people to get in forms of thank you very much mary and again a thank you to the town first officer down a minister's office and the media center for all the hard work in making all this possible so appreciate all of that last thing i'll say is that again in terms of the ground rules i think everybody is familiar with this kind of vent from having done it before but just as a reminder this is an opportunity for tommy members to ask questions and get informed about articles that are going to come before us a town meeting in a couple weeks this is the purpose is to be able to ask questions and hopefully make town meeting all the more efficient and effective it's not the time or the place to be practicing your speech be advocating for a particular position to be arguing the merits of one side of a warrant article or the other so i will be kind of strict about that in the sense that i will try to keep us focused on  questions and opportunities for information and learning as opposed to advocacy so please just ask your permission for that in advance the other thing from the standpoint of timing my intention is to finish with a hard stop at nine pm of course if we finish before that so be it but i want to make sure that everybody from an expectation is perspective realizes that i'm looking to get us done at nine pm at the latest ok so thanks again so what we're going to do is talk through the articles that are on the warrants for the for the june town meeting that starts with oracle eighteen articles eighteen through twenty seven are the financial articles and then the remaining oracles that we've got or is three and four teams article three is the minuteman article the new agreement and then article fourteen is the citizens petition that relates to the the building of homes in particular is a sony related article so what we'll do is we'll go through those articles one by one give a brief explanation of what's going on with that article is about in the know give people an opportunity to come up to mike and ask questions to the extent that you end up having multiple questions please give an opportunity to your colleagues to come up to the microphone and ask a question before you ask many many questions  and obviously if you could keep your comments to sink that would be terrific ok so we'll start with article eighteen article eighteen is really into the salaries of what officials i can actually see what's on the screen but it may be up there  and david kale are you there you are back there so in a number of instances david will kind of give us a quick overview of exactly what's going on with each one of these articles and one thing i'll tell you is that we that the w committee as a group has investigated and done in some cases consider a lot of work on her on all the warrant articles with the exception of the last two or we have not yet voted on the last two but on every our other if i don't get electrocuted elected town treasurer town clerk board of assesses and the like and is included in the f y fifteen operating budget are there any questions about oracle eighteen ok so moving on to article twenty article twenty is the first article that really gets at the core of the budget just to be clear our budget for fiscal year two thousand and fifteen is a little over ninety five million dollars the various motions that you see in article twenty represent the vast majority of that ninety five million dollars of expenditure so basically all of the operating expenses with the exception of the capital discretionary amounts which are in article twenty three are in article twenty and then the elements that are fixed within the budget and so the the total the total budget is ninety five million dollars as you can see up here there are about fifteen million dollars of fixed costs that are in the budget which include things like the pensions both debt payments and interest state charges the roads override  abatements and minuteman so those represent the little over fifteen million dollars in fixed cost the remainder is about a little under eighty million dollars of operating cost in the budget which is then split between town school and capital discretionary which you can see on the bottom so capital discretionary is in article twenty three along with the roads override amount which is part of the fixed all right so that's an article twenty three essentially the rest of the budget is in article twenty two so that everybody understands ok also you know overview on the on the municipal side overview on the schools on i think everybody knows that the work committee works with on a subcommittee basis so there are some committees assigned to the schools in the various municipal groups and there are multiple members of the work committee many of whom are here who then do a very detailed investigation of each of these budgets and in the work committee report has generated as a result of that all you have copies of the fifty plus page work committee report so david elkind if you thank you ok we'll start with the budget process briefly as you all aware the budget process begins in the late fall when the war committee and the border selectman work collaboratively to develop are available  actual collections and we'll get into the specific is where that led us at the beginning the process of how that change we start our process in december with the department heads they're given budget guidelines to develop their  any necessary adjustments in addition to that while this is going on again this year and we've collaborated with the superintendent of town and school officials to share information all on process so that  we made sure that we were operating off the same set of facts and same set of assumptions and information in addition to that that includes collaborating with our local and state elected officials town and school officials again and working all together  to make sure that we were all on the same page and i would say that this year particularly there was a lot of meetings that took place of with the school committee in superintendent his staff and our staff as we work through the budget assumptions and  through budget assumptions and strategies about how to put the budget together and i would say that i think this is probably the third year that this collaborative process as taken place and i think that that we believe in our budget document getting more improvements will be made but we've continued to try to make improvements to present information to the public and at the end of the budget process or i should say at the point where we submitted the budget to the board it's like basically the adjustments there were on the table as we submit the budget in february again a whole different way of looking at the budget but similar to what mike just did is again our budget is ninety five point two million dollars it's an increase of three point five million or three point eight percent of the school budget is forty six point two increase one point eight million or four point one total capital budget which is the discretionary in roads components of the budget  increase two hundred sixty seven thousand and eleven percent and tower budgets including fixed cost total forty six point four million which is an increase of one point four million over three point one percent so as we talked about the budget we began basically with about a million nine available to distribute after we took into account cost increases for the fixed cost the fixed cost again deal with our state assessments deal with our pension assessment based on the actuarial study and minimum and assessment and the like so there was a million nine available to distribute to towns and schools million one to the school one hundred thousand to the town as we were working on the budget the governor submitted his budget and it included in the terms of additional revenues five hundred fifty six thousand dollars in state a there was some additional new growth that was identified as part of the recap process say the tax rate in addition to that two hundred thousand dollars was allocated to the capital budget to support sidewalk repairs and  one time rmy that we received from a contract renegotiation was allocated to the capital budget to support the purchase of a snowblower piece of equipment to assist the town in removing snow from its sidewalks  five hundred fifty six thousand and the readjustment of minutemen a cost that seven hundred thousand dollars was reallocated to support the school budget during the process which was included in the submission to the school committee and to the  assessment and then again as i mentioned there were allocations to the capital budget to cover both of those items i just talked about in may so the budget cuts made it in february in may as i mentioned to a moment ago we were waiting to see what additional state they might have been generate through conversations with the legislature they've come down with a consensus stayed a number which generated about a fifty thousand dollar increase the belmont would is included in their budget submissions collectively so we should contain included that in our final budget and fifty thousand dollars in new growth based upon the assessors taking a look at the five hundred thousand dollars estimate of new growth that would generate new property taxes they look at where the per building permits and what construction is happening in town to give increase that number from five hundred to five hundred fifty thousand in addition to review of unexpended balance comprising your appropriation for capital projects we're able to identify about two hundred fourteen thousand dollars of term backs to support the capital budget which is one of the reasons why the capital budget is increasing by about eleven percent and then there was a small increase in property tax revenues what did those increases in additional revenues support they supported reinstatement of a school resource officer at a point seven five that position will be given work in september to coincide with the beginning of school during the process we had a conversation with the light department and there's a estimate increase in our cost for electricity for time schools of about ninety thousand and as i said two hundred fourteen thousand with allocated to the capital budget so generally when the budget was submitted in february it was in balance and they supported school in town evolved since november again i won't go into a lot of detail here but again just shows you where we're spending our money again the largest slice of the pie is the facilities department is about ten percent of the winter all less than one point four million one point five percent of the budget the rose allocation for capital for pavement management program is two point two point one point three million dollars or one point three percent state charges is one million seven one point eight percent general government which includes all you departments at town hall basically the treasurer's office time ministries office of information technology as is the clerk other general government functions are put in that amount four point four percent of the total budget pension insurance and benefits that represents a point eight percent of the budget is about eight point three million dollars and that represents  about six million dollars for our pension costs which are based on our biannual valuation that's conducted by the retirement board and basically the amount of money that we need to provide to the time to  cover our actuarial costs that are determined every two years that's six million of the eight point three as well as health insurance cost liability policies workers comp insurance policies budget is the property tax which is what eighty percent of our funding source if you combine that with our state aid which is a pool well less than one million dollars that's almost ninety percent of our budget funding from property taxes and sta budget continues to use a million he of free cash which is about two percent of our revenues to fund the budget recreation fees is seven hundred thousand or so or well less than one percent and m s p a reimbursement is three hundred eighty two thousand that revenue will go away next year but that will coincide with a reduction in the debt service for the chinese school so and then all other  other department the fees and the revenues generated other taxes the biggest chunk of that three point two million dollars is the motor vehicle excise tax which is about two point eight million dollars so that just again just gives you a graphic representation of how we fund our budget for fiscal fifteen in terms of categories again but seven percent of our budget is to is used to fund salaries wages and benefits  that service as i mentioned is about five percent buff i mean dollars capital for roads discretionary and operating capital of money is included in departmental budgets cover capital purchases and not salary which are the things that the town buys which is energy especially to wish and supplies beach area was accepted and that's about twenty one percent of the budget or twenty million dollars again this is for the whole out of two hundred thousand dollars has been allocated to sidewalk repair and eighty seven thousand dollars as i mentioned from one time any source has been allocated to purchase a piece of equipment for public works to assist them is supplemented by five hundred thirty four thousand dollars which is one of the motions that will be reviewing the moment for state money that we get from chapter ninety to support road improvements so between the two it's almost a million  project so that i can be considered by tommy after him point at the end we know the chair the board is likely noted that we will be holding a public forum to solicit input on the belmont center reconstruction project so i think that's the last slide i hope last one just again reminders about under prop two and a half as i noted new growth represents five hundred thousand dollars of funding source towards our budget so prop two and a half allows your leverage to increase by two and a half percent plus to grow if you don't have new growth that means you have less money to spend on operating budgets so you get new growth is very important  increase not property tax revenue again part of the conversation it's taking place with the financial taskforce is a take a look at not proper tax revenues to see if those can be increased with a variety of strategies u reserves in general again article twenty one in is basically the use of revenues as part reserves the fund the budget the school department superintendent talk about using some of its school reserves to fund the f y fifteen budget and again i think generally fortunately this year we were the beneficiaries of of additional state aid which doesn't necessarily happen the recent years it's been a decrease in state aid to  year where we've actually benefited from increases but again i think that without that kind of infusion of state aid increases it would have been a very very difficult to a budget year so that's our presentation and i think the superintendent is going to do early three and so this year actually that's indexed every year by two and a half percent so the number going in was one million two hundred nineteen thousand dollars the capital budget committee when they allocated its funds had an adjustment at the end of about sixty five thousand dollars and they allocated that to the roads budget which gets you to the one million to eighty four and that was an earmark for belmont center if it goes forward in addition to that we received five hundred thirty four thousand dollars from chapter nine funds from the state and as i mentioned at the time meeting good legislation the governor hopefully will support an increase to three hundred million total for the chapter nine program which would translate into approximately two hundred seventy thousand dollars increase of the town of belmont fiscal fifteen the same kind of conversations took place last year and as it turned out the government did not release that extra hundred million from two hundred million to three hundred million which basically meant we maintained our five hundred thousand dollars allocation so that's the primary sources of of the paper management approximately to do sidewalks is in sun in front of a house of between fifteen hundred two thousand dollars so that all right number peter so if you take two hundred thousand dollars and i think you basically can just visualize a house and it's about fifteen hundred to two thousand per house lot to do the street sidewalk reconstruction went and yet again just to be clear the roads money basically is in a part of it which is the over issue i know that the cambridge that was the same language that was used when we received our credit report from moody's and the other rating agencies in terms of the budget the budget has a six million dollar corporation which is the amount of money that is equal to the amount that was required as part of the every other year evaluation done by the pension board of the time the board to basically come up with the funding schedule that allows  unfunded pension liability to be funded in twenty twenty seven and again we have to twenty forty two funded for basically the retirement board in terms of developing a schedule is targeted that day and is basically provide the funding schedule to meet it based upon the assumptions that are part of the actual or evaluation again they will be doing another actuarial valuation which based upon market conditions on their investments in the life may allow that amount of money needed to fund our unfunded liability to be less or may allow the time period to be shorter again that's why you do the study every two years to make adjustments based upon your investment performance and any changes in the demographics of our retirement population so six million dollars to to deal with that assessment based upon the actuality study  sliding liability that sort of moves in thirty year waves so basically you do a study every two years similar to what you do for your pension study and you come up with what your bly ability is  want to see is a recognition of the liability by the establishment of a room of a revocable trust and open up trust to basically collect monies that may be put into the trust tell boss at that liability right now the amount of money in the trust is a million three as of six thirty met made seven as of today so again that will be added to based upon the appropriation that's before you again that is  recognition it's certainly not going to solve the problem i think what it allows you to do is have a vehicle so that when we meet our unfunded pension liability the amount of money that's allocated to that purpose could be shifted over to fund the opioid liability in addition to that the town does require individuals who are medicaid eligible medicare caid eligible medicare eligible to participate in the program first and we basically provide secondary insurance not all communities have done that i think at this trust was again a factor that the rating agencies look for so i think we've done the things that we can do is state legislation that's pending that will help provide relief long term but that's been stalled for a period of time but i think the rating agencies  like the fact that we've done all the things that we can do to limit our costs to the best we can we set up the opec trust fund we contribute to it and it's a recognition and i think the rating agencies understand that it's a huge liability  aaa rated communities that have the same issues that we have about our unfunded liability for opeth but again the recognition is a very important thing for the rage that we're not putting our heads in the stand that we recognize that we're trying to find it we have a long term plan and we've done all the so member what happened in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine basically that an impact on the assets of the retirement system so you want to give yourself some room so if there's a downturn in the market you haven't schedule yourself right to the very end and find out they've had a downturn in your investment performance and you can't meet the deadline in the judge in the judgments that twelve years is the right size based upon the recommendations of the actually that the time a board hires i think that's their target date they feel comfortable with the negotiations for those benefits were done when they were expected to be paid on one s as you go places so is it is possible regulations which are called gaz b forty five the approach that we use is in fact a combination of pay as you go plus a component that we fund into the stabilization fund the for so it's basically those two elements and just to be clear the amount that we are putting in on a pay as you go basis is in article twenty it actually is the it's part of the the motion that is directly after the one on the screen so  fifty sorry fifty four percent of that amount just to be clear is the thirty four b which called thirty four b contribution where we pay an annual amount pay as you go so the pay as you go piece is right there in the budget the other piece  understands is the piece that is in article twenty four which is the stabilization component that's the two hundred sixty five thousand that as ford was just talking about we believe collectively along with our actuarial advice that making a contribution on a page ago plus this nominal granted following our policy contribution helps us actually maintain the aaa rating that we  we have made the cut the commitment to follow the policy that we've established which means that we will pay the obligations on a page you go basis and we will make a contribution using the policy that policy generated turns fifty five thousand dollars contribution this year and you know the nature of the possible going to details but it would be roughly that size so the some solution to the larger problem which is how do you actually address the one hundred ninety six million dollars of unfunded liability is not an issue that we are as a community are going to be able to solve on our own this is a situation where we are in the same boat as every other community in massachusetts there will be state legislation that will ultimately deal with this we're doing our part to do the right thing and the ratings agencies and the actuarial folks as well say hey you're doing the right thing by looking at this by looking at it this way this is the determination that we as a community of made ok thank you get other questions before we move on to the school side and we can fund the future pension benefits that then that point today of money could be switched to more fully funding up is that correct yes thank you yes just to be clear the of the six million dollars that we are funding began in article twenty four retirement about eighty five percent of that is actually going towards the unfunded liability and fifteen percent of i'm not mistaken is going towards current pension costs so we're using that eighty five percent to pay down that liability and once we get to twenty twenty seven that would give us the option to take that reasonable chunk and if we're so choose deploy its words unfunded open rights so why don't we continue on with   i'm laurie slapping my role tonight is i just wanted to give you a brief overview of the process that the school committee goes through as we review and develop the budget with the school department as david explained we get the revenue targets early in right before the end of your dr kingston along with tony to call a general finance director the ones who are critical in developing the budget and when dr king arrived three years ago we established subcommittees on the school committee one of which is the finance up committee and i've been serving on that committee along with kevin cunningham and rouget and once the budget season really kicks in in full in the early part of the year we have been meeting regularly every tuesday morning with tony and with dr kingston to go through the budget section  by section to ask questions to we've been watching the sausage making as it goes through to help develop some of the presentations for the public so we've been critically involved in those pieces of it and then we report out to the full committee who also all six of us looked through the budget very carefully we had a couple of public forms were looking for input from the community and then finally the school committee adopts the budget formally at the public hearing which for us occurred last tuesday night and at that point the school committee votes to adopt the budget as it stands and for submissions to town meeting on the other piece of porsches that as michael mentioned we work very closely with the warrant committee and subcommittee and other members is to go through and examine it line by line the other comment i wanted to make is that i think the i fifteen budget as you may have seen already is able to maintain pretty much the status quo luckily with the infusion of the additional state aid we didn't have to cut any programs or go through any dire consequences we still do  challenges as you healed more about from dr king's as i'm sure many of you are aware we've seen the rise in enrollment we have increasing government mandates we have our students have increasing needs these aren't going away so i mean this is something that we're very aware of now and we're go through a little bit more the details for you thank you formation of a budget of course it has to be guided by certain kinds of principles and our fundamental principles are to collate it in the strategic plan we have a three year plan and i'll be entering the third year of that plan on july first the primary structural goals are to appear all students for college and career to support continuous improvement and to ensure that students receive instruction from consistently highly qualified educators that's tight closely with the new educator evaluation system that's in place the basic objectives that we have in this budget are to maintain and as laurie said the quality of instructional services at current levels we have been designated by the state department of elementary and secondary education based upon not just in his measures but any number of rubrics we've been designated a level one district that means we're a top performing district this is a case where we get home we stood on our own the target because it's the top performing to district we also are magnet district and attract students and dealing with this attraction is part of the challenge that we face in the years coming forward we want to continue implementing the current strategic initiatives that we have a place in the plan and that we we need to sustain the continued implementation of the new educator phrasal system which we've really embraced to wholeheartedly we do have a requirement now in consequence of what's called a program review by the department elementary and secondary education to provide mandatory  shelter english immersion training for any teacher who would conceivably have a second language or another in his or her classroom that means virtually over time we have to train all of our teachers  we do need to meet our consist our existing contractual commitments we're also in negotiations a word about that later we do intend in this budget to continue all the new positions that we had to embrace in fiscal fourteen because of the impact of increased involvement the impact of special education services and other matters to the extent possible we want to try to address the increasing class size we want to maintain of course existing facilities and avoid deferred maintenance as it's called the higginbottom pool memorandum and we want to maintain a competitive system of compensation we do hire and retain highly qualified individuals  primary cost drivers for the school system of course our salary obligations it's two thirds of our budget and the student enrollment is increasing markedly as of may first we had a net increase of one hundred forty three students to the system my prediction is that we would increase next school year by a hundred fifteen that's pure guesswork there's a little bit of a of an algorithm behind that but it is a guess and we know that mandated special education costs generally increase somewhere in the neighborhood of three to seven percent each year you know variables that we face right now is that we are in contract negotiations we don't know what the settlement be we have to try to work with are available we do have to work within our available revenue that's not necessarily an easy sell to all the units that were negotiating with we do have a net gain in student enrollment the new england school development council is predicting on the basis of historical evidence and there of the rhythms that we would gain eighty three students next year as i said based upon the most recent history we've had an increase of bubble of the last three years particularly and the fact that we're at level one district i'm predicting about one hundred fifty one hundred fifteen students the bit a little bit more about what we're doing with the class size issue later on here we don't know whether there will be an increase or decrease in federal based upon level funding at this point quick chart here that shows that seventy five percent of the revenue sources for the school budget come from the town of belmont the  twelfth little over twelve percent comes from the massachusetts chapter seventy allocation which is the state aid given to the town about not for the schools nearly six percent is from state and federal grants less than six percent is from  the revolving funds and fees and that little tiny fraction is important is what the minister referred to as the school department reserve fund it's a lab to wishing credit that we've not expanded but we were posing we are proposing to expend in fiscal fifteen this is what the actual budget looks like it's much more detailed in the town look at that you have but the bottom line is that we're increasing the overall  chapter of the overall general fund budget by one point eight million dollars a four point zero seven percent increase or if you look at the grand total four point one cover through various fees and other resources grants the total school budget for fiscal fifteen then would actually amount to fifty two million four hundred eighty two thousand four hundred two dollars which is an increase over all from the previous fiscal year of three three and a half percent now we are faced with certain challenges we would do certain undertake certain things if priority if additional funding were available i would put this in our back pocket hoping maybe the state or the federal government will come up with more resources we do have a commitment to provide an additional district wide english language learner teacher and e teacher as a consequence of this program review that i mentioned earlier we have a bubble in the fifth grade it's a very big class rising up to the cherry we really need to offer a new section which we would try to do next year with available funds this is not in the budget at this point if we can find any money to do something we would put this is a high priority and there are additional middle school slots that we would fill in consequence there is a need to increase a more electives at the high school we do need to hire more elementary teachers eventually certainly we have as a result of the report student student life one of the modeling group reports the school department had commission a real need to pay more attention to the emotional and social development of our children which would imply additional guidance counselors additional support personnel the information technology department has asked for another position which we are not funding at this point we would like to increase our materials budget we do want to continue our investment in you know they should we will be continuing what we do have started but we would like to increase opportunities  always would welcome more increased time for our professionals but i do not see that as such on a special topic of class size this chart tells you the picture how well over forty two hundred students that we're calling for right now this is the average this is the average class size increases not the moment the average class size has increased in consequence of our growth in the moment over the past ten years i'm sorry and what we have to guard class size s a set of guidelines and stablished by the school freshman and over the course of the last five years we have been hitting that guideline limit and in some cases exceeding it depending on what grade level we're talking about  we anticipate that anywhere between thirty to forty percent of our classes next year will exceed that guideline are that missing link is here we are taking some short term actions to address the issue of class size we are going to be distributing new students right now across the grades that does tend to indicate that we would be increasing class size in our elementary classes in any case by probably one student classroom we will be assigning new in rowley's through the central office as a kind of a fluid boundary way of assigning the other modeling groups both the issue of capacity in class size of treasure carmen did mention that we hope eventually to be remodelling from a high school that may give us an opportunity for for class sizes there i think in the short term beginning with the fall of two thousand and fifteen you're likely to see some modular units in use what we want to do is continue using the central office for the distribution of students and we will explore other kinds of innovations such as a combination classroom model for example i grew up that way i think many who probably have the experience as talking about both aspects or all aspects of the budget the things that david in lower in time just talked about represent about ninety million of the ninety percent ninety million of the ninety five million of the budget so it's a lot  so we spent some time on that if there are any further questions feel free to step forward factor at all in the increases as a factor of revenue for us as a very small number we do not we're not a commission district so we are except in general that moment from out of district the only out of district students that we actually have  medical students we have a commitment to two hundred our commitments there we're not admitting or increasing our medical allocation for next year you may recall that the medical students are reimbursed and we are reimbursed for a medical students out of the state grant thank you very much you will use precinct one town meeting member dr kingston congratulations on your success i'm curious again about the dynamic in the budget these are the the contract negotiations that you're engaging in in obviously there's a need to pay market obviously if a commitment is made it needs to be met in i'm wondering how are those negotiations informed by the pension the unfunded pension obligations in the unfunded post employment retirement benefit problems they're not pension fund that we're talking about it's one of the covered under the massachusetts teachers retirement system which is a different fund altogether ok now we do have employees that do impact the open that is the non licensed employees do as would be covered under that right david the average per pupil expenditure in belmont is twelve thousand two hundred fifty dollars for plus or minus that's deceptive because there are students who will cost two hundred thousand dollars in their students a cost is twenty five hundred dollars priority order i should mention of course that the school resource officer officer has been put into the police department budget over and i'm just so they aren't hurt here and could you just quickly run down do you what are rough costs for those things if you want to do the first five just i'm just looking for hire you have very loosely additional teacher averages about sixty five thousand that includes most of the benefits but that's again an average and specialized teacher like a e s l teacher could very well be seventy five thousand same for the middle school teachers the average sixty five counselor is a license personnel so that's also the same figure what we do in many of the electives at the high school is higher part time so that would be proportion so it sounds like to do the first five another three hundred thousand dollars of profit and just a nother question something that came up in a another precinct meeting that we had last week was trying to get a better sense  of is the is the belmont school system which is awesome atrophying to a point where it's starting to sink but we're not going to know for a while so i was trying to think of analogy if if the school system was a boat and it has ten built pumps which keep it from taking on more water how many of those ten build pumps are currently on how many are off use per student and so on and therefore be able to predict kind of space needs you the town needs going forward there are interim measures that are perfectly reasonable and also cost effective like modular units we've had that experience before we survive much of it as well we actually own one may want to be using that in some way so the long term solution really has to be deliberate and thoughtful but there will be short term measures as well you know maybe we may buy one built next year but maybe three th rigor was still there there may be holes in our buildings and that is terrible too but i guess i was more that you've got to have both you've got to have capacity as well as the talent to live or the instruction there's no question announcer salant  talent builds pumps going i think that's very strong we are draw district that is we do draw talent we do have people who are ready to come to belmont if we he's the be offered the only point i was going to make is if you do look at the roman reports that are available online and all the modeling group reports doctor cases mention you'll see that the class sizes are bigger the elementary school we have some of the smaller classes are graduating high schools i mean that's why i think we have to watch very carefully as these groups move up to the high school for i'm sure folks appreciate this is a must as i think they should and maybe won't matter to you but in the period from two thousand and three to two thousand and six based on the auto were first in roman zero percent of our k to four classes were over the targeted class size guidelines heard status quo do you really think that's a term we should keep on using we talk about our ability to match resources with growing in rome quick answer is that mr berry's data is in fact for the long range financial planning board right now it's been very helpful the longer answer is anticipating gross means that you also have to induce a paid the kinds of resources needed to make growth i can say this not as a spokesman for the school committee but as an outgoing superintendent i think the town is at the point where he has to consider seriously an operation the right recommendations on all of these were worn articles on all these different motions in every instance we are recommending unanimously favorable action on each one with the exception of the minuteman individual item which is a center of fifty one thousand dollar  ppropriation and that with the vote was twelve to one recommending favorable action the one mentioned there is simply that we are seeing ongoing meaningful increases in the administrative costs of the operating budget on the minuteman side and so there was an expression of concern about that but in general nearly unanimous recommendations for favor washing across the entire budget so i moved forward to article twenty one basically the revenues that support the budget that are derived from outside sources so for example the bay many exemption surplus account has a balance in it that basically is a portion of it's be transferred into the general fund to support the operations of the general from budget we receive a pilot payment from the belmont like department so that that's an allocation from their budget our budget so basically these have already spoken about to some extent this is the upfront funds for high improvements the funds that come from the state in the form of chapter ninety funds so this five hundred thirty four thousand dollars in addition to the one point two million or so that's in the next article twenty three represents our paper management budget so if there is there any questions about this we can take them but otherwise we move on to the capital budget and article twenty three again  would like to make before we go through what i said was going to be up there as a slide i would urge you to read the capital budget report you would have received it from the town clerk we spent a considerable amount of time this year revising it cleaning out all the old stuff making it a little more straightforward and clear so i think it gives a really good picture of what our process is and our decision making and how we arrive at choosing the things that we're going to you for a town meeting appropriation our budget includes as david pointed out earlier some one time funds which is wonderful for us for this year and those one time funds are being spent on road maintenance the sidewalks snowblower i almost jumped up a town meeting the other night when we started talking about the snow bylaw i wanted to say but wait but wait we're going to buy a new snowblower it's going to be great so those items are being funded by one time funds and that's great but that doesn't necessarily carry forward for us so we're trying to make the most of the money that we have there are no big purchases this year often i get up before you or my predecessors have gotten up before you and said oh this year we're buying fire equipment or snowplow or we're investing in the track or some big ticket item like that there really is none of that this year so we were able to sit back and fund a series of smaller items that are just as necessary but nothing's going to jump out at you as a big purchase from us this year as always we put a high priority on safety so you'll see the items that we purchased for the school department in the police department the fire department we put a high priority on that and we tried to choose wisely those safety items to fund and then finally there are ongoing funding pieces we have an ongoing program for replacing the unit ventilator s at the high school and that continues i think in fact this year we may be at the last year of the second to last year that and we also do put money aside every year for the ongoing building envelope  work there was a study done a number of years ago that identified what kind of work needed to be done primarily on our school buildings but ultimately that's going to be expanded into our other town buildings as well but for the school buildings when you look at the roof the walls the windows the doors what needs to be done and so every year we put anywhere from about one hundred twenty thousand dollars to two hundred fifty thousand dollars towards that envelope work those are the main categories of things that we have  list is that they are i'm sorry it's such small print but it is in your warrant in bigger print i will to lighten up the mood and let's see if i can do this one of my daughters challenge me to highlight this without getting giggly the report that we gave you and the lovely big print list that we gave you for our capital budget requests doesn't prove it does include a belmont high school pool upgrade the installation of ultra violet filtering system not an ultra violent filtering system as you will see in your list but the belmont high school pool for many of you has been an ongoing issue our new director of facilities has worked very hard on that practically from the day he walked in the door we're trying to do as much work there as we can in the most cost effective way and you will see on the list two items they do continue to address the him are important issues happy to answer any questions for any questions consolidated facilities department which brought together the facilities management that took place on the school sided with the facilities management on the town side that is overseen by a board that represents the superintendent and the town administr and so it's terrific to have jerry here and to be making great progress in the facilities arena so when we move forward to article twenty four an article twenty four is the open stabilization fund i didn't expect it when i was much conversation about it at the time that we did we actually got into an enormous amount of detail i'm not sure there's a whole lot more to say at this point again this is the piece article twenty four the two hundred sixty five thousand roughly that we are in addition to the pay as you go component contributing to the local trust  questions we can talk about it now great so in the next three articles article twenty five twenty six and twenty seven are their authorization for revolving funds of the appropriation for insurance proceeds of about fifty one thousand dollars and  age back barring the authorization if you could describe each of the three of them very briefly and at the said there any questions about any of the three we can taken together article twenty five is the standard article that's on the warrant with regard to establish the expenditure limits for the revolving accounts as listed article twenty six under state law any insurance proceeds that you receive in excess of twenty thousand dollars needs to be appropriated  we had a repair that was covered by insurance with regard to the burst pipe in the high school boiler room and we received a check for fifty thousand one hundred forty one which we're looking to accept an appropriate  needed and not required the project has been closed out and basically is the difference between what would the authorized vs what was issued thank you david are there any questions about articles twenty five through twenty seven good evening everybody we actually held a informational forum tuesday night on this on this article it was well attended in i think we cleared up a lot of questions for some of the people in the g r district general residents districts that had had some concerns my my resident expert joe de stefano who is going to be here with me tonight is ill he actually has been been sick all day and was unable to make it so i can field questions and if any of our other plenty b lot more time at tom meeting with it but some of the history to the general residence zones are in i think every precinct two in town and the history of the issue that led us to this point is is that there  were were a number of developments of single family homes that were torn down and replaced with with two families in in every case sometimes two families were torn down and replaced with two families and there was a great concern among the neighborhoods that that these buildings number one had no public process they were built you know according to the underlying zoning with regard to how they looked in how they fit into the character of the neighborhoods in many cases they're much taller than their neighboring homes much bulkier dents they sit back off the street skate further than than all of the neighbors do and we're a great concern to the neighbors notwithstanding the economic impact that i want to even get into here we'll get into it much much more at a town meeting but the neighbors got together and formed a citizens group and meeting overwhelmingly and i believe it was a special meeting and instead of the requirement of ten signatures to ask for that i believe the requirement was one hundred signatures which were obtained for this for this moratorium again tom meaning overwhelmingly met immediately after town meeting last year with with the citizens group on a number of occasions as well as with clancy the inspector of buildings in jeffrey wheeler who were going to do their work in the development office unit development office and we also asked the town council to to weigh in on a number of the things that we were talking about citizens group had a large list of things that were of concern and we tried through the various tools allowed  by the zoning you by the by the planning board to to to cover and correct as many of these things as we could we drafted redrafted many occasions met numerous times with the citizens group we had working sessions we had the planning board meetings we had public hearings and again all through this we weighed in with the town council to make sure we were you know not overreaching legally and what we felt there were there are critics who think we may be overreaching in some areas i think that without the tool of special permit which is basically what we've engaged mostly  every two family home that gets constructed whether it's a single family to a two family a two family to a two family or a new two family where there is no building at all we're in have proposed a special permit requirement for that  special permit a component of his design and site plan review the component is a public hearing process in a series of meetings where neighbors get an opportunity to to weigh in on what's going to be  built obviously the planning board will use its discretion and its expertise to to help improve the project and ultimately have a project that fits in the community in maintains a character of the neighborhood  it really comes down to me anyway personally to a philosophical kind of question do we do we want to allow developers to commit and really do what they want by by the grandfather methadone on many undersized lots and put up these these homes that are meeting the zoning criteria that's in place but dwarfing their neighbors and causing a lot of distress in the neighborhoods and really changing the character of the neighborhoods or do we want to give the planning board tools that they can employ to control this process by making it a more public process and ultimately protecting the character of the neighborhood which is one of the charges of the planning board in general  so we don't want to discourage development we want to encourage thoughtful development that fits the character of the neighborhoods and i think that's basically the overall situation so i open it up to any questions if anybody has any questions john robotham precinct to we had a precinct to caucus a couple days ago and you know i think in general everyone applauds what's going on here we want to know is there going to be an acquittal into effort this coming year about things like mcmansion you know it's interesting that the planning board has been criticized the time for not being very proactive of late and  this past year we were really mandated to do a lot of the thing a lot of things that came up the planning board with things that we were asked to take care of because of changing state regulations or you know us citizens group which which had a moratori um shy of having a moratorium for the for the top you talk about it's one of the things that we hope to address on more of a town wide basis for that particular issue and other issues we know we haven't once town meeting is over we'll be sitting down and we go over a our officers and what we're going to be doing we have a vacancy that's going to be field i would imagine and we'll talk about you know next year but it's one of the things that we've talked about absolutely two when you show this are you going to show the different just trucks and you know what the requirements are now like single residence and what the changes would be like totally throwing out what is existing section four to the putting a whole new one back in its place is the dimensional regulations it's actually not a complete rewrite of that section it's actually specific parts but it and remembered missing baby in light of the fact that it was required for and that these permits and in light of the fact that hundred year storms are happening every thirty years now last year we also passed a storm water by law that would require any development in town under special permit or otherwise to abide by a storm water by law we're still waiting for the regulations to be approved unfortunately a year later could you confirm that the special permit process that's in article fourteen involves a developer who might increase the impervious surface on their property happens before the building permit process that and forces the regulations for the new stor told by so the special permit process requires that have already been confirmed that compliance to already be confirmed yes ok so it's the opposite of what i thought they have to confirm that first before they get their special crockett town meeting member precinct five so we've got a little bit of a catch twenty two going on here you tear down a single family build a two family and you get more  property tax from it yet you increase the school population so my question is just a simple one if as i saw eighteen her street gets knocked down it just gets bought for five hundred thousand dollars knocked down rebuilt each half of it is hold for five hundred thousand dollars what does that do for the property tax that's collect the original property tax would have been just rescind the family home the new property property taxes would be for each of the two units so that the net revenue to the town would go up property tax wise but but so do the resulting costs to the how are you i just want to give a little recap of where we stand because the board of selectmen the selectmen have taken a position on this and i want to explain why just for the record of the sixteen towns that comprise the district one has rejected the amendment ten have approved it and four have passed over or postponed it indefinitely their decision i'm so fifteen a vote it now to be made now for example since one have one time has rejected it and four have passed it over a postponed indefinitely there is no unanimity which is what's require so there is no gun to our had per se that our vote will make a deciding commitment for anybody that's one thing so it's not unanimous we don't need to make this decision  secondly we don't have enough information it's a shapeshifting environment just listening to which towns have approved or which are passing over which are rejected had the impact of those changes and and the town actions required we don't know what those are yet we don't feel comfortable making this decision until we dig deeper and find out some of these things town meeting condition its original approval of the feasibility study if you recall a while ago on a right sized school we still don't have a commitment for that what withholding or postponing our vote indefinitely will do is hopefully force the administration to minute man's administration's hand in rightsizing this school and meeting our original commitments in town meeting maybe years ago when we approved when town meeting approved the feasibility stud finds it's still not done the capital project and the full ramifications of of the amendment are not understood and they're not settled we don't feel we should make a decision right now we do feel that it can be placed on the want of a future town meeting when a decision absolutely needs to be made and when we have enough information to really be able to firmly lead the town in the right direction  means that i'm responsible in part for the drafting and authorizing this agreement and that's something i hope they don't put on my tombstone it was truly like making a sausage big towns against little town to rich towns against not so rich towns compromises and compromises and the end product let me say cannot be amended by any substitute other than to postponed indefinitely but the agreement itself cannot be amended because the agreement is finally voted by the regional school committee that jacks its own has to be submitted in exactly the same form the wall sixteen times is pointed out under our existing agreement that goes back to the one nine hundred seventy it requires unanimous consent in order to amend the agreement let me just speak for a moment on what i from nonmember towns the school built in the seventies is falling apart it's in very bad shape and it's in need of substantial rehabilitation or replacement among the things in the existing agreement is in order to well that's not quite true the usual way to raise that under the state law is it has to be by unanimous consent so of one time says they won't join then except for a more complicated procedure where there's a a district wide vote one negative vote means that they cannot raise the money to fix a school we're seeing this freight train coming been a lot of discussion the last few years many of the town said look we're not going to go on to a new school unless we have an amended agreement olic then for instance that supplies approximately a third of the students and therefore under the existing claimant pays approximately a third of the operating cost has one vote out of sixteen and many other complaints by other towns and so that they decided that they should start to should try to see if we could achieve an amended agreement damas position  always been the first thing that they should do is they should size a school and it's got a long history and when this subcommittee that i served on started to work on this agreement we said exactly that you know we need the right size school and then maybe we can figure out what we need for an agreement to make it work we were told got to run an apparel track and so forth so our mindset was assuming there's a good right side school looking get the required  votes to be to build a new school how well the new agreement what should we have a new agreement well while working on the agreement and it became very obvious that you're not going to get sixteen towns that supply fifty seven percent of the students building a new school under an agreement and state law that says that the nonmember towns will not pay any to go down that slippery slope or if it was going to be built for more than that there had to be some mechanism whereby the nonmember towns in addition of paying operating tuition could could pay something on the debt and that has progressed to some extent and for the first time the state is now recognizing the possibility and they say they will put in the regulations whether it be a so called intergovernmental agreement and a type of an intergovernmental agreement that makes sense is  metaphysics and a lot of students a school where every october they figure out how many they got they ought to pay their proportion of the debt for that year and we're not clear that's the type of intergovernmental agreement they're talking about they may be talking about an interim government would remain in which the facilities be set by the states so that's something you have to keep your eye on and will make a big difference of where we should go when you say when these pieces finally fall again a funny thing happened on the way to drawing his agreement one of the things we were told was it was not a user friendly agreement and you really needed to make get more flexible so we could attract as members the waltham the watertown's the wants out it town meeting votes two thirds and then gives notice of a withdrawal and three year window because they get to work their students or rooms of what they could get out if they had the majority vote of the other towns and the commissioner of education said ok you can get out and it was written in a very friendly way because they get that majority vote meant that a majority number of the other towns would have to call a special town meeting invented no otherwise it was deemed allowed so there was a period to be a very clear route to get out and that was designed to help bring in these other tough well the funny thing that's happened as you've indicated many of these towns have passed over some is becoming a more cloudy picture and all the more reason why until we know who we're going to make an agreement with we should not vote on this now and i don't like the way pass over it sounds like a jewish holiday but i think we should use the word indefinitely postponed seems to me to be the obvious thing to do bear in mind one other point the one town is voted no i don't think that's automatically the end of this propos because there is no shelf life on this agreement to get submitted to the sixteen times i'm sure there will be enormous pressure if all these other dominoes fall in line and we have a legal obligation and a moral obligation into in a line and then i'm sure there will be pressure on these dissident times to change their vote and that could be five years from now but when the day comes that the sixteen town vote yes this agreement goes into effect so it's a terrible conundrum i ask you don't get lost in the weeds of this agreement it was complicated to put together but jack knew you handily the agreement with an overview and any questions  you you'll note that none of the discussion so far as important as it is and as all rude seem to lead to the building project and quite frankly in my four years on the school committee i have been fighting tooth and nail unsuccessfully so far but perhaps that the tide on that is changing to get the minuteman district to address the school's izing issue all roads seem to lead to  school sizing but what hasn't been discussed yet tonight is the article and the amended agreement itself so if the motion to pass over or postpone is approved what i'm about to say is moot and so i'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it happy to answer as many questions as you want as it relates to this specific amended agreement it's important to note that this was in some communities mines including arlington was probably the largest proponent of this was a precursor or a prerequisite to getting their cooperation or approval on a building project as adamant has belmont was about the sizing issue there are things in this agreement that arlington was adamant about so as part of the district agreement i don't think anybody would call it a good agreement i'm not so sure it's the agreement that one would come up with if they were creating the district new but you have sixteen communities all of whom have to vote yes eventually in order to get the agreement approved so the agreement that's before people is a delicate balance of the interests of those competing towns and it was an attempt to say here's an agreement know some of the community's comments about leaving and so the analysis then on the narrow question about the agreement is all things being equal it's better than the existing agreement and therefore the only reason to vote against it would be because you like the existing agreement better i personally believe and i voted for this agreement when it was in the school committee i personally think building project decide this is a marginally better agreement than the existing district agreement notwithstanding that i agree with a lot of the strategic reasons for not having dealt with addressing them so i'm going to take two seconds to just summarize what i think are the three major components of the change the agreement in your talent meeting package there's a two page summary that bob and i put together when we first met with the selectmen in the warren committee on and there's more detail the information about the changes in information that m together in for anybody who has lots and lots of free time on their hands the entire grievance is there for you to read but the three major components the three major differences in this agreement and the issues that are addressing some of the concerns other towns have are as follows first he changes the formula for allocating both operating cost and capital costs right now operating costs are measured as a point in time and won't be heard david mentioned earlier tonight minute by belmont's in rome it went down by three students and we have a big savings in our assessment belmont's in rome it had gone up three stews and almost in consequential number we could have had a big surprise in terms of our minute man assessment for operating costs the new agreement doesn't change the allocation of ca operating cost based on the role that what it does do is it bases it on a four year rolling average all that does is it gives you more predictability more time to anticipate changes looking at trends as opposed to year over  year variability on the capital side what it does do right now the existing agreement allocates capital year to year based on that same single point in time annual in the moment so you're building a thirty year facility here you know barring thirty years and that services for each town is going to swing year over year by one years and while the new agreement  would allocate fifty percent of the capital assessment based on that same four year average in moment it would charge each member community a one percent capital assessment if you will cost of membership club membership so sixteen percent of the capital would be assessed equally to all towns and the remaining thirty four percent would be allocated by what i call wealth weighted utilization the concept of there being towns that are financial or wealthier ought to have a little bit higher ability to pay and those towns who send a higher percentage of their students to minuteman than other towns ought to be willing to devote a higher percentage of their town's resources to the district and not get into any more of that most people have lots of questions but it changes the allocation for me the second thing that the agreement does is it changes the voting at the school committee from what bob just referred to each town getting one vote there was originally an attempt to move it entirely to a vote based on in rome and again moving to a four year average as opposed to point in time but based on a moment the smaller sending towns many of whom are the wealthier towns balked at that and said this is a horrible agreement for us it's never going to pass our town meeting if you tell us that  the value of our vote in the school committee is being reduced to in consequential numbers less than a percent for some of the small towns and at the same time are proportional assessments going up that's just a bad bargain so the outcome was that of voting would be similar to the compromise that was reached for our u s congress half of the vote will be allocated equally to each town so instead of six percent or one sixteenth each town gets three percent and the other half is that allocated based on it will mint in belmont's case it's almost a wash it just doesn't matter that was never a big driver at least in my view of all our concerns about mitt and an were in about the same position at the end of the day under that but it was in a really important for the larger of the arlington and at the end of the day it was important for the some smaller towns and then the last thing i think that i will touch on is just withdraw as bob  now communities need to have all fifteen other towns to say yes before they leave the district under the new agreement notwithstanding that the subcommittee tried to give that as a unilateral right to each camp on them that was the original proposal changes to the regional agreement have to be approved by the state department of secondary mill secondary elementary education dessie the commissioner the commissioner balked at that said absolutely no way will towns have a unilateral right to leave the district because they were worried about the precedent that would be set for every other regional school district around the state so what they said is you need to have at least fifty percent of the communities approved or really not disapprove there's a deemed approval there if we if we don't think it's important enough for t act to leave that we're willing to call a town meeting on that will mean belmont is deemed approved if the fifth so any community that doesn't have fifty percent or more of district say you can't leave will be allowed to leave under the new form will do this now i think this will come back in some form or fashion i would expect because i think it's critical before there is a building project oh but i think  if that were to pass we would not vote article three we would only work with three personally or two not just so that's precinct three thank you for a very good present patient clear presentation i still have three questions sorry i had it first am i correct that effectively this also halts any construction that in till there's a new agreement as a practical matter there won't be any new there is a lot of work that still needs to be done around the building project and so it's i think they are on our lower overlapping that's ok and i'm not sure that taking the action on this necessarily slows down the would have to vote on that and if it does it without getting to detail on the one sectionals day law all sixteen towns would have to say yes it's not going to happen there's another process in which they can hold the district wide all sixteen town election ballot and it is a majority vote of people who say they approve the debt then that's approved again there's a procedure the belmont could get out that happens ok but i well i have two more two more questions but thank you for clarifying that the second thing is this sounds like you know the agreement is progress and i agree we should postpone it but it sounds as if there's been progress made and it's interesting that you've have any of them said this egremont looks not so terrible to us we want to join now because that's a real measure of the quality of the agreement but you see the strategy is if there's an end to governmental agreement if they have to pay the full boat not only operational but capital and then i get no vote maybe they'll join and the third thing is this must be a state wide issue vocational education came in about the same time everywhere there are regional vote tax everywhere in the state is there and presumably those buildings are also forty years old is is there a prospect of a legislative solution for a legislate every writing of some of these agreements on the basis for them to walk up things on funding center dolly from arlington filed a bill to increase the reimbursement rate for vocoded schools and it failed and secondly at a meeting that we attended i think every recognizes this is an issue but i don't think there's a huge appetite at the moment to try to take it on i think that to two comments that i would make first is in in lots of ways but in specifically your questions a minute man is unique i think relative to other vocational schools in the percentage of non resident students that it is mit's most other vocational schools sure sheen being an example that covers tewkesbury in bedford in burlington have little or no problem filling their se from their member communities i think that's more a reflection of the changing the demographics of the minuteman communities of the sixteen minute math communities seven of them are in the top ten in terms of well  within the in the state so i think demographics have an impact on that the the other thing i think that is worth of pointing out is not withstanding that minuteman is about the only one that has sizable percentages of non resident students it does appear that the commissioner of dessie is going to promote something that minuteman has been requesting for a while and it may impact how communities the view the school sizing question what bo benefit from capital investments and the commissioner has recently said he will aggressively promote those and on resident non member communities pay their share of capital expenses under a new school building project that has been something that is does not exist under the current i don't think it requires a legislative change i think that regulatory change doesn't exist now but it is   the dead so those non member communities wouldn't be on the debt but to the extent that they were going to send any of their students they would be assessed a capital assessment that would be based on what they're currently doubt it's still in development so i don't want to over i don't want people to draw too many definitive clues the current concept is they would pay their share of debt as if they were a member town it sounds good thank you s o precinct one i just had a few questions they're a little bit mixed and different topics so if is there any chance by passing this over that we i was reading your this item here side by side thing so it says authorization for a new dat not specified in the current agreement and then it says historically there's been this method used do we do we run any risk by not proceeding with this that there is some other way of the district moving forward debt wise with the project without a resolution in other words this says historically so i wasn't sure if they have some other legal way of obtaining debt that right right now the district agreement is silent as to how debt can be issued so it defaults to what's permitted under state law and there are two options under state law right now the one that most communities go for is to ask each of the member towns to approve it at town meeting it requires the unanimous approval of all of those towns not unanimous votes within the towns but it requires all towns to approve it there is another mechanism to do this general election that's an option that's out there it's a costly option but with communities having said they're not going to approve the building project with out changes to the agreement i think there's little prospect that a building project would get voted on through town meeting i think there certainly are close to zero prospect in belmont and i think there's even a smaller prospect that it could be passed in an election through that the with sixteen in which is is just a quite a lection if there is a district while action and if a town like belmont votes no but we're all voted by the electorate from the other those then belmont at that point can say we sorry if i say that we did vote at town meeting for a debt do do we then have to have a debt exclusion vote at the town the way that we always have to have since we don't have any space towns can choose whether they need that or not i think in belmont like it's in terrible condition i've only seen it from the outside is there a risk that someone could bring a lawsuit about the condition of the building in the district could be compelled to build a suitable space or somehow rent space that people deemed suitable do we have a legal risk i think there's always slip and fall we've all kind of risk but i don't think the condition of the school is in that dire state but but the issue that i think will often get raised and it's this is a real risk for people who think we can just stonewall forever oh there are state rules of that say if you spend more than certain percentages of dollars relative to the value of the asset in a three or four year period you trigger the obligation to meet full accessibility and full current life safety conditions and minutemen does not currently meet those accessibility standards are those life safety conditions because it was built in the seventy's i would imagine that the belmont high schools the same and so if you need to replace the roof or there's you know some certain catastrophic kind of capital expenses you could of very very substantial capital investment that would get zero m s b a reimbursement and so the idea that and what we're trying to do is boston business journal last week there was an article about the average salaries for all the two hundred cities and towns in the commonwealth and belmont was like thirty or thirty five or something like that and minuteman was i think number twelve or thirteen so it's just a comment and i think i've asked the same question i think it's reflective of the age and ten year of the faculty the minuteman faculty is significantly