first we should have minutes from our last meeting which we have to have we don't have hard copies but everybody got an electronic copy and  are sure to guess what i'll do is i'll speak at a high level in terms of where we are in terms of what i've passed don't you all and we were going to see that you get a sense of some of the challenges that will be facing the town in the schools as we develop a budget for submission to the board of selectmen school committee in mid february  so the document i passed up the last page the revenues have been listed in the increases to those revenues from fiscal seventeen and at the bottom if this fund for you what we at this point expect the budgets to be for the school in the town or use the financial taskforce model as a guide to start the  process and use those assumptions that have been carried for the last two budgets as a starting point so i guess to start the good news is the fiscal eighteen budget is in balance  i'll tell you why there's some challenges even though i've made that statement as you recall during last spring there was a general consensus that our goal should be to try to not require a nother operating override through fiscal nineteen so basically the override last four years  to sixteen seventeen eighteen and nineteen think that's generally has been the promise that has been talked about since last spring to basically least get through fiscal nineteen without requesting another operating override so that is how we are approaching this budget process in terms of some of the decisions that we're going to be making i also would remind you that when we did our financial model for  nineteen we were projecting a seven point seven million dollars shortfall we got a four point five million dollars overall so just in terms of context clearly we were trying to find a balance between what our projection showed versus what we thought would be a reasonable acceptable number to the voters so that just to keep that in context this is the beginning of the process there will be many assumptions that will be modified over the next sixty days and i think we've all been part of those processes where basically we get revised estimates for a minute an assessment  revised estimates for state aid and other things shake out over the next sixty days so this is a beginning point it clearly will not be the final resting point i will tell you that we've had many conversations between the superintendent myself and his staff and our staff to basically come up with some strategies to what we will do in terms of developing our respective budgets we've gone through some of our estimates are already so there there continues to be a very close working relationship between the schools and the towns to basically make sure that we're sharing information to make sure that we're both on the same page and we understand what the goal is as i said just sort of have a framework were able to get to fiscal nineteen budget without the need for additional override funds i would also highlight that in the budget proposal before you in terms of revenues for using two point two million dollars of the general stabilization fund at the end of this fiscal year to be approximately three million dollars as you recall the first year of the override we banked a million six seventy four and we we also last fiscal year appropriate a million one from free cash as well as  some unused capacity of one hundred fifty thousand dollars plus interest so we feel at the end of this fiscal year the be about three million dollars in the general stabilization fund where using two point two million to balance the budget for  eighteen this is the first year we're using funds from the general stabilization fund i would i would always point out that clearly the three million dollars is one time funds so what we use in fiscal eighteen to balance the budget we need to have the same amount in fiscal nineteen otherwise we will have a revenue shortfall from that revenue source in the general stabilization fund can't spend the same money twice so our goal would be basically to try to be in a position for fiscal eighteen to use about a million five from the general stabilization fund of the three million so that we could use an additional one point five in fiscal nineteen to have it the same number because if we use more in this fiscal year we won't have the funds in the bank in the general stabilization times the same amount in fiscal nineteen so with that being said while the budget is a balance we're proceeding with an attitude that we need to find between combinations of revised increase revenue and i'll talk about that in a second get your evasions to the estimate of increase in expenditures some savings and or some additional revenue so that basically we can submit a budget in february that only uses one point five million from the general stabilization fund instead of two point two so that we basically will have the same amount available in fiscal nineteen as we are using fiscal eighteen so let me just go over some of the things that are in play and sammy will give you an update of a recent occurrence with regard to new growth in january of two thousand and seventeen the board of assessors will provide us an updated estimate of new growth as you recall for last two years they've given us a memo that talked about what i would call the traditional new growth of about five hundred thousand dollars and an estimate of additional new growth from the three major projects that are being developed in to uplands substation by dalma light and cushing village so in these initial projections we're using what was given to us last year as an estimate which is the five hundred thousand dollars in typical new growth and an estimate for the uplands of two hundred twenty thousand dollars from additional property taxes for the uplands in fiscal seventeen we've projected two hundred twenty thousand and that that goal was met so for fiscal eighteen the assessor's from last year's look estimated to twenty as they develop their revised new growth projections we believe that some of those new growth essence may be able to be adjusted i would also point out to you that last year's memo from you sasser it didn't have the substation in terms of the end star component for taxing capabilities and so sam we want you provide an update of what was happening last week yeah i am pleased to say that we closed with a star on the substation just last week december  fifteenth that is you know just just to recap what you may recall as we enter you know through town meeting we went and got authorization to borrow fifty three point seven million if you bonds in order to to construct the substation in the transmission lines and acquire easements it cetera we subsequently entered into an agreement with n star whereby and star would buy from us some of the transmission lines and equipment and easements and they would actually do the transmission and you know they would pay us at the time we said develop twenty seven point six million of that that authorized debt well with added costs in the construction of the substation and stars share balloon to forty five million dollars and so we did close last week and we did get forty five million from and start to cover the construction costs and part of that will be used to retire our short term debt the twenty seven point six million leaving us with long term debt of twenty six point zero point one billion now we were supposed to close will number one i should say was very important to close before december thirty first so that the end star personal property and real property improvements could be taxed in fiscal year two thousand and eighteen if it closed january second then we would not have that benefit in the next fiscal year so we did satisfy that requirement but the second important thing is when the when the selectmen had met about a week we can a half earlier to sign the documentation we were presented with an asset purchase agreement that had an allocation of that forty five million dollars purchase price and you know forty two million of it was allocated towards non property costs intangible costs and the selectmen at the table you know were able to catch that and say hey wait a minute if these are non property intentional costs are we going to be able to tax them or is this document going to tie our hands and limit our ability to tax you know and star personal property and improvements only to the range of three or four million so we did get the assessors involved bob r and he reviewed it and he said no no no no this will my hands we need to revise the agreement which is what we did we engaged in a mega negotiation with and star for about a week we have it's something like board counsel or like department counsel had not caught literally it was caught by the selectmen at their meeting table and in the course of a week week and a half we were able to revise the agreement to make it clear that that that this purchase price in effect i'm paraphrasing that this purchase price like non property intangibles and things like that that would bind the assessor so in the end the assessors were pleased barbara then we got our town council george hall involved and he was board counsel was pleased and of course the board of selectmen were pleased with the language we approved it december fifteenth in the morning and it closed later that afternoon the funds got wired into our two thousand and eighteen budget number one and number two the paperwork we signed will not limit our assessors ability to fully assess those properties for property tax purposes that actually is a better i think we want to be prudent to let the assessors do their work in their analysis because it is a specialty assessment in terms of philippi and and  their updated assessment of new growth items typical uploads and now the answer substation so to the extent that is a positive number which obviously you expected to be it will go towards our goal of trying to reduce the use of the general stabilization from two point two closer to a million five so i think that was that is one of the shoes that are going to drop  dollars so you said the forty two million purchase price that twenty seven was going to be used to pay down the short term debt what happens to the rest of it as the rest of the forty five well it's covering added costs of ok so sure number one to drop will be a revised new growth statement so we'll get sometime in january in the assessor's secondly state a these revenue estimates assume a one percent growth in local a a school i would just remind folks if they've been reading the newspapers governor has implemented some reduction is because revenues have not met the benchmarks completely if you also read read lottery sales are flat or below expectations so it will be interesting to see when the budget is submitted in january what our local aid will be and obviously i think revenues will be up and we've been benefited by the fact that the governor has given us a percentage of the increase in revenues but clearly if the revenues are not growing fast enough to balance the state budget how he handles the increase to local aid so while we've used a very conservative one percent i think we need to be cautious because state revenues are not growing as quickly as i think dissipated and there is a lot of stagnation going on so i think again it may be all good news but for the moment that's another shoe to drop hopefully we'll get to the plus side minuteman assessment we used to ten percent increase to be cautious based upon the  regional agreement but also to shake out a fewer number of students are coming from out of district which are again if you have a budget they pay tuition but if the number of districts students who are paying tuition drops that's going to either require them to raise more money from the member districts or cut expenditures so i think we'll have a better sense of what the minuteman assessment will be in january as they submit their budget to the minuteman school committee and  apply to us and so would that actually create a sense of savings or my not thinking about that probably when we did our projections for fiscally teen in one thousand and twenty it was my understanding that minuteman was going to spread that debt issuance and so that we had built into a a fury will might want to speak to this but we clearly in our estimates we've added an additional boss to the school budget based upon projected a moment we added a bus to last year's  budget we put that on the table can the projections now because we think that's a reality we clearly understand that in roma continues to grow the budget for eighteen does include the five new positions so as part of the overall we i can look down there with me because the superintendent always gives the updates after tobar first but then things changed after october first so seven so on students four thousand five hundred eighty two so there's you know differential when it's against belmont public i'm looking at all the schools so forgive me for looking and thinking and determined as part of the process i would only just say that the cherry modulars were relatively easy install just because a logistics to the building additional modules at the elementary level are little more intricate and therefore based upon the number of final modulars and the infrastructure required they will be more expensive than the million for fifty that we allocated in fiscal sixteen so why is that  ue for fiscal eighteen because if we want the modulars available for use at the beginning of the school year for eighteen nineteen there is a significant several months time that needs to be accounted for so while you may not need the modulars for it until the one thousand nine hundred school year unfortunately we're going to have to buy them eighteen budget monies so that's a new wrinkle to this whole plan so i would also and again i don't look at the million three that the town has received in one time revenues as a result of the execution of the sale of the cushing square parking lot clearly the board of selectmen will be talking about that and then maybe we do a combination of allocation of one time monies and bonding the rest but i guess the only comment is that we're going to have to find a way to find the money to purchase the  eighteen because there is a several month lead time to actually have them put on the site so even though we don't need them for next school year we're going to have to pay for a lot of the eighteen budget then there's always capital needs that always crop up that we haven't received a request from our departments yet but clearly we never have a enough money for account so where does this all bring is ok so our budgets balanced for fiscal eighteen we're using two point two million from the general stabilization to make it balance we will be reviewing our budgets and looking at some expenditure assumptions to see if we can shave some of those projected cost increases to save some of our general stabilization money hopefully we will get some additional revenue for the revised new growth projections and state a generally and so what happens if those things don't all pan out the way we will like them to do so if you take the three million we've got in the general stabilization fund and you make the assumption that we use the two point two to balance fiscal eighteen that leads you point eight eight hundred thousand so what that means is in order to use the same two point two million in fiscal nineteen just as a starting point we're going to have to find a million for and obviously the fallback and the worst case scenario if we're having a good revenue year and we don't have many hits to our free cash might be to do what we did last year which is make an allocation from free cash to the general stabilization fund for some amounts of money that will allow you to use the fiscal year eighteen not reduce the free cash used in the budget in other words keep it not reduce it by the amount you're reducing it so keep it ok so we use seven and one point seven million last year it's come down steadily over the fast five years from like two point five two point six million to one point five million i mean to one point seven million why wouldn't you take it down to one point five or more or leave it at one point seven because historically we have replenished those funds that i know that you know free cash i've heard the story on how we generate free cash and that we need to generate that but we need budget in order to budget conservatively because we need to do that and our free cash typically exceeds that significantly and we all pretty much always with actions that always but we've for the past ten years returned about at least a minimum of one and a half million up to many to four million or so in in free cash so i'm just curious why we continue to have to squeeze that down or why we wouldn't level that out it some number he let me finish two points and i'll answer your question so i will have to can just so so i guess that's the fallback i guess also for the fiscal nineteen budget if all things hold true with our projections and our revenues even with using the same amount of general state of general stabilization and we look like we might be facing a shortfall in one thousand of them above a million six so we've got issues to deal with in nineteen even if we are able to keep the stabilisation usage at the same level for both years and again just to remind folks when we did our projections as part of the override conversation we were projecting  seven point seven million dollars shortfall we were fortunate enough to receive through the wisdom of the voters four point five million but we still have a gap that we knew we had to deal with in the future  again we will continue to mohsin provide updates so to answer your question about free cash  a couple things as you recall from the last meeting free cash is replaced two ways revenues that exceed expose estimates and expenditures that are less than what we're budgeting we've been very fortunate because we've been able to have instances where for example we've had non budget items such as tax title and deferred property taxes that range from four hundred to seven hundred thousand due to the efforts of the treasurer to collect those outstanding ballots that are on budgeted revenues that help replenish our free cash there's no guarantee those are going to continue  we did in fiscal sixteen receive our reimbursement for the snowstorm one winter previous but that was a one time revenue that's not going to be available we so t answer question what we've done in the eighteen estimates is really take a look at our revenues and have now budget in them very close to actual so this only give some perspective here property taxes represent eighty percent of our revenues to fund the budget state aid represents nine percent of our budget so between those two items it's almost ninety percent and then if you look at the local receipts that's about seven percent allocation and revenues to fund our budget so if you take a look at motor vehicle excise tax for fiscal eighteen we're using a number of three million three fifty five which is very close to the actual with fiscal sixteen so that's assuming we get the commitment in the spring there will continue to be an increase in our commitment based upon people buying new cars to reap place the depreciation that will take place in terms of the existing vehicles that we taxed last fiscal year so i think the excise tax is one of our biggest it is not the local receipts and we're pretty much budgeting them to actual at this point and the rest of the revenues we've gone to recreation for example and we brought that up to nine hundred twenty five we collected nine seventy eight in fiscal sixteen but we also talked about the fact that we may want to take some of our recreation receipts and allocate a small portion to a recreation stabilization fund so that we  have a pot of money for capital maintenance repairs in the future for the pool so therefore if you use all of what we collected you don't have that option to consider putting money into a stabilization because you've used all the receipts the receipts were saying is based upon where we're out and we're using four hundred twenty thousand dollars more for local receipts and if we keep our free cash number of the same i guess the question is if the way you were punished for cash is to have revenues that are in excess of your estimates and now you're budgeting especially some of the bigger items close to actual you you basically taking the risk that you won't replace the free cash that you're using now that's again again it's better to be in a position where you exceed your expectations so that you can allocated to the general stabilization fund or you can use it to pay for modular classrooms but to use a free cash amount that you're not entirely certain is going to be replenished half way through the fiscal year i think may not be something we want to do initially at the at the end of the day though if in fact we have a good for revenue year for example we may get a big building permit from the question village project and if we don't have cash  reserve hits we might be in a position to move some money from free cash like we did last year to the general stabilization to either cover a projected shortfall in nineteen or to basically if we're able to reduce our seven sixty seven to make up the difference so as i said we're at the beginning of the process i think we have a lot of options but i think i think as we are local receipts as we budget them to very close to actual you need to make sure that you don't overuse your free cash because you can't use the same number in the same way twice similar to the general stabilization you also have a free cash guideline that does allow you to look at that and to basically be within the parameters so the guideline basically says we take the budget and we take the amount that was certified which is seven million one thirty five and you either take four percent or three percent as a foundation amount that you keep your powder dry and then the balance can be used for other things so depend upon whether you use a three percent or four percent and you still use the significance number of that balance so i guess the answer is question yes you can as we move through the process take a look at what we do with free cash but you've got some things in place still that i think we probably should look at the process of all because we can always allocate money from free cash to the general stabilization fund to help get us through the fiscal nineteen process so to same difference frankly it really is the same difference because if you use it here to reduce the seven sixty seven you're really allowing the stabilization fund to be stretched out or you can do what we did last year evaluated so ok based upon what are sort of five balances based upon what we have for revenues and where we are in terms of expenditures there's a comfort level of taking x as part of the guideline and moving it to the general stabilization so i think your point is well taken to just how you do that when you do that yeah i just point out that that some things one are rolling six year average of turn backs for revenue expenses is three over three million dollars so we're talking about replenishing one point five or one point seven million not and so we have not been so tight in terms of punishing that that you worry that we're not going to get to that number and and i mean we budget in order to make sure that we can meet those budgets we have you know a number of new units coming on in upland with all of whom are most of whom will probably have cars right so the excise tax over time is going to reflect that also so i mean i know we're talking you are looking for opportunities to get this amount that were using this year from the stabilization fund down to one point five million from two point two and i'm just pointing out that the free cash is part of the reason you need two point two million is that you've reduced the free cash by five hundred thousand so that that's that's what i'm pointing out and frankly  come in an ideal world you would use any free cash to balance your budget and then you would use f a one time items for capital in an ideal world that so i think i hear what you're saying i don't disagree i just think you're right it's how significantly more than the one million for fifty and either we're going to have to pay for that through a bond issuance which is going to require funding from somewhere that we currently don't have which might be free or it might have to come from the cushing village one point three but that's not enough to cover the whole cost so it might be a combination so i think we're saying all the same things the free cash balance gives us some flexibility how we utilize that flexibility will become a little more clear as the new growth gets known as the state gets known as some of the costs that we projected for fixed cost shakeout as we look at our budgets in the school the time working together to basically maybe potentially reduce some of the projected increases in expenditures for that we basically don't need as much money to balance the budget of expenditures so as i said this is an evolving process over the next sixty days that will then at the end of the day you'll do some options and non options the paint on which side of the coin flips yes and i think you raise a good and i think it's got to be revisited as we have more  budget so for the last two fiscal years we've changed our concept a little bit we've basically taking the expenditure side and projected that because we've had the ability to fund that projected has become the starting point which is different than what used to happen which is it's sort of the same difference which is here's our revenue here's what you're allocated you have to live within those allocations i think we're living within the allocations but i think would be more realistic with the expenditures so it's a little bit different and that's what this is for the second year we sort of changed a little bit which is it's sort of driven by the projected expenditures and then revenues which are available to meet those expenditures and what we've done now is we said if where our goal to extend the override we need to do so further review of our also then move to the next item on the agenda which is the fourth committee for it i would just have some very brief observations stage one is just a discussion of the physical production of the think well let me put it this way i'm happy to work with you guys to revise what we did last year in ways that make sense but i guess that the main question is whether you would be willing to i look at three words at a time so i mean the word vacuum was easier but the understand the whole production part of the word document got harder yes i mean the f b i went i mean that was a concern concern that i heard and you know and i recognize that and so maybe is getting to the point as long as we sort of determined it earlier on because you know we've had years where we've waffled between formats and i recall having to do the reported word of the power point it shifted to something else that's just a complete waste of time to constantly shift formatting the content stayed the same what's going on i don't think the enterprise funds for example were touched on the report exactly and so it's a we had just the one page sort of warning people you know at this point and in the kind of meeting you will be asked to vote on this in just  census form and you take a look at the assessment data on the second page just focusing on the single family homes you know forty five hundred single family home parcels but just sort of took in took that address and tried map it into someone who was who was on the residence with and about about ten percent of those had ten percent of those single family homes didn't have any one any one on the senate sort of the same sort of ballpark about about not done not good compliance there and then and then third page on the school ellen ellen o'brien cushman gave me a a censored list of it's it is a question as to whether it's it's just a general general compliance question or whether they're under other things to take a look at and just sort of note that it's the one year where the enrollment is less than the census is kindergarten because that's the year that parents do have to fill out a census form by the town clerk the other sort of an anomaly that just maybe a random factor but that but the biggest gap was in in junior junior high school which i thought was which i thought was immature is curious point but i guess i i just races in saying you know we should we should want the that the compliance to be much aware of it but but it's really a question a question for for the school for the school and department to answer us on not on that to vote and they've got people who just don't vote honestly we have a lot of people voting age the number of people registered to vote is way lower than that so if you don't care about voting you're not going to fill out the census i could see even not filling out the census i would feel and i can see why people wouldn't so i don't know and i mean if there's a rampant problem with people in during the school system who don't belong here that's a big problem i suspect is probably more laziness and some of the other factors that's why and just to go to the point isn't it presumably some reason most of the people are mean all all all that i wanted was a was a small amount of time just put this out there i don't have a solution and you know i know that when i was put this out i did hear that the planning board for instance if you come been this i mean other than other than you know encouraging the school in the town or to try to figure out strategies on their own that would maybe maybe have have more fre