and in some aspects at our school committee meetings and that has been a conversation here and i don't have a presentation per se as much as i would like to just present generally what we are trying to provide as a course of action here we are right now preparing obviously our budget for f y eighteen it's been submitted to the school committee as we look at our q three that was presented to the school committee the other day  when we think about the line of our district students we are in that line item four hundred thirty four thousand dollars short so that q three was presented to school committee and to finance we have and will utilize circuit breaker funds to fund part of that deficit for this year we have done an analysis of our circuit breaker and we have been looking at how we want to utilize those attended the majority of our meetings and likely vincent and laurie have come also with certain times we are fortunate to be in a situation where we are carrying a circuit breaker balance from  e that we're into the next year we have in belmont like the year that i arrived two years ago that we walked in seven hundred fifty thousand dollars short and have historically had to come to town meeting for additional funds which would have been in june of that year which meant that we would have to go to the board of selectmen to notify folks in november and start restricting funds from other lines of our budget like instructional supplies for students and teachers and reducing positions are not filling positions so that that basically was what after f y fifteen became in what was the norm in belmont we're excited that in the schools that we have expanded not only to ask for more money from the town which we have benefited by an override but not to ask for any more we've been living within our budget we've been expanded our revenue accessed by actually implementing in a medicaid reimbursement program in the school so we are beginning to collect money from the federal government for services that we already provide us students right now we're going to be yielding approximately twenty five thousand fifteen to twenty five thousand dollars per quarter and that will only go up when we get better at identifying the services that we provide and we can actually get our families who receive the services and also have mass health to come on board which could be a revenue generator to somewhere to be hopefully around fifty to one hundred thousand dollars a year  in quite frankly in other aspects of our budget we've gone out and had hard conversations with folks that runs our buildings and we actually charge the more and tried to enhance the revenue aspect of that so we could support other aspects of our budget when i arrive special education  the two biggest draw ours on the regular red money or the general fund to the schools budget so i said that out loud because we're i want to demonstrate to the public and to the work committee that where we're not sitting on our thinking we're actually trying to be proactive on both sides of this conversation of being conservative but also looking at proactive revenue measures with that said now as it relates to circuit breaker funds we have been able to with the seven percent increase in the first two years of override money and being very close with how we expend our funds we have a balance of about seven hundred thousand dollars or so right now it's projected at seventy five  in circuit breaker in f y seventeen we have been talking all year about how we would like to know use those funds but be clear that those funds can only be used circuit breaker funds can only be used on special education services within the town for that specific purpose within a two year period it can't be expanded or anything else and those funds are provided to the  school districts throughout the commonwealth through a formula based on last years in rome and brought into the new fiscal year on july one with a pool of money that's been allocated by the state that shifts each year that's divided amongst the cities and towns by how many ips and how many service deliveries of actually meet the standard of being reimbursed and then that number is then brought to each district in the fall so we are while we talk about circuit breaker have always been in the position of needing to budget funds that we're not sure we're going to get and to what extent because we don't know the pool of money the state will get we don't know how many students will have that will justify that reimbursement but we do have an average of what we got from the state several districts the majority of districts that we've contacted and we have a new list and i have it here of the thirty four districts that replied back to us what do you do a circuit breaker funds each year seventy nine point four percent of those thirty four districts hold the whole amount in place during the fiscal year that they receive it in fall and say we're going to use that in the next fiscal year because they're budgeting from strength of numbers that they know and money that's in here and instead of budgeting the year before with money that you think you might get they actually got ahead of the curve at some point and now budget in the fall of seventeen they would budget with the money that they got in seventeen and not expended in seventeen i mean not expended in eighteen that would be money that they were prepared to use in the budget in talks for nineteen so that they're there they're planning their fiscal matters from a position of strength and knowledge and not from what they think they might get an estimate belmont has never been able to do that that's been one of my goals is to slowly inch up that that of that amount so we could we could always be ahead a year so here we are we're ahead a year the district finally has about nine hundred thousand dollars or seven hundred ninety five thousand dollars so we've gotten around that corner and we're trying to say what's the best way to fiscally manage and budget this money so we can have minimal impact on the other parts of our budget because this is the line that's been impacting the other parts of our budget so this was a dialogue all year  jim has come and his thoughts and his concerns and his questions and mike and laurie to some extent and we've had vigorous debates about that in reality i think we're all thankful that we're on the other side of that curve that we're actually ahead a year we have funds that we can lean on and planned for over the next few fiscal years targeted towards the district line in our budget which is which is the most volatile this money in our opinion will be expended if we kept all seven hundred ninety five thousand dollars in our budget we have it being expended in seventeen eighteen and nineteen and we have ourselves being nine hundred nine thousand dollars short in twenty so whether we keep all that money in circuit breaker or we take part of that money and put it into a centralized fund that would be town suggested that i'll talk about in a few minutes the money still is going to be needed and expended over the next three know plan on having it in the circuit breaker funding account that we use that we've been talking about a year or we can have part of it be put into a new account that the state has suggested that need to create so we are open to that dialogue and the phraseology that i've been using is that the circuit breaker is like our savings of our checking account that we know we're going to have to expend that money throughout the year or the next two years and whether or not this the special education reserve fund that we are looking to create a town meeting could be like a savings account where we could actually put some of that money away but make sure that we had enough of the operating money to to work our house budget over the course of the next few years so that's where we are the special education reserve fund is a mechanism through the new municipalities act that was introduced by the state that we would like to implore we put it on the town meeting article that means that the money in that account could be board of selectmen and a vote of the school committee which was different from the special education stabilization fund that we had which would have been a town meeting vote so it was hard to access so at least this account would be more acceptable to the districts are open to that we put the item on time meeting ourselves we we are now voting a third draft of our budget to create a line so we can actually have a mechanism to put money into that account which is part of what the state is telling us to do this is new for every city in town and we are open to this conversation about having some of that circuit breaker money or some of the money that we're using towards ou intuitions that we can have an offset placed in that account keep in mind that we can't place the circuit breaker money in there because that money is targeted not to go into an account that money has to be talking to be expended on that on that line so we would then have to take money that would normally be allocated to that line from the general fund and maybe have that money moved over keep in mind that the money for f y eighteen the increase for f y eighteen for that one line the three hundred and thirty four thousand five hundred two dollars we for went and did not take an increase this year and that line the school budget was targeted to have a seven percent increase in the out of district line we did not take that increase we forwent that three hundred thirty four thousand dollars to put it in the stabilization fund to further the overwrite funds for future years that has a ripple effect through years because the multiplier on that we understood that when we did it we felt that we would be in good partners to the to the town to do so but for some folks it might be hard to justify not taking three hundred thirty four thousand dollars from the general fund when you know right now and you q three that your four hundred thirty four thousand dollars short and you have a spending plan for this circuit breaker money that's coming into augment that a supplement that so there's a lot of pieces to this that we're managing and i think we manage it well tony to college hero does a great job in our finance committee keeps us on task and the warmth with the members that come keep us on task  this is been a very transparent conversation we are trying to balance being fiscally sound in how we manage and how we budget our funds moving forward with circuit breaker and general fund money and i d e a money for this purpose and also being good partners in the town to demonstrate that we're trying to show transparency because a lot of people have concern when they see a revolving account like circuit breaker that kind of money in it that's never been seen before in the town so we're very very mindful of that but that does not take away from the fact that eighty percent of the towns keep that money and trust their school department to say that money's going to be used in budget in the next year morning we are taking measures to put the mechanics in place to put money in that account we are discussing what sum of money that should be to reflect being a good partner but also not restricting the school's ability to budget accordingly and whether that again whether that money si s partly in circuit breaker and partly in this new fund it will all be needed for this line over the next two to three fiscal years and it will leave the district nine hundred nine thousand dollars short by fiscal twenty so we're all kind of rearranging the chairs on the titanic a little bit but that's ok we're just trying to be transparent model moving forward that was part of the dialogue when mike was there we had a flat so we did talk about maybe adjusting that up we did that also talks about our general fund allocation not getting to seven percent this year but getting it in the  thousand and twenty because that was part of what we had decided the financial task was really that was also now utilizing some circuit breaker in each year and utilizing part in part so we're using pieces from each one of these funds  o systematically use funds to address this overarching any that you can get there that's correct so we have to expend all of last year's first and then we expense some of this year's now and save some so we have a little more and that's the cycle that we're in and i think  it's i think it's good practice and i know it's not achievable in every district but the bigger that number that you can know you have in hand for next year is just a good budgeting tool because it's a constant instead of a variable so i do have a sheet generally that seventeen through twenty and it it shows what the out of district tuition line is that's the meted out for those years with a increase projected eight point six percent a year which is going to be more like nine point four percent it shows the index that we hope to get from the general fund it also shows the i d e a grant funds that we use for that purpose it also shows the circuit breaker expenses that we use for that purpose and how we'd like to budget them over the next few years  them all with different scenarios in mind but we are planning for circuit breaker to go up by five percent a year that's line twenty three are also hoping in and expecting in line three that the point there's a percentage in line nine it shows how much of our out of dish acosta covered by general fund versus outside sources and you can see the nephi seventeen at thirty three percent of our r line item is covered by  outside sources then it goes to thirty eight thirty nine and forty so what we're doing is we're increasing our liability or our reliability on outside funds to cover this cost  in days where federal funding is very very at risk in terms of how the the new chair of the department of education at the at the federal level is looking at shifting how maybe funding could work for schools as a relates to charter schools and public schools and there's a big conversation at a time where federal money might be more risk than normal for how the department of education may see it but projecting  budgeting where you're relying on more of it doesn't it doesn't really seem to make sense so it's just something to keep in mind that this is this is one version of the five versions that we have different variables playing off in different lines but this is the general picture we're lucky that we're ahead of the curve with thankful for the override money that has all allowed us to to move us ahead of the curve with thankful for the staff for really being mindful in their cost a d expense measures and we think that this is a good news story the schools not asking for seven this year the schools actually have seven to put this to put forward in this account was this big expense for the next year had dialogue with j sullivan who's the one who's the expert at the state level on this my opinion is that just like we as a time were always coming up short we created our own that we had several different votes that needed to take place at the town meeting level i think they were thinking that if towns wanted to deposit money in that kind of account as a just in case that it would be an easier threshold to access the money by just aborts locked in in school committee vote as opposed to the time being vote and it really does live within the school within the school budget that the town meeting puts money into it by a third overall appropriation to the school and it's and it's really up to the school committee to  fund if it's it is a it is a school fun but it's got that extra trigger of meeting formal approval tell me to sign correct but that the other version of that is that if a town meeting is a very very difficult thing to access or you have to demonstrate that you've actually reduced funds to be able to justify whether you can get more funds and then the spread reserve fund is a little less than that but it does require us to justify our need and then someone could say well why don't you just cut off those regular red instructional supplies a little bit one should not fill those two positions and also said we're going back to reducing goods and services to certain populations of students because people want to make sure that we're tightening the belt to be able to access the money that was quote the schools already to begin with so from a from a purely selfish  if we want to be able to run the schools the way that we feel we shouldn't have access to money to use it to the best of all of our students it would be best in our hands that's my belief in but i understand that people think that this is a lot of money and we should put it somewhere else and let it set i do also take exception to the transparency piece but but i i guess the this is the the circuit breaker program as complicated as it is actually works if you use the tool the way the state gave you the tool and we and we have always been behind the eight ball so we've always been having to justify why we need the money then again we find the around that curve we were on the other side of it and i feel like we're finally budgeting from a position of strength and being proactive in how we budget versus being forced to budget from a restrictive freeze manage in tray year variations in you know they have a year where they have seven hundred thousand dollars in extra expenses as opposed to having to come to the board meeting here and something else for their i mean i know i do go back to what i said in that the appropriation is the key in this case the fifty two million one hundred sixty nine thousand four hundred fifty four dollars and it's up to the school committee to have a line item and just sort of say what they're putting into it and that's and that's sort of you know what i mean why i have kept raising this to see if by friday when we have to have the authority whether we have  a number that's going to go into that line item or whether we'll find out what that number is closer to account but it's but there is a town meeting can you tell meeting if it goes to the school budget just votes on the total total number of him the school committee provides sped it's better to reserve as a piece of information and i've had back and forth with dessie who's sort final answer on that yet jocular ask you two things just because part of town he is coming up pretty quickly i take it that the school department is in favor of creation of the reserve fund absolutely and i don't know what the motion is going to read but the one article says a create the fund and b of potentially appropriate a sum of money and where does the school department stand on  whether to appropriate a sum of money this time around or if so how much we have been talking about the if so the how much we are goal is to establish the fund our goal was then to establish the line in our budget that would be the mechanics to put money into the fund we have discussed at our finance meetings over the last few months that point frankly i think that we'd be better positioned financially to do so in the fall when we knew more about how many kids of district when we had our budget number from the state for a circuit breaker and would have a cleaner view of the that next year in front of us with all that all of the standard front of us i think in the discussion we're having now is not a financially it is not a financial conversation because the financial conversation is to wait for the fall the political conversation is do we put something in a time meeting to demonstrate that we're trying to continue to be a good partner to say that we're going to use the account and try to be more transparent i do believe that that's more of a political conversation as the financial advisor in the room might say you should really went to the fall and so you see all your ducks lined up and you know exactly that circuit breaker is and then you can decide what you want to do from there this is a new account into to jim's point i would agree it will be hard to get advice or guidance from does he because it's all new to them too and just because they implemented it something that they thought are british it doesn't mean that the thinking behind it has been well thought out so i think that we'll all learn together how to best utilize it and we're all open to that and you know so i think that there's a lot of a good news in the room that we have funds that we're ahead of the curve with i would say that we've been talking about this pretty openly i think that that we're willing to be a put a good partner like we were we did not take the three hundred thirty four thousand and we put it we volunteered to go back towards extending the override and they were willing to show this as a way of managing our money in front of the town better but those are really political conversations those aren't financial conversations ok if if it turned out that the reserve fund was created in june and then funded in a fall town meeting that might be and over and over what would be the source of the what monies would be available then what would be drawn upon an order to fund that point my assumption is in not  being the the the money person is that we would have to make a general fund line item just shift for one light item from the general fund probably out of the out of district special education line to that account we would not be able bill did show up they would then have to draw on the circuit breaker by that but by the same amount and so on and so that's how it would work within the context of the of spreadsheet that i gave you and that's why seventeen expenditures from current year allocation of circuit breakers eight hundred nineteen we're projected to spend one point two million in circuit breaker incentives and jonathan he said leave that door has to stay open  using eight hundred nineteen thousand dollars roughly in f y eighteen we using one point two million dollars and f y nineteen we're using one point seven million dollars and in twenty we estimate using one point eight million dollars so we are using circuit breaker money each year to balance this expense line along with i d e a in general fund and then again when we get to twenty we we will we will be in deficit  in the budget period but also obviously in this line so i say that a lot because i think sometimes we think about circuit breaker as a savings account to be used just in case and it's really just the funding source that used to be expended over the next two to three years or at least every two years on an identified cost that we know is going up by eight point six percent a year so it's just part of the the financial planning that we do it's a it's a pile of money that you set aside and in theory might never use but is there just in case you have expenditures they come in in the year that are in excess of what you can otherwise afford as you can then tap into it and so and then the othe lines are things that we actually expect to incur in a given year and historically we view circuit balance for a circuit breaker a chart for that purpose so it seems to me that if we want to actually fund a reserve fund that actually needs to come probably from free cash and not have it in and then not actually from the school budget is the school budget is in fact spending on current year stuff so maybe i'm maybe i'm missing something but if you're going to fund something that is actually not intended to be spent but i actually there just in case it seems to me that's not the regular budget that's actually different money and maybe have so many embassies i mean jane you can come in if you want if you're i mean the the the the practice up two years that cushions gone from you know twenty one thousand dollars to i mean my i mean mine and my a number based on the same numbers that tony tony has provided to us all here is is that it's on track to end is this a year at a bout one million dollars himself and so the money's already in some effect moved from free free cash through this through the some budget process back and you know that if you go back to two years that the school appropriation would have been less and that the circuit breaker balanced would have done so i mean so my point of view and what i was raising in january and that's where john of the school and community did did did give back three hundred thousand dollars was to sort of make sure that that the cushion wasn't so large in the school department side and that that some of it could could stay within the free cash or or the or the general stabilization fund which seems to me that there are a couple of concerns one is a time constraint and the second is the creation of the reserve fund seems easy because more flexibility can harm you it seems but the the actual amount to fund it and the strategy for funding it seems something that is going to require quite a bit more discussion that we actually can't do tonight but that was my that was my question was to has there been discussed what level would be the right accurate is because the landscape has shifted from being behind in using it every year as a as a safety valve that we know we're short every year budgeting in working and running your organization from a deficit mindset that forces you to use different strategies and you funds in a certain way we are finally getting over this hump to to being able to budget in strategize from this position of strength in a positive mindset that now we can use this money as preparing for the each of the next fiscal year so i agree that the money in that account if it was a safety valve was a safety valve for that year that we might run trouble in that circuit breaker was always meant to go over into the next fiscal year so it was a one year insurance policy if we are you know we're going to spend the next year we have discussed numbers up to two hundred thousand dollars at finance to be deposited in that account if in fact we think it's the appropriate thing to do i would prefer to wait till fall to let the conversations continue i think the finance committee is understanding that there may be a sense of urgency to be you know a good partner maybe want to do that in the in the spring and we had that dialogue in the spring meeting next week or in two weeks and we haven't had that final on that so i hope you got the most recent version of i distributed around five o'clock this afternoon this reflects the combined edits of me and a fair number of you thank you clarified something in my own mind today that we've been using the term operating budget or budget but in fact we're talking about the general fund budget because the enterprise budgets are separate and so the standardized terminology the reference here is to general fund budget not operating budget some of the numbers of moved around i hope they are all final in particular philip you know the number that's wrong please at so maybe we just keep reading then if anybody sees something want to they want to change speak up i change the tables slightly from last year's format  exhibit one of the highest level summary of the general fund a movie on three roman to give it to provides a little more detail just basically the chapters that you've all prepared for the down in the report with a breakout  for pension expense and i combined other fixed cost category and i finally got a clarification on understanding the pension expense number let me just explain that for a moment in exhibit two the pension expense line is the total payment both portion and the amortization of the unfunded liability just for the towns in the schools and include the other components which are the pension contributions for the water and sewer employees and the like department which are all town obligations on that all in basis the number then goes from seven point three five million that that you see in exhibit two to an all in for the whole town number of over nine million and the all in number is actually a seven percent increase over the prior  there wasn't an obvious way to explain all that in exhibit two so i have a footnote saying this pension expense number is really just a piece of the total and it refers to to the reader that it refers the reader to the more detailed pension discussion further down in the i don't call that being the case last year but then again maybe before and remember this is not just the unfunded portion this is this is the current portion plus the unfunded portion  the only connection that i can see between the enterprise fund and the general fund budget is that there are some services provided such as the d v w director acting in his capacity  as the ultimate administrator over the water and sewer funds there is a transfer from the enterprise budgets back to the town to compensate him for that time but otherwise all of the operating expenses in the pension related expenses capital investments related to water and sewer are isolated in the enterprise  funds using our heroes stick for meaningful changes of five percent and for the purposes of the whole budget i put one hundred thousand dollars threshold in the paragraph below exhibit two the material changes are in the insurance line the belmont public schools line capital budget discretionary minuteman and pensions but i explained that the insurance number is actually an artifact of the budget vs adjusted budget for f y seventeen and in fact the insurance line on a budget basis very much in line with last year the capital budget discretionary has a big drop you can see it's about fifty percent i also discussed the down that's because last year's last year's was unusually high so what we have for f y eighteen is a return what's really the more normal level we had a one time infusion of about a million dollars last year from the fire station insurance settlement and that was devoted to the discretionary capital budget exhibit three is a quick overview of the principle sources of revenue you see in property taxes are up three point seven percent local receipts five point change but the free cash utilization would go up from one point three two to two point three one on that basis and the general staff line on it would go to zero i thought though we had more funds coming in that hundred seventy five thousand dollars so that that that wouldn't be out of the free cash that would just be but a change in the state budget over the stated that the number we were talking about the friday that the forecast that the anticipation is as was described just she is nine ninety three from this distance rachel and if that she has from there in addition to the one point three two from the free report from our current report is based on the house the house and ds budgets in any detail but they're there for reference and i can based on this morning's discussion i realize that the paragraph beginning section three i'm asking you to trust me to write this in a way that's consistent with with the way the numbers will shake out in exhibit t interestingly for the last several years our health insurance expenses were remarkably flat or minimal increases in the next year the budget to growth is nine percent which is a level comparable to the well you know more than a couple of years ago when health care going up you know eight or nine percent consistently which is  some roman for our time should be familiar to you there with minor editing the highlights points that you sent to me over the last week or t o see in the education discussion there at the education report as i should say as usual and as i am grateful for it is an immensely detailed labor intensive chapter and this year it's even more ambitious with new data new presentations of old data very interesting comparison of belmont to a number of other towns in the area one of the points that i took out of the highlights section just recently got too complicated was a discussion of film on teacher salaries compared to other towns because it turns out it's that it's not a simple comparison to make and it didn't l services the first topic discusses solid waste contract it's going to be big by the end of the year i think the phase the third discussion i think went very well with  meeting and i think this committee will have an important role to play in that whatever solid ways our peak gets how it gets developed and then the selection of the ultimate contract to me that this raises as many issues really as the net metering question from a couple of years ago there's a lot of issues about proper planning and incentives and unintended to approach trash differently for example bulky pick up and people who put out seemingly unlimited quantities of waste and this contract that's about to be let is finally an opportunity to really see if we can do things differently in the future than we have up to now so i'm looking forward to that  ok public safety public safety is also interesting in that we're all aware of the state of the police department after our tour in january there is a group now involving me and jenny working with and remold me and others to try to come up with a strategy that can actually be implemented in the reasonable reasonably near future and  financially feasible and we think we're actually making progress on that and and marie will make a brief report in the june town meeting and we expect to do  more detailed presentation in the fall about how to how to make real progress on this question interestingly simultaneously of police and fire both identify the need for additional i t support this came up briefly in our meeting on monday i think this is important the and i'm hopeful that we can help find a better solution for this than what we heard on monday night that the need is real  but the best way to get useful data and useful reports that can actually improve the operation of these two departments is something that requires further study and whether it's it'll be some collaboration i assume between department has board of selectmen this committee and i would like to invite the information technology advisory committee which is in his around for many many years but hasn't taken a lead role in many occasions i think this is an opportunity for everybody to get together and contribute their expertise on this reich you know just not for any action now  do the interviews with the department and have spent a lot of time recently thinking about the fact that i dive deep into what that one thousand department is doing but not the other several and the police have their own in labor has their own and y have their own and i've certainly spoken with david why there are multiple and there's good reasons and i get that but i'm wondering if for future maybe we think about taking a look at all of the i t departments together at least for the purposes of this report so that we can get a sense of what's happening with a t generally you know this is this problem this is a big question because there's the operational needs of the police and the fire department so there's a physical infrastructure issue because the hope that's located in like apartment has to be moved in i don't know of the migration of the cloud is complete and the hub has moved from the light department is it simply to be moved someplace there some alternative technical solution that should be implemented this is really a far reaching question so the question that question about the funding for moving the hubs is coming from the capital budget so there are a lot of pieces of funding for id generally in the town that are all it's like an octopus it's all nice and obviously is fundamental to the operation of the town in many ways but it's very hard to figure out how to think whether it's a new platform that we didn't have twenty years ago you know and it's in the operating budget it's in the capital budget it's all over the place and it would be great if we had the funds to establish a new technology funding source but we don't have that applications there's other departments that have absolutely no skills and would rely on the eye to department and and everything in between and so some of the things that you were talking about with the police and fire about whether or not they can leverage the software well is it necessary that it be police and fire doing that or is it possible that there are other experts in the well anyway that's what we don't very much i think your question lord i'm hopeful that the software is sophisticated that scripts can be designed to generate reports they would find useful and then they could just be running up periodic basis but i think there will be a project for those who want to get involved starting in the fall i'm sure to see how to do this better i was just to say i think that's an interesting idea because i think for the average time media member the question of why there are five and how why they don't work together is just a question and those explanations would be helpful to educate the public just a small addition to the well i suspect part of it is that things just grew up in the pen and we like other areas and towns where you know we have legacy silos that we can perhaps dismantle there's some good reason ok we have general government there are some of those points human services when i were down to rome and five in the free cash update again this is going to have to be revised based on what we just discussed involving reduced reliance on general stabilization fund and the increased draw david before he left kept indicating concern that the historical or punishment rate will not be i guess we'll see if there's  heat their belt that has been a significant amount of leverage replenish meant calculation and i think at this point some of the ones that remain are longer term circumstances for tax titles and are which require more process through the courts and so we don't always know when those are going to come forward part of it also has to do with  the excise tax for vehicles we have even in the forecast we have been less conservative in those numbers and try to make them closer to what we have seen them through and so and also with the advice of people who have had the silence from regard to the forecasting model through the financial taskforce so we have tried to be more less conservative in terms of projection of those numbers and closer to what we've actually been getting and with regard to the deferred taxes he's reached out to many people who are  still in their homes and there i think was a lot of misinformation about taxes being deferred and and he has had lots of conversations with folks about pointing out those even if you're family still living there but you're not and that will help to diminish and i think he's had a lot of success in having people pay those deferred announce and knowing that they're paid now instead of continuing to accrue interest and be paid upon transfer of that property to heirs so for sale so i think i know a lot of those things he's already knocked on those doors and collected and and those are just some examples but that's why there is some concern about how much replenishment will be i think there will still be some it's just a matter of you know sort of building permits how much scope there is for similar size for a project are the future of the british large  and thanks to mike for asking me to research this the existing stabilization funds that were created in the fairly recent past have not been terribly useful the the existing in the sense that the existing sped stabilization fund was drawn down to almost zero in two thousand and fifteen and it hasn't been funded sense and the major capital is a major capital stabilization fund i'm not through reading ever funded but the money for what for road that could have gone there was immediately allocated are in an account because they because of when they came in they're in a receipt restricted proceed and they intend to david had drafted a memo on february twenty seventh with to the bid is being prepared and the intent is that that when that is bid out there would also be it would also include a cost for the infrastructure to be required so once it's term in where those will be then you can begin to look at developing specs that will say what the infrastructure requirements will be and we would have a number that's the reason that we're unable to schedule that for the current time meaning so we're looking at getting that information and then that the one point three was intended to be used for that and then supplemented by free cash or i know there's been much discussion about whether that should be bonded so receipts reserved for procreation and if there's an animation of how that money will be spent if there's a determination that instead of paying for it with those proceeds or reducing the cost the receipts we served and that particular account according to david's memo can only be used for purposes for which the town is the eligible to incur debt for five or more years so defacto will be a capital project but exactly what capital project of course has to be identified but it's not as fungible as he was that sum that could go into the high school stabilization fund or something else now ok according to david's memo it cannot be and it cannot be deposited directly to treat cash either and how these incumbrances arose i don't know but that govern what's happening with the parking lot money at this point  statutory well  this fund is david's description of it and it sounds like it is segregated in this account that could only be used for capital projects that would be bonded for five years or more it's a statutory thing but it sounds like it's just the sale an asset that we had i mean i don't want to spend oh i can buy that but it surprises me because i thought we had that other discussions last year about the fact that that might eventually end up in free cash or be in the stabilization fund or whatever because as i say i don't know the answer to that but i will try to twenty seven to twenty twenty nine and here you see the one of the more meaningful numbers i think which says that the taking the town as a whole the pension contribution  everything current and unfunded portions will be seven percent this year and next and the expectation if the investment returns are achieved to reach the required contribution will drop to four point five percent  for the remainder of the the teacher's contract are fundamentally important and we don't have any visibility into how those are going but i think and we're just stating what everybody knows that the compensation cos very critical of the determining determining financial pressures elsewhere the town the belmont schools in point number two separate point from compensation growth the enrollment growth is creating two at least two significant issues one is the need for additional teaching staff to keep class sizes at anywhere near the target levels that have been expressed as goals and then secondly the school buildings are running out of physical room and i've heard from the school committee that you can't even increase class size in certain grades or in certain buildings because the classroom is physically not large enough to accommodate more desks so that the need for  pressing and an increase of one hundred students a year which is what we've been experiencing in the last few years is projected to continue at least for the next few years one hundred students a year is four classrooms worth of students i don't term solution is probably building a high school that spectrum seventh grade twelfth grade and then there'd be a real a realignment of students across all the schools but that solution will not be online for quite some time so all we can do here really is identify the issue capital projects it's actually impressive when you make a list of everything that was done just with that exclusions and the general fund budget there's a respectable list of projects between schools and fire stations and home building i was taken aback i originally had on this list and like pointed out to me that was twenty years ago and i can't even i'm getting old so i just didn't seem like twenty years so i took it off the list but i think when you include  to the debt exclusions and general fund projects because that's the budget this report is addressing but of course c p a s made additional things possible and then in the future as i keep saying  the high school is moving forwards the library is beginning to move in and the major capital projects working group believes it actually has a workable strategy for the police station w incinerator and the one that's least well defined at this point is the hockey rink it seems like that's a project that will depend on some kind of public private cooperation but that hasn't been specked out at all section four there's the pension and health care liabilities discussion  say is this repeating something we had before  well double check to make sure it's not being repetitious the opeth discussion is the second half of the section states again what we have been doing in the last few years is making a contribution of roughly three hundred fifty thousand dollars per the old have guideline the really big news and opeth will be the completion of the open study to try to get a better handle on what the size of this liability really is for the health care benefits of currently eligible belmont retirees i think that's just on the town side in the schools and has a another one point five i mean there is a line out in this world for the exact same  thing and that that number is on page forty three it's one million five five six to one joe and that makes sense that they're comparable because harry be roughly comparable size  never eliminate that thank you so jim if you could clarify for me so it will be the right number then is one point four plus roughly one point four five and the is there is the opeth number that we've been discussing a number that includes a school component or the school is not a piece of the open liability that the open liability that account talks about is the school jeff   you're right comparable spreadsheet school site so thank you for that correction i don't know exactly when the open up study group will report back but i gather it'll be sometime before the end of the year before the end of the calendar year hopefully a lot sooner than that and then the usual concluding paragraph describing all the good will happen chapters that are can come may want to talk about it in the presentation you give but my suspicion is that being completely silent on that issue is probably not that doesn't that we may want to work out of that in some fashion but you know leave it to you to think about how to do that well so fair point what is less than what the exact number because it isn't as much as that so clever it's a couple years whether it's you know after two years now three years in or four years from now we're likely to have where we're going to have a shortfall is you mean these trends continue and we're going to not only in this report you know perhaps you don't use exact numbers but it's this is a cliff and one we clearly because we've run a resource now whether free cash is more robust then we can use more that unclear whether state balance additional revenue coming in cutting expenses to the extent possible but i imagine a significant drawdown of free cash at that point which order will same but they're is very unknown right now but i think one of the things that the financial task force report and the subsequent budgeting conversations has done is made the budgeting discussions publicly realistic because in the past you know twenty years ago whenever we passed our overrides it's always been the message that this is for good you know we're not going to do this again people always say this is the last time we're going to do this well it's never the last time because that's not realistic and we've had very realistic discussions in the past few years it seems to me about the budgeting process and keeping that on the table i think it's a very important thing to do so i just i think we've had very realistic discussions in here and i do think that needs to go to town meeting and beyond because i do think that whether we are positioned in that way or not there is a perception that we've fixed the problem and there's still a structural debt even given the importance of this and actually given the range of edits we've discussed i and i will turn around another draft by early tomorrow morning and distribute it again which and then anybody who would like to comment further between laughter night i would say if you would like to discuss the ed ed report at all you can take the lead on that or if you'd like to discuss your memo about no i think i think and i think we've spent summarizes and and the other thing just in terms of what we did when the school budget when when the when school committee presented their budget they spent six eleven through fiscal fifteen and because because they put a lot of focus on that and since it was an important kind of comparison i mean i felt like it was a good year to sort of them dig in and try to try to sort of have a n i mean they were very helpful in sending us the the full the full on financials for all four of the sixteen towns we talked about all of the fifteen towns it was our close neighbors it was when you take a look at how dessie the state measures how well schools are doing the amount comes out on top i think that's a testament to our schools i think it's a testament for kids in our parents as well as well but it's just something something to keep in mind is that the that the results of the whole process are turning out well when when we look at these at belmont in fourteen other towns arlington winchester really looked like they were close as close as two years just in terms of the the small small commercial tax base and then actually what was striking was that those are where the in roman crunches r r r r m going on in those those are towns going to through the same kind of growth especially in the elementary grades and whereas in west and there there's a drop and the other thing we looked at is that they have relatively low new growth in the property tax tax tax base and that's also sort of a lack of a lack of a development possibilities within these towns a tax base that's almost entirely dependent on residential properties and then a high average single family tax tax a bill relative to to the massachusetts measure of per capita in come and so and so those you know those three towns really are sort of going through the same the same stuff with that you know we are we and those other towns are operating at at you know at home you know at a at a relatively low cost per per student so when you take a look at the at the outcomes i mean you say that you know that the that the school is running pretty efficiently with the lean with the lean on the budget how that really shows up especially in belmont's case is  that we have the highest number of students per for classes so we're so we're asking the school system to to out to to have to have more kids to have more kids in the classroom that's and that that's a major driver  of the cost difference there are other things that were sort of hard to tease out these desk numbers are not just school budgets but it's town i'm town up budgets and so that you would get to charge some of phyllis's time or you get to charge them with a snowplow time and and it's not clear whether every town is doing that on an apples to apples on basis we have some of the some of the lower spending there some other towns like cambridge are much more much more i'm generous in terms of in terms of them some of some of some of some of their benefits so there are other things that are driving that we also seem to in the same way that we run lean on classroom teachers i think we run lean on guidance counsellors and that's been a focus of i took a look at the actual contracts that were and the step in lanes that were in place for fiscal year sixteen for all of those towns and every town doesn't have quite the same step laid lane grid but sort of making realistic assumptions about how to map it into a standardized table and then taking the belmont census of teachers and applying it to each to each to each standardize table for each town showed that among the peers among among the arlington and then the winchesters that we that we paid more in fiscal year six six the teen than they would have would have paid the the towns that paid more are that wellesley is in the west in newton and he knew it in cambridge we had a table on one page you know forty nine that sort of shows shows at that and the first half of it is based on the standardize mapping of every contract out there in the in the last two columns are actually numbers from the actual actual contracts to be to be apples to apples like every town has a step in the lane with masters plus thirty or masters step from step a three and you see that our that our salaries actually you know once you realize that we can't pay what a what a weston weston or newton pays you know that we look at that we look good to our to our you know to our peers peers and there are there is you know clearly a lot of support services and teachers that have been added because of the override and that shows up the the role meant as as a roy had mentioned will always be a pressure point i think one hundred students per per year is out there that you could probably i mean that's that's three or four for classrooms but it's but it's but it's real and and then it sort of gets to the point that mike brought up in terms of the overall context how do we manage  growth in context of the overall overall financial capabilities of the town given given you know given where we are and that's and that's a major challenge and then we just  highlight that as an observer i mean we've pulled this public data we're sitting on the outside but you know what happens inside the con the the click to boarding process which which is a process that you know that we support it's the way it is the way that contracts are done what happens between the school and committee and that in terms of what the salary salaries will be for the next three years really is going to be the main driver about how much about how about how much more flexibility that we have and so we just sort of you know we were on the outside just making comments but you know if we have a set amount available for compensation you know if we have to ask you know what is the value of smaller class sizes if that if you're that if you're that if th you're working and working in the system i mean just just sort of want to sort of keep keep that in mind and so that's i mean that's where we went we had to add to all six schools it would cost even more than that and think about the balance between those things i mean that's not the only consideration when you think about great configuration but if you're thinking about it from a financial point of view we really do need to start talking about the balance because no matter what we do it's going to be constant quite a lot but with a very difficult question for the building committee because we're building a school from nine grades nine through twelve is another high school but building seven through twelve is really building two schools and proper planning for that the physical configuration whether a mystery a with fund fascinating they were like forty fifty or something parents and educators and students also participating in it and there was a whole lot of discussion about what is the best way to educate children how do you want to have them together and what does that mean for the different configurations and what does that mean for the design of the building absolutely they have to be connected but the the way i understand it is that all of that information they'd already done a session with teachers and administration and then they were doing this one with the community and all of that is going to feed into what they are going to recommend and the way emma spear i was just going to point out to the important growth for the time the high school gets built we will have added probably a thousand students in the last whatever how many years that's that since we've built another school least add seven hundred or eight hundred and that is that that is a school that's was larger than any of our elementary schools and it's pretty close it's smaller than the channel but it's still pretty well i think that's why it was so important to have  that were going to be that had to be established before we could move into the educational plan and then into the visibility studies so they're aware of that  to well it's going to be a challenge and if course once it's built and we hope that the enrollment stays up because it will be a shame that's the that you know there was a time when schools were built and i guess everybody but that bill that sixty or seventy years ago and i think we're just at that point in the cycle again fiscal year eighteen budget to the town clerk the final report should be based on the draft presented to the war committee on may tenth two thousand and seventeen on the discussions at its may tenth meeting on any subsequent draft provided by the chair and comments received in response and other edits by the chair that correct typos and factual errors enhanced clarity or otherwise improve the final report second it  and then i am hopeful that all of our work is done until you're in town meeting just one more week to hang in there and then of course anybody who can attend more readings welcome to come so the seventeenth for me