on his way but while we're waiting before we get into the joint meeting with the school committee work committee and capital budget committee to go over the two thousand and twenty budget we are going to be taking on some other items on our agenda item number one to the people here for the heat pump promotion program thank you james booth from the energy committee the item that we're asking the board of selectmen consider is executing this community contract from the massachusetts clean energy center to allow us to receive from them a small grant to five thousand dollars for the purpose of marketing the upcoming he expired belmont campaign that we've we've told the board about that it will be launching in april the community contract is virtually identical to the draft contract start of the road map that's coming up at the end will tell meeting yes just for the public this is a five thousand dollars grant that we applied for and we were awarded oh vice chair mark pools here so few weeks ago we actually got awarded the five next item discussion impossible to prove change of manager of craft beer initiative l l c d b a craft beer seller i know they're here so come on over thing where we've got two companies we made the decision to franchise our store back in two thousand and twelve and i think it makes just a lot more sense and we're at a point where i need to focus a little bit more on the franchise company so because of that as i said we want to do things right i'm spending about fifty or sixty percent of my attention not necessarily time i'm still in the store but i'm spending my attention on the franchise company and because of that we'd like to move kate into the manager position of the store and we've we've pushed the ownership of that company over to kate as well and she's favored me by giving me her ownership of the franchise is a continuation of a discussion we had of our prior meeting when they were going to go hold a neighborhood meeting over an ivy road and they've done so and are back to report yes so we had the meeting on thursday evening and we sat here for i think homeless two hours guys right and  was a really positive john was there really positive meeting i've had a lot of positive feedback answered a lot of questions for the neighbors they brought up stuff that we need to address like a school bus stuff trash and recycling and we started to come up with solutions for all that so i ct we have and we actually did a sign up sheet and we basically got all of the director butters were pretty much right there on from i v and we took everybody's name phone number and stuff like that and then that when they were also providing us all the other name neighbors name and phone number and we also told that we're going to do what we call a sidewalk meeting once we get a little closer when the weather is better just really give the full details out and really sort of lay groundwork with everybody a little be i think it brings visibility to our community and we appreciate you know yeah and one of the things we did talk about too with a bed summit one of the residents actually brought up was not only visibility of the community but also the fact that our crew is going to be here for a while and visiting the businesses in town and so so that's why that's one of the reasons why we have police details and generally what we do is like we try to gather the crowd in one point you know where they're not and they're our way and sort of like and then we put the camera around and we ask everybody to sort of go behind the camera on the other side and generally what happens is like people come out for the st like half a day maybe day and everybody gets really bored because we move very very slowly it's like you won't see this so this new actor this actor that i think we will get this to who would be i'm sure there's going to be an interest there concerns or if you share that with the community right now where everybody who is out on line or every we prefer not to post it online because ten we get a lot of phone calls of i want to be an extra so everybody who was at the meeting has our cell phone number both jeremy and victoria is everybody who received the flyer and that a buddy neighborhood had jeremy cell phone number on it so they already have it they're going to get it probably twice more as we continue to handle flyers one for the sidewalk meeting and then one that sort of really has are the detail plan of dates and times and stuff like that right now the stuff you have a psych sort of approximate windows but as we sort of really define it you know by every half an hour or whatever we look at whether intellect kind of stuff like we'll update people will probably create honestly emailing list just so that way people can provide us feedback that way as well but yeah we're our big thing that i really hammered home i think was out of all the questions concerns communication is our number one thing that we focus on and we are communicating to the residents and really the residents communicating back to us because we want to build to address their questions concerns we don't like being blindsided by anything so the more we know of things you know that are going to be going on or could the concerns that people have that we can address in advance the better off we're all going to be and our major goal here in all this is for them to call us st before the town even hears it we like it yeah it's  trust me because all that means is that you guys don't call me so i'm dealing with the problem anyway so if i can address it head on that's that's the goal and that's the priority when we do you stop said things so we're voting on this year you want to voting on guy was renting the permit for paramount television to do this filming appreciate your squeezing me and the proposal that i want to put forward and i would ask that you put it on the warrant before it closes it would be to change the moderators term from one year to three years it would have no impact on the moderators responsibilities whatsoever just one change and the point of this is this has nothing to do with me personally but the office of town moderator that's what we're talking about so what's the context why now well i've been town moderator for about twelve years and each year as i go around and get signatures and talk to people i get repeated questions constantly well when you hear last year and i say yeah  one year term yeah why is that i said well i guess because it's been that way forever but that doesn't make any sense they say because every other term is three years so i said fine well a couple of years ago i was talking to helen from the town clerk and i said on once you've checked and see what's going on if you wouldn't mind with other town clerks what's happening in other towns so she did and she put a little survey together which you have in front of you i think they're a couple of conclusions number one is broadly about half of the communities in the state now have three year terms for moderator and a buyout half still have one year terms historically the one year term was tied and it's in the belmont representative act of one thousand nine hundred and twenty six and was true for the other towns it was tied to the annual town meetings so it's a one year term but what's happened over the years gradually is the towns have all not all the ones who have looked at this and made a decision have moved from one to three so in  that summer you have dartmouth moved recently needham moved in two thousand and fifteen south hadley moved in two thousand and seventeen so we're seeing a steady movement from the one year which is really an anachronism to the three years to make it consistent with the other town wide offices so if you think about it we have a situation here you touched on it at him in which all of the town wide offices are three years yours  school committee and so forth every town meeting member runs for three years everybody i appoint this town moderator to committees is for three years here tonight three hundred and twenty five individuals have three year terms roughly and there is one person one position with a one year term down moderate or so on the face of it i think it doesn't make any sense so my proposal it would the process would be as follows put it on the warrant the town meeting would vote on it if the town meeting acted favorably homeworld petition would be taken to the legislature and presumably they would pass it because that's what they've done with these other changes so it's very straightforward what i'm asking the board of selectmen to do with this point because obviously you haven't had time to think about or debate it is to put it on the warr george hall has already drafted proposed article so include it on the warrant and then as you do your due diligence on all the other articles and vote look at it get any information happy afy obviously i'm happy to talk to further about it and communicate with other towns that said or make a decision whether you endorse it or not if you endorse it then presumably we proceed if you look at this and don't endorse the change and i'm going to move to withdraw it because i don't think this is a contentious issue but i don't certainly don't want to make it a contentious issue me personally i collect the fifty signatures ea and done that for twelve years i'll do that for a number more years and that's fine but i think it's an issue of the position of town moderator so i would want in order to proceed for the board of selectmen to endorse it and proceed in that fashion if not as i say i'll move to withdraw it because i don't think it should be a contentious issue so thank you well i appreciate the thoughtful and considerate way that you brought it forward mr moderator i mean the list that we have you're just because not everybody has it has twenty two communities twelve have a three year term one is a two year term nine has a one year term and then south hadley subsequently all have leaves which are teenagers i mean all we're being asked to do this for  effective today residents and businesses qualify for group discounts on solar p v while the solar hot water systems wind for residents businesses belmont light and the town for details see belmont goes solar dot org the exciting things about women's club presents dancing with the belmont stars friday april th at the beach street center doors open at six competition begins at seven hundred and fifteen dancing is then open to all after the competition tickets are available for forty dollars a mc singer and former radio personality candy oh terry the dance lessons were graciously provided by fred astaire dance studio and there is an all star lineup by district attorney marian ryan sen will brownsburg are our own mark polo and patrice got myself into this but it's a great cause for the home house and that all fans will go to the bible and see three organizations so thank you mr chief advertiser and you're doing it after your term and so i give you i don't have my term as one of those phone calls you get late leaving you just say ok that's fine and then realize designing the new library explore the site discuss the stand ability interests delve into the building program all they're welcome is examine these issues on an interactive working session wednesday march th at seven pm at the library assembly room at bringing to the selection in a couple of couple weeks great that's perfect so any comments from town residents for items not on the agenda tonight see number close the porch in the meeting and get to the main if we're actually running early usual  so when developing the f i twenty budget this year one of the guiding principles for us was good financial planning financial planning that came before and that we hope to continue i am lucky to have a great finance team to work with floyd carmen the town treasure  in the town accountant tony g kojo for the business manager for the school john failand superintendent john marshall my assistant ten minutes straight are going castro the budget director and of course matt and pam in my office that kind of put up with us every day and also the department heads for helping us create and build a budget so one of the other things when developing the f y twenty budget is following the policies that have been put in place but by the town the free cash policy the open policy and most importantly the reserve policy and if we fifteen the time passed an override where money was put into the stabilisation account the original plan for this override was a three year funding of the operating budget the town was fortunate to good financial planning and management to extend that to five years f y twenty being the final year when developing this  school and some potential other police station money that has not yet been approved it meaning maintaining our aaa bond rating is essential and that is been a big focus on this budget finally a financial house forced to has been appointed by the board of selectmen they had just begun meeting will be looking at the f y twenty one budget and beyond that committee is representative of the school the warren committee the board's lachman capital budget committee and some town finance team members so this year there's a change in the layout of the budget book traditionally you had binders now you have one document it some of the other changes that we provided is we had health insurance in the medicare pulled out of the individual town budgets we wanted to show the community the true and transparent cost of medicare and health insurance for the town and i understand this is also a recommendation from the warrant committee several years ago we moved the phones from the facilities budget into the i t budget phones are becoming more and more cloud based and we felt that this was something that really needed to live in the i t department recreation budget was pulled out of d p w fortunately we were able to acquire john marshall who is the assistant ten minutes trader who is also going to be working on as a rec director the goal of pulling the wrecked correct recreation budget out of the d p w is this is the st step in trying to develop  enterprise fund for the recreation commission we were hoping in really struggling to put this on the in your town meeting warrant but we realized that we needed a lot to do a lot more work before we did that so the st step was to pull it out and now the nd step is to really assess the true cost of what it what recreation cost in the town of belmont and then we broke out salaries and expenses in the narrative prior the budget showed just one total budget and i felt that the salaries really need needed to be called out separate from the expenses and the individual budgets and we also focused on full time equivalents we felt that was kind of being lost in prior budget when building the assumptions for the f y twenty budget we are using the governor's state aid number for revenues we have asked the department heads for a level service budget traditionally supplemental budgets had been given to select after the budget had been delivered to the warren committee the selectmen in the capital budget committee what i had asked is if there were any such items or requests like this that it big be placed into the individual department budgets we applied to the collins center recommendations we increased local receipts by three hundred thousand dollars and we increased the indirect costs for water and sewer enterprise fund we used a formula that can be we calculated every year that would give us the true cost of what the town provides the enterprise funds finally the health insurance we carried eight percent estimated increase for f y twenty our representatives told us that it would more likely be a ten percent we met with the board of selectmen in the health care representative it had been determined that we should put it back down to the eight percent and then if claims if claims arise in f y twenty we could hit the health insurance trust for those for those payments currently the balance of the health insurance trust is five point three million dollars more than enough that meets meets the needs the town's policy that we have three times the number of claims within that health insurance so the budget highlights this one hundred and twenty nine million dollars budget eleven eight percent total increase over f y nineteen the reason why this increases is so stagnant is the debt exclusion for the high school that passed this past november  is within that number the town's overall budget increase over one thousand is four four percent the school is six four percent capital is fifty two percent over f y nineteen which i'll get into a cap onetime capital items the open and operating budget belmont public schools is a total of sixty one million dollars and other town departments of forty one million dollars minutemen texas essman came out to nine hundred and eighty four dollars benefits and insurance which is just health insurance workers comp and general liability insurance is four million three hundred thousand that service increased by six point eight again this is the debt exclusion for the high school pension has increased three hundred and forty eight thousand appropriating five hundred and fifty two thousand so the budget purdy's the budget purdie in f y twenty one to f y twenty budget is education this is shown to the commitment of the over seventy percent of the town that voted for the debt exclusion for the high school that will provide support for the town and school facilities this will be for the facilities coordinator the aging buildings and the maintenance that is required is escalating the capital infrastructure we are proposing two point one well i have posed to put one million to the capital budget committee which they're still kind of going through their meetings point seven hundred thousand is from free cash and perpetual care i had recommended this year that we looked at some alternative funding sources other than the discretionary income which is one million four hundred thousand again the budget the biggest party in the budget one of the big priorities is to maintain the ten percent and designate a fine balance in june of two thousand and eighteen the undesignated fund balance was sixteen percent our policy for the town is that it does not dip below ten percent the reason for this is the bond rating we have another bought bond called next year in march as i stated before in march of two thousand and twenty we need that aaa bond rating to go into that borrowing and keeping the undesignated from balance at ten percent will will be the way to do that our expenditures summary again the school department is up six point four percent minuteman is up sixteen three benefits is twelve percent that number includes the pension the state  that five percent of the town departments is up four four percent debt service is up due to the high school debt and capital is up fifty two two percent fifty two five percent this is just  for those visual people out there major expenditure increases of course it's the schools the town health insurance is eight percent pension and debt which is driving the budget the supplemental request i spoke of earlier total about five hundred and eighty five thousand dollars that were not funded in f y twenty budget this is on the town side facilities had asked for additional funds for maintenance repairs facility asked for three hundred and forty three thousand  than we could give them they also asked for another f t e we gave them one community development as you know traffic is an issue in belmont and if you guys have heard that one of the things community development was really looking at was a way to manage some of that some of those ways of dealing with the traffic concerns in house well then going out to a consultant i had cut part time salaried position in my office and some general expenses and then accounting we do some overtime and level funded their professional tactical i like to do but you comparisons over a five year in a ten year this is five year what usually jumps out as benefits fixed costs such as benefits and insurance and debt service again the ten year looking at this the facilities gets a little funky because back in i believe f y ten schools in the town were not merged together so it's kind of a skewed number but again you see the benefits pension opeth debt service i mean these are th not exclude that you'll see as an increase from fifteen to twenty that five hundred thousand dollars that you see there for f y twenty is the d p w police station that was approved at the last in your town meeting for seven point four million dollars looking at the town side for f t ease this is just a breakdown of increases over the last six years what you're seeing from one thousand dollars to twenty dollars is the facilities position with one additional f t some of these are not completely full time positions i was told that they were just increased in hours and things like that enterprise funds separate from the operating budget are showing four percent increases for water sewer the way they covered the increases for water and sewage they used retained earnings so water and sewer are not going up by their rates are not going up by four percent i for revenue summary of total revenue which matches our expenses because this is a balanced budget is a one hundred and twenty nine million dollars property tax being the the large generator of revenue in the town of one hundred and two million again the de service is within that number state it is up we're projecting three percent we're hoping that number holds local receipts we raised local receipts by three hundred thousand dollars based on the con's recommendation where we found that three hundred thousand dollars was motor vehicle excise and building permits we were showing actuals over three years as a place where we felt comfortable raising it and then available funds at seven million seven hundred thousand what is in the available funds this is the stabilization it two  a summary of the state aid in chapter seventy again hoping these numbers hold or go up this is just what the the the state provides the town in chapter seventy general municipal aid veterans benefits this is a revenue summary of the town property taxes again being the number one we're local seats not too far behind we do want to caution the other available funds again seven million seven  reserves dip so does the designated fund balance so this is a comparison for revenue expenditures over five year period what we're showing is the revenue in blue and the expenditures in yellow and what's happening is the yellow is starting to get a little higher than the blue where we're making up has to be made up by either onetime revenue that's already existing in the budget or possible over it there was an anomaly for this amount people rushed in to pay their taxes when the tax law changed our normal prepayment amount is two million dollars in two thousand and eighteen it was point five in prepay so that's what's making up a lot of that eight additional revenue the schools receiving three dollars that town's receiving one dollar fixed cost benefit status that for the so the benefits of this town and the schools and then the debt is seven  dollars and then capital is seven hundred and thirty six thousand five year revenue comparison you'll see that the town is belying more and more on with a bill of all funds which is usually free cash and one time revenue sources such as stabilization over a ten year  period look pretty much the same the town again is policy is to maintain a ten percent in undesignated fund balance as that number grows in available funds we are going to have to start dipping into other pockets of money which could property tax biggest revenue source in town this is pretty much how we get to where we get get the base levy multiply that by two and a half which is what the town can back some back so plus the new growth equals the total  what what we've seen in previous new growth years where it's been higher is the world belmont and ever source this year were we are we're looking at christians who are coming on line and helping with new growth they're looking ahead at new growth there's the mclean property that is currently under the planning board for rezoning that hopefully with some rezoning could get developed and also a pleasant streets rezoning at the last town meeting so there are some development potential there so budget forecasts for f y twenty in twenty one we are presenting in f y twenty balance level service budget for the town in f y twenty we are using one time revenue stabilization fund which will be exhausted and an effort twenty one there's a possible requests for an operating override this will keep the quality services through possible operating override that the belmont residents have come to expect factors to consider there's a decrease in free cash and stabilization fund which could affect the bond rating the treasurer's confident that barring can produce additional premiums with the town's aaa bond rating so the town is constrained on on revenue you know we have to stay within the two and a half limit we have fixed cost increases we have the high school another facility operations to consider in the future but we also want to maintain quality service to the residents of this town the strategy is moving forward to continue financial planning finished policies and forecasts working with the financial taskforce to one of recommendation has already come out of that meeting which is a capital planning committee recommendation to ask the board to create a committee that would work on capital planning long term capital planning recreation enterprise is another recommendation that came out of the financial task force one and we're working to do that we're going to do our best to seek additional grant opportunities such is the masterworks grant complete streets things like that that will help take some pressure off the operating budget cut to bargaining contracts  r contracts are up in two thousand and twenty the two thousand and twenty is last year of the town and the school teachers contracts so we're really going to look look there to see if there's anything that the town can gain through negotiations we also need to determine any impacts to services over the next couple years we need to investigate regional opportunities so to sum up so many questions yeah thank you jack this is actually a conversation i've had with my finance team all last week it's how to put out the facts but also explain that it's not how it really appears so it was a struggle to write the budget message i have to say given the  number but you know we can continue to work on how to really hone in on exactly what's going on appreciate right thank you and remind chairman kava budget committee i appreciate that you use the collin center recommendations on the capital budget but it's something that we objected to at the time and i have to say continue to object to because by throwing the d p w police project into the capital budget and then saying that budget is increased by fifty two percent is very deceptive and the average person watching this or or picking up information is going to say well what's your problem with the capital budget it's increased fifty two percent but in fact the discretionary available money for the capital budget is only increased by two dollars and a half percent and that's you know what we can do under proposition two and a half and so i wish that we could call that our more dramatically and more separately because i i feel like i'm going to be fighting that all the way from now to town meeting with people telling me you've got tons of money what's your problem i will say that the discretionary for the the discretionary capitols one dollar which increased over  nineteen with the increases coming from is the additional free cash there were using for a one time appropriation and the perpetual care the pretzel care fund is to fund the cemetery cellblocks things like that what we have done is took the interest from the pecial care fund put one hundred and twenty one thousand and twelve in a piece of equipment for the cemetery so i think that's what's playing with the number a little bit well and is that use of the free cash is that now cast in stone or is that going to be a discussion point because i think change in that will affect how much money we receive right unfortunately your your committee has not fully vetted all that yet so it was just a proposal well and more the point the one committee correct me we're working our way through are meeting with the department heads and we will meet this thursday with the saudis and schools that will complete that piece of what we do but it really then goes along to me for their discussion i think we were trying to address the crucial capital needs and we saw the free think there are a number of changes in this budget that i think are perhaps appropriate but they're going to be harder for the public to comprehend what's really going on and i think if we go through the budget person taishan process we may need to try to have whether or not serve a pro forma version or at least a side by side comparison that says this is the budget increase but if you take out these sort of one time or unusual changes this is what that change would be because i think people are going to ask that because i think there's a number of things that while they are misleading for sale they don't allow someone six hundred pages of material on friday and we just have not been able to digest it in them in a meaningful way and i'm hopeful that we can do that but the process this year seems to have been very delayed we typically have gotten a budget sometime in january and then there's time to analyze it before meeting with department heads and then getting ready for a town meeting and i'm wondering if you can tell us why it took so long to put it together this year and what might we expect for next year that's possible so this year well we were working around a lot of scheduling and we were making sure that we had the right numbers to present to the board and the one committee and kept on budget so it was really just a timing issue and i'm hoping that it gets cleared up next year i would know if this is actually patrice's st year putting the budget together from scratch because your college she was hired in january of last year and so you really feel as marshall did the budget and then patrice came in and inherited what had been done up to that point so for what it's worth but nevertheless we have it now so a couple questions for the chair so patrice thank you very much i think the budget that you put together is just terrific and appreciate the presentation as well a question on stated i know that's the governor's budget i mean any sense from our state representatives in terms of we typically it's difficult for them to decrease state yes once the governor sort of puts his you know his proposal out  foundation budget review committees recommendations and a sort of lost track of that we heard in the you know on that all have now heard which you know takes into consideration of course the continuing increase in our education costs and health care and foundation budget forecasts end up being short what's the implication than for free cash and the designated fund balance sure so the two point six that you referred to that has to do with the parking meters  the money that we receive for the parking in the fund that that goes into that is indirect costs from the water and sewer left over our capital items the perpetual care fund capital endowment up one hundred and twenty five one thousand dollars things like  so those are the things we identified as semi recurring revenue but did you do a free forecast analysis is part of this because we have our free cast  free cash guidelines range if we if we are trending down toward the lower end of that range and there's some unforeseen demand such as a heavy snow year or something like that are we going to be pushing the limits of free cash or can we not say at this point so based on the conversations i've had with the treasurer over the past couple weeks we feel confident that next year is for cash number will hold given what we're seeing again we're not out of  three yet we'll have a better sense q three for their free cash replenish number budget it's pretty clear that you know we we have been very clear that this is a level service budget with the exception of one f t e for the facilities department and it's a level services budget for the school department and the budgets are going up by four point four and six four percent respectively and that is pretty typical i mean we're where we find that two and a half percent is actually not livable in terms of increase our spending and i think that we have to in terms of the presentations the public has to understand that that we are not spending you know profit atlee to the extent that we are able to keep it in check we have we are doing level service budgets but they rise by more than two and a half percent and that's the reality and i think we have to be very open about that as we move forward because if we're talking about looking at falling off a cliff next year which we maybe then people are going to have to know what we're facing and that's the reality purpose as you called jenny for one of the benefits other than all the work that we did in financial task force one that came out of that was that we were transparent and we were continuing to message that you know work this is where we are from a financial perspective and we're may draw down free cash to the floor of the guidelines if you will that we get through in a balanced way book by now you know start to advertise through june i think is when we form the task force for a time that you know likely next year i mean if you look at the projections it's pretty significant they were like the union operator all right in the spring of next year we are working on it with the financial times though i think that we wanted to see if there were other recommendations that based on the concept of timeline and some of the other ways that we might be able to sort of you know  get that deficit but if you look at the projections begin for the book it's pretty significant i mean when we sat around this room last year around this time we had a conversation that the override was coming to an end shortly and that we needed to do something we were going to engage the concent and we were going to or we actually were working with them at the time and create a financial taskforce to and try to figure things out and what we're going to do in strategize prior to the override running out in that in fact in the last year has occurred and is ongoing and we have another year to continue on with this process before we hit some problem but right but to jenny's point i do think we will have to communicate to the community and that town meeting this situation and we probably will not have finished that faith has forced important it was in your slides that we stretch the override funds from that to sixty i think you said sixty seven percent beyond where it was and to submit it to be stretched and if everyone remembers perhaps around the table we asked for a half one million and we thought at the time we needed seven so you know i think from our you know fiscal discipline in our ability to locate you know manage our expenses and perhaps you know one time funds being able to get through additional years and i think that needs to be a message as well to me again i think the fact that we've run out trees so i applaud the efforts to split health care out health care and benefits that we have a much clearer view of that is something we always struggle with so having a separate line this year i think is great it does illustrate that it's increasing at twelve percent which is not unlike previous years with significant increases there any thoughts that you can curricular that we've brainstormed a little bit different in different forums about steps we can take in future years to try to get that  d down so we got health insurance i will say the insurance advisory committee is actually meeting tomorrow we're going to start discussing plan design things like that to try and drop the increase year over year because we saw something a couple weeks ago that compared our benefit to do you i see yeah it was interesting that g i sees benefits have been coming down ours have stayed where they've been for the last five years and maybe yeah there's definitely some work that we can do on the town side for those who weren't watching our meeting a few weeks ago i won't fault you for that we were discussing with the consultant came and discussed the health insurance and the plan design of whether to combat some of the increases were seeing in health insurance to change the plan design in order to get that number down i pulled out some old work committee meetings minutes from i think was two thousand and eleven when we were discussing her twenty's when we were discussing this very issue at the time should we join the g i c which is the state's insurance program or should we not which we had and at the time we decided that we would mimic the g i c but we wouldn't join the g i c because if you join the g i c the state tells you what to do but if we mimic the g i c we still kept our control to go our separate way if we so decided or we could just keep mimicking whatever the g i c did that's what we decided to do at the time and we've been doing ever since of course in the meantime we've stayed the same in the g i c is kept altering things we haven't really kept pace with that so it's time to revisit of course it involves union negotiations and such an bargaining so it's it's a simple thing to do but looking at the budget going forward it may be a necessary thing to i think the other thing too is i think the time is to look at a policy of when you do you have those there are present years of putting aside maybe two or three percent premium so you're always kind of building that health insurance trust and keep in mind we've had a good run on the health insurance increases which have been nonexistent for a while now so the chickens have come home to roost as everything sort of evens itself and we've had good we've had just had a good run of low years and now we're getting you know the regression to the me which is not unexpected just welcome lauri's next if you can just grab a microphone and identify yourself for the record  listening but it wasn't as high as ours you know that are they still on the website on this like and i think that yeah our packets are usually on this like page if you go to the town website if you go back to that meeting that their slide should be is jeff torrance all these folks including patrice and i were on the phone yesterday trying to figure out what we're going to do today in certain times last week so we thank all the departments that support the community as they are able to hold school or have to cancel school to keep the students in the community safe so we think all those folks i have a couple of thank yous as well when we look at the the financial taskforce budget that we're about to wind  financial planning over the last five to eight years prior to or my arrival in through the work that floyd did in new have done in the board of selectmen prior in the school committees prior and getting five years of revenue in expenses  behalf of the community with three years worth of revenue support through the override was was quite a task so thank you for that work i look forward to working with tom in the next financial taskforce and hope that we have equally as good results on behalf of the community  i want to think tony and glen castro in patrice in in florida for their work on the budget and also newcomer john marshall who supportive of this work as well we presented this budget at the school committee night the budget booklets went out last week online for all to be able to view as of the presentation we have full packets here for you tonight and we have for any community member who would like to have one in pa per form in not online we have them at school department keep in mind that that budget book that you have in front of you is not just the general fund allocation is actually the all in budget of the school department which includes federal grant state grants and our revolving funds we want to make sure that people can explicitly see what the general fund pays for what our state and federal grants pay for and what our revolving funds support as it relates to our school children in all of the offers that we provide them  three sparts one is just using f y nineteen to inform our f y twenty process as it relates to expenditures and revenues a little bit of history in the current status the recognition of in rome and in class size that has been a real driver for the belmont public schools over the past few years and also the financial highlights are related to the different aspects of our budget like special education in health insurance and for an update  is there anything going on at the state level regarding the state budget formula there is the senate change d s proposed a reform bill last year that is in front of the senate in the house this year that addresses the formula for schools across the entire state of massachusetts the three driving elements that they say that all towns in most towns are struggling with our students who are learning english english language learners the cost of special education and the cost of health insurance what you will see in the budget tonight in summer which patrice is already outlined is those are the three dollars drivers that we have here in belmont on top of increased in roman of all the above so when you have more students they come with corresponding needs you need to hire more teachers that comes with health insurance we actually employed over five hundred and fifty dollars employees that's twice the amount that the town does so that health insurance is a big driver in the school budget independent of all the other things that we try to do so in f y nineteen we are monitoring our q two we have a balanced budget projected for june our special education program has currently a three year special education funding guideline and goals it's a two page document that we update each year so we always have a three year revolving window of all the revenues that we use to provide our special education services to students that are in district and out of district as relates to out of district tuitions contracted services and transportation remember just four years ago or five years ago we were here asking for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make up that deficit this year we're in a situation where with revenue from the state in the federal government in our lab credits that we have a balance that we are able to make sure that we know in feel comfortable that that that budget line will not be such a challenge to overcome in any of the next two to three fiscal years so our goal of using circuit breaker wisely as it is provided by the state to use one year of circuit breaker for the following year's budget and always thing when you're ahead we are complying with that guidance and finally able to do so if you just looked at our budget absent the external pressures of health insurance special education and roman our roll over cost would only be three five percent so we'll kind of unpack that a little bit tell you what that means we also like to always bring t attention of the community that we are surrounded by communities that spend more money on education than we do we use the department of elementary secondary ed data from f y eleven to f y seventeen you will get the f y nineteen numbers probably sometime later in the spring so we can actually compare apples to apples with how much money we spend per child than our neighbors do so the list of communities up there than the communities that we like to compare ourselves to someone ranked order of who spends the most and who spends the least cambridge spends the most at twenty nine thousand dollars per child we didn't make the top fourteen so we go to page two and we are at number twenty six dollars where beaumont spends thirteen thousand six hundred and fifty six this is probably the only category that we come in last in in the state with the schools in the top if you look at how we compare that average cost the average of the state the state spends fifteen one million nine hundred thousand dollars per child we spen we serve a four thousand eight hundred dollars students which we serve it would actually be a substantial amount of money if you take that same comparison and you measure it against the in the towns that we compare ourselves to they spend eighteen thousand dollars on average per child against thirteen thousand six hundred dollars that's a four thousand eight hundred dollars difference between the comparable districts around us that has a twenty six percent separation between our cost per student and theirs and if you notice this number it keeps getting higher the gap gro so folks might say why didn't the override and that money infused into the budget take care of that gap because we've been averaging over one hundred students for the piutes keeps getting sliced up by more folks even though there was more dough and no more marks or rather more sauce on the on the pizza there was still more people that we had to cut it up for and that's why that number remains a gap number and it's increasing which is concerning that it that gap continues to increase the last slide in the subject is just a matter of seeing what where we are where the state is in where our cold war it's as we use nineteen to inform twenty we have benefited enormously by the override in two thousand and fifteen that was based on the work of the st financial task force we had a script of three years worth of positions that we actually put in place each year as we had said we would back in two thousand and fifteen the infusion for special education in special education transportation and contracted services was a substantial amount of money each year that allowed us to shore up our budget in those areas our principals and directors get to spend the money that we allot to them we give them two percent increases each year and they find a way to spend that in a very thankful for it and we've also been able to adopt some textbook support e books support professional development in other operas the operational cost with those funds and we're very thankful for them and that's why sixteen to nineteen we believe that budget very well and we continue to track and meet the existing needs within our budget and we continue to work through the challenges of increased in rome an increase class size space needs health insurance transition to a new great configuration increased amount of students who are coming from all parts of the world to live in this beautiful town that need support from state minute and mandated support through the yellow work that we do so we are working on a budget  those needs in place just to look through our class size in roman slides very quickly this is the chart that we keep internally about how we go backwards in time from two thousand and eleven to now this shows the net increase over time and we have here thirty seven dollars for this year that we have currently october one of two thousand and eighteen we brought this up with the war committee group that we were at that were with last week and someone said well have you gotten student sense then is that thirty seven more like fifty or sixty that number is more like sixty but we always try to be transparent that we always use the october one number so we can't change the rules in the middle of the game we go october one t october one to october one so we have had up to sixty students enrolled that are new in addition to the students that we started the year with but we use that october one number ironically that number of four thousand six hundred and sixty three  exactly where the mckibben report told us we would be four years ago so the mckibbin report in the m s p a said well we are growing a certain clip that thirty seven dollars does not take us off that cliff we are still at the same projected enrollment rate over the next few years part of the challenges that we have had and that people know about is that obviously we've added marginal classrooms to the high school to the middle school we're very thankful to the burbank community in all of the town support we got for the modules at the elementary school we started the year with class sizes finally at the elementary school by adding staff and adding space that were at or below the class size maximums of the school committee and then when we were meeting with the joint living management in the union probably sometime in november they said the teachers are already letting them know that we're already over because unfortunately we knew that because i'm the one who rules and places every single child so we have jumped over that market and we are in excess of our classroom guidelines presently at the elementary level but the added staff that we put in place at the elementary to two grade five teachers at the middle school this year and out of the system principal at the middle school we have over one thousand four hundred and fifty dollars students at the middle school and we have three assistant principals and one administrator one principal state mandated classes etc go up and we had partial lefties and special education p e music as well this just shows you the end game this is the high school nine year roman forecast this is where we are right now people are they think that we're maxed out and we're at the bottom of this this hill in two hundred and eighty thousand nine hundred at about one thousand three hundred and fifteen we're really more like grade in grades five through twelve in about three hundred and eighty five dollars or so per grade in grades k through twelve that's what the mckibben report tells us and it doesn't go back down to where we would have been over the last ten years it actually stays at a new water level so we are preparing our school budget in our school staff and organization of the district around the projected numbers of four hundred dollars students per grade at the upper levels and about three hundred and eighty dollars per grade at the younger levels so again we're not moving the district forward to fit into the new school we're moving the district forward to support and provide services to the amount of students that the new school is going to fit which is the four hundred dollars per grade and we have  incrementally working towards that goal over the last four years not because we thought we had a new school coming because we knew we had almost four hundred dollars students per grade coming and that's what the students deserve and that's the amount of staff that it takes to support that many students invested in those aggregate amounts of students we always have two groups that we like to be able to ensure that we can support these are students who have mandated state services provided for them that usually come in a larger cost we have very thankful to have great programming for our students who are non english speaking and our students and i especially through our lab program in our internal programs will start with our english language learners we did go up by nine percent this year we are now at three hundred and sixty dollars for the october one two thousand and eighteen as you can see those percentages have gone up pretty significantly on average over the last five to eight years that amount of students represents eight point one percent of our so almost ten percent of our student population does not speak english as its st language at home that means that we have to comply with all state mandates around serving those students and they have just got more complicated with the minutes we have a good news story here for this calendar this school year we have ninety five dollars students out this represents all the different types of placements that that they would be provide getting those services provided by different agencies and groups when you look at that number ninety five computer will be left in june is it a decrease and up i can remember sitting at the table three or four years ago saying is this is this ever going to is this number ever going to you know even out of students that need support without a district placement we finally saw one data point that went in a different direction and that's this year we do have students who age out we do have students who may move out we do have students who decide not to have services all the way till age twenty two and may go to work or do something different at the age of twenty but we are responsible for all of our students and i are the age of twenty two so that's three years old to the age of twenty two so not all folks i think understand that the wide age range that rip your present and in this work with our special education students this is just a bar graph form of the same data when we look at our f y twenty budget we have primary cost drivers we have financial highlights and we have tend to go budget assumptions strategic plan based cost drivers is planning for the student romit that is increasing on average by about one hundred dollars students per year is expected to do so and continue to do so through two thousand and twenty five this is also data that's provided by the m s p a in the mckibben report we had two reports done consistent consistently increasing in roman has resulted in the additional need for staff both professional classroom teachers we've also tried to provide additional nurse guidance secretarial and in aid in unity folks to support our our students in the classroom increase and supports the services that have mandated costs related to them special education and english language learners maintain the level of purchases of text materials and supplies and equipment interest petition for the district the biggest primary cost drivers as related below that but our eight percent for a five hundred and fifty employees is embedded in the six four percent so when you have twice as many employees and you're going up by eight percent it's a substantial cost driver to the schools special education is where the good news starts  like the think the war committee in the school committee over the past few years for working with us toward college arrow our finance director has put together a very unique and now looking to be duplicated formula for creating a three  window of measurement of revenue and it's dissipated revenue against projected costs for special education we have been able to put a three year revolving plan together that takes state aid find federal aid lab lab credits in our own general fund all on one sheet to show exactly where all the money goes for all those expenses and how those expenses are projected over time based on previous years amounts this year we were able to like a year past reduce the amount of general fund money we need for special education and we will only ask for a three percent of general fund increase in that area the additional four percent will  be charged the circuit breaker that we have been able to accumulate and uses that buffer moving forward this is a one time cost that we can afford to do against the revenue that the general fund would normally provide similar to what we did an f y seventeen where we were able to give back three hundred and thirty thousand dollars to the dish to the time during that fiscal year we are also able to reduce our contracted services based on the same methodology we are reducing that line to a negative forty three thousand dollars this again is a one time adjustment but we are asking and continue to ask for the seven percent increase per the financial task force one of seven percent for the special education transportation so again the work that we've done over the last three years to be able to have a multi revenue approach to our special education cost has allowed us to ask for less money from the general fund for that purpose and that's exactly what we had planned to do when we set out to the school three years ago the f y twenty school budget includes rolled over staff in existing operational costs additional costs related to our strategic plan an additional national additional costs that are cost drivers what i would consider bills that we have to pay which are health insurance special education and other mandated costs so we like to group our expenditures in our revenues in three different categories to give folks an idea of how  to the point that was made earlier we are not spending money excessively that if it weren't for the added enrollment in the added need for health insurance going up by eight percent and  l needs all of which i pointed out very clearly in the state building in front of our state legislatures as impact to every municipality we would be in a three point five percent increase for the town that would include staff being rolled over text material supplies being rolled over transportation being rolled over friends discuss not include the health insurance eight percent of this is an initial fringe and then the special education transportation we left at zero because we show it in a different slide so of all things are equal would be asking for three fifty one percent when we introduced the strategic plan cost drivers we do consistently need additional staff  i showed the warrant committee in a show the school committee the list of twenty four f t e s that we gathered when we met with the directors of the principals things like math coaches that we don't have any things like social workers which we only have one for four thousand eight hundred students things like math classes that go below twenty seven or twenty eight at the high school science classes at twenty nine at the high school class sizes of the middle school with with study halls at the middle school with kristen's grades five through eight all of which have been reduced and made better over the last few years are all still present in some form in all require f t e support reducing them and putting the school in a better position to have our students be successful so with the existing funds that we receive the six point four percent from the town this year we are asking for one point for elementary guidance counselors everyone here should know that in these times where students are trying to be supported through our s c l work coming to school with lots of troubles and challenges and we don't have full time guidance counselors at all four of our elementary schools just one so this one four ad will make each school able to have one full time guidance counselor like a nurse because a student who has a hard day doesn't take the day that the guidance counselor's there they just pick the day that they have a hard day so we want to make sure that we can support them point for middle school foreign language arts teacher this is just a pure function of enrollment if you want to keep our world language program afloat the numbers that we're getting in at the middle school  extraordinary and grade five and six and we need to support that department high school teachers point four is actually a program that we're trying to do in pilot through our math in our social studies department which will also in directly support class size a high school assistant principal just point four to bring them up to three assistant principal f t eason total again they are at one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars students and next year they will be next to a construction site and lastly a one dollar director of english language learners we are now at the point where that department service is almost ten percent of our population has about twelve dollars to thirteen dollars teachers has mandated expectations from the state regarding people work in testing that is growing to the level of bureaucracy that special education has become and we need someone responsible to do that work so we are asking for that position those positions add up to three six f t e s the total salaries are projected to be two hundred and ninety eight thousand the insurance for those positions would be thirty nine thousand dollars we are also asking for funds to support all of our student activities in athletics and all the feed driven costs that we have we have not raise fees in five years the only fee we raise because the federal government made us raise it was launched by a quarter back in two thousand and fifteen they said we are charging too less bus bus fee and all of our athletic fees and club fees of remain the same and that continues to take a lot of pressure from it needs it's taking a lot of pressure off those fees if we are able to support it with the general fund they cannot rely on just fees and gate receipts alone they need support from the general fund to work  that as the other other sum of money that we are asking for to continue the existing services that we provide there are no new services in that wine after we get through with the search based items we have the clear indication of the one point three percent that we could use for what i would call bills the health insurance grows at eight percent again that eight percent is imbedded in our six four percent increase overall that's five hundred and eighty five thousand dollars by itself special education tuition we're only asking for three percent so we have gotten that number down from seven percent down to three which is only one hundred and fifty three thousand dollars special education transportation goes up seven percent per the financial taskforce model at ninety and we have actually taking a minus forty three thousand eight hundred and four dollars for contracted services again with one time ability to utilize funds in a special education three year revolving plan when you put all that together essentially you have the f y nineteen budget what the rollover would be three dollars the strategic plan another one dollar the external cost drivers another one dollar and that's how we get our budget of sixty million six hundred and forty one million four hundred and fifty one thousand dollars which is a six dollars six point four three percent increase over f y nineteen just to round out the presentation we have a lot more slides and graphics for you in your budget book that not only show the general fund allocation but the all in federal grant state grant in revolving funds in general the revolving fund the general fund budget is broken up in this manner with forty nine percent of our funds going to teacher salaries thirteen percent of our funds go into special education fringe benefits a regular education transportation district wide support instructional support school based instructional expenses substitute teachers and administrators salaries some of the next few fuel slides are redundant it's just a summary with the assumptions but the assumption is we're looking for a sixty million dollars for six hundred and forty nine thousand dollars budget with three dollars f t east we're taking in the assumed rate of eight percent of health care in that total cost to special education is is broken out the way we described with some one dollar time general fund impacts to the to the good for the town federal grants have been budgeted f y twenty at a f y nineteen level our user fees remain the same circuit breaker will be used to teach equally through our multi year plan full day kindergarten will offset portions of the kindergarten teacher in need salaries in the school building rental revolving funds will support the maintenance of repairs of the school facilities in the town facilities department this is a draft one budget we hope to have everyone here be supportive of it we're very thankful to the town for five years of funding  that started with an override five years ago to be able to financially plan and stick to that plan creates a very sound budgeting process for the town you should know that when we are able to have a budget that's approved in advance we're out hiring teachers in april and may not in june and july the quality of teachers that we're getting is incredible because we can go early when we need to to get truly the best who want to come to belmont teach in an innovative environment with a new school coming down the road and be part of this community in having a solid financial plan that we've had over the last five years has produced a lot of other good things that wouldn't show up in a document like that happy students happy parents students who are learning spaces that are more appropriate and in a big picture view of reconfiguring the district into a beautiful new building that we got tremendous support from the community on back in november with seventy six percent vote for a new high school so the school department is very humbled and thankful to the community and very much appreciative of your consideration of this budget thank you thank you materialize with this budget are we making but we still making progress against potential reductions in class sizes especially in the elementary grades or are we sort of treading water or can things still be getting worse before we might be getting better so the as you saw in the graph that shows the high school going up to a one thousand six hundred and sixty student building from nine to twelve that is the largest wave of the waves in that wave is right now in the five through a community at the at the general so we've really tried to support the channel as best we can because we did a good job i think bringing the class sizes down at the elementary and we are sustaining with moderate to good class sizes that are great but they're pretty good the bulk of the the added roman is in five through eight right now in where we are struggling with class size it that's why you see a couple of ads there the high school hasn't hit that hit that wave yet so i don't see disallowed because if there's a high school teacher out there watching i don't want them to think that the class size is going to go up it's going to go up unless we are able to incrementally still support that wave moving forward so  we think that we're stable at the elementary level and with thankful for the extra space in the extra teachers that we've been able to provide to do that stabilizing of class size in the next road is the middle school in the high school over the next ten years and we really believe that we were not asking for another nine or ten or twelve though we believe that we could put them to work very quickly we're really at this methodology of incrementally supporting the essential pieces of the budget in the staffing so over time we can look backwards and say we're almost there we're going to get there because i think that that's respectful of the budget process that's respectful of what the town could afford but the incremental successes i think we have added up and they'll need to continue to add up to not have any wide gaps in class size and program offerings  john thanks this is good and interesting and daunting moving forward as the new high school is built and the grades start to reconfigure i assume that the tell will be facing some investment to change over the schools to the new grade configuration they'll be staff changes and they'll be physical changes and i wonder if the school department has started to quantify those at all because those are coming along the pike in relative short order so the changes in the physical plant to the other spaces that may be used differently were outlined in the s m a report that they did st last year we haven't engaged that process yet but we do have a those that age level of students the service delivery that we have and also the number of students that we have going in and out of those buildings the high school obviously has been taken care of in terms of the physical plant with the seven dollars to twelve dollars program which we continue to solidify and will put into a deal designed bid next month in terms of the cost to fund the staffing for those buildings we do have a projected plan for how many administrators that would be how many teachers that would be how many nurses that would be in then you start to move around what you are ready have and you put in place before you ask for anything more so we're we're really realigning the assets that we have and reallocating to them to the different levels of the district and then looking to see where the in the holes are as an example is when you have that many students in a secondary level of four hundred dollars students for grade would like to have one administrator pro grade including the principal so right now if we get this point four assistant at the high school that would bring three assistants in one principal for the four grades so incrementally we've had a couple of base hits over the past she has check that box we're done at the middle school we've asked for another administrator last year's budget so now we have four right now to  the principal and the three assistants check that box we're done so we're incrementally looking for these basics over time to get again get the staffing level to a four hundred dollars student per grade school system and then we will fit them into the configuration that we end up living in from a staffing perspective so that's it that's really back to our basic model you know base it by base it position by position with the overall goal of staffing the buildings correctly for the modest since we have in the buildings that we'll be living in in the  future thank you madam chair john is always a terrific presentation sobering as well so thank you for that just a comment i have a couple questions i did this quick math tony correct me if i'm wrong that if we were to spend just at the state average not   we do have some additional programming that i think is useful in moving towards that end but that didn't dramatically decrease the amount in my opinion and i was stunned that you said that we have one social worker for four thousand nine hundred students what does that social work john we have so that social worker works with students in small groups works with families who need support and the children need support and contacts outside agencies to get them the support our guidance counselors at the elementary level are  working with students now not just in the lunch groups but they're actually tackling some very substantial family challenges at the middle school the same as well we have a guidance counselor for every for every grade but if you think of it that way the guidance counselor now is responsible for about four hundred students there caseload is four hundred dollars students that's overwhelming so the the clinical the clinical model that is more appropriate would be to have your guidance counselor be like your classroom teacher and then the adjustment counselor or the license social worker to deal with the next tier of students that need support and then maybe a licensed social worker who would then be really critically involved in some of the outside agency work and then a psychologist at the top of that to consult and work down with our families so we have guidance counselors we have added to the middle school the elementary level in the high school that next leg of work that we want to do is is to that license social work a social worker framework as well so again base it by base it in it's nice to know that the a bill that the governor signed as part of the safety mechanisms that he would like to put in place for schools the police chief and i went out to see him in burlington his daughter only adding school resource officers which we are lucky to have two in belmont but also adding social workers is a great i mean one to me just does not elizabeth dionne want committee to questions with the new school coming online are there plans to try to provide more programming in districts such that  more children can stay in district or are the plans to keep programming largely the way that it is knowing that you can't ever predict what students are going to me about place and i'm just i'm wondering about the capacity to you and i have talked about this before just  as a mother of a child who is placed it's much nicer to keep them in district if we can for all sorts of reasons and my nd question is if you could describe some of the additional requirements that the state has imposed for english language learners and i unfortunately don't know the answer to this did any funding accompany those changes thank you for the question the we are providing additional space in the seven dollars to twelve dollars school to support more special education programming that can be done in house so we been looking to do that for a while when we were happy to check that box the s b a was very supportive of special education services being in district and we were able to take them up on every offer that they provided and also when you think about the upper elementary school that we would be that generally building now will have more space in it as well so if we ever want to do more programming with the lab or do it on our own we have we have building capacity for that and we look forward to doing that kind of program because the students win because they get to take classes next to the the the students at their playing soccer with on saturdays is a really big deal there the look bill that was passed by the state legislature watched years relates to  english language learners provides with two or three testing sessions per year which basically shuts down the teaching learning for about three weeks the reporting is substantial during those periods of time and they have fluctuated on how much time is with students pulled out of class and how much time should be in better immersed in the class so we're still working with them on that methodology that where were there working with us then i think that the trying to get to the what the best practices i believe lindsay rinder who's been our part time lead in that area if you look at our student achievement scores are our learners to fantastic so the work that we're doing i think is a good balance for our district and we're hoping that the state allows us to have that kind of  town local authority to implement and service us students the way that we feel best suits our family's involvement but sometimes they kind of make you do it a certain way where we're hoping that we continue to to work with our families to say we do know remarks what the forecast is for the number of additional e l l students over the the horizon that you've described and secondly how long the student stay in the oh i take it they're not in there for their entire time projections that was one of the characteristics of our town that was truly kind of a wild card because it's hard to predict when they predict in roman traditionally they ask how many how many children are born in the last four years that will turn five for kindergarten so they start with births then they start to go to how many women in the in the community are in shock childbirth years believe it or not and you look at that window you look at how many houses are occupied by folks who may be over the age of say seventy that may that house may turn over so there's a lot of factors they don't have an international component of that so that's where we have been very much at the at the whim of who moves into the town students do very well so the majority of our services are provided to our elementary middle school students in the students tend to come off those services at the end of middle school to high school and the massachusetts teacher association all support this bill and we're very happy to move the bill forward i think like most things in politics in beacon hill it will start to break off in different versions will start to be a play so depending on what version goes for the vote will wait and see what the formula does recognize a lot of factors that each town experiences and provides a funding element for each one of those factors and i think the amount of students that we have in combined with how if the formula shifts back to one that does not necessarily use wealth of the town versus how many students in the tax base except for those things have tended to skew our chapter seventy one dollar money down our chief to seventy one  has always increased by more than three percent over the last five years because even though the increase is going up by three percent our students are going up by one hundred students a year so the numbers on the enrollment of the previous are tobel one so we get one hundred dollars more students worth of that three percent in the next year so last year we believe that our new staff that we asked for which was nine positions was about eight hundred and eighty thousand dollars but the increase in chapter seven was one dollar so we're you know where we were going up by so many students were actually we were doing a pretty good in belmont so when you but then when you turn around and say what do you do and how in the class sizes so it's a struggle both sides but we think the state should move forward that discussion and we think it would benefit belmont doing more department head meetings meetings and we will be also discussing health insurance as it is now broken out as its own thing and is a major issue we're going to be having health insurance discussion that morning that is march th that eight a and then following that is our next get regularly scheduled meeting which is monday march th at seven pm with fun items such as the c p a projects and the incinerator site final vote so stay tuned with that chair i move that we