increase um sorry those two were the the added costs of the police department restructuring and the health insurance increase that were Yes because the health insurance increase is just it's it's not a normal increase i mean it's
really an extreme example of an increase so if this and it's our future so it has to be in the operating budget but I think it's justifiable to apply some cash to that increase and then the rest of it can come in either in next year in
27 or in 28 we could do it in thirds I don't know but um that's the way I'm thinking um and of course we have the school we know that there's um uh sped costs that will not be with
us forever and so to that extent I think we could also use cash i also believe that I I wanted to interject that the request for cash the request to the um capital
planning committee it looks like only one item is going to have a budgetary impact and may have a budgetary impact and that's the greater um so it doesn't look like most years we have a list of things that we want to use cash reserves
for and it's not looking like that's the case going into next year so using a h 100red or $200,000 $150,000 in reserves to smooth out the budget increase um isn't going to hurt and of course we
can look at the capital planning schedule and you know we can do that whole analysis of the cash i don't think it's going to be a problem for us i think we're still going to be in a strong cash situation and we're gonna be able to deal with the bigger capital items that we're going to have to handle
in FY27 when the library come well I don't know i just think it puts us in a better position yeah I I I agree with you George just one thing I want to make sure we don't forget is that we have had some preliminary discussion about a Warren article to build
PAS mitigation right uh funding right and so um true so that I think we ought to think about that as a capital expenditure for for this year yeah well it hopefully AJ you decide when we can
pull up that schedule and look at the free cash and and put all those reserve requests on there and see how things I was going to suggest we do that in next our next meeting um because I think you'll I think you have another capital planning meeting coming up we do
Thursday yeah so I think um let's plan on doing that uh at our next next meeting and let's make sure we come up with some plan on on the PAS testing and and we have a number from looking at the minutes from the last meeting it looks
like you had a a estimated number for that yeah I think it was 50 is that right yep so we could actually and and and that schedule is available to everybody by the way because it's in our folder it's in our drive
[Music] all right um I see some hands up so let me go to Gabe and then Susie so just some areas that you might want to think about um your unemployment comp if we fig if we find out how much is in
that trust that trust may be funded enough to not put money into it because you haven't laid anybody off so the whole point of that trust fund was to put enough money away to cover unemployment
and not impact your budget that is something you might be able to cut in half i know it's not much the same thing with your OPED your oped balance what is it you may want to reduce it down to 40 this year instead of 50 those are just
thoughts um if you're trying to find alternative ways instead of using your um levy on OPED we we could also we've done this at least once before right we could use
free cash to fund that that expense this year yeah you could do that y we did that two years ago right three yeah if we do an analysis of cash reserves and we decide that we really are in good shape that might be the better option yep
um excuse me i think it's important when we're talking about the police budget the increases I believe are coming from the contract negotiations and that the restructuring part of their um budget
this year actually reduced what it would cost if we kept the part-time model um so it's important to say that those are contract negotiations not um increase services you didn't use the word increased services but I think we can
point it more to the um contract and the other um possible uses of our cash reserves would be um there's a $40,000 legal um number 20,000 was the past we could
do 20,000 out of cash reserves um and I think we've had one opportunity for towns people to vote on legal increases which they approved at a special town meeting in January I think it was but I
I feel like um we could um use cash reserves if needed and if it gets more than that then maybe the town gets to vote on whether they want to put in more money into legal and the other one was the veterans
benefit yes we know we um have somebody on board and we don't know how much it will cost and that is a fluid expense we could fund the increase for the veteran of 5.4K
4K out of cash reserves because it's a fluid line right uh okay Bob yeah just I think maybe Susie or George know about this but it's
always occurred to me that uh we pay a certain amount of money in the school budget towards sped and uh my understanding is that some of that money comes back to us in the way of circuit breaker compensation uh for some of
those uh expenses and it seems to me that maybe we could pay sped from cash reserves and then the money that came back could go back into our reserves i don't know if that's a doable thing but it would make sense to not make it part of the school's operating budget and to
separate it and pay for it in that manner it seems to me it might take some pressure off us George yeah what I would say about that is I think we need to leave some amount in the school budget because you're always going to have a baseline level of sped right there's a lot of students
with IEPs and they're always going to be having sped um resources they're always going to need sped resources um for me it's when those large outplay placements happen that we really should have an alternative method for
funding those and to me I I mean you heard Ammerst I don't know if you noticed at the fourtown meeting they have a sta they have a sped stabilization fund they're funding right and they're funding that and they're keeping they're doing what we're doing with the unemployment account they've
got a balance they keep funding that balance goes up some years it goes down goes up but it's always there and it keeps the pressure off the operating budget so I I you know I agree Bob I I think there's better way to do it than the way we're doing it but I would I would would say though there's a certain
amount that we always need to leave no budget the the um special student costs that we put 40,000 last year out cash reserves um this year they're meeting some of
those special student tuition and transportation out of grants and the 34 there's 34,000 in the operating lines of the school budget that we could fund out of free cash like we did or out of cash
reserves like we did last year 34k i think we should do that yeah right i mean the the sort of aggregate total of all of these
um uses of cash reserves i mean this sounds like easily $200,000 um so that that certainly would go a long way towards closing our deficit but I think we all I assume we
all sort of recognize that we we are this is a year we're going to have to use some excess levy capacity that seems unavoidable right okay yeah and and AJ I would just add to that reiterate what we said earlier $200,000 yes but we still need to put
that in the context of where our cash is and where the other cash requests are and are we comfortable using 200,000 so let's let's at our next meeting let's actually start with looking at the the
capex planning document that you've created George and that we've used the last few years and let's think about um whatever what capital projects are in the works um you'll have
had another capital planning meeting um by the time we meet next let's talk about the what we if we want to do this PAS $50,000 fund and then um and see where
our cash reserves are think about those that 10% guideline um that we've had in place um and uh and then and and have some discussions about
uh you know which of these budget lines might be appropriate for us to use cash reserves and then if other if folks have other ideas I think Bob you want to take a look at the budget and um we can we can have we can start that process of talking about any individual budget
lines that you want us to um deliberate on uh Bob I wanted to ask Gabe if she has any update on what the balance is for our PAS account and I think well right now I'm getting ready to do a
report that's due next Tuesday to this D and I've got all the bills and I brought them home to work on it because it's pretty lengthy we are going in the negative when these next bills get paid
um and I will give you I hate to guess so I'll send that once I know what it what it is after Gail runs the warrant and did we ever hear anything about the mitigation over at the fire station is there any No we have to find out about
that and make sure we have a grip on that too as far as I know Susie and I looked into it a little bit and they're not doing anything what we know is it's not it's not happening um there's no mitigation right
now there's still the testing so we suggested that the $5,000 um for mitigation come off the budget and the other 5,000 um could come from cash reserves so if
you look at line 161 I took the 5,000 off okay and then there's the 5,000 for station mitigation okay [Music] just a concern thank you yeah no definitely
okay anything else on the budget for us to discuss tonight anybody have any ideas seeds they wanted to plant tonight um we'll continue this discussion at our next meeting susie and for the things that we don't know that
might come out in our favor once we assemble a budget anything any revenues that we didn't anticipate come off what we plan to to have for the tax levy is that right it doesn't go
into free cash right away um I guess I still need to understand those nuts and bolts the the this the assessors will take the total budget and then they'll do an analysis of all the revenues they'll know what the cherry sheet is
because the state aid would have been approved the budget should be approved by is approved by then they'll have good information for calculating what the local tax is they'll put all those in and they'll end up with the amount that they need to raise from property taxes
and so any of these estimates that we're off on are going to impact that amount to be raised from property taxes and hopefully like you said new growth will be higher the charity sheet will be higher and the amount that we're going to present at town meeting to be raised
from the tax levy will be lower when the select when the assessors set the tax rate cross your fingers well and like Bob said we want to be conservative so that that is what happens and we want to brace the taxpayers for
the worst all right uh so let's see do we have anything else we need to discuss tonight any We're meeting next week so let's think let's talk about our next step we
added next week uh are we meeting with department heads actually we did it didn't get announced we haven't planned it we put in an extra meeting um because that was going that I
still believe that should be part of our process but we're not we don't have something clear to show them yet i think it's too early put that off so I believe we should meet next um Tuesday so that we can find out if we have a budget that
we need to um represent to the public um a little closer to that because they didn't know where we were at when we talked to the departments well and and we'll get the kick around these ideas that we're all having and and Bob and you know I know said that he's he might have some other ideas so things that we
could help us get closer i do think it's a great concept meeting with the department heads i think it's really important that they understand where we're at um ask them to put their thinking caps on but also ask them to be prepared at town meeting
to discuss their budgets because if if there are people at town meeting who want to decrease the impact on the tax rate they're going to start making suggestions on some of the lines and if I'm a department head I want to be there and I want to be able to explain to everybody what those you know what those
motions might mean to the town i guess we need to figure out again when the when the um budget has to be voted by us so it can go on to the warrant so we had it as April 1 was the vote for
the budget right yeah maybe maybe I should pull up um the schedule um okay um all right so I've just changed annual town meeting is May 31st
or June 7th so that means let's work backwards from that um plenty of time this is based on which meeting date AJ well let's let's assume it's May 31st right
yeah the sooner one yes yeah and so that means that our budget info session is probably going to be on May 29 i think we usually do it the Thursday or at least the last few years the
Thursday before annual town meeting right but it's really down to when we have to have the Warren article done right so working back yep yeah um [Music]
it's 25 days difference so this is going to be that's got to be two weeks right uh two weeks plus i'd go with three yeah i mean I'd go with three to be safe but yes all right so this would be a month
later like May no is that right that's a Mon that's a Tuesday I take it so that means then we approve the budget on May 6th so yeah I got to add in some dates here [Music]
uh April second let's see it's April april fools i'm just adding some some open dates for meetings uh one
wait not the 11th one and April 15th so you you're saying April 1st and April 15th yeah that makes sense okay
so the clock is ticking yeah so the question is is do we want to meet next Tuesday um that was what we were planning on um might still be a good idea what do you What do folks think
i'm in favor of next week i like it for two reasons one we can kick around all these ideas we have for balancing the budget and I also um I think the committee would want to hear what happened at the House Ways and Means meeting okay all right
so we're going to do uh 25th funding um continue budget plan okay all right so
we're meeting next Tuesday y and if we solve it all then we can skip the later meetings yeah all right uh I sent that um the details on that uh ways and means
meeting um you should have it in your email um I think it's going to be a big deal i believe because I've I've got a kid in the high school and they have they actually asked for um every
family to for a permission slip to have their allow their kid to attend the meeting so I think they're actually expecting a lot of educators and potentially a lot of students to be at that meeting so should be an
interesting interesting opportunity okay question sure yeah as the notekeeper um I noticed there's a person attending our meeting with the name Town of Shootsbury and for the record I'd like to know the name of
that person i apologize i I signed in with the I'm I'm Frank McInn MCGN Towns Buildings Committee and I was Stephen Delus asked me to come on tonight to make sure we had the 10,000 but I saw it in your budget line so everything's okay
okay i'm sorry what was your name again sean you said Frank frank oh that's right sorry Frank and how do you spell your name again mcg IN thank you i appreciate it okay uh Frank if there's anything else that the
building committee needs to discuss with the fincom you know somebody can contact me um offline and we can okay make sure to get it on this week you're going to get a spreadsheet of what we've done right
we have done that's coming out this week okay great um so I think I'm actually gonna suggest I think because you know that that'll be really good information i think there's some interest in the committee actually hearing that so maybe I'll ask for you guys to attend a future
meeting and kind of walk us through that yep great i'm the interim chair now okay okay thank you thank you all right anything else aj I just want to remind you to send us a copy of the
budget yep thanks uh so I think what I'll do is I'll plug in those new salary updates right might as well put that in before I send it out yes
george do you trust me to do that or do you trust you to do that that's a good question i think so i mean if you want to send it out to me and I'll put them in and I can redistribute it i mean that's up to you uh I'm happy to do it if you'd like okay if you don't mind um
let me send you what I what I what I was sharing tonight so I think that's got everything up to date except the six salary positions you know that amount to a 10,000 i've got and I've got the notes
AJ the minutes so I'll I'll double check everything all right great thanks George all right so Bob George will send that out all right great yes I will i'll try and get it all out to everybody by Thursday appreciate it could we make a motion to adjurnn our meeting yeah there's a
Celtics game second great george Arvinitis I Hemingway I cashew I Moer I salvador I and Stein I
thank you very much AJ thanks everybody that was awesome thank you yeah good meeting folks take care folks see you next