spain and the next set park so when i was thinking of this evening i was actually beginning with a couple of questions that i prepared really work through all of which were questions any any topics that concern you at this point about budget whether it's on the top side of the school side so with that let me turn to my list for a second  upon the voters approving a debt exclusion voluntarily increase their taxes pay for care of five jets in the capital projects that the debt exclusion money pays for our  motivations to town hall fire station renovations underwood pool senior center in the loans so those are the amounts of money does that have been approved by the good and which ones are stored separately i don't have that in front of me so i don't want to speak but i know for i can tell you what he refinance and then the total that church is more like the a million white schools been open for five years plus two probably seven or eight eight to ten years ago that's at the senior center is approaching ten years i think so so these most of these  except for the underwood pool have been capital projects that have been undertaken several years ago that of have a bonding schedule of anywhere from ten to twenty years so this is this is all in the nature of refinancing existing sometimes you can reassure the debt at a lower cost so that's what the treasurer does if the numbers work out so if interest rates if you bonded certain amount of debt at five percent and rates came down and you can issue the same debt after recall period for half as much you basically have the opportunity when people bought those bonds that there was a recall opportunity that phyllis's the i don't see the refinance of i think four it is now six separate them out to the actual projects because in fact he bundles certain debt for certain projects an issue but it looks like he's uncoupled them so i know at one point there were a couple into one number but we can ask sure again as you well me just tell you what they are so place alarm fees is the amount the monies we charge a residential commercial individuals to basically have their alarm systems tied to the nine one one center and there's a twenty five dollar fee to do that and so that's what generates that revenue in the budget and so i think there's always a balance of making sure that we have fees that are  reasonable and not so large that it become a tax so i think we can look at that but i think it's i don't know when the last time was increased but i know that the financial crisis and worse a few years back looked at all the fee schedules and generally at that time we were at the upper end of our fee schedules were not proper tax revenue so i know that's part of the revenue sub group it was looked at a couple years ago one twenty five so the next thing what are the fire fees so when i'm passing around is the schedule of several different types of fire and so there's different rates of different activities that make up that number and we budget approximately forty five thousand dollars a year oh i think most of them are fairly straightforward basically in the chief can correct me but i believe that you know a significant amount is in reviews for fire alarms and swank or systems and  fire quitman inspections so i know that we don't collect a ton of money on tar cattle inspections so that so generally these are planned reviews for different kind of fire  extinguishing systems that they review for example a few years back we have a fairly large fee for the review of oakland's project because they have to be reviewed for fire alarm systems and the like so  i don't you can speak to the black powder fee but i do pay routinely in other towns up to fifty dollars for the smoke detector that we're charging twenty five for for real estate deals  basically the first farce alarm you have in your house is free but if we dispatch somebody the second time it's ten bucks and the third time it's twenty five dollars and the fourth time we dispatch somebody to your house because of a false alarm f there was an interest in changing that he said but what's the procedure for doing that some of these assessed by statute some of them are set by him in a straight of component of the ok next question is prompted by my feeling that certain large items in the budget or have been unchanged for as long as i can remember and the first item in that know that they're the amount of the pile of payment is included in the belmont like department budget how much of a pilot payment can be paid in some cases has standards so obviously you can't just arbitrarily i believe increase it to two million dollars but there has to be some nexus about what the pilot fee is covering and does it again does it fit into the regulatory review of the light department's fees i know that there was an agreement to maintain that fee because there was some conversations about reducing it so i think that the light board basically can provide you better information but six fifty has been the standard for several years and i know that when i first arrived there was some conversation with the general manager about the amount of that pilot payment and whether or not it fit into the stance of calculation obviously several years later i suspect it's it hasn't change we should be ok in that band with but what i'm telling you need to be verified by the general manager you have the like board needs to decide because again they're ultimately the rate payers pay for this so it's not a free transaction somebody pays for the pilot payment and there's several matters but there was also a long time flat fee of sixty thousand dollars coming from the like department to the town as it just the budget column is the most the political want to use and in this budget for example you had public safety bargaining units that had not either ratified or when the budget was impaired had not implemented the salary increases that were negotiated so those were housed in a different component of the budget and they've now been distributed to the public safety units to cover the cost of settlements so that basically you do want to use the just because that's in fact what your cost is as adjusted in terms of the budget and you compare that to what eighteen is so i would suggest that the adjusted  sat there may be a change in the eight hundred thousand dollars we budget for abatements because that is a certification number by the department of revenue so i think in the in the adjusted column you'll see eight hundred twenty thousand stead of eight hundred but that's part of  rate setting process for property taxes and after the budget is adopted in june the state adopts a final budget and there's some usually some small variances when the final budget adopted by the legislature and signed by the governor to reflect state charges and final charity reminiscence usually not a big difference but there is some some recalculations in those final numbers because the point conference committee votes at the legislative level thank you for that is  of limited information in front of them about what the budget is of course they can always go to the more detail budget documents that you know him have all of the proposed budget detail in them but to the extent that they're familiar with with numbers whether they're looking at the details or or the the larger amounts in the warrants you know that they're that they are familiar with what they voted on last year and i'm just wondering if for purposes of in a sense being helpful to town meeting if we do or if it would make sense to do our comparisons against what they voted on as long as we include explanations for what changed and to be adjusted budget i think you confuse people if you did that to be honest with you and frankly that's part of the due diligence that you perform for ta meeting every single year it's the exact same it's a data set i think is right you understand where you're coming from and we've got to go back and forth on this but i mean doing is adjusted which is the actual amount that was spent people don't remember the exact numbers that were that were voted it's better to compare it to what actually happened as opposed to what was what was voted out there so it my personal opinion is that we should continue as the adjusted number as that is that there is yeah yeah i would just say that you know for the for public safety this year it looks like the budgets flat did last year and in fact it's not it's going up by nine percent which is a which is higher more eight percent of whatever it is on a consolidated basis and that's that's higher than the revenue base that we are projecting you know that we were projecting to increase so it doesn't really a i feel that it doesn't accurately portray where there have been adjusted and usually it's in very few places easily is where there has been a contract negotiation or it's a small adjustment but the contract negotiations can be significant in this case they are significant for the first year at least i don't know i hope it's not an ongoing contract that calls for eight or nine percent every year but the numbers are quite significant and to represented as a flat budget even if in the verbiage you say it's gone up by x percent i'm not sure it's really helpful for town meeting to understand how they have the money and which i thought was the purpose of this report for them to understand how that's being  how their money is being spent i would they don't because it's not included in the projection they don't even maybe know there's a negotiation going on i mean what they vote on they don't even know so this is sort of after the fact but it ratified a contract that goes back to semi fiscal fifteen so basically and the nine percent you're talking about is generally in a three percent annual increase for fiscal years fifteen sixteen and seventeen so the eighteen budget basically reflects the settled union contract for public safety units that reflects the contract period of fifteen sixteen and seventeen which was not included in the adopted seventeen budget we are currently in negotiations now and basically we settle contracts we will make have to make those adjustments next year to reflect what the contract settlements work if in fact we had settled contracts for eighteen nineteen and twenty we would then reflect what the salary negotiation amount would be based upon a several contract for the eighteen budget but we don't have any settled contracts with our bargain units when we put the budget together in february so that's there in this and the public safety is somewhat unique because it's really a three year incremental increase of approximately three percent each year  the prior year adjusted budget as the reference point most of the time that's going to be identical to the voted budget anyway and for the few instances where there is a difference i think there should be mentioned early on in the discussion that to identify that the difference exists how big it is and briefly how it came about and it's two or three sentences maybe maybe could be sufficient to satisfy most people is pretty awesome let's see if that seems like a reasonable approach also put a paragraph in the executive summary if it's a big deal i mean because i mean when we're doing our work we referenced the previous years and what we did we didn't last so it's just useful to sort of leave discussed at great length in the one of the last two meetings so to the extent that it was i'm not trying to reopen that can of worms it was not then we can talk about it an appropriate degree that you think roy the question i'm raising is the question of the use of free cash versus the use of money from the general stabilization fund philosophically we have chosen to reduce by a reasonable amount the amount of free cash we've used historically and use a larger amount of money from from the general stabilization fund than we would how do we use that as a more historical use of free cash i'm curious what the full lot what the logic was why we chose to do that and again if that was talked out at about a great length i don't want to just you know make that make us discuss the same thing but well i'm curious about that  we discussed a bit you could probably have discussed this more of this there clearly differences of approach where r the party and those kind of a tree are so to speak of drawing down a circuit breaker account drawing down free cash and then drawing down  breaker it seems to me that the book jim maybe i'll have an update on this but i thought the school department had a view on the draw down of the circuit breaker that  they say in certain circles was not clearly erroneous and i'm not sure that i had a better proposal regarding free cash  regarding free cash there is the question of the historical replenish from the free cash and how good how good a guy this guy for the future and david has certainly explained on several occasions why things replenishment in the future may not follow the same trend that it has the last couple of years but i thought where this was possibly heading in the fall where there's likely to be a special town meeting is that the town  take another look at free cash in the fall after a certified for july one and if it did seem prudent to take some amount from but i thought the deferring action for six months groovy i mean i'm one person i'm not elected and my own personal view is that you know the general stabilization fund is by definition one time money that unless we put more money into it it is one time money free cash is a combination of money that gets replenished every year and money that is one time money now you can have a debate about how much money gets replenished every year but the fact is that it's millions of dollars i think it's on average three four million dollars over the last six years i could pull the exact one but the idea that we've spent you know on the order of one point seven five million for many years in a row roughly or even more two million is it has been somewhat of a standard we've chosen to reduce that by roughly four hundred thirty thousand dollars and take money from a one time fund my view is my personal view is we should be taking about one point seven five million from free cash and then instead of taking one point two million roughly from the general stabilization to be more like seven thirty that's my own personal view you can you can sort of do it either way you can put the money back later on but to me philosophically that you should take money from free cash that you legitimately believe is going to be comfortably replenished and i think that the data suggests and david may very well disagree and he may have made the point that that seventy five million could be comfortably replenished from freetown that's my own personal view one person's opinion so if i may say so couple a couple things in play here which i think roy reference so reference point one would be that we are in we will need modular classrooms for the eighteen thousand nine hundred school year they will need to be purchased by january of eighty two the location in the number is something that the superintendent is working with the school committee to identify and we're working on trying to get some estimates so one of the strategies was to wait till those factors install modules that the elementary level it will be more challenging just because of the location and the utility work that will be required to install the modulars so we also have one million three that we received from the sale the cushing square parking lot is a memo i attach to the handout very deep gave you and that basically has put that money into a reserve account for further appropriation so one of the strategies might be is once you know what the number is is do you beyond the cost of the modulars for which you have to budget the appropriate amount for principal and  for five years or do you cash pay for them from either the cushing square parking lot sale and supplement that from free cash and i have that approach you always can take money from the free cash and put it into the general stabilization when you do that in the how much what what max amount of flexibility you want to maintain and when you want to implement is maybe the discussion with regard to the free cash number we are using approximate four hundred thousand dollars more in non property tax revenues in this budget and the way free cash gets replenished is from revenues that exceed budget amounts and expenditures that are below what us to made in your budget as we for example budget very close to our actual for excise tax that what we collect in the prior year and knowing that our commitment for seventeen was virtually the same number for sixteen that that comfortable level that we're always thereafter as long as you get a new cars purchase to offset that depreciation factor you basically will have increasing revenue but at some point that's not forever so all i know is that what we're budgeting for eighteen is what we virtually collected in sixteen the commitment to seventeen is basically the same as last year i think it's a different it's different by fifty grand now so that that spread is getting less as you budget your actual non property  closer to actual the the hot foot level of making sure that you can replenish free cash from revenues means you're taking a chance so what we've done is reduce the amount that we use for free cash by the increase of the non property tax increases as a revenue source in our free cash guideline and i might add that basically to assume that you're going to replenish free cash mostly from not spending all what you budgeted puts you in a position where if things don't break the right way you may spend your entire budget will be no term facts now that's probably not going to happen because we always have vacancies and in the lights i'm not going to tell you that's ever going to happen in the absolute so so we've used about third of the general stabilization fund i think that when the new growth revised testament's get issued by the board of assessors we should be below a million dollars in the use of the general stabilization but that was always the plan is on the third year to use the general  guidelines it's only going to be a problem the year that you don't replenish or mostly replenish what you use right now we have a seven point one certified free cash number and we may use a portion of that to fund modular classrooms in the fall because you could in fact take the proceeds from the cushing square parking lot and put it into the capital debt stabilization fund as opposed to using it to cash pay for the modulars and that's something that clearly the war committee the treasurer the capital budget committee the board of selectmen will have a strategy session on so i guess based upon our position we are within the guidelines set by the free cash and again i think we all understand that eighteen budget is balanced how we gets finance that that is up for discussion nineteen and we're finalizing our projections will be challenging but achievable with some work twenty will be difficult because as you said michael general stabilization funds are one time revenues and so once you don't have the many more two you lose then you have a hole in your budget going into the fall we have because you find replacement revenues you find expenditure reductions so but again as as we all understand when we were fortunate enough to receive the override we've got four point five the projection so do we needed seven point seven we've been able to there's a reasonably good chance we will stretch that all right for four years i think fifty it will be challenging unless we either find replacement revenues or have significant expenditure reductions but clearly the year that you don't have the general stabilization to fund your budget you start in a deficit right from the get go and i think you all understand that so i think so the question is about timing and i know there may be a citizens petition to do the same thing last year as we did this past year which is transfer of money from free cash to the general stabilization to the extent that you do that and you are able to keep your guidelines in play and to have a reasonable reply nish meant i think you can do that at some point you may not be able to replenish that as we all know the treasurer helps us by collecting outstanding property taxes through tax title and through deferred  property taxes that people pay up their deferred property taxes i think this fiscal year where that along three hundred thousand we typically spend somewhere between five and seven hundred so that's not the end of the world but again it's one of those things that does help so we're all saying the same thing it's really just a strategy and it's a timing discussion about when you can you can always transfer money in from the free cash in general stabilization questions when you want to do that because you're not going to need to fully exhaust the general stabilization fund in this budget the budget is balanced and it uses about a million or less what happens with the new growth number it does reduce the amount of free cash based upon the continued increase in the use of non tax revenue as i said one strategy is to get free cash certified in the fall of two thousand and seventeen have a special town meeting determine how you going to pay for the modulars because if you issue debt for the modulus that's going to have to be covered in the budget so it's either going to be paid for from cushing village moneys or covered from free cash or covered from property tax revenues if they're available so i think and then at that point you maybe have a reset and so ok this is where we finish with free cash we still have a healthy balance with look at our excesses based upon our guidelines and take some of that put into the general stabilization that's one approach or you could do it now it just means you just are making some assumptions that you haven't boxed yourself because if in fact the modules are much more expensive than we anticipate because of the earth work in the utility work in it might be a more more expensive than the last set that we did and you and if you decide to finance it through  cash it's only going to come from free cash i think everybody is saying the same thing it may be more of a timing issue but again we clearly are at seven point one which is a reduction from seven point five or six last year  we knew that because we did buy the module is for one million for fifty and that would be a reduction we had a good year in terms of revenues in expenditures i would tell you that the revenues year to date  and we're probably not going to get that big building permit for cushing village in fiscal seventeen we will get a foundation permit and the other revenues are tracking on budget  so there will be some excess in some accounts because we're we haven't fully budgeted the na property tax revenue to the max and seventeen but we're getting close to that eighteen so in terms of the reserve account which is a four hundred thousand dollars check out that if you don't use like we didn't use last year that will help replenish free cash we're sort of at that teetering point for snow removal the last storm was expensive it was a lengthy storm so we're collecting all the bills we may be over in our snow and ice budget slightly we may be ok but it's close so you may get asked to do a reserve fund transfer  so i guess that's where we are for revenues expenditures other than that we don't anticipate needing another reserve fund transfer i think the school department is within budget i think they have a small shortfall as i understand under being i think without question we absolutely have to see the job stabilization fund from my point of view to see the general stabilization fund i think it's a timing issue as david indicated i've said this publicly i think we absolutely have to do everything we can to get through fiscal twenty without any additional you know any kind of operating over i cause we're going to be facing some type of debt exclusion vote on the high school probably nineteen i would think so i think to think about any kind of an operation over i between now and then we'll have a significant dippy effect on that vote it's a significant vote i'm not even thinking of that so i think we have to do what we can to fund the general stabilization abundant sense we need to first decide what another building committee for the high school but i think that first needs to be decided what is the make up of that you know if it's eight to twelve perhaps at seven through twelve as the superintendent presented a meeting why why we decided on modules now we'll need to decide that the fall so i think we'll call a special town meeting in the fall probably sometime in november and find appropriation that either through bonding which i support that been aware of the you know where we've come from up we've had turned backs and i think at that point we'll have to have an article i'm looking at an article in the war to fund the general stabilization to move from free cash it to the general staff and i think we have to do that so that i think it's a timing issue michel we could lose more free cash now unless general stabilization the way i look at it let's wait till all everything falls out why in terms of fiscal seven well because backs and that's always a potential excess of so there is a piece of free cash whatever the trend may be that you can consider return in nature right and so you could assume you could then the say ok alicia's then take that a draw that down based on trending and fund the general stabilization fund now that make a difference are we funded now or funded in november i don't see that i see in november will absolutely know what the results of seventeen we're likely going to be similar perhaps maybe not and then use whatever we believe is prudent to use once you've decided what we want to do with the module plus rooms to move funds our free cash in the jones deposition that's why i book  that's why i'm working i would also say that if in fact the policy or the decision is to try to get through fiscal twenty you may be in a position if  lose all your general stabilization funds to do a bigger draw than free cash than you otherwise might like to as a bridge to other potential vote i would also say that in terms of the strategy that the schools in the town are using is we looked at the eighteen budget in tandem with nineteen we'll look at the budget nineteen in tandem with twenty and i think we're going to have to go year to year based upon the fact that you know that stretching out is going to be a challenge and the other thing to keep in mind is as we bond if in fact the high school that exclusion is successful we're go have to make sure we pay close attention to what our fiscal picture looks like as we go to market and to make sure that we haven't depleted all our free cash but that doesn't mean we cannot use free cash to either as a one time basis fund the twenty budget or to see the general stabilization but i think you need to be prudent in the sense that you don't want to have a successful debt exclusion and then go to market for a significant amount of borrowing and not have some of the pieces look as positive as they once were so there's a lot of strategy it's going to go in there's a lot of timing and so i think everyone saying the same thing it's just how it gets implemented and i think and keep in mind that you do want to make sure that your fiscal house is in order when you go to market for two or three or out on bond issues for hopefully a high school project that's approved by the voters but if you want to stretch it out to twenty you go maximum flexibility because again as you said michel one time money is one time money when it's not there and you want to basically extend the budget usage of your override money without having to go back going to fill it back up and that keep it as well as possible for as long as long as i'm possible i think it's a very good message that the general stabilization is our primary savings placed to sort of make sure that the that the future is historically normal level between one point seven and two m two million and and i'm asking the schools to draw down the circuit breaker more and i think you know i think the implementation is a positive thing i think that's a sentence not a neutral i echo that i think it's creates more discipline i think when i hear you say marc right now it's workable re r and then we'll decide what's prudent to put back in the generalization general stabilization fund if we put if we reduce the free cash use that we put we leave it in the general general stabilization fund now we know what's in there going forward and if there is additional cash at the end of the day then you can put it all in but if you're creating discipline around that particular aspect and you're allowing yourself to still have the flexibility to increase the pre crash in your budget for you know in years to come if you need to but we have for example on the non property tax revenues we're projecting in fiscal year eighteen lower than it we need protecting higher than what you projected last year but rejecting five hundred thousand dollars lower in local receipts than we actually took the end in fiscal year sixteen and two years later and and we will have three hundred new cars at the uplands eventually we'll have you know if you want to go through line by line and talk about you know things like motor vehicle excise taxes and that kind of thing but i think those are the things that i mean i think when you look back at historical at this is david has been years and a great job of constructing a budget that is that provides  pretty consistent replenishment of cash from expenses that's probably in line actually if you look at the the just the expense side you probably get pretty much what we've been using in the budget for free cash in the revenue is all kind of the gravy that's been used for for increasing the free cash as we have over the last few years so that's just my perspective also i think it provides a little more discipline i mean i think if we had done that and i think we've done some things that you know like that we could have extended this even further by financing the last modulars for example we chose not to do that and i think we need to start looking at that stabilization fund or something and i think it says to the voters we are committed to extending this this over right as long as possible i guess to me that the general stabilization fund was expressing the ideal or the hope there would not be another override until it was absolutely life or death necessary  think it seems to me the likelihood is that we're all very good stewards of our resources knowing that there's going to be a real serious issue probably in two thousand and twenty and i imagine we're going to draw down most of our balances whether they're in the general stabilization fund or free cash so i'm not concerned about where the money is parked as much as this is as much a part as possible and so i'm i just i don't view putting money in the general so in the general stabilization fund  real sure i mean i agree with the points you made about having the discipline i completely agree i am to support you commit they will absolutely need to make a transfer in the fall to the general stabilization we have to do that in order to get through twenty to me completely i don't see us spending free cash on anything between now and the fall other than what's currently appropriate in this budget we couldn't anyway because we have to go to town meeting when all the just settles what the amount is and then make you know of a robust transfer to the general stabilization fund sometime in november you can drop in and again if we draw down less now like stone to speed the need to transfer additional amounts in the reasons that we discussed here several years ago but there's no need to debate that all over again because i think the likelihood of a similar project coming forward in the next couple of years is we have an adequate two thousand and twenty budget and i just don't see any threat on the horizon for some use of free cash that was inappropriate you're if you're disciplined about the way you approach it whether you're taking money from free cash now or taking money from general stabilization then and then putting it back if you end up in the same place but for me philosophically what i would say is th time money you want to use that as rarely as possible you use it only when you have to use it free cash has essentially two components to me one is a piece that is comfortably replenished and then there's a piece that is not  i would say is we should spend within a reasonable bound of the company real punish money as a standard practice call it one point seven five million roughly of free cash we've we've replenished in the last six years it's been between two million and four point three million are free cash right putting it at one point three simply means you're drawing more money from the one time out put it is zero then you have to draw even more from general civilization and then put money back that doesn't make any sense to me you use the money you know as cover to replenish and then you use the other money  on a one time basis if the end of day again it doesn't really matter but i would just say from a discipline perspective it's good to say let's use the most you can and comfortably can in a month to replenish money and then one time money for a one time stuff that's just the way i think about it but it doesn't really matter that much because if you get in the same place anyway well that makes sense for those that make sense i haven't thought about the south american i'm like i'm not i don't think i'm disagree with yourself i mean something we can keep thinking but it's sort of six in one half dozen of the other i think that's right i mean i understand your point completely and i want to protect that funders much as possible because i'm committed to trying to get through twenty but i haven't any kind of reductions that's really a difference in the investment of the free cash versus i don't think for you know for you may have a different philosophy in terms of the length of the cd he might hide for the stabilization fund if he knows we're not going to use it for a year or whatever but he has an ongoing investment program using investing all the towns to i mean i don't think we have the exact answer for you bob on that but i think it's a great question we should probably ask it to that i don't think he does know that it's not just to pockets it's one part that's right here's another way to look at the free cash that's being replenished is from the operating budget and recently reducing that every year which we have done the last two or three years then you are just squeezing your budget more you're not you're not you know if you if you if it's being replenished it's part of what should be supporting your budget if we were planning to replenish it in the fall i would agree with you but i don't think that that's the case here i mean there are all kinds of contingencies about how much it's going to be drawn down in this budget anyway and  we don't even know how much it's going to be going down and it's going to be probably less than you're projecting right now so in terms of the timing i don't see the difference moderator if you look at page six of your budget book under legislative elected officials the moderator and i had a conversation so the the request we've been getting on average is like seven hundred thousand that would be good to know it turns out it's four hundred thousand the maybe the number is correct and i can make it and in my five years we've just gone over that four hundred once my recollection of results but in my own entire it once i believe and we used none of it last year if another state or only i guess the question would be also whether people don't ask another kappas four hundred thousand so it's good and i think i would only say this should eliminate or reduce the amount of time to come from transfer because you're budgeting accurately what you need to use in your bill that special ed is probably the biggest example of that which is having the opposed to reducing the general civilisation used in the budget so i guess if that's something that mark is hearing and feels is hearing if that's in fact the country will have to find the money to do that we'll find the revenue to do that or just assume that we'll at this moment budgeting again i would tell you that the department of very aware about making sure that when they look at their budgets that they budget prudently but they also budget actively so that they don't need to come for the money so it's not about you know i think it's good and that makes people pay attention as i said the snow is the only one right now that we believe you were on the fence on that we might have to come to this point oh i just make  process so we come up with an estimate for the health insurance increase so for just seventeen the estimated two and a half what we do is truck what you would need to do is go back into the individual budgets of the doctrines to the health insurance line item so what we do is we've included the two and a half percent increase in health insurance budgeted amounts of famil as a gross amount that different fact is approved we will then fold into the individual budget amounts in the individual departmental budgets and just all nineteen to reflect that increase i would  we are watching our health insurance claims carefully the ninety percent is based upon the fact that in the last fiscal year we got presented and i'm not sure what the answer is i mean you want to have it in the line and it was in the budget what i'm hearing you say is that you're trying to keep that relatively consistent so the volatility of it shows up in in this sort of gross up line item but that means when you look at the the the budget categories in each of the departments they're going to look relatively stable when it's not really stable related to that and this is i think i have told you very one of the things i had observed in general government and it's particularly because those departments are very small is you'll have something that crosses the threshold because one person you know joined the planner or one person away from the plant which is actual costs of health insurance aren't really showing up in the departmental stuff it is substantially except for the nine percent increase which is in gross budget that clearly there's a balance here because obviously the several years ago to try to reflect the departmental budgets including benefits if in fact you want to gross budget the entire cost of health insurance for the one thousand budget we can have one line you know what it thought i think the problem is if you think there may be a change in that initial estimate and now you've incorporated us them into individual budgets that if you have to go back and change are you talking about hundreds of person who replaced opposition to the family it's the same or vice versa if it were somebody decided not to take it or somebody didn't take it in decided they didn't want to take it so it's really individual transactions you're looking at it doesn't change the bottom line it which would include the benefits on the other hand by spreading it out like that it's really hard to track the actual total cost of health insurance so if you're making a choice which would be healthier i think the advantage is that somebody can look at the department understand how much that department really costs us for the you wouldn't lose much by taking an average  just said someone has to claim space was obviously so we had six months of favor or claims experience and as i said we have just got a spike in january so if that's an anomaly for some short term procedures that's great if in fact based on a conversation with our carrier we've now been hit with a large number of expensive treatments that means your claim basis for several months may be higher than what you currently experience so ok budget right thank you any other questions about the budget seven thousand dollars and the overall budget was for the crease of like three hundred fifty q thousand dollars because we're going to use instead of going out with a one percent increase for the outer district commissions which is what was projected we're going to go down zero percent this year for that in order to use the u s from the lower budget i mean and then there's the issue with that what we discussed is that there is this money that you're seeing from the circuit breaker and that the balance that we have this year is much higher which is why we're increasing it for next year but going forward those funds will be used going forward those funds would be booked possibly be necessary for the school department because it's such a volatile and so to see how that plays out or doesn't play out of you know of the the final step is i mean that the that the one vote the town meeting is about the school is just the vote on the total size of the budget unlike all the other budgets in town where we're all sort of committees you know actually and what town meeting passes is a budget at the line item level at the school it's simply is and you know and what i was stressing last week is this is a funding question you know if you if if there's a lowered your home phone number right now the schools are projected to and this year with more than a million dollars in this in this circuit breaker right that they have that they have that they have access access to and so it's a question you know that there is there is no you know second chance the next fall where we could have another town meeting rather than having different points of view they we just work together to work in a school committee superintendant down ministre or the board select from that side what should be appropriate reserves for the group we are all committed to the same thing is that that that should ensure that we get through fiscal twenty without any reductions in the necessary resources to get through twenty and then we will see what happens after that so i think the board selection can lead efforts to play to ensure that we all collaborate on that rather than point of view i mean although they're healthy and it's sure the purest form of democracy sometimes can be disruptive as well divisive and i think if we as as town officials that have responsibility for these budgets can gather and understand and try to reach consensus in terms of we're we want circuit breaker and and special education stabilization fund i think we can have a debate about what the right location is and what that amount is but i think the important point today for people to understand is this from my perspective having some reasonable amount of the reserve for school the school district to build up a push and a cushion there and and i'm and i'm very sympathetic with the with the school committees perspective about trying to make sure that that question is is there but a problem in your fiscal year but if you have more placement or placement with just a lower dollar volume you really need to assume that you may not get the stabilization transfer free cash transfer all you can assume that's going to happen so what you do do is you basically squeeze all your budgets planning for the worst that won't get approved by tell me when in fact it probably will be you can't assume that and so i think the reserve fun component is of a vehicle to basically give tell meaning a vehicle to put money into the reserve it does get appropriated elections again can be spent without for the appropriation to allow continuity of the expenditure pla ok let me do something that i hope will be quick to demonstrate the templates that i have in m report and i broke it up into chapters so there's now a word document that pretty much exactly mirrors last year's report except i removed all the tables from it because it was always a question of different groups preparing tables and the ways i have created a spreadsheet for each department that will generate the tables that we need so just as an example here's the one for information technology for each department i fire lighted in yellow well the subcommittee needs to fill out and then everything else should be automated so you can ignore you only have to pay attention to what's in yellow ignore everything else i put in some extra lines in each table in case there happen to be more items this year than last year so you have space to work with but so for example this is the information technology table and it's the it's the format of familiar with with last year's number this year is number change the prior year and so change the f t e is all the all the tables that we've been using for the last couple of years so just for example i prefer populated everything with the numbers from last year's report so for the f t east for example i turn to the budget book so the general government i t table happens to be on section three general government nineteen where the f point creates the total transfers the total up to the main table you don't have to do anything more so the if you piece of it the same way for the end of calculates it automatically recalculates the percentage breakdown of the f t c you don't have to do the next items are the i thems that have changed by and i changed the criteria to five percent and ten thousand dollars just to take account of inflation i've circulated already a spreadsheet that contains all of the items that meet this criteria in the budget so what you need to do is look in the spreadsheet see if there's anything relevant for your department to move into this part yes and the question is pretty big because you from those types of asians for the reasons we discussed tonight that i didn't think it was really all that fruitful to explore the reasons for a large change of the level of individual of an individual apartment to be answer was that somebody got married or something along those lines so ellen raise this question a little while ago and yeah year of the contract i thought you just said it was in the individuals and not really the context as i just thought i just asked that question whether the numbers that there were related to this there were significant changes of the insurance  recommendations and i have decided subject to your agreement to take a radical view towards the recommendations section because we've had this goal of having the previous year's recommendations recording progress on them and then the new year is the current new patients and i'm not sure that there's much follow through  to be acted on then make it this year's recommendation but i don't think it's worth going back to a legacy set of recommendations that seem to have been neglected because it's itself are full but  and if you don't have recommendations that you think are significant don't be bashful about saying the department is run in a very fine way and happy recommendations but i don't want to just carry things over from the past because it out of habit ok so that those are the tables hopefully that will go quickly for each department and it's also it up so when you're done i can just cut and paste this directly into the works ok so here is my work version of last year's report again information technology i've made placeholders for everything that i'm going to paste from the information technology spreadsheet in terms of adjusting the text i work to be a little touchy with formats and all that so what i'm going to urge you to do is to the extent possible use the existing t as your template and if you really want to change something start in one character because with word if you start at the very beginning of the very end of a line sometimes things undesirable things happen but if you start in one parent here then you can change it anyway like  and stop and then judiciously use the delete key and delete the rest of the line or make selective changes and that should preserve this document without any gross mishaps on format the only other thing you need to know is the most valuable key in the whole office software suite is control z which reverses whatever you just did and it has a memory of at least twenty five or thirty steps so even if you've been typing for a while and realize it's all a mistake if you just hit control z anough you will go back and undo whatever you want to undo and you can start over again so hopefully on that basis no system is perfect but i think this should get us there with the least confusion and the force as a readiness report of any question comes up you should email me but  i think it should work and i will so this is all one big document now i'll just break it up into the individual chapters to distribute subcommittees along with your relevant spreadsheet and then it's up to me to assemble it and write an executive summary which i will do so is there anybody here who is not a word user that you know i would say if you're not a word user find somebody else in your think that will make the process will be better to thank you and we are not going to be meeting for three weeks or next regular meeting as march twenty ninth so hopefully that gives you time  to meet the department heads and decide how you're going to approach the report but last year's report i think was a marvelous report and you might be able to make use of a lot of it to minimize the writing burden for this projects are of course the police station and the library part of the public works as well as a skating rink we've got a lot of questions about that so the members of that major couple project working group  wonderful plan and on that it is absolutely workable from the public private point of view we have got some big reasons for the unionized as well some concern about i guess the river shut down a couple times this past season so we certainly  heard about that we're not standing on that we just think it's important to first decide what the footprint of that high schools like before any decisions made in terms with the skating rink will be in those were two options one and two so we could have a communication with