and as we are now making customary the first item of agenda is to approve minutes and there are two aspects of this conversation one is that will review the minutes from our last two meetings the meeting on the ten fourteen which was here and then the meeting on october twenty eighth which was the pension forum which wasn't really a logical place to approve minutes and so we have two sets of minutes that are most recent that want to approve now everybody has has had those distributed to them so that's kind of the generic topic number one of the generic number talking over to you under the under the header of minutes but we received an e mail from the town clerk's office indicating a number of different minutes over the course of you know an extended period time as many as some cases up to a couple years ago that were either work committee minutes as a whole or subcommittee minutes that for whatever reason were not actually in the hands of the town clerk's office and they wanted to resolution about that in a timely fashion and of course our response was yes so so i'll have jim talk a little bit about how we're going to think about the subcommittee minutes because that will do a quick approval of some subcommittee minutes here for about you know to the subcommittee process of him mike covered it there's a there's a list going back about four or five years of missing minutes and so just to help the town clerk and help us fill our duty to the open meeting  w i i i want to talk to ellen and she said it's fine to have the approval of minutes happen at a full board committee meeting so we can do it now and  the education subcommittee meeting for june eleventh two thousand and fourteen myself and bob sorrow who were there and just so you know this was a meeting called to prove other meeting other meeting and minutes the moment some are what we'll do is we'll bring those meeting minutes forward and do you know a quick rapid go through so that within a matter of them certainly by the end of the year i want as asked for that we would get all of the meeting minutes  first quarter and the first thing i'll say is as you know in the school year the end of the first quarter as of september thirteenth is obviously very early so for some things it's easy to project tony likes to do projections where he expects at this moment the year w land so there are certain items like the salaries which are easier to project over the course of the year depending of course on the leaves of absence and substitutes but there are other things in this early time of the year such as special ed transportation where there really hasn't been the bills coming in for september yet for i think as i said substitutes is another example of things that we're turning used a three year average of trying to figure out what it might look like so if you look down in the balances and deficit which is the second to last column next to the notes on the grid that showing the results everything is sort of falling in line given the extra money that we have with the override this year the as i think i might mention before all of the positions that were included in the financial task force report were higher as planned with the only exception being a kindergarten teacher because it turned out that the kindergarten numbers really didn't justify an additional class this year so what was done was a guidance counselor for the generally was moved from year to two year one in those two were swapped which is great because now there are four crimes counselors are generally for the four grades so looking down this last column it's really as you'll see the five hundred thousand dollar deficit in the special education to washington line which is the problem area and which is why at the bottom right now it shows one hundred four thousand dollars deficit projected for the year and i think as we discussed at our meeting and as i tried to include in my e mail when i sent this around today this doesn't indicate that we expect to end the year with one hundred thousand dollar deficit and request for reserve fund transfer or anything else similar but we really wanted to illustrate at this point what that special education overrun does everything else being equal what so a residential placement and residential placement is if someone is not being met you know transported back and forth doesn't attend every day but is actually living in a particular s fulltime residential you have no idea what that number is up to over oldies are pretty close to where they were at the end of last year right i don't have a particular number i can find them for you i mean i know the number is ninety eight i think as i was going to say is there's a you know a wide range sort of the special ed really level of services where and this is where i don't mean to be vague i'm just trying to walk the line carefully with the confidentiality issues that surround all this kind of thing it is so i mean i think we'll be able to manage it and the thing is we're going to sort of have a q one point five update with the school committee in the finance subcommittee next week actually to see a some of these things that are projections to see how they're coming in and whether or not there has to be you know adjustments made right now or forward as the second quarter but i think we can manage it this year but it does raise the point of that special education stabilization final race you know where the why yet again that this is this is an instance where it looks as though it won't be an issue this year but it really is great to have some type of you know  additional kids so much as it is changing all of the services and the other thing that just to mention and i would you can everything is listed on line the presentation of the superintendent gave it to the school committee meeting last week is he there was a report on the foundation budget there and there was a let me see that as i have been named the foundation budget review committee and filed a report with the legislator this is a problem that many of the districts across the commonwealth are finding that it's just so hard to deal with special education class and it does impact can often impact other areas of the budget because it just can't be controlled so i mean really at the state level it would be an ideal to have some kind of solution but in the meantime  the superintendent presented the other night it does show that you know the spending belmont spending is in line with its peer districts it's really you know not in any way unique to us it is a common problem but as one that is  driving that level of variance is that right but it can be up to three hundred thousand dollars for example per for an individual and so you have a five hundred thousand or variance it doesn't really take that many people to drive a very large areas that is that ok so what i think one of the things  to see how this might impact the f y seventeen as we enter the preparing that budget is to look carefully at the circuit breaker to see what you know that lags it's a money that those the reimbursement are not reimbursement but the level of support you get from the state which is always a year behind and that's something th money that is looked at as for reimbursement and then there's a percentage reimbursed right i think i think caps out at seventy seventy five and it sort of is the only thing that had a very right but it goes up and down but it had gone back up i think right for a couple of years to already and i think that's the thing as i understand it there's a pool of money that's gets aside so it sort of depends on how much they can fund that pool and how much demand there is on it from other districts so again you can sort of you know hope for you know when you seventy five dependent variable in the brain is sort of set right so again that sort of shows that trying to manage these costs you can have the stabilization fund if you have an extraordinary year that you're not prepared for to help you with that particular year and then we have to look carefully at how it true and it's something that you know when we look at the maintenance piece at the next one point is that it really had gone down where the real overlooking the five years are was held flat and i think that was one of those things to try to make everything balance when things were tight and so that was  as you said not funding as it should have been really compared to the age and then the needs of all the bill it's always a risk but on the bussing you've got a twenty five i think the superintendent and his office have been very creative in not having down find another bus for this year and this is sort of where we've been close to a tipping point with filling up the buses and as you know the with the elementary schools and we're the way that when the roman goes up it may not be your neighborhood school but it's sort of wherever the class sizes kalau it and so which has been working well and when you look at the enrollment numbers that we've been distributing they are really very well distributed but the problem is that it poses a lot of challenge for the bus routes depending on where those kids happen to live and so there was a lot of problems i think at the beginning of this year they had to really really route a bus essentially because it was just taking a very long time or you know there were two kids that had to go to the butler they just the way they get it all to work is i quite amazing but we have been warned that next year i think there is going to have to be another bus which is about sixty five thousand dollars and then we see we have been traditionally not funding properly when you look at the trends the buses and so we're as you all understand the major commitment doesn't get you to the spring so therefore that's the big billing cycle that generates the majority of our own well if you go excise tax so the number really is question just just on the just on the top line i mean as we're talking about the property tax and the and that is the resetting there in a that there we collected twenty three point six percent bob you know just further on that point you could i look at those two percentages the this year versus last year i would think that every year there's a certain you know sort of depression of the first quarter and also because in every the new tax rate and we suspect we will generate what we normally would in some of june of two thousand and sixteen which was fiscal sixteen so the fact that we're all over the head is not a bad thing but again it  more or less makes us confident that the seven twenty five that we use for fiscal sixteen is not targeting ok the next one on the next page is their fund balance and so we have not got our free cash number certified yet but you know our but to the extent that we continue to use free cash to balance our seventy budget our believe to replenish the amount that we used in dallas in sixteen budget is important so therefore even though we have some overages and some revenue that's not a bad thing because coal is to replace what you use the phrase for free cash to balance the budget revenues that we used about state budgets and i think the states trying to balance how you take your increasing revenues and how you make sure you don't have one time or means you have some prominent revenue and how that may impact the allocation of state aid to cities and will will will future spending in terms of public safety salaries be at twenty five percent or less per quarter for the next three quarters please i have a question on the information technology expenses why they're so much higher than the prior year know no holidays ok those participating of course will be board of selectmen town treasurer lloyd carmen the retirement board siegel company which is the retirement board actuarial consultant first southwest which is the town's financial and investment advisor and you know like i said the discussion will be focused on pension obligation bonds advantages  disadvantages and risks certainly members of the ward committee who are not in the holiday mood are welcome to attend another time or place presumably probably the board is t work gathering information and we expect some recommendations by the end of the year to great and i guess one of the question for you david at what point do we start getting visibility into what we think the growth in health care expenses going to be for the at the end for the upcoming year so you know we had zero percent growth actually for the last two years and i guess the question is when we see it when we when we have a sense of what that's looking like claims that basically that that's a trend that you're probably not going to lose and we don't know the individuals as we don't but clearly you get a sense of what some of the high cost items are and so you get a benefit is that as i think we've discussed in the past the total liability on the side is large as meaningfully determined by the growth in health care costs as i understand it the current forecast is i believe one hundred seventy five million something like that that is the gap is that ring about true david and that number has been adjusted down from in one hundred ninety s because of the last year's positive experience in terms of health care growth and the model that gets you two hundred seventy five ish million assumes i believe eight percent then seven percent and six percent in five percent and five percent growth forevermore and so if for the sake of argument the number would actually be zero for going forward that one seventy five ish number would be two it would go down quite a bit if the number is eight seven six five five five then it is that and if it's a different number up or down than it's affected so that growth number actually really matters a lot and so  been very fortunate to have zero percent growth over last couple years and so on these is not at all clear or not awful here is what that actually will look like whether it's going to be five higher or lower and so that's why i ask because of the it's obviously has as big swings in terms of our overall liability i don't know if this is true but it seems to me it's possible that the trend over longer periods of time is more reasonable to project rather than trying to figure out what the trend is in really a given year because as you say david it could be for two individuals that suddenly had major medical issues that suddenly spike that thing you know over last year so i would think that it would be harder to count on any particular projection even in the middle of one particular year trend but you know i think if you if you look at health care growth for quite a long time there was very meaningful inflation in health care costs in the united states and for the last several years that health care inflation trencher wide has actually been has decreased meaningfully as and for the town we've had in part because of the way we actually approach our our our manager healthcare costs has actually been lower and so at some point if you have a positive experience for a long time and if you then say maybe we actually are going to do august well unless you're new everyone is quite familiar i think with the work committee report i was sent around i sent around another version of a copy of the report from last year to everybody earlier today just as a refresher but here's  here's just one section which just happens to be the very first section that we that we do in the report after the introductory section so this happens to be human services council on aging it literally is first so it's not chosen for another reason essentials and people now i think when they look at it used to looking at the format i find it very easy to use now i really have to reinvent fire look of it but one thing that did come up last year and we talked about at the end was when we were doing the percentage change from prior year do you go from the budget amount or do you go from the one that the war can that the town meeting approves of you go into the one that have been revised and we didn't really know which one to make sure that at least i don't really care i just want to make sure every single department report is having the it so i mean just to follow up on that do we have i mean do we know what that number was for last year i mean can we i mean do we do we have do we have do we have on the just the numbers  they were very pleased with the information and we've sort of cut it down it's not all that long sections and everything that department did and excruciating detail i think that we took a lot of that out and i think that was yeah i would say that program budget was adopted sort of for certain reasons because if your sense of where you're spending most of your money in terms of the services being provided program well the thinking of programs will ensure that this is pretty much what sometimes i think is missing on this is that you don't get as much sensible cost behavior from that kind of slicing and i know in for the budget i tried to take line item sort of ingroup kind of group line items i mean some are obvious labor costs know get a sense of if you're trying to get a sense of what's driving your budget growth i think some look at line items not just at the detailed level we've had to do program but you know we look at you know individual line items that exceed a certain threshold in the expense analysis what i found missing on the ed report that i tried to change a couple of years ago was get some sense of what the labor cost was in push technology costs what are you know how much money is going to sort of you know supplies or textbooks in the case of the school get some sense of what's really that gives us that it provides the reader i think with a little better sense of what might be driving putting than just program does could program obviously it's slicing it this way and you're budget for me personally i think you need to say the education for the both public schools a section of the work many reporters meaningfully longer than any other section sure in part because it represents nearly fifty million dollars worth of expenditure and so i think the kind of analysis you're describing is very helpful and i think the the richness and the rigor in that section which you know we give a large share of the credit to you personally for that work over the last several years is terrific i don't think anybody  i agree with you don't overanalyze a two hundred fifty thousand dollars and if we get the budget in a spreadsheet form with the with the with the components of the chart of accounts broken out into separate columns we can probably do that programatic leave for everyone pretty had to look into different pieces to sort of find the numbers and if that were the case i would i would think that we would want to try to help map our re report more directly and to do what is on the warrant selectman and the staff monitor that i'm not sure we need it in terms of a trend line for the town meeting members and every single report however you could do it relatively make it relatively easy to i'm not sure how easy it is if we don't put it all seems to me some sort of graphic presentation but that's because really what you want is just somebody to grab that sort so dan it sounds like perhaps as was said over here that might be more  makes no sense at all because then you might just try to read the line out a budget and just something that me i'm thinking of something that makes it easier for just a reader to grasp in terms of how how their money's being spent and i think one way it's programatic lee this is these are the programs for supporting with the budget and people you know who use the services one of one is sort of know i was allocating it and the other one is again and you're right at each over time it takes on more importance but it could be done like that in the pie chart format which would i structure well look i mean this doesn't have to be the only discussion obviously on this topic what i'm hearing from the group is that the general approach that we take in terms of the way were approaching the summary in the way we're structuring the different sections of the document seems like something that we're going to continue to do for fiscal seventeen to hear any further it feedback that would be helpful to us quickly as folks you know maybe hear this conversation to say oh actually this would be helpful feel free to you know share that and it will incorporate appropriately is your e mail at one so when she left the work committee all email was about that i know that e mails that are sent to that come to me to get forwarded to me so i do receive them i just know that i never receive e mails and so we'll track it down i will make sure approved it and it's one hundred forty four million nine hundred thousand dollars i've heard some rumors that they're all of budget and they're desperately trying to cut it back to keep it under one hundred fifty million dollars they finally come to realization they're not going to get forty life is full of choices and when you get terrible choices what's the right thing to do you've got to pick the least bad right and what is the least bad if i thought if it was defeated if i thought that that and i'm still hopeful and there's been some behind the scenes meeting if it was defeated and some leadership step forward and realize the district is dysfunctional students i think and the wall fams and someone will cambridge and put together a district and build a new school and reconsider if i thought that was the outcome of the defeat absolutely a vote against it but i don't see that happening i see an attitude and you see it already when they put on the presentation they present that if we go alone alternative that's the only place to look at and it's  hundred five million dollars that they've put together with the roof and all the things that have to be done so if that's where they're going to go and not really look to reconstitute this district and this is where we are what happens with that hundred five million dollars first thing that happens is there's no state a so that's all passed through every year and the operating budget and the second aspect of it is there has been all of this effort to get the non district members to pay their fair share of the capital costs and so forth well if it's passed through on the operating budget and we have a school bear in mind build for twelve hundred the new project is defeated we dealing with twelve hundred student building with band aid repairs being done that we've got a maintain with if you take a look at the ninth grade and you look scrap elated four years forward the end missed in the district membership will be three hundred forty four students to six hundred twenty eight students school rattling around in a twelve hundred student building temporarily repaired no state aid and nothing from the no one district members that will have to bring in to fill it up because it's not debt right it makes me pause and it's easy to be emotional with your own personal financial decisions but dealing with other people's money namely to help on tax paid it might be the least bad thing to do right now vote for it i mean it really is troubling me personally i don't know that that's going to happen i've heard rumors that they're going to first go the usual route which is to go to the school committee votes the debt and then the votes district sends out a notice to all the cities and towns if you don't want to pay this debt you must have sixty days call a special town meeting and vote against it it's got to be unanimous if any one town votes against it so they're going to go that route wait for the first time to say no and then it's a foregone conclusion then they're going to quickly scan scramble and if they have eleven votes to go just to  discussion the budget has to be approved by eleven towns every year sold it in theory that could be a revolt well it sounds like seventy seven times what i believe that's not out of the question alan so i think what i'm hearing correctly i percent to ten percent of the district give or take based on their projections so that would be our share of the debt which is to nine million books but it would have several but it would be the core it would be service over bob and i want to go is everyone heard of all of the the debt because i was going house i was going to ask you about what if you could speak a little bit because i spoke to the supposed to know numbers out of the cesspits but that's that's sort of tentative in it it's regulation not enough if you consider that historically the nonmember towns were not owners they paid eighty wishin which was set by the state which happens to be less than the per pupil cost of the member towns but but they recognized the unfairness of that and not of the legislative level but at the administrative level they passed a regulation that the district can negotiate a facility fee as a condition of member towns would be i have heard rumors that the november towns will challenge that they shouldn't ever have to pay such if he closed their paying for the ownership of them building they go on anything up  if you look at the politics of the situation the nonmember towns have been successful in reducing the tuition to less than one member towns pay so still these people won't be attacked problem is with operating the ninth grade for four years you have three hundred forty four students in a brand new six hundred twenty eight student school and you get what a look at just saying we'll pay the tuition because it's five twenty member districts and one hundred more or less known member districts are now one hundred nonmembers would contribute about seven hundred fifty thousand dollars and if that doesn't happen doctors be very elocution or our bill w five nonmember students they were expecting to have in this but which they calculated to share that they would be paying you could simply shift so that you know they're not they're really if you're a super in so now a lot of towns have their ninth graders staying at making friendships in their own home towns and never going to minutemen so they all their projections are very suspect so that's right if wages that we could lose so is there anything that you're suggesting it's as if this is going to continue to play out it like a slow train wreck or is it just good good is there anything you're suggesting that we do is or a committee right now or should we just keep you know on top of  it's terrible but it's going to save us in the long range to vote foreign made or i mean one of the core question so i mean we've always there's always been sort of two camps one group of people that believes it is impossible for us to withdraw from under any circumstances ok that's a done so he's in million dollars after the state reimbursement that is just being put on these sixteen towns you have seven towns that have already said they want to withdraw all right and it's highly possible the number will be greater than seven towns and says i refuse to pay that amount of money  so the the mutiny that you sort of alluded to may very well become a real issue and so i realize that it's require sixteen town to sort this out but like we it's hard to even imagine exactly what that world looks like so again there's a camp that believes it's impossible for  draw either because we're too big or because no one can withdraw and then there's a camp that says that things might go so strangely that the whole town is all over the whole district i'm sorry was up dissolves and there may be a different world i mean i number one and number two it's a matter of time if you are in the district when that debt passes with district wide vote actually it's not the time i'm told it's when the bonds issue thin of the sixteen districts in order for it to pass assuming doesn't pass the other way right right so if that fails that fails ok that fails they did their presentation has what happens if we do it alone and they've got a whole list of repairs and the bottom line is one hundred five million dollars and they indicate  of the superintendents been exploring and sort of behind the scenes i don't know that he's around ready to come out in a public forum to describe all that but i know that he's been working hard to see what alternatives might exist ok well it sounds it is more to come here i'm just curious too is that some improvements that they performed at the waverly station m b t a would prefer to just close the current waverly station close the belmont center station and construct  center in between the two and that would be on south wasn't street at our forum we had i mean beach street center was crowded we had over one hundred people we had people from watertown showing up handicapped accessible keep it in its current location and and you know that's it and of course they're under no requirement to close belmont center at this point at this point either so that is the option that we are trying to pressure the m b t a to accept at this point keeping the station where it is and waverly making it handicapped accessible i'm hoping they will commit to that and then maybe we can you know they keep pushing for a charrette i'm hoping that once we're able to to focus on a on a location that's desirable then we could use the charrette process to help design you know the new the new station at that facility so hopefully more to come you know they always are sure at sure and when what is it is a gathering with a group of people to share ideas and exchange you direction it's always been well we've really has to we have to address waverly and they're estimating a cost between fifteen to thirty million to make it handicapped accessible and then they're looking at belmont center and saying well sometime down the line in the future five years ten years two years we're going to have to address handicap accessibility there and that's going to be another what forty million thirty million big wondered if that because it's not just money on the stations it's also a question of scheduling and i know you've been anxious to not only have one stop in belmont is the bottom line troll trail and you know i mean i think that's a discussion that would have to be and then in terms of who decides it's entirely down it's entirely them but it's who pays it's entirely yes but it's a political process again so right but if you go to the answer to this question but  windows had to peel but we could request variances maybe go you know another road you know part of this is not only taking private property that's generating taxes on south pleasant street but they want to take a portion of our d p w yard as well and you're going to have a lot of commuter traffic in the residential area between beach street and waverly street you're going to have commuters you know parking six seven million and we can use that to offset the cost of the d p w construction it's you know might sound more appealing but i don't think the numbers are anywhere near that ok bob and then just the likelihood of securing well and the other thing n b a has said is maybe we'll just close the station and keep it closed i mean they've threatened that as well should they could the board of s think about moving up the moving up the m d v d v w plan faster i mean i mean i mean if we build something there then there would be i think that's a very good idea it's a village the cushing village developer appeared before the planning board yesterday morning at their meeting and received a one year extension of the special permit ok before people shake their heads it's not it's not all that bad and i'm going to explain why because there is this misconception that this is going to put the project off for another year and i don't think that's the case the special permit would have expired on november nineteenth and there is no way you know in order to keep the special permit alive you have to start exercising rights under that special permit and there's no way this develop november nineteenth so his lenders his lenders came and said you know you need to get an extension from the planning board i think an extension of one year is more of a belt suspenders thing because he would have performed enough work under the special permit certainly well before that time i'm hoping in order to keep it in order to keep it alive  the reason why i say that should not affect the timing of the construction is because once he closes and the deed to the parking lot gets recorded our land development agreement takes effect and that gets recorded as well and that requires him to complete construction within thirty two months of the recording of our deed to the parking lot so the only way that table's going to start running is for us to close on the sale of the parking lot four hundred dollars on his financing and then the clock starts running regardless of the life of the special permit it could be five years it still has thirty two months of approximately to construct that the other thing the planning board was able to secure from the developer which i think is the most major thing is commitments so i'm going to read from the decision the draft decision of the planning board the applicant shall complete acquisition of the municipal lot on or before december eleventh two thousand and fifteen very important day because once that closing takes place then the time to begin and complete construction under the land development agreement starts ticking second the applicant shall have commenced demolition of the existing structures on or before january fifteenth two thousand sixty two thousand and sixteen i said six thousand sixteen third the applicant shall commence pouring of a foundation for at least one of the three buildings at cushing village on or before april fifteenth two thousand and sixteen so what this is doing is this is pushing them along which is what he needs if he doesn't comply with any of these conditions the special permit could expire so he is under tremendous pressure to comply with that with these with these time limits and you know that is probably the best thing that the planning board has secured otherwise the concern was if we give him a year he'll decide not to close for three months because he's got a year extension and then the land development agreement never takes effect if he doesn't close so that thirty two month timeframe doesn't start clicking so i do think the planning board the right thing i think i think the project is being pushed along we are expecting a closing before december eleventh and that would be the hope but they wanted to build in some some additional question because of the holiday thanksgiving holiday break any questions or comments about that but the pay the monthly fee yes it is that go against the purchase price o fifty percent is right now it's thirty thousand a month fifty percent goes towards the purchase price the other thing we extracted is because this process delayed so long he's agreed to reimburse twenty thousand dollars of our legal fees otherwise we would have signed the documents board of selectmen so he's agreed to reimburse us our legal fees from may on up to twenty thousand dollars if we'd rather see the development of her but i think the thinking was if and i'm saying this on camera if there was another legal fee he would have to pay the longer the strad doubt it would close order so terms that you believe that the parking lot purchase will be completed by december eleventh based on what you know oh it has to it's a condition of the special permit that you believe it will actually take place yes ok great any other questions or comments for sammy now remember if it doesn't take place than the we retain the parking lot hundred fifty foot strip of corn row doesn't get discontinued and it becomes a chopped up process chopped up project as opposed to one large you know larger scale mixed use project so i think there is incentive committee me last week about there is a technology plan presented and we went over some of them what description of all the specials the student services and then talked about sort of the context of the states are just they turn on to the media center if you want to look at it or the presentations are all online but  there's nothing really directly related to the work of me from last week that short story absolutely questions about that time you have any comment you'd like to make as a member of the audience