new town and assistant town a minister and fills the city next to me miss marshall hartman has more than twenty five years of public management and financial administration experience since two thousand and three she has held the position of treasurer collector for the town of watertown as well as a position of assistant to the town manager slash purchasing agent from two thousand and one to two thousand and three in addition phyllis is served as the business manager for the department of public works in the town of winchester and has served as a project manager for the connecticut resources recovery authority and assistant county administrator for scott county iowa educational background includes a master of public mr asian from the university of kansas and a bachelor of arts degree from baker university phyllis has been a member of the i c m a which is the international city county management association for over twenty five years and its marshall  has extensive experience in project management and the development of budgets and policy and which has provided her the opportunities to work effectively with the elected and appointed officials committees boards at the local county and state level of governments  just want to say that we had a very extensive process and we had many fine candidates and we're very very pleased that phyllis has decided to join the town of belmont as part of our team and we look forward to her joining us have a great team and i'm looking forward to meeting everyone and working on the budget process because i know that is up next on the agenda so i'm looking forward to it i'm very happy to be able to be part of the team during the experience i ha is just one small announcement just so for clarity purposes we have written a letter to homeowners which is in the process of being mailed hopefully we'll get out of tomorrow which includes a snow brochure and a copy of the bylaws for with regard to the residential sidewalk so removal by law that was recently passed by the time meaning i just want to be very clear though that as part of the process our general bylaws have to be approved by the attorney general before they take effect we have submitted that by law to the attorney general we've asked for some expedited process seen in approval with that we expect that to take place for the final approval sometime in early january so until that is received from the town by the attorney general which is her final approval the residential sidewalk snow removal by law is not in effect and i guess as we are  expecting potentially a six inches of snow this weekend while in general i think folks typically who have sidewalk shovel there they're sidewalks that i know we've got some phone calls and we just want to publicly say that no the bylaws not officially adopted by the board of selectmen is a not on our home page so folks who want to go want to take a look at it in preparation cancel by just want to announce that because we have had some questions and just want to make it clear that what the process as well we share with this we can with the pending annual luck tax classification hearing that we're required to hold by statute in order to set the allowable classification and then allow the board of assessors to set the tax rate what you have before you is a proposal that would set the annual classification at a percentage of one factor not meaning that every possible in town every class of property would pay the same tax rate of  based on the current estimate thirteen dollars and fifty cents this is based on the assessed value of five billion for four hundred forty four hundred eighty one million and with the tax levied just shy of seventy four million dollars this is a proposed increase in the rate move from the current rate of thirteen dollars and thirty three cents it would allow us to be because of the new growth that we're able to achieve this year the new growth was actually a seven hundred thirty nine thousand dollars a great deal that is made up by the final product completing of some of the project at mclean hospital thirteen dollars and fifty cent rate in order if we went to a full shift of classification the residential rate would drop drop to thirteen dollars and ten cents with a commercial rate would go to twenty dollars and twenty five cents which would be an increase of six dollars and seventy five cents the reason that it's not a dramatic shift away from the residential as would be in other communities is the fact that we only have five point six two percent of the town of belmont considered commercial industrial a personal property and so we are a very small portion that would have to shift to the reason we are recommending the classification of one is that classification in of itself does not raise one dollar more in taxes there's no other communities like the size of belmont that have a split it's just you really have to have it's based on the commercial you twenty percent commercial is a good indicator of where it would be would make sense to split it we're only a little less than six percent commercial and it has  line quicker than we anticipated yeah they're the five hundred thousand new growth number that we were projecting is kind of the annual constant that if you have a construction we put together the process that we go through to do the collection of it we're going to be starting is as of january first is the day so at the end of this month we will that would be the date for new growth we then start doing our collection process which takes this into the spring and simply because of where we live though the weather doesn't allow us to get out and do a lot of the work until march april and may so that's why you know even though we're making projections based on the building permits and all some of the building permit work that's done doesn't generate new growth and so it's not we can't just take a dollar for dollar number and say ok we had so much in building permits we're going to be able to do it if you replace a new roof for example that is not generate new growth so it's new construction of some sort that generates new growth so that's why it takes us a process to go throat we actually don't finish the is going to take place for the fiscal year has taken place exactly so it's not growth or construction there's a misconception i think that it's construction in the spring months of next year it's pushing village coming online that that would all be pushed into perhaps new because they see the addition going on currently will the addition will be picked up for a year from now and that's there is that leg people don't do so by the end of the month but you know when we given the projections now november the year hasn't closed so we do have an indication by the end of the year what's going on but for example the the new cushing village site will bring no new tax revenue and so you know even though it was approved in all nothing's going on at that site and even if they got a hint of a hole in the ground in the spring of next year that's not something that would impact anything until revisit it to the extent that we can you know want to overshoot either because if we overshoot then we're sort of within our budget then we're sort of scrambling if you will at the last minute to try to reduce the amount that we've overshot by or even if we embedded it in our budget and it doesn't come in as we expect it's even better because we've got the much more time to give you a more accurate number to guess what we've been communicating over the economy revenue numbers are pretty litter in nature we expect them to change particularly on the state side maybe maybe new growth or unclear and to make sure that the numbers are in fact solid accurate numbers so that we're not getting to a point where we have to come back and say i mean we overshot when you know we're not going to you know we don't have to wear certain numbers you know we don't have the luxury of cambridge that i think the war committee and you was the ways on to the war committee and conversations i guess one of the things that we're trying to be very sensitive to is to make sure that the public understands that it isn't as simple just picking numbers  deciding those are the final numbers because this is a moving target we've just heard some moving target with regard to new growth it's a moving target with regard to estimated not property tax revenues that you have to get the excise commitment in the spring before really know what you're going to collect and ongoing state aid receipts with regard to the meals tax and and the like well i guess i would just want to say that the budget process is a fluid process and not all the numbers are known at the beginning of the process  appears that the numbers are changing that's the process and that is not anything other than trying to be accurate and complete in your analysis so if numbers do change it's not because they were known early on it's because you're getting better information as the pro the classification at a factor of one for the tax rate down on some of the second well if they were it's that in the other pieces that we don't recommend also residential exemption the residential exemption again is the shifting of tax within the residential class a property it would not raise any more money but because belmont is properties a so similar nature as far as around the median assessed value  shift would only benefit very slow and probably isn't a very in a very high in progress would pay more in taxes it really wouldn't benefit we've done some analysis over the years and if it's not something for all the work that would have to put into it it would be simply be shifty economic indicators or or income levels or any of that nature of a basically just cities in towns that have a large population that does not own or occupy their homes it would benefit because for example if you had a property and cape cod today will vote to establish the tax rate of thirteen dollars fifty cents ok will then spit all the paperwork to the department of revenue for their final approval once they come back with the approval or you'll be notified the tax rate has been approved ok multitude of reports multitude of calculations multitude of requirements by the d o r to get to this point this morning and i just want to acknowledge the efforts of i want to get you to this point because it's not a insignificant amount of work and effort that allows us second vote favor but i will take a small recess here good luck today with a side merry christmas what the intent of the financial task force is it's something that it's not a new idea there was one least one before as i understand it that was chaired by former four slept remember bill scully and i think i'm recalling that know what the budget process is all about can we get comments from the community about have we really done the work that's necessary to understand what our need is and this ongoing environment that we're living through in reduced resources and  the strain on our on our fiscal condition haven't really done the work that's necessary to understand full well you know from a community perspective in terms of delivering services looking to new revenues organiz around how we structure our departments have we done all of the work that's necessary to figure out to say we're done and you know that we can really look for is additional revenues and i think we have so we came up with the idea of forming if in your task force is going to be a board chaired task force and we asked for a number of volunteers from the community we also identified a number of individuals within town currently serving committees to serve as well members of the work to make up a bu committee school committee school department treasurer so on and so forth to be a part of this taskforce understand and i certainly appreciate your willingness to serve there is a fair amount of work that we need to accomplish over the next several months i'm hoping to have watched this really are than today but that said i think over the next six to nine months we should be able to do the work i believe is necessary to to get underneath the issues as relates to our financial condition not only in the operating side but also on on the capital side many of you who know me have heard me say that our infrastructure our capital structure is crumbling around her you know and we certainly need to address that matter as well there's no silver bullet in the states not a commune here it was an additional five million bucks to balance our budget into use for capital projects and we've been told that a number of times on fact mike would work for the mass taxpayers association presented to the work committee last wednesday in fact said that same thing that the days of the state really billion other cities and towns as are over even though this year may be a better year than not than last year so the purpose again of the task force  the overarching purpose is to develop a multi year financial and capital investment plan to review the various programs to copies for both town and school departments i did present this to town meeting to understand current or future expenditure and revenue issues to support quality mis close educational services and capital improvements we thought about the membership of the task force we said well really who should be on that and myself and david sat down to kick it around we had input from the town treasure we felt that it should be a board chair taskforce that we should have representation for the school committee so there will be two members of the school committee that will be serving a member of the work committee member of the couple budget committee member the plein board member from the board of strong applications as well very strong resume so we wrestled with doing increase the size of the task force by all the folks that applied so that was one thought that we had we kicked that around so we came up with the idea actually was david's idea that we should appoint the two resident says we had voted on as a board to serve on the task force but probably made sense to also get input from the other folks that we didn't appoint them or focus group perspectives and so there are there members of the task force but there are more in a focus group sort of role if you will to sort of sit there during the meetings not perhaps participating in the working groups that will be formulated and we're going to go through that moment but asked actually sort of be the individuals that listen to the reports out there working groups sort of independent of the work that's been done by the working groups and bring to be other thoughts questions or concerns about some of the commissaire be emits a sort of a a p at them as being a peer review committee if on the work that we're going to do it together i thought it was a wonderful idea and hopefully members of the members have a point of focus should think so as well we thought that the best way to  do the work that was necessary was to organize into working groups this wasn't an original idea on our part as i think the school committee should be the school department school committee tom has organized in working groups to look at some of the issues as relates to the schools so we sort of took took that idea w stole it and said ok look we're going to have meetings at least once a month perhaps more as a group but there's going to be a fair amount of work that needs to be done and accomplished by the working groups to sort  gather the information that's necessary to look at the peculiar issues and the task of the mission of that working group so we said let's form one for education and we go through that moment one for revenue opportunities while he's here all the time our other revenues that are out there so to investigate opportunities to maximise nonprofit tax revenues in a wiser current fee structure we've done that before but certainly as much there of it we should look at that make if we were to have an override would say if that's the recommendation of the task force and of the process here and believe me folks have said well you've already reached a conclusion i haven't reached any conclusion and i think this group should as well we need to do the work before before we reach any conclusion t what we believe is necessary for a town so we need to be open minded and think independently of maybe our point of view and gather the information that's necessary that will inform us of all what are a conditional fee but if you want to look at the working group around revenue committee has met with the board in a couple of occasions clearly there are other things that need to be done we have a list that's will never be addressed that's miles long from a catholic perspective i think all of you are aware and know that the group that will look at the capital projects hopefully maybe work on maybe less about prioritization of capital projects but can we be a little bit innovative can we have multi use facilities i don't know we hear that all the time is that possible let's look at  that town government program matic requirements i know that the schools are going to be looking a little bit at this issue from a program out of perspective on they do that every year anyway i think on the child side at least from my point of view and you know that certain that and that's possible we've been talking about that for years we haven't been able to accomplish much around that but we should think about that should we consolidate some of our town services are there alternative service delivery methods should we consider outsourcing  things in a little bit different way what is the what is to five years from now what is the part of public works look like what kind of services should they be delivering what about the police and fire things of that nature there's a lot i'm going to be on this a few but it's a lot of work to be done there and then finally  selected suggested if you do anything beyond five years it's it's really that it's meaningless to some extent because you can't really project out that for so three years is probably a solid projection for three to five years so both on both on an operating side of perhaps on the capital side as  look at the need to fund the major projects down the road to the high school what is our debt exclusion numbers look like so those are the working groups and would have an introduction on the purpose and the mission behind the task to introduce a few folks on number one is to introduce phyllis marshall hartman who is accepted the position of assistant tom in a straight up and she's scheduled to start on january s phyllis has over twenty five years of public management financial ministration experience and since two thousand and three she's been the treasurer collector for the town of watertown so she's joining us and we're very pleased to have her and will welcome her expertise and help with this process so welcome aboard and next to phyllis is jim connery i jim carney has been engaged to assist this committee because it is a lot of work and  the organization of materials and the display of information and the reporting of information and how that's communicated in the final product is going to be key as well as some analysis and it is a significant he has after specter of and in his career he was the executive director for management services in the cambridge public schools as well as chief financial officer and i know that in our  here he's been giving some assistance to the schools and will continue to give us a sense of the overall group and i think he brings a lot of skill sets the table that will help this process be successful and positive and produce a good we try to anticipate the kind of information that you might need so we p d f to you a lot of information and hopefully you'll read it over the next month before our next meeting as you dive into the working groups i would encourage you to inform yourself as much as possible if you town that loves the idea of forming from anything producing reports some of which we have you know and others we don't so the capital project oversight committee report which i think is a very well done report on building projects should be you are especially the folks in the residence that are here that don't currently serve on a committee in town i think the better off are going to be into some that as we have struck and watched on a path of looking at some of these issues at the right so as the chair indicated we've established five working groups the first one is education and the superintendent at the end of a few minutes i'll ask him to give an update and just an overview but as you can see education is one of our first topic areas and they are reviewing financial programatic topics really to the providing of quality education to the students of belmont there are eight subgroups within this major category salary compensation and romance revenue resources where which are outside revenues that may be available to the belmont public schools such as naming rights or ra foundation grants and the like  instructional modeling innovation special education operations and maintenance student services instructional technology and i think those are all working groups that in addition to providing programmatic information all those subgroups have financial implications and what it means to the public schools going forward in terms of its ability to provide those services and to be able to fund them so that is why they have been subset into  smaller groups within the overall educational group on that major group the working group is comprised of the superintendent schools is the chair school committee representative laurie graham school c representative laurie slap trying to decode jerry o as the school finance director and mark polos the board of selectmen represented so that is the working group again there are sub groups working within these program areas and these topic and the second group is the revenue opportunities group and again i think there was a a decision that we need to take a look at our non property tax revenues again which is about six million dollars to fund the budget and just to make sure that we haven't missed any opportunities to make sure that we are on par with our neighboring communities with regard to some of the major fees such as building permit fees or raw rock fees and the like just to make sure that some of our major not property tax revenues that where on part were able to justify the fees and maybe take opportunities to make some improvements or some adjustments to that but but also this group is important because it in addition to that charge one of the things that we will need to demonstrate his new growth and in within your package there's a memo from the board of assessors that was perfect prepared a few weeks ago for the board of  selectmen which was shared with the war committee with regard to our averages for ten year new growth and new growth basically again in the in the game of prop two and a half basically you're limited in the number of dollars you can collect from the property tax levy which is limited to two and a half percent a year growth but in addition to that the levy can increase by new growth which is new construction or addition in assessments if you build an addition to your house and that gets put on the tax roll that basically  be new growth or a brand new building so we have some things are happening in town with regard to cushing village potentially belmont uplands we would follow which you in the process of trying to execute so and then there may be other things that are on the horizon that we should try to take into account that we may want to include we will include in our revenue projections because as part of our funding sources we have our proposition our property tax levy which is the major funding source to fund the town budgets but in addition to that we had a factor of about five hundred thousand dollars of new growth which gets added to the property tax levy of an estimate and we just want to make sure that if there are things on the horizon we build them into our projections so that we can give a true picture about what are the increases in that new growth into property taxes going forward so that committee as again in the overall williams as a resident and so i think that will be the charge of the revenue ever revenue opportunities working group but again i think that has a couple different missions as i just indicated a group c is capital projects  the capital projects group will take a look at again trying to again we know what our major capital projects are and the capital budget committee has spent a significant amount of time and it's in your packet of producing a matrix of sort of key point questions to sort of determine what projects are in a position to move forward and how they can or cannot be prioritized in addition in your packet there's a copy of the five year or six year capital plan and information from the last how meeting that's in your packet for resource materials the capital projects committee in addition to looking at our major capital projects will need to analyze the debt service cost because again tom obviously doesn't have the resources to fund these out of pocket it will have to be bonded and that has impacted with regard to a debt exclusion and what the impact would that be on people's property taxes and the tax levy in addition to that we will need to take a look at  other non major projects such as our payment management project the last couple years there's been a side conversations about sidewalks or expanding the pavement management program even though i were in the process of doing propellor which is a major project that's been funded by the state and we started to get into the neighborhood with regard to repaving straits clearly the plan that is before us is not funded in a way that will get that list executed terms of street repaving anytime soon so i think there's been and that is from current revenues and receive all the requests from the departments of capital needs and try to parcel out that money to satisfy the most stuff priority area capital needs that are funded from available resources and again that's  challenging project because typically we receive requests that are five or six times greater than the allocation out of a million one so i think it would take a look at what what we need to look at moving forward to try to have several tracks and trying to invest in our capital needs and i think we may all feel that look there's not a minute money right but we have vested only a million dollars per year in our capital infrastructure clearly is not enough so that working group comes back to set in order to address all the things that we need to address for the next fifteen twenty twenty five years as a community and many of us will be sitting at tables or working a committee twenty five years from now this what we need to do going forward if not then the buildings will crumble and a roads will continue to d which is top government program out of requirements and opportunities for structural changes and again i think mark highlighted some of those topic areas looking at regionalization to the extent possible alternative service delivery models review of services not currently provided on staff planning again i think that also in compas is sort of making sure that there's an awareness that there needs to be some succession planning because  and they will be moving on based upon as the through retirement more than likely and so we need to make sure we understand what what that will mean to the town because i think we have departments we've been able to put together  the operations of the town with available resources and that's quite a skill and find replacements for those individuals will be a challenge because of the experience and years of knowledge they possess and those will not be easy replacement so it's sort of looking at that what that means and understand what the impact of that will be consolidation again i think there's been some some of the some consolidation it's taken place in the past and there's been some models that have been floated about and taking a town wants to consider far recreation facilities as opposed to having as part of the general fund budget and again the other thing is we sort of talk about capital budgets and major capital budgets the thing that we need to be cognizant of is that when you open a brand new there's some additional new costs that need to be factored into the mix it does does you no good to open up a brain of facility you don't have the funds to operate it or don't have the staff to satisfy the programmatic options that have been built into the capital project that cost money so that dovetails with the capital project group and what that means financially and how that's considered is something that this committee will take a look at  on the committee we will have input from other groups either individuals department heads or other committee members and like just to provide information feedback as needed so even though it has for folks i suspect similar to what the school is used there will be individuals who will provide information and and guidance as we move forward in the last group is to take all this information that's being developed and try to come up with the financial projection model  that will take into account the revenues in the expenditures and to try to come up with a model that can be updated easily that can be displayed easily that could be understood easily by the public it does us no good to have a model that's thirty five pages long and have everyone confused but it's important for us to have a working model says we make adjustments with regard to new information that it can be updated and displayed and under stood easily and that's one of the challenges of the financial projections be updated and displayed in a way that is easily understandable and that will again require significant amount of work so those are the five working groups these are the assignments that we thought made sense clearly this is a  groups that we identified you know all of the working groups that are necessary i mean there needs to be other groups or we have sub groups and also you know the participants on those working groups on the financial projections if i just could comment there we could do a projection today i mean it's easy to put numbers on a piece of paper and project it off the next three to five years that's not what we mean by financial projections because we clearly can do that today what we hope to accomplish here is thinking about where we want to be in five years three to five years from now how we run our departments what are the needs of the schools what are the needs of the towns and the partners what are the needs from a cap perspective and then once we decide to develop that in thought about you know strategically where we want to be in  strategic plan and then we put numbers to that because i've said before we don't want the numbers to drive our strategy we want our strategy to develop to drive our numbers so it's so important we can do a financial projection today and it's going to show that every year we're going to have a gap year in year out that is not what we're hoping to accomplish here we're hoping to accomplish through the working group process in the future taskforce it's inform us about what what hold for us if we do certain things if we can do consolidation if we can do regionalization what do we need to do if we could look at additional ways to source revenue what do we do from a cap perspective then what is our financial projections look like that makes sense that's the point here and so the financial projections won't be sort of constructed in the model that they were just referred to until well into the taskforce  hear a can you could just kind of mike here you want to get at that we can hear you but this is for speed tape ok this is a great thank you but i think the idea of the the results coming from strategy is a really good idea i'm curious about for the can you discuss just the top line what does this concept of an override so an override so and that's great in that there is a lot of is a terrific government document and perhaps we could should provide a link on cities and towns can only raise taxes on hapless sent year in year out so whatever our property tax levy was last year under the under prop two and a half proposition two and a half which is why we can always raise taxes by two and a half percent beyond that plus new growth that david referred to so typically every year on the property tax side from property tax revenue you probably get in about three percent additional revenues maybe a little bit less than that you know  here's the point we as a community we we tax fully to our levy every year we tax every nickel that we can up for levy communities like cambridge that are flush with cash don't tax fully to their levy they're like one hundred million dollars under their tax levy each year so it doesn't want each year it's an automatic we increased taxes to help a cent plus new growth and we fully tax to that levy we can't tax more than that  that's the revenue source that we have along with some non property tax revenues that we tax fully to our levy enjoy it did you just just to clarify that it is also a misconception you see sometimes is that people assume that the next year we only raised to never send more that based on your real estate so the total value of a town by the by what the levy is is what your taxes so that only increased to a half percent plus growth and like germany for little said we residents of that community that city or town would have a say in terms of any additional increase in its tax overriding to an improper two and a half was that's what an override is so when we say we can only  of the last year's property tax levy would have to go to the residents say we want to raise an additional two million dollars and asks beyond the two and a half percent and we need to ask you residents to vote for that throughout cambridge that assessed value was over a billion dollars so that just gives you some perspective of of where and again cambridge is unlike belmont which doesn't have a large commercial tax base cambridge has a significant commercial tax base so basically two thirds proximate two thirds of the property taxes are paid by the commercial property owners even though they represent one third of the value so a new growth has been but on the annual tax rate on the total actually on the first two components to a buy in the term the maximum levy is x and that's about one hundred million dollars last than what they actually raise so the maximum tax levy that they could raise in property taxes is one hundred million dollars less than what they actually do raise to balance the budget and they don't they would not need a mechanism because of the new growth that they that the city council those two  million dollars higher in the council proved that and basically you could tax to a levy limit so obviously that would never happen but but in theory you could and i guess this illustrates the i guess mr ames illustrate your point i guess part of the education for the analysis and part of the review is is is for next year of our available revenues which will include property taxes were estimating about ninety four million dollars of that ninety four million dollars seventy six million dollars is coming from the property tax levy so therefore our reliance in terms of a percentage of revenues to fund the budget is predominately made up of property tax resources and that's over eighty percent and the next one is is state aid which is the point three million dollars and again in recent years that state aid number has decreased not increased last year was the first time in several years that our unrestricted general government aid when the acronyms it's lousy is called who got actually increased in several years in the state right there was some increase in chapter seven but with so if you look at the way our budgets funded the majority of it comes from property taxes second is from state a  then you have non property tax revenue that comes from motor vehicle excise tax which is about two point seven million dollars ambulance revenues we forgot to add providing basic life support services  advanced life support services is estimated eight hundred thousand dollars license and permit fees is about seven hundred fifty six thousand and what's the other wreck faeces about seven hundred so as you can understand the need for the point is this there has to be a way to address that either we continue to reduce services or to look for a way to deliver the services and you know differently which i've talked about in the past i mean are there ways to deliver us services in a different way are we delivering them as efficiently as we can i think in many respects we are about down over the overtime so it put enormous pressure and stress on local cities and towns because of the state because they're on the same boat as we are unless they have a debt or an operating override and not many have been successful other than on it and has had successful override so over the past five to six years you're sort of left with finding ways to fund the services or reduce your services the other way to override the tax is through a debt exclusion so many of the buildings that we do in town the only way to do that is through bonding is through a debt exclusion so that exclusion it's the same concept where it's raising taxes beyond proposition two and a half the difference between the two is an override  a permanent increase in your taxes a debt exclusion is a temporary increase for the life of the project and it's typically floyd twenty or thirty years to service the debt let's say of the new high school we move forward a debt exclusion on the new high school of the mescal bil or same of interest it's a it's ninety million dollars a week we clearly don't have nine million dollars to build a new high school we have to go to the the the residents of this community and ask for a debt exclusion vote on  bonding that project i'm just using ninety million is a number i don't know whether that's the right number or whether we face it and to bond to to service the debt of that ninety million dollars interest and in principle over the next thirty years that's outside of the tax levy and but there's a there's a end to that so we've had very i think we've had a lot of successful debt exclusions typically those pass because folks look at that as a nice a discrete building we vote for it we support it like the w school or other things that we've done and then it ends and i guess is at and we'll move on to dr king's i mean we do a very brief overview of the progress of the school group but i think the f y fifteen budget as we fall about will sort of be micro sort of a snapshot of the difficulty of trying to balance available revenue news and needed resources and i think that it is going to be a microcosm of fifteen so tom once you give a brief overview where stability and planning with and this is a you know serendipitous occasion emerging of the the magic moment in a sense because what we began last summer was a series of  trending groups and what i call modeling groups to see where we've been and what the trends are in compensation in enrollments in instructional technology and instructional modeling all of the things that you see listed in these a groups here  as a way of capturing and if we can predicting the needs of the school department that are both realistic and ultimately stabilizing the single biggest fiscal driver in the school department is compensation and yet we are inheritors of a system of compensation that's probably outlived its usefulness and so we're trying to reinvent what that might mean so that it's fair to our employees and yet predictable to place them the average per people expenditure and belmont's about twelve point five thousand hours if you multiply that by one hundred that's one point two million dollars and in new demand these groups have been operating since september and the aim is for them to come up with white paper reports about the trends that they've discovered recommendations they might have how that might feed into our ongoing  now and had what i'm hoping to do is to be able to summarize that into either a comprehensive white paper we'll have a set of individual eight white papers that comes back to this group for their incorporation into the work that's going here  here working within this within the school but i think that the people making the recommendations are going to be but the five people in the know actually the people making the recommendations are the members of my smaller working groups the working group where education is somewhat of a pass through but it's going to be informed to a great degree by the working groups that king doctor it's in and others have formed in the school committee within the school department in with representatives on those working groups as time indicated include residence members of the work committee so it's not just all school folks and so we thought about this an angel actually that had the same point as you frankly that you know we certainly want to work in group that has other gives or folks that aren't as actively or deeply involved in the education side i put my name down there as being one but i think i think tom is right that this working group will inform this task force plus focus group members of some of the findings i think within that environment within overall and by active the task force well the report of the task force in the report out is the task force it's not the working group the working groups inform the task force but some of the things thoughts they have recommendations we as a task force be deliberate on that and especially the focus group members who are independent of the working groups i think can sort of step back and say you know that will play devil that advocate if you will and some of the comments or suggestions that are made so that's sort of the idea there key milestones or working group tasks so again just to pick a date we be picked out january thirty first which i think is a friday if i remember and i guess that we can talk about timing but i guess what we would ask is the working group chairs between now and the end of january meet with their individual working groups members and collect the information come up with ideas organize and start the analysis and begin the design of presentation formats and basically be ready to in january to give an update of a meaningful update of what what what has been accomplished by the individual working groups that would be led by the chairs that we talked about so i guess offline having the chairs of each of the subgroups sort of organize meetings and and what i will do is either no we all have our e mail addresses  type up the i have typed up the phone information so that if we need to do the old fashion way to arrange schedules we can do it that way also so that would be the initial charge right now which is to get the individual working groups up and going i think if you think that the other point to point is i think that as the point was just made i think as as we start reporting out and start creating a from nation that i think it would be important to do a presentation to the town meeting in june to so to give an update of what we're what the task force is working on and what information is available as an interim type of reporting out because again i think folks will be interested in want to have some kind of feedback provided to them  publicly and then if you look at the end of the calendar what we're currently projecting is to try to get this process pleated by the end of august of two thousand  line and basically be prepared at the end of january to come up with a report just to come in on the on the task force and we were we were talking about this last week or two weeks ago  and i guess from my prick point of view perspective it doesn't need to be a nine month task force it could be it could continue and perhaps it should continue so we'll discuss it deliberate on that not to impose upon all your schedules for the next two years but even if we have a final report out or even maybe it's a preliminary report out in the fall of next year there are certain working groups that perhaps should continue like the program matic working group the revenue working group or maybe the task force does continue to look continue to look at these issues as a community because there's a lot lot of work and needs to be accomplished between now and next august and it will be here before you know it it is a lot of work that each of us i have to do within the working groups as well i guess task force to continue to look at some of these issues that are affecting our communities that make sense to them and the next document is the comparable communities and again part of the analysis and in some  communities and so on as we looked at that list i also brought in the list that we conventionally we met at the belmont school committee has generally looked at as benchmark list this list does represent economic commercial educational and residential comparability yes has yet there's one community one community that's most like belmont in terms of population income and income variation and miles of road miles of street educational level of the of the of the employees owning their own a letter grade department i mean all of the components that go into making up a community the one the community that's most like belmont and in a fact is very similar to belmont is marblehead and i think we have to because i think the well i guess i guess the last thing is just to be the sure part to make sure that if we if we had our next meeting scheduled for friday january thirty first that work for people schedule so if we did an eight o'clock meeting in am which let us know if you know and we may mean more than often then once a month you might say well that's a lot anyway to get with for the working groups are going to be having several as i would think within each respective month and we might decide as a task force that he and february we probably need two meetings we can decide that along the way and form one another if we can't just from an open meeting one perspective we can't really go corresponding to liberate through email so be careful and then you can certainly talk about agenda topics the meeting days through email and dave i guess you process here inform the community of those folks and their folks in our country with which to watch these meetings and each of them to televise the working group meetings working sessions you don't need to be televised workload just be working groups within  certainly reach out to either one of those individuals into your respective working group members you don't know i think it's a white board frankly and just approach it how you see the unfed within the working groups  white ford this is not predisposed to any conclusions as i said earlier this is a little bit more of a white fourteen approach on each of the working groups in the business at the so thinking about think about it from that perspective you can if you want to be hold for belmont i think we need to do that might bring it back to reality if you will but i think you need to sort of think we're brother the in openly the about what could we do as a community that we deliver services what can we do from a question the focus group  we just want to try to keep the size of the committee and and so my thinking on this is that you want it it's sort of like first impression you want to hear the report at a meeting like this as a focus group member certainly if you felt the need to attend a working group meeting and listen in you could do that they would seem to me that i guess where i'm thinking about it getting that sort of first impression reaction you know and in the intro it was great some of the comments he made today about the list of communities and other things in a working group that's a kind appreciate your time and effort and i think the community is really looking to us to come up with some recommendations that make sense for a future so let's go at it like they do again for that  y the first official financial task force for