apologise i've not really talked to jim about this and it we talked about it before but that we haven't talked about the end tonight but just to reiterate for the body how we can approach the minutes in the past and we can have some discussion and we can talk a bit about the minutes that were the things in so jim kind of does that first half is that feedback too and then the minutes are distributed to the entire group entire group then has an opportunity to give commentary the intention just to be clear is not to modify things in a way that reflects what you would have liked to say as a political you actually said although i think it is fair to say that to the extent that the minutes don't reflect the spirit of what we sat here and it's important make sure that that's that that's clear the expectation is that people will modify their own comments and not modify the comments of others if you in fact have a comments about what's something else someone else said and you feel like the minutes don't reflect what that person said you're certainly welcome to share that with that person and they can then final draft of the minutes and then is shared with everybody so everybody has now seen the final draft of june tenth minutes for some time at least those that were on the work committee at that time and and so the intention is to have everybody review that so that we walk into the room where either prepared to vote on them or there or not and hopefully we're prepared to vote on them but we're now going to be doing is actually approving minutes in a very timely fashion ziran to try to do that at the next meeting if at all possible and do it as the first item on the agenda which was  great recommendation by jim in an effort to try to provide you know that that data point to town meeting its any other concerned citizens in its timely fashion as possible so they can access that as a summary and of course they can also go to  television broadcast which is on record and robert's only us right now so that's a basic discussion of process anything you want to add to that or you want to add to that in terms of overall process moment it's not clear enough and you know it would be very helpful to have it written down i think we can certainly talk about that and do it right then and there if necessary so i think aspirational e if it can be done in advance great if not we can either do it or not yet in the moment if it's if it's appropriate is anyone disagree with that approach ok so the other thing just to comment for those who are new if you are not in attendance of the meeting where the minutes apply then you by definition abstain from voting on those minutes so members of the work committee all for example who are not here at that you're meeting would have seen from a vote on the minutes it is a typical the people vote no but of course if for some reason what i would say is if you intend to vote no we should certainly talk about that because you know it would be desirable to have a unanimous view of what the minutes actually say and i would say that is typical that we are and you know mess with some abstentions ok so any other questions about that because otherwise i think we will vote on the meeting minutes only because i just described the process right now but we will vote on the last week's minutes and of this week's minutes in the next meeting as the first agenda item and that will be our part aspirational intention  with and you know if thanks to those who have given input into greg in this process because there has been a bunch of back and forth on this but i just do i want to explicitly call out great menace for the extraordinary work that's been done here  at least one person said this is some of the best work that we've done in terms of you know rigor and quality of work and you know they were genuinely fortunate not only to a wall street journal quoted expert but one of the so anyway and thank you very much for the work you've done and the help you've given all of us while i turn the floor actually over to you to maybe you know lead the discussion on this and i think we can talk a little bit about process you know what our comments are on this how will you know that how we may want to modify this specificity of the recommendations we may make or the nature of the recommendations that sort of thing but i'll  very good thank you for you for the kind words michael thanks everybody for all their help and and i think as we go to the next round will be sure i will be sure to get you know more advanced notice for people to read things i thought to be maybe worthwhile just to spend a  people might have other people back home so the new stuff is basically page one has an executive summary hopefully does a pretty good job of summarizing what's in the balance of the there's some information on page five that compare the month's numbers on pensions to the other aaa rated communities in the commonwealth and this is something that people asked about last time and i think it actually does a really good job of helping to form discussion so that was a great suggestion and then i think in the very back of the version anyway we included a bunch of references the pension obligation bonds an appendix three i think anybody is interested we have like one hundred fifty three page p d f with all the background documents i think we elected not to send that out just yet budget that's growing you know substantially higher and maybe even twice as high as the sources that you have to pay for the budget that actually doesn't pass standard tests of fiscal sustainability that's a term of art in a definition that's used in thinking about fiscal policy  and it pretty simply speaks about aligning your sources of revenue with your spending over certain periods of time so i think it's a fair question and the numbers support that i think when we look at different considerations about the about the funding schedule there are both some options and some important things to think about you know when i talk about options the the big find here is that among the aaa communities belmont actually has the either most disciplined or most aggressive funding schedule meaning the shortest time horizon that we're currently projected to get to fully funded the pension system i think that's meaningful and you know based on the follow up analysis from the actuary does suggest there are pop simple modifications that could be made to the funding schedule last still being viewed as towards the top of the table among the aaa rating communities at the same time some of the considerations are we only have about fifty percent of the assets that you need to pay for engine liabilities based on the actuaries calculations that's on the much lower end of the spectrum both that you know any modification to have our funding pensions that day could represent a change in the messaging that he and others have been pretty consistent about talking about how we're funding pensions and then lastly i think we've had a lot of discussion there just a lot of very different than what's being projected and so i think that general observation around certainty says there are it appears there are options to talk about on the funding schedule but also some real considerations around i think just to put a possible recommendation out there also taking into account what we learned last week about the decision rights and how they rest with the retirement board and the the the the two year process the retirement board goes through  it kind of lends itself to an approach where we could say you know that the what the what the word pretty recommends in addition to submitting this report is that upon the receipt of the next hour actual value ation which is somewhere between nine and twelve months from now and upon the request of the border selectman that we the work committee would agree to analyze this information again with fresh numbers and if it made sense to do so approach the retirement board  to have a discussion about potential modifications to the funding schedule to take into account the operating needs of blood i know that's kind of a mouthful but i think the the starting point for that thought process and i should say mike would read some good input on this based on our conversations with him is as we discussed last week the next valuations not going to be ready to nine months from now or something like that and the next time the retirement board considers the funding schedule and it is their authority to look over  this is going to be about a year from now and so i think because we're going to get new numbers those are great and i'm sorry just interrupt you for i was under the impression that what tom said last week was that they would actually be making a determination in january did i mishear that that others here that after the valuation that's in fact the schedule that was you know on the latest report it was as of one one fourteen but didn't get is usually authorized publishing to later in that town so so if you if you kind of play that the next funding schedule is actually determined and sat at what time roughly between what would have to be said for the following year budget so basically and jim was making a really good point on this that right now the way the process works the way you just described it his if you go back to the general fourteen numbers the budget been set up for fiscal year sixteen and seventeen right so that so unless we were going to have a discussion about changing the process or asking the retirement board to change their process the next time that he and he adjustments could be considered would apply to the fiscal year eighteen budget and also the current year but in the year from then from now in terms of fiscal year from now that we're we're about to be in sort of observation and jim was particularly focused on this in a really helpful way but that observation is about the timing of the process i thought was pretty instructive because it allows again unless people have a view that we want to have a discussion about asking the retirement board to change the way go about doing their business and i would advise that i think that these systems are set up in a particular way and there's a rhythm to how they do their work and this is a really important issue in us and it's good to be careful and diligent and disrupting that is unlikely to lead to the results that somebody might be seeking if they say they want to take that path i think that's actually helpful because it allows us to start with this information to meet our obligations a town meeting with kind of this first set of homework behind us and then take our time in this is something i think bob and both boys were sort of vising before and after the meeting last week to really just take our time to think this through really carefully and then we saw with the benefits of new information and ongoing discussion a look at how things are doing the stock market which impacts all of these numbers i think would give us that time to take a really awful approach and by having it be contingent both getting the numbers and the board of selectmen requesting it i think it was the work committee you know body is expecting to come out of this but if a town meeting is is hoping if members of tel meeting are hoping to be able to have any kind of town meeting discussion or response or input maybe we do that through a forum rather than on the town meeting floor actually but if tell me does not get any recommendation from the white committee about any changes until after the next two year cycle is removed then tell meeting has no option for any kind of input i don't know whether that matters i don't this is a very technical aspect of the finances of the town that i'm not sure town meeting is the best body to discuss right but why are we making this report to tell meeting if tell meeting has no because it gets revalued the pension obligation gets revalued every two years and also that theoretically against changes the pension payment plan because you're that the amount of the the liability goes up fourteen million you see here sixteen million you see out in two thousand and twenty five or whatever the date is is subject as greg said to change it and it's every two years and one of the things we discussed was maybe looking at this again every two years as the value changes but being a part of the process bobbie really coming first on the issue of timing and jenny points out and greg has pointed out the the idea that we should evening we come to conclusion as to what is our timing in responding to what a what we think we ought to be doing and b the deference we ought to give to a time time having said that and greg has done a terrific job in my mind of taking a very complicated set of facts and reducing them to five or six pages so that we can all get our arms around it and i think it i mean he's going to get their arms around it and when anyone looks and sees that next year we have to deal with a two hundred  eighteen thousand dollars increase in hitting our operating budget by twelve years now we have to deal with the four million seven hundred forty two thousand dollars something's got to be done and frankly i don't think we can sit around and wait for two years before we start to think about what we're go to start thinking at least about what we should do right now and i look forward to this discussion one of the things that frankly greg i wish there was more discussion in the report because i really don't understand it but it's the tension two three four percent to three percent i don't know where floyd gets his four point seven four percent but it would seem to me we could take advantage of our credit worthiness and borrow at something like four percent and i seen greg's comment and i've seen jim williams comments as to the spread and the potential savings jim says of forty five million dollars i don't know whether that makes sense or not i don't understand it by that you'd be dismissed out of hand and as you know mr chairman i said before we signed in a report we have a selectman who also was elected recently on i think a single platform of this issue so he must have some support to it we've got to study and understand the the payment obligate the pension obligation bond as a possibility because it just seems to me that we've never had a return as low as four point  whatever it is so i don't know how big the risk is but the upside looks like it might be pretty attractive and it's something i want to know a lot more about i'm not going to know the answer in eight days and with that i'll stop and i look forward to discussing oh the people that  asked the date of october fifteenth so i think that is an important question that i think we'll talk about i think embedded in that is if the answer is yes what is the nature of what we actually share because a think depending on how specific and how much of a recommendation we make as opposed to providing a report which actually informs and and enlightens and you know keeps the discussion going and the further you go towards a very specific recommendation the higher the bar presumably for us to actually you know generate something in eight days and the more generic in the more informative it is i think the lower the bar is for a report in eight days and so i think well will i see that jeanette you know just as a  should weigh in but i think that's clearly a topic that we'll talk about tonight in the comments before i come back to greg to just clarify and what what the specific recommendation that he's suggesting that we make so that i think look at the funding schedule how it's changed over time what you would see is that the year changes only only and by and large they fit the numbers to hit that particular hit that you're and that's just a way to go about doing not perfect and if you have a big market down here the discussion about ok i think now the number is seven point one three five two percent it is seven percent so i think they picked a year and they came up with a number that kind of gets you in that year and if those of you have looked at it the amount the contribution that we make actually sin and in twenty twenty six it's largely paid off in twenty twenty second and there's a smaller countries in twenty seven great honor i'm not mistaken i'm not saying that on page six but am i wrong about that one more time i thought that the so there's the normal country which is where paying for current retirees services and then there is the the it is the amortized portion of the unfunded liability and that amortize portion is the piece that's really kind of growing in a big way and that number peaks if i'm not mistaken in twenty twenty six when it and say that's that's a god's truth number but we have to pay for that so that's that's just you know one one out of millions of possible possible paths and  the way i think about it but about rule of thumb is so to get into what bubba talked about you know that we pick a target date and live and then and then that defines how much we have to we have to pay and you can think of it in in up for to to jim's i don't remember what when we got the two thousand and fourteen report the liability had changed by a significant amount and i believe it went up by some amount because the interest rate that was used by twenty million or twenty five million  sixteen could change significantly make the i probably could go up or could go down and so it's going to change that payment schedule that's the point and i don't mean to beat it to death but i'm saying that i think that's really important for people to understand i think that's exactly right that's actually what where i was going to go as well which is to the point that bob was making whether you say it's a seven percent or what he said twenty twenty seven and either way you get to the same place that is clearly a critical variable but there are multiple variables that come into play and you will correct me as i if i get this wrong but to answer point there is the investment return that is assumed so this is assuming a seven point seven five percent investment rate you know tom and and the retirement board will decide whether they want to keep that seven point seven five number or they want to increase it or lower it and whatever that number is we'll have a very important fact on on all the numbers so there is the the assumed investment return as an important variable there also are what are the actual returns that have been observed over time and so that actually affects the total amount of the value of the assets that we have and then there is also the the counts of people that are actually in the system so that gets really looked at and so depending on the number of people and the nature and where they fall time wise in the system that's the thing that gets factored in and then there's also the actual the actuarial tables themselves would make assumptions about how long people live in things like that and how long therefore it will be collecting retirement money so the actuarial valuation as i understand it has a number of different characteristics i may not have named all of them but it's you know it's the year that you want to have you know it fully funded it's the assumed rate of return it's the actual rate of return that is a bit been observed recently it's you know the actual terribles around people living in and that sort of thing and it's what counts in the nature of where people fall in terms of how many people we're paying for and getting most of them right or compensation  ok with you if we step back and let's flip through the the pictures and i can do this pretty quickly yeah you look as if we're you got we got some time here so i mean what i want to do is i want to get to ventura obviously to the point you're making bob but let's go through this let's let's digest this and board with they have they get advice from any p c which is a very well respected investor consulting firm and the majority of the assets are actually invested with print so kind of answer your question bob with a little bit more detail the way the state system in massachusetts works is  that all of the state employees and all the employees are subject to the same benefit formula it's and state law nobody gets a different benefit the people in belmont get the same one as those in winchester another depends on whether you're a teacher or a firefighter or a general boy but it's the same formula said at the state level the systems themselves are managed somewhat independently but they're governed by very strict rules like the one we're talking about now how they fund the stuff and they have different levels of flexibility on how they invest the money to your question so years ago towns that were both poorly funded not porn vestment performance all got put into the state's investment portfolio managed them a state's rebuy premise the name of the organization because its performance actually even though the funded ratio was very low it had pretty good performance was able to study i mean that the balance is that has done better in investment returns of the perm system according to the reports that any p c produces that dell actually has done a little bit better than prem or at least as good in most recent periods and i can say from a national level printers book that is one of the there you go yep and or get exclusion so if that does not is if we don't mean that we should take it out ok but i just wondered because no one's mentioned that if that is still a part of the thinking attention and i so i would like to understand how that would be used so my understanding and great you should comment but my understanding is that if we were to do a pension of voting which is one of the three broad strategies that are talked about that would require and so talking about how the investment portfolio works is probably relevant here because it's a big part of the discussion but if it works but i'd like to not get into the details around the benefit structure and all that other stuff that's not part of the report and it's kind of a slippery slope but we can make this  missing word something i mean i would say missing word like non substantive you know you stuff i would pass through the mail yeah but in terms of like substantive like for example you know i'll say as an example i think the notion that the decision rights are today for the benefits that are being accrued unearned in the current year so again the amortization payment is the significant majority of this this largely comes from simply put underfunding the pension system in decades past so i think that observation along with the you know the seven percent increase that we've all talked a lot about to me makes it a fair question for a town meeting just to ask about how we're going about this in terms of its potential docked in the budget and then the set the table at the bottom of the page we've also discussed  what the line is showing is how over time looking at the access on the right hand side of the page with the percentages how over time that this funding plan is projected to get the town from having a little more than fifty percent of the assets to pay for the pension liabilities all the way up to one hundred percent and probably most importantly it also tries to illustrate this big drop off at some point you know around twenty twenty seven twenty eight where once you get the fully funded you no longer have to make he payments and then in the text in the middle of the page i made note of the fact that according the town treasurer of the production ever station payment has been discussed as a way to provide resources to address unfunded open liabilities yeah i think from my perspective that actually is the strategy of the town at the moment so i would i think that's a little bit we can work on that offline but i think the this sort of softens it sort of implies the treasurer thinks that way and i think it is actually the stated strategy of the town that that is exactly what we're doing  old trust to the excess of five percent over or fun balance i think the strategy of funding your pet once the pension is been paid off it's been stated by many folks at many different times i'm not quite sure there's a piece of paper that says smallest to largest which shows down on at the far left on the bottom chart and shows belmont more towards the middle or to the right hand side on the on the on the top ten is just a little bit more clear that way and if anybody disagrees alphabetical order i would say but you can't sort both graphs separately and present it this way stacked on top of each other i do i think i have i think it's hard to understand where i agree with the point that was pretty loose the lady should just write it based on  to different towns where you think rank it on one and then and then have the same towns i think that's you know from my perspective it's not really the point of the your truth independent charts not to charge that or trying to you know compared to each other and the just the top chart is saying that we are you know ninth in the it in of the thirteen in terms of the you know when we were going to be paying it off i'm sorry one thousand in terms of our finite amount that is currently this is extremely helpful data others have the same reaction i totally agree will definitely separate the two concepts and i think probably are for at least on the front of the show it from chris i think it might be helpful also if it's relatively easy to do is to have  line or something that shows the average so where were you know so that people and say oh you know so the average is twenty thirty one on the bottom and the average is you know four fifty seven percent or whatever on the top one i think the other thing i would second or right as that if you modify the schedule you could get modified by a couple of years you could still do that and still be first or second or third among the twelve carefully from his left but then on the other hand you go back to the top chart you have to remind yourself that we're in a more difficult position and so maybe that's an argument for higher level prisons so i think that's the balancing act here and if you take the two pieces together it's a reminder that the impact stream strikes me as another factor i mean does it matter that has you know how belmont overall budget relationship with the pension unfun funded life building to our overall over assets the whole budget compared to some of the others i mean it could have a people clearly trying to say well if you were triple a community you know what does it mean that you know we got an aggressive schedule because it's a small number that we're trying to deal with is that is the relationship reversed is seventy question which is i mean are you saying it would be it would be helpful to get a little bit more context that's the way i'm going i'm going i'm just trying to think of you know if you're trying to find if you take your very aggressive would be would it be different if we take if we were taken in a group an aggressive approach or it depends if you you know we're talking here percentages of unfunded liability on the top so the actual the actual unfunded liability could vary a great deal across these and would lead to different so because the size of the town is that's right for that but so that but using using that kind of life that he is going to be better it's relative to what you've got to have accomplished in terms of paying it off certainly this is slightly different you're asking but i think it's a fair question to say i'm taking these two things into account which are the two factors that drive the annual budget of tax how does what share of the budget is this taking over for these other towns which maybe apart from brooklyn are drastically different l by moody's and so the twelve there listen here are the twelve aaa moody's twelve there are aaa if i'm not mistaken s and p towns that are not reflective your mind am i right about that so there are if i'm not mistaken cite big a little a little a is actually how they do it so i just want to point that out for people benefit and so a change saying that we should go figure out the answer is for the twenty seven pounds or whatever it is that actually might qualify under all ochre tyria but i would ask maybe as bob and others of that take away resonates or if you're saying this is one of the things that you think people need more time with which is this basic idea among th and then if you flip the page six i think we talked about these last time this is just this illustrated a lot of calculation of the list but it looks like winchester is twenty twenty nine and there and wellesley and lexington and concord twenty thirty fast the pension contribution growing at seven percent and what it would look like if it were more in line with say the budget or revenue i change the number to four percent increases instead of three and a half i think in looking at the financial task force report there were budget growth projected cost growth numbers of four percent or more there were revenue numbers of less than that so it was the round number between i think it's reasonable people it's a different figure i'm happy to and i guess every question you know if i look at the direction of town meeting it says and the warrant committee prepare a pension report that includes an analysis of the impact of the pension payments on the annual operating budget ok and this seems to go to that because you're showing what percentage of the annual operating budget is being devoted towards pension liability does it make sense and maybe this is along the lines similar to what bob is saying does it make sense to see how other triple a rated communities you know how their schedule falls so so you know right now we are point two percent and then by two thousand and twenty seven we're three point one percent of our budget and been that's actually not what it's as if i'm not mistaken but this is saying is the that all that's going to that's the part is so big you know you would have to look at what the average growth was of their budget or what they were projecting for growth and compare it to what they're what they're projecting for their payment schedule that seems like a burden some knowing what for example winchester has in their fiscal sixteen budget for pension and knowing what their total budget is in terms of size and therefore doing the ratio of those two things so that for us it's roughly seven point six percent for them it's some number that seems like a excess would be versus a three and a half number whatever number they actually are using that would be a more complicated exercise presumably unless the numbers are already just you know plug and play fighter action numbers are out there you have to if we have the town budget number if you're interested in doing that a part that you don't have is the total budget for the difference in the growth rate that they're assuming because you're looking at the exit rate that's right that's right i would think that's i think that's taking a lot of think that's beyond the scope of what we should be doing because we would have i mean we would be making assumptions unless there is some document that shows their budgeted growth but i don't think that's included in the payment schedule i think they just put a payment schedule reuther laurie in the box so there's a famous article in economics called measurement without theory you know that i'm really cautious about generating a huge amount of numbers that defiance or protection you know we could look at the great support of the other over that's different about just how are they have a different structure here they're not really good you know if you go comparing your apples to oranges if you try to think across towns and i think we just get into that quagmire and we haven't really that's helpful i just went back and looked at the the growth rate the revenue growth rates and i haven't done it for the actuals for fifteen but when we'd done it before the ten year growth rate for the for revenue to fourteen was three point four percent the for your growth rate this five year from ten to fourteen was three point seven and from twelve to fourteen was three point five so you're in that kind of three point should talk about this but i have a mild bias towards the three and a half number you had before because i think it's closer to what we probably have seen historically but i think it would be very useful i think to have in the appendix because i think it's easy to just plug and play it up to say what does it look like under three would look under fo five because i think to royce point i think that you can pretty easily then look at that three four five and say aha that's it this is what it means in terms of growth and this is what it means in terms of the time that the date that it gets paid off and you can just very quickly i think you know with numbers think is as many we don't think you know really complicated as many scenarios as we can sort of present to them if instead you know you know friday returns within reason yeah obviously you know we don't say for twenty for revenues more three and half so we just got to pick a number to me and i don't think either one matter to me it's the costs that are in excess of revenue that is the relevant factor that is that that is the measure of affordability or on a like you made the comment a line sources of revenue and spending the come in you made the beginning i wrote it down and if our revenue is growing that's a three and a half percent and any cost that we have whether it's salaries or whether it's pensions or whatever it may be is growing greater than our revenues that is that is going to place a burden on our operating budgets so it seems to me that we should use the growth in revenue as the relevant number we can use it you know through half a sort of an average we can pick at a time period and use the exact number for that time period doesn't matter to me but it seems we should compare it to some ok some for some of the number yes the i think i asked this question last week but i still want to make sure i understand that on the budget numbers in front of me the payments that we make the seven million dollars is that that comes is that is that in our budget expenses or does that come out before we get to the top line number revenue number a hundred million what are you what are you trying to look at that relative to this percentage that we're talking about because don't you want to look at that's that number grows the difference between one hundred million that what it's grown that i know that so i didn't read it went to the store employees were depending on the be your period you want to choose it grows roughly between three four and three seven depending on the period you want to choose right and that's for that top line number of top line number exactly right so any costs that grow in excess of our revenues and of course revenues could could ultimately not even grow that fast they could grow at two or they could grow at four point four which i just last want to make sure we look at the top line and not the operating because those losses are coming out before that operating budget number at fair enough  point seven depending on the years you choose it's just a simple it's a right it's a kind of a round number and it has a logical sort of ring to it does anybody disagree with using that as the baseline number ok which which which puts the it depends a little bit on so and i think there is there are two different points that are or that are what kind of embedded in what you're saying if you go back to the executive summary just remember conceptually one of the things that that greg was talking about was that the the the rich on a board is going to go through a schedule of evaluating this and the only thing is really set right now is fiscal seventeen right the rest of it is actually to be determined unless there is some radical change in our in our towns so the financial situation if you some shit is even remotely close to what the fiscal the financial town task force the financial house was come true given the revenue number or the revenue we have from the override we're going to be fine for fiscal sanity if you're right so i think we can definitively say i believe that the that the status quo to fully fund the pension is viable for fiscal seventeen and so to your point of like let's use the time it's not clear to me we need to like radically alter what the attempt to radically alter what the retirement board is and try to change the process for seventeen i think that is not necessary we're fine for seventeen i think to your point about whether we're fine for twenty twenty seven is a question of how much you know how much pain you're willing to kind of take out of the operating budget which is a number it's on the order of five million dollars so it's this one is going to happen in the best i mean that can be depending on whether the investor markets are higher because the maybe continue to be a viable option is usually dependent as jim is just saying on what investment returns we actually get and what changes potentially are made in the term it's not actually going into a hugely viable option if our if the stock market crashes and we're in deep trouble so that may not be viable no i feinstein i understand what you're saying i guess what i'm saying is that two percent courtesy something like an intro introductory clause which says sort of assuming you know if we somewhat take it off the table like there's got to be some sort of adjustment to this it is one of the three strategies right we're talking about how i think so it is i'm sure you're reading this is taking it off the table i'm reading it it's making is casting some doubt as to whether we can just sort of keep the same system in place i hope it does because i think it does capital rodolfo that we could spend four point seven billion dollars more out of our operating budget twelve years from now  formula as our benchmark because you can't analyze a moving target i mean it is a moving target but you have to have something as the example that you're using and so somewhere tell meeting has to understand yes this is  be next actually seems to me this is mostly an editorial issue with not where but i think it's written if it's open to conflicting interpretations it seems to me that the status quo the cost of a hearing that policy could increase substantially certain assumptions they're out in which case it may be that there may be well comment is actually to be make this less of a value judgment and more of a statement of rate of the facts as we know them so for example the say the status quo to fully fund the pension system is estimated to cost an incremental five million dollars  and twenty seven over what it is now is in fact what the chart below will say so that's not that that doesn't this was a way that's good or bad or that's affordable or not affordable it just states the facts about what is going to happen so i think that maybe the direction we may want to go but out i go to and then well that was what my comment was sort of around that too is that seems to me what i think greg was trying to do is say here are the three options so i'm going to make some comments on each option not necessarily judgments on each option so i think but that you could say since next year something  rating and i think those are important aspects of understanding why two thousand and twenty seven why we have the schedule in place right now i think a couple of those points we can just say this is what's happened right   things just one getting back to the pension obligation bonds you know a couple quick thoughts i had was we have to talk about the current interest rate environment is i actually think if we're going to think about the pension obligations front actually getting that right and getting that right at the right time actually it right the investment portfolio can be tweaked all the time but we should have some information about you know what the current interest rate environment is now what's the yield curve i have this four point seven five percent of the financial advisor gave over twenty years what is that number where did that number come from i have no idea about that number the other thing is that we talk about invest in stocks and bonds and alternative investments and it's as example private equity you know outside of private equity there is hedge funds or commodities  estate again we have back we're going to get more information on how the portfolio is invested but if we're going to even look at the pension obligation as a formal recommendation but the current interest rate environment is key and that's not something that we can wait two years for three in the table would be helpful to anyone else it would be helpful to others think it would be helpful i'm a little concerned about putting a fifteen year projection the budget down there that's why i talked around it but if nobody else has that concern we can just punch in a number and have a grow by this is where who really like to see more numbers and that's actually helpful and there are other times when showing more numbers can actually be distracting and confusing to people and makes it worse so i think maybe maybe makes sense to just explain hard to columns and we can take it and we can kind of decide next week whether or not it's better or worse with sorry this is the recreating the tables exercise  analysis find it kind of walk through the left bank on the increase in the pension contributions this is what siegel the town actuary ran numbers against based on the town meeting language and sort of our interpretation of that in other words looking at what the impact would be if the year over year increases were seven percent but if they were six five four or three percent the next column shows that based on then that analysis what the projected a full funding would be and i think a couple folks have asked for some more information on this because it seems to be a little bit surprising to people that it would have such a small impact to make what looks to be a pretty significant adjustment to it the main reason for that i think are that it is the compounded investment returns of the portfolio itself is just as important as how much we're putting into the from the from the budget each year in the contributions we're not changing the existing budget number we're just tweaking by how much it grows and employees also kick in so the end of the day this these which is one of the reactions that i had as well as that it's not super granular in the other direction so where you start with seven seven five which is the current number and then it just goes to six you know without getting massively granular like even showing s investment return which strikes me as being helpful and that is that kind of what you were getting at with your i would i would like to see that in the judgment should be made on what's what's realistic in terms of range of what one thinks one should have is one of want to have anything higher than seven point seven five maybe not so so one of the questions that i think is embedded in what you're saying is is it easy for us to determine to find out what rate of return is being assumed for the other twelve or eleven towns that are convention around this stuff is to recognize that the seven point seven five is an expected rate of return right and then typically you look at the twenty fifth the seventy fifth and the tenth in the ninety eight percent top six percent figure is in the ballpark of what the twenty fifth percentile would come out to be but we could chart in our pencils and come up with a really precise number that is more science behind it that would make people more comfortable and i think providing a range of numbers in the way just up or down is is as plug and play so that's easy to  do so i think twenty fifth percentile is six percent what is the seventy fifth percentile stars again if the twenty fifth percentile is roughly six percent what is the seventy fifth percentile it would go up in about the same amount of general i think and correct me if we talk about the you know whether whether they're going to be presented in a way that successful so my advice based on experience is that this single figure actually ends up being particularly and we can do a bunch of other  the six percent the reason for that is that if you ask people well how sure should we be that this plan is the right plan is going to lead it's almost everybody will say well i ought to be at least seventy five percent sure and some people will say we're talking about the school budget over here  you know saying this is our seventy fifth percent yeah what i'm saying is that this is kind of in the ballpark of twenty five wouldn't it be better to say that you know the number six percent i don't feel like seventy five percent of the outcomes would be greater than that six percent or some some other way to kind of think about is the expected return the seven and three quarter based on the current portfolio model about the next twenty years ok so that's an expected return on the current por that any p c would be the person to ask the percentile questions but frankly they're not going to help with the difference their numbers are very different in any way i was doing and it's i mean i mean you know that if you that if we agree on the these sanctions it's just pretty straightforward of seventy four million or seventy five seventy million dollars present value of what the liability is and you have to trust that and that and that actually summarizes all of that model of work and it's a handy number to work with and then first off there's one of the things in the town meeting where ford said what if we just stretch the schedule out to twenty forty if you did that you could actually keep the contributions level at about you know seven and a half or seven it's basically a flat payment schedule but the problem is of anything goes  wrong you're going to have to fix it and probably a lot is that within that the twenty four to about three so we could talk about that more but i don't think that's an option the time for that we're going to sit or i don't think it's really worth our time here and if you look at the bottom result in this page which shows is that three percent increase in contribution payment plan is great if everything turns out as expected because you could still paid off by twenty thirty but even with returns of six percent which is well under expectations but still not a disaster scenario you go you go beyond twenty forty which was an exception which is unacceptable i think because what it means is in a situation where things aren't quite as good as you thought which means you probably have other budget problems you have to raise the bar in your country which just gets back to i mean  that the driver here is not the percentage growth in your pension payments it's the return and if you go back to the charter for here which shows what the excess is you know if you did this on the let's say the three percent of the five percent scenario if it wouldn't show that much of a difference i guess because it gets so that's paid off and yeah i mean doesn't twenty eight because of company in the investor return obviously has a enormous impact i think the investment churn speaks to the risk factor which is at this point you know you know that you know at three percent for example you'd be seventy five percent confident that you c this the rate of growth that actually has the hasn't is the massive driver on the budget itself on the operating budget so we it's some of we're going to we have limited capacity to control the investment return  that i was i guess i was just relating it to people wanting to know what the impact on the budget was and thinking about you know pushing out the schedule with one of one play which would be to do a smaller percentage growth in your pension payments every year which is what this is yes and i think again showing that lever that changing that doesn't really affect the payment plan and that is the same investment rate in the expected case in the w just i agree with david that this is a key table and i think just for people who are not financial professionals like me i think having some explanation of what that six percent represents where it came from and what they're  see perhaps if it's just some are close enough to be applied to it but it's something we get i'm looking at the three percent how would you looking at the four percent where if you had six percent growth you want to get there by twenty thirty eight someone who's really concerned about the growth rate really concerned about how much is being pulled out a lot of the revenue stream might say well we can we can go there it seems to me that you know some statement about risk is i think is good we need that but we also need if we have a sense there's got to be a line below which the time for just is not going to go and it may be a lot sort of tighter than we as i don't want to put something out there that they say oh yeah that might be a really good idea if it's got absolutely no hope of passing roy and then a little puzzled about the turn this conversation seems to be taking because it sounds as though the the the conclusion would be  no it just sounds like where's we're starting to head down that path it's not my impression based on their you know the region recommendation the great need of the beginning of the meeting that our recommendation would be to work  with the retirement board on this issue over the course of this of so summit in months and not make a recommendation that says you should change the schedule for you know i don't think we're going there in this case because the focus of the discussion is when you get the full funding date and it seems to me that something that's more than line with town meetings request would be if the attempt to make more explicit if the full funding  became some other year for whatever reason whether because the investment return went down or because the funding rate went down the implication for the town budget is such because right now we have one table that says this is how much that's the implication for the operating budget here seems to be the punch line for a town meeting would be under one of these alternatives which basically means that the full funding base that fund today than the implication for the operative for the contribution in the operating budget is some alternative it seems to me that would be the and i enjoy to be some kind of introductory paragraph that says first love reminds people of not dealing with teaching point i'd like to know how many people are presently and i'd like to know because i think this is so people that are people who don't know about this about the options here and what they are and we've all made a very significant point tonight about the fact that this is going to be very attentive to the numbers the actual numbers are not going to be the same  i actually think it's less important to put the budget the actual budget line other than the one table that we have as an illustrative example because i think this is just the beginning of the conversation in some ways for tell meeting  i really do think that this is a lot to absorb and i've learned a lot from these two discussions that we've had and i mean i probably i'm for ignore the many town meeting members but there are other people who are no less than i do about this i think to some extent and i think it's going to be it's it's a lot to take in that's what i'm saying and i do not think that more figures necessarily would be helpful so one things we talked about earlier was the process i think losing other growth scenarios with other numbers in an appendix are you advocating not leaving that out and not doing that if you want to put in appendix i think that's fine but i'm not sure that i would add any more to the body including more actual budget numbers because they are real mean there if you look out fifteen years they're completely made up and who knows what's actually going to happen but i think stroke is the lawyers make up a structural critique which is a different maybe that you were thinking maybe the better way to look at this be to say if you change the full funding e tone that seems the town meetings concern is about how much competition is there in the operated with the focus but there's a lot to answer and it will provide that eight story yes that's right so just some direct questions like i think the for three quarters borrowing cost was my interpretation of something that's a financial advisor i gave a specific example i think was a fifty million dollars pen saying what how much better does today look like versus two years from now based on what the older was telling us and i think from a timing perspective if you go back to the original recommendation i put at the start the conversation michel obligation bond issue which is based on my experience it's a very it's a complex issue to get people to to develop a consensus around and you know on the one hand it is true it is a particularly low interest rate environment but if you look at some and at the end of the day there are going to be some number of thoughtful people we just have a concern about using leverage as a way to try to lower long term cost and i think in this particular conversation frankly it's a little bit of a challenge where we do have some good information on potential proposals but it's a little bit hard to look at a specific proposal that hasn't i think come through different channels of the board of selectmen it's important and i think it's also true that i know that there are people around this table that turns about the concept simple and i don't know that we have an advocate here that can really help drive the conversation multiple levels into the analysis speaking candidly and so i think the intent here was just to provide the basics and we did give and i did a little bit of math just kind of on  the probabilities there's a lot of research information but i think we need a little bit more feedback on what more we want to do in this report as opposed to just becoming educated charioteer of a town meeting and perhaps a recommendation saying we're already to analyze take a you know those are three separate long term liabilities that all look the same way when you boil it down to finance and we're we're on it and that the relative numbers are striking two it's seventy million for the pension but it's one hundred fifty million for the open and the financial task force number list of projects came up with one hundred thirty million dollars there just just in terms of the principal need so we you know if we s the pension issue by itself without figuring out what we're going to do with those other two you know that that we're still going to be struggling with what's the consequence of long term liabilities on the operating budget and it gets me to a point that you know i mean i think the plan we have in place where we were first knocked off pension and then get to the open maybe wrapped it up in a thirty year thirty year timeframe and i think that's a that's a that's a plan where is the borrowing capacity of the town i think we really need to save for bringing to the tack figures needed in terms of in terms of these you know six major major uncoupled couple of projects so you know beyond that timing are you know as we remember i'm sure the impetus for this is the citizens petition that we were responding to was approved by town meeting lou the lead by jim williams and i was an e mail chain and i know some of you people will with you with share with everybody that i don't think we should file our report until it's very clear that we've invited him to commit and stand by that statement and try to educate us i thought if he doesn't not be criticized for not giving him a chance  to make that pitch well i'll reiterate imitation for him to join us next week i think that you know to the extent that we make the kinds of directional comments that are in here about pension obligation bonds are not really evaluating any particular proposal such as i think at this point nebulous proposal that jim is sort of thrown banding about but has not actually i think put on the table for this specific analysis i think it's it's less problematic for us to comment generically in the way that we are and say as as i think reagan suggested that it any moment if there's a specific proposal on the table we're stand ready to analyze it and provide advice and counsel as it relates to that recommendation so i'm happy to have him come roy i do think i'm trying to suppress my personal views about french obligations so i say this but i think it would be appropriate for this report to briefly summarize the use of pension obligation bonds elsewhere how they're viewed without saying anything specific about belmont i think it's appropriate to  explain what the history is because there is some history of these things and i think that's a useful starting point christine because that was back after the great recession when you had both low interest rates and low valuations on stocks and it describes this window of opportunity that and i think we're just in a different set of circumstances today so those be the four that i would look at and  miller wrote those last two as a really well respected pension investor for the most part that expert in the field and so that's the most favorable stuff that's out there so johnny that's a good question and i think it may be worthwhile greg the rating agencies that sort of incorporate some of the boys comments too because i think it is looked as it has been looked at as a last resort thing david you know my understanding is that floyd has it sure i think and no problem whatsoever with distributing that i'm not sure that's exactly what ann was getting at two things one was what's the impact but the other one was what does it do to our debt capacity with respect to and i don't know whether it changed i will that will make to it that i think will make it better and is a very helpful document in terms of informing town meeting as to the way the land and then to the extent that we make a recommendation along the lines of what a great talked about at the beginning which is that you know essentially here's a bunch of information in our recommendation is that we'll continue to work over the coming months with the retirement board and and also to address any particular recommendations that are made such as a specific recommendation on pension obligation bonds i think that has the benefit that's an excellent recommendation i'm not sure is there a particular i mean short of just essentially posting a information session you know at the tree center and that people can come to i mean is or is there a more formal suggesting is providing a forum for town meeting members to attend which would allow them to discuss and ask questions about this or they can kind of get under the covers a bit more a little bit like the way we do you kind of like the league of women voters warrant briefings you know that that concept where you know you know between twenty and a hundred people can show up and ask questions and that's what you were getting at right i really support that so i would think you would want someone from the retirement board and maybe floyd or other people to address some of these some does that sound reasonable i mean i think there's a very reasonable i mean it's you know i mean it it was it was a directive to warrant committees and warrant committees responding to town meeting so i think for you to haul for a much like the league night you know for example where people come in and you know you explain it would be very helpful i on the fifteenth on the fourteenth and then the fifteenth where we can actually publish something our others comfortable with this is the notion that i would schedule in a way that you can certainly attend  understood and the other give a comment right well just quickly i don't i don't think getting it right is a defined term here so that this year it seems to me that this is just the beginning of it educational process short report that doesn't just have to answer all the questions a good answer because just a very basic issues and to be that discussion will be continued at this warmer and some other settings so short report that's not comprehensive i think would be fine in saying that a lot of the impetus behind this was some of the work that you millions of done and i just wanted to say that you know we did reach out and i think he was very gracious in saying he wanted to give room for a thoughtful conversation i know that's actually right and i think that that the idea of saying we'll be responsive to those yeah i think that's right and just to be clear to jim's credit i think that what you just said is right greg that jim not coming in i think was not a function of him saying you know this body is not important for me to come it was more saying i have a specific thing that i'm trying to pursue or that i'm trying to think about and i don't want to actually negatively impact the process of the word committee has been doing what we're doing right now so i actually would applaud him i think in the way that it was just saying in that we were able to have  today which i think would have been meaningfully different if we spend all our time talking about a specific pension obligation proposal which is only partially i think formed so again i'll reiterate the invitation for him to come if you would like to but if he doesn't i just want to be clear that i don't think it reflects my report of last week but i would like to say you know i want to thank the ward committee for their work i think it's an excellent report i think it's an excellent discussion greg thank you for all your hard work and boy this has certainly been educational to class which used to be really incredible especially when you see that there are probably thirty two hundred kids in this building so i think that has been in dire need for some time and the only other thing is as you can see when you just look at these class sizes are better than they were burbank and i was a struck by it was such a drop off in the kindergarten and we were all just talking about it and saying well well how is he in a class size of twenty four and then the incoming class of of in the kindergarten is and that's actually got up because up until a couple weeks ago they were like seventeen in the kindergarten and we've just been kind of blown away by twenty four in the first grade and seventeen eighteen now it's up to you know i see nineteen and twenty and kindergarten for some reason the first what the year was like could there be closer communication i think was the idea with the capital budget committee somehow between the work committee in the capital budget committee and i don't know exactly where we went with that or where we ought to go with that but i just wanted to let you know that i did mention that to the capital budget committee and they would be happy to have any kind of communication with the work committee about the process that we undertake but there i would like to put on the table for that purpose thinking about two aspects of the capital budget committees work if you will one is obviously the end your capital budget where we go through things like you know should we report the middle school or whatever very specific details about fire engines and pointing and roofs and things like that and that is we have extensive conversations about that as you know that's a process that starts when the budget process is ongoing here scuse me and we'd be delighted to have more input or communication with the work committee about that if that's of interest but the other part is that my understanding from the conversation we had at the last meeting is that the board of selectmen is going to ask the capital budget committee to be sort of the spearhead if you will for the capital projects planning because that is a list that over the years has had many conversations as you well know there are certain projects left on the table and they have to be prioritized and the financial task force did a certain amount of work on that and marie mahoney was on that subcommittee chaired it and she is the chair currently of the capital budget committee and so it seemed to make sense to ask the capital budget committee to continue that work and so i think that that is going to be part of the charge of the group for this year so to the extent that the work committee is interested in that and would like to have more conversation about that i just want to put that on the table that that is going to be part of the charge of the capital budget committee great i mean  myself and others can chime in and i think as you guys are learning more and you're feeling like you have a you know you're at a position where providing an update about the direction you're headed in would be useful to the one committee i for one would be happy would be happy to hear that  over the whole payment schedule and that's looking at that we can all see what buckets of money from a long term planning we would have in savings that might go to other projects along those lines i think i do agree there's risk all these assumptions i don't think circulate this report and i would do the same with the open with my team is that this is always costly to be changing so i think we come up with recommendations but every couple years like the retirement board does i think you have to revalue with things because we might have a couple bad years or things might change or there might be other other issues up pops this is number one and done so to speak and then the other thing on i think jim commented on it these are all interconnected and i think that's where a lot of the time enough we're thinking that you know this is one piece of the puzzle but the  larger piece and there's also a larger capital budget so how do we balance all of that there might be a strategy for the pensions but then we look at larger concept of our picture of do for capital budget investments we might want to ratchet back or add