i think you welcome to the special board of selectmen meeting this meeting was scheduled simply tonight there is no business important so this is a put it was just a meeting to discuss the budget the first step is randy and kevin are going to spend some time with us going through the budget and their comments and then after that we will be meeting with the ad com and will be reviewing in the joint session their thoughts and our thoughts on the budget yes or you want to say i was going before i do the pledge allegiance look i want to say something  point was what's the bottom line and then secondly how did we can last year to this year because it's a fairly startling change in terms of fortunes may not be immediately apparent to careful in the way explains the surplus means as we take all the revenue that's available to us this year say this year would mean july first the new year fiscal year coming play operation of prop two and a half plus the revenues that we normally bring in other than two and a half government revenues is cetera and then we compare that to the expenses that are proposed in this budget we have a four hundred three thousand three hundred fifty six dollars surplus in other words we have four hundred three thousand more revenue that we need to balance the budget now that budget includes all services that we provided to the citizens last year fact that there are some movements in there we've budgeted for employee raises that have been carli card contractually to go she added budgeted for the new pay plan and all that has been presented to you yet but that will be probably next week so all those things are in here and despite the fact that they're all in here we have a four hundred three thousand dollars for the reason for this is very simple it's not really a great mystery reasons what happened as last year as you recall when we started  budget process which instructions were white a level services budget level services to find out all the services we did the able for adjust the budget up for those things that have to go up compared to revenue we did and we're about one point eight million short we engaged at the board's direction in a comprehensive review of all expense categories all revenue categories one of the things we did which  for dues two hundred thirty thousand and twenty three thousand of new revenue the initiatives that we engaged in the board's decision to change the retiree health insurance plans the co pays we introduced saved over another half a million and there are a whole bunch of additional things that we did in the sum total of all those things out of up to about one point two million dollars of reduced cost or new revenue the meals tax was also passed it was another seven hundred thousand but we haven't factored that into that into this budget because it's got nothing to do with this budget that's been held aside for opeth and road repair as was promised to the for the  so the one point two odd million dollars of reduced cost in new revenue balanced last year's budget and it carried forward into this year budget so when we took this year's budget now reduced by all that money last year or increased revenue increased frankly what happened very quickly is randy and i noticed the budget balance very very quickly this year now there's been a lot of changes as is always the case because the budget we wrote back in november which we gave to the first of december which is the one and your book it's been three months now and a lot of things have changed but those things have changed for the better a lot of good things have happened that of reduce expenses even further or created additional wealth and the happy situation is that we've got this four hundred thousand dollars surplus and you get to decide what you'd like to do with it i think well that's your check to go see kevin i guess i don't like to suggest that we change our language because too often everyone's taken for granted you just raise taxes to one half percent so in your number to get to the surplus you assume a twenty percent increase in a different way to say it would be that if you take your proposed budget if it were approved as submitted you would have to raise taxes by not the two and a half percent but let's say it's want to have one and a half or something and then it's so so so that's fair for the voters to say if the budget gets approved as it is tonight we would increase taxes by on average want to have percent plus whatever the impact of the excluded debt would be so that the less the vote understands less yes writes the rework on the ri so when you net that together can you give the voter an idea again and just assuming this were approved what would the total tax increase on average be when you add that up the money you'd have to cover here as well was very careful to say this is not a reduction in the current taxes instead of raising taxes two and a half percent as we have done for the virtually every year so it's probably we won't need to raise it as we can raise a lot less now there's still a possibility as we go through the next two months before it's needed if there be some additional good news that we may be able to make a surplus even bigger and potentially get to a point where we don't have is actually levied right so before backing that off that is something to be backed off so that's two and a half plus approximate other two and four percent related to excluded debt so the bottom line is we don't recommend any additions to the budget we think this budget is a good responsible budget the money that needs to be put in it before i just go back to really i want to make sure that everybody understands your four point nine did you say included raising taxes two and a half percent correct so if we approve the budget that you folks had submitted the school committee submitted and the capital fits into wherever you had to fit in then he it wouldn't be four point nine it would be closer to three point something just to just under four just under four ok and so i think it i think it's important for the average taxpayer to know that they shouldn't be counting on their taxes going down with this budget in fact the taxes go up almost four percent partially because of the library project and partially because of inflation and salary increases and all the things that kind of you into adding it up but it would be just under four percent is what looking at at this point correct and subject to change but now there's one other factor that's got to be considered which i don't think we can say anything about yet because it really is going to have to wait too long because of the classification because of the type of classification action that you took the other shift away from the residential tax payer on to business and exactly how that will translate out yet we can't tell you internally percent increase because a percent increase the overall increase in the levy is the same but how much the residential homeowner will pay is due just by the fact of the classification plus the fact we're not going to levy as much as we could levy so the final numbers we can't say exactly what they are yet when we left off back on december twenty first you know with the the budget that reflected all of the requests and the revenue estimates at the time as well as the recommendation from from the town manager on the budgets we had a deficit at that point time of two hundred eighty eight thousand and change and so since then over the last approximate three months is about twenty changes that have been made  minor errors on hourly rates our office audited the submissions we found two minor errors of the hourly rates are used in two departments and then there was an omission a capital a omission that was assumed to be in the capital budget but it's a smaller amount of veterans budget we finally received the impact of the regional assessment we're moving to an assessment you know basis in the regional agreement and on the veterans agent you know the great job trying to estimate what that impact would short there then as a nonunion no wage study which impacts about seventy different positions the incremental impact of that wage study should that be you know be adopted and approved  twenty seven thousand four hundred and the and of course that would be voted has a separate article on that now kevin you've been promising we're going to see it when are we going to see it i now finally have it in my hands in final form i'm going to meet with the employees that are affected by it and give them a presentation and sure that they are supportive of it because it's frankly no point bringing it to the of the employees covered by i don't want to and there is some and because i want to know the wage board job is to make recommendations to you and so they will we will have it ready for the next to gender in two weeks and will be presented to the board that night hopefully the way t presentation and record low recommendation of not a presentation that sultan will make a presentation to you on how she wrote it and i hope the nonunion employees are provided some indorsement so those are the steps so two weeks it's ready for presentation so by april first the board should have a copy of it yeah you'll get a copy of it prior to the meeting which is just soon as i move the non u next week and be sure that there are no one minutes to it because it's you know the best way to describe it don is to make sure the people who are covered see it less somebody said wait a minute there's a mistake there this is a huge amount of data but assuming no amendments come out of that meeting will actually send it on to the board the next day so it will probably be associated with the implementation of that weight study it's not it's not something that's that's covered in the budget article it's associated with the personal wage you know article separate article so that's something that you know is reviewed in an article you on that as well as addressing the top thirty for the from the school administration school committee and that is adding up a mass specialist they discussed to enhance enhance that program as well as five thousand dollars for to how much fifty thousand for the financial analyst sixty thousand for the mass specialist and five thousand for the after school clubs lichens you know i have to come back to that effort there was  time for to capture any new growth taxes you know given you know that they've decided to prioritize their opening in franklin over foxborough and i think it's you know there were some concerns about some of the best barber transportation three hundred dollars that's what we had working with the chief assessor in the building commissioner had estimated that that what the impact would likely be the good news is is that it's not a bigger number and you know had it been going into an area that didn't already have  we also have good news back to when the governor released his proposed budget of an increase in state aid as relates to foxborough netting the the eight numbers with the assessment numbers increased one hundred sixty thousand dollars the bulk of the change a hundred fifty five thousand dollars change actually came from estimates on the assessment from the charter school in its root it's really based on primarily based on a roman in the per who serves the same position over the charter school to try to get a better handle on how this might change and it's a very good meeting in understanding the process we have to wait and see with us our and how the law of the lottery works and how the changes in a moment works number when they released the surplus the state released a surplus of their operating budgets and distributed that as eight cities and towns but that actually be included like this year because it's not so much my sense at this point is  that you know what this is a probably a net good number to go with given the pressures up and down on them and the school committee always talks about the if you look at the number of students to go to the charter school we could absorb all of those back into the fox schools with our fixed costs relatively simple and when you look at what the net assessment is for the charter school would make a huge difference for the community if you have the number handy just so that those just homewood would understand that number sure it's  thanks thanks for calling out it's an important number it's actually it was a number that didn't exist back about eighteen years ago meaning it and as an assessment this two pieces i'm just going to net the two together but it's across the classes it's not a bump at all but the million dollars plus would be huge to the community very substantial plus the bussing costs and stuff so exactly the  's not support not supported by excluded debt tax so it's within within the operating budget and do the refinancing that is seven eight hundred dollars in actual savings in interest other savings that don't accrue to this budget per se but accrue to tax and rate pairs will be excluded debt tax savings next year twenty four thousand dollars direct taxpayer savings as well as ten thousand eight hundred dollars in savings for water debt so downward pressure on on rates on the water side next item is the addition of a police officer a new position instead of one of the new highway laborers and that is a net increase of fifty three hundred dollars and i believe that was me trying to capture the discussion that this board had on this topic obviously if you know if that's still the th over and above tax it's within the debt budget all the debt interest we removed associated with the interim financing for the town hall building project you know we don't have an article at the annual town meeting  to go forward you know with the project and you know initially we had assumed that that would be something that would go forward but now that it's clear it's not on the war it doesn't make any sense to keep the hundred thousand dollars in interest associated with the interim financing in the and so we have savings there and i think it's important to understand where the savings are actually are and the proposal that we're making here so we budget every year and we have for probably a couple of decades the same number within the operating budget for snow and ice five hundred thirteen thousand dollars and then we exceed that legal deficit and it's a lead it's a requirement even though we're allowed to exceed that legally it's a requirement that that deficit gets covered right off the top of the next year's taxes and that's a planning number we always we plan for that it's all part of the planning and over the last five years that number of that deficit that we carry forward it comes right off the top has averaged about three hundred forty five thousand dollars one hundred thirteen and three forty five's about four hundred sixty thousand so this year it's looking like our deficit is going to be about two hundred fifty thousand dollars less than us we're not going to need you know three forty five we're hoping we're all going to need about ninety five as we you know as we stand right now might be a little bit bigger as we stand right now last last i checked a couple days ago i think we were at like some sixty thousand dollars you know so we've reduced the debt that carry forward deficit the budget itself is still hundred thirteen thousand dollars but then the recommendation is that we increase next year's budget from one hundred thirteen thousand topic on our list serve you know what's where is everybody standing what are you budgeted you know what your experience and one of the takeaways that we have is that whatever you're spending this year that your baseline and that in many other communities do the same thing that we do they under budget this item and carry for the deficit and they do that for a couple of reasons one is that if you raise the budget to whatever level you raise it to you cannot reduce you have to maintain that level that's just the law around the budgeting for snow and ice it's not something that you can cut so once you commit you know if we commit up a hundred thousand dollars we're committed to it so if where but if that's our baseline in a mild winter then that's a pretty that's a reasonable number the other reason that has compelled us historically for decades not to go with a higher number is that in certain circumstances the state may provide relief you know for extreme weather events not not fema not the feds with the statement and then they and their formula they look at what your budget is and that's a factor in what sort of relief you get so the way to try to set it up so to maximize what you might get in those situations is to have a low number so our numbers artificially low and we've only had one such events in in my my tenure here so i think it's prudent to bring the number up to what is in essence our baseline one hundred thousand dollars higher than what it is today and what that will do is that will pay a dividend in perpetuity because if you think about it if next year in f y thirteen we would have one hundred thirteen thousand in the budget and three forty five coming off the top of the taxes the taxes to pay we know since we're budgeting four hundred sixty thousand dollars the next year we we in essence will have a higher operating budget of two hundred thirteen thousand but we'll have a hundred  one hundred thousand last on the deficit and so that's one hundred thousand on average that would have to carry going forward so it's a year it's a year where you can finally make an adjustment and actually make your operating budget a little bit higher and in this is the year that you have the money  sets the recommendation is that you could i know that the obvious question why don't we make it higher you could but then you can't go backwards and so maybe this you know down the road maybe would be an option you know it makes sense to go higher on the certainly you know it's  on this but i think it's also a big function of the impact that the initiatives that foxboro has been working on with regards to you know making our bring our health care plan design into a their confidence and i want to encourage us to continue down the path that we are something we're getting probably more than more in title two now randi when you switched plans there was a run off with the old coverage and you had to leave money aside to cover the runoff correct and you were going to be monitoring that and then at the end of that run off period any additional money you'd be able to utilize differently so can you give us an update on where we are with that runoff absolutely we've got about six months to go before that period ends is actually the feds have a have a twenty four month run up period on our on our medics plan and we actually did   is approximately one point two million dollars and that balance factors in heavily to some new plan design changes that are being contemplated and worked on and you know the simple reality is those dollars have to go back to you know for health insurance and other places they can go can you put it into the trust the opeth trust but probably not not all of it because it would it would have to be the portion that's associated with you know with retirees but it was probably some some portion but i think there's there's a there's a much bigger story to be told here in terms of the help plan design and the very significant health plan design changes that are being contemplated and where there's another area that that this could could also be used and because there is three initiatives that will be coming to the board in the next few weeks that are all culminating at the same time it's just coincidence one is the health insurance initiative which will be briefing you on that's all written and as a meeting thursday with staff to house or advisor blue cross blue shield to go through those numbers make sure they're the plan on the health insurance will utilize a part of that surplus and we'll be talking to you about that subject a plan is subject to the board's approval but we'll be bringing that to you soon the good news about th exactly randy said precisely speaking we don't deserve a zero zero zero would mean that the total amount of claims we had this year were equal to the claims you have the prior year and that's just not the case that never happens in fact that would suggest to you that medical cost inflation was zero but we all know medical cost inflation is a lot more than zero and in all of these that averages eleven to thirteen percent per year so really what we've got here is we had a good claims year that's for sure and we might have been in the three or five percent range for renewal but my it was basically rewarding us and i have the ability to do this they have a lot of members and they like they take certain communities that are doing very real things and they give you a little better deal on your rate and then strictly speaking here you might deserve you know three things we did last year first thing was the board's action to remove a group of employees from the g i c and change the contributory share from ninety to fifty has saved a lot of money second initiative we increased employee co pays we increased offices of from five to fifteen three tiered pharmaceutical plan depending upon which plan they're all standardized that he's ten twenty five thirty five now for tears one two and three and a third initiative was a program an educational program we ran for the employees  during our health fair last year where we took all the folks around the pos the point of service plan and try to point out to them why they really didn't need to pay their share twelve hundred extra dollars a year our share three times out for a benefit that they thought they were getting that they really weren't and that they could save that money by joining the h m o and that program was hugely successful and i think we have forty something folks there  so that was an enormous savings the sum total of all those things that we did collectively the boards actions staff actions cetera had the effect of both improving claims reducing expenses got us down in the vicinity of zero and then myer basically just gave us an incentive the continue doing those kinds of things and said we're going to give you zero now the good news is the health plan that we're going to to put in front of you in a couple weeks will take to zero as a departure and it will push rates down substantially lower  putting on a front of you very soon now some question about whether we can get that accomplished in time to have an effect of this fiscal year or whether it's going to happen next fiscal year all i can tell you is one way or the other there's some very substantial additional savings so you can can direct that but as i guess my only point is if the employees are cooperating and lowering the cost of insurance for the community and themselves but for the community the unfunded liability that we have for them when they retire it would be kind of unnatural the more that they work for us to save the more we can fund in that account so that when they retire they can be comfortably sure that the funds are going to be there to pay for their health care  you know i mean that would between that and between because that that's kind of an annuity as well so if you took that and you take the meals tax we could start to make a pretty good impact against the unfunded liability and as you've explained to the community before the more you can fund the less the deficit commas because of the interest income that grows sometimes faster than the than the increase in health care and if we are changing our co pays and deductibles or bring our health care down the interesting come the additional money could be a huge swing in that account for us you know it's good not look at that as part of the you know for sure so i think that completes more presentation of the board and now it's kind identified the benefits for those are built in yes also the legal expenses budget where the reduction for twenty five thousand was related to the human resources position and we still don't have that in place are we still you know i realize that we've reduced to twenty five k now we've and we're short by fifty k given the environment well are we shorting ourselves still in this in this category yes i will say in candor yes that controlling the town council budget has been far harder than i ever thought and the and the primaries and for that is because of the advent of the casino issue this year and that has that has drawn resources in that budget that we're not frankly expected no budget for because that's required a lot of legal work in the billboard or if i if he has draw a lot of resources as well we also had one unexpected case over on the label last side which is now into the twenty thousand dollars mark in terms of expense which you know those things pop up out of the litigation is a trainwreck to a legal budget because where we can track our regular expenses or advisories and things like god if a substantial  and i'm hopeful that i can manage to that number now and we're going to tell you absolutely no because of another piece of litigation pops up in the middle of next fiscal year we're going to pay it but i'm trying very hard to get it under control the policy that you passed earlier this year has been very helpful and i'm hopeful that we'll be able to do it it's a it's a goal you know and it's a very hard one to manage because so much unexpected stuff happens and not a lot i can do about that i mean i just think you know given the circumstances that we're in with the casino issue in front of us that i want to make sure that we are not hamstringing ourselves  always being able to get the legal advice in in a i think as limited fashion i think what honestly is going to happen if that issue heats up if you get an application then realistically  of those expenses legal and development analysis will get picked up by the applicant will need a substantial infusion of funding into this budget because it is not budgeted for that by launch religiously since it has to be copied that's correct so really no concern with that and all we have unless we ended it so that's when we get an analysis though because it's easy to say well some of it is the increase is due to the casino when we know that the bill that was submitted for december was sent to someone else to pay and so i before we throw it it's this or that just give us an idea of what we've spent a year to date by category and so if most of it is litigation or most of it is employee settlements or whatever it might be know very well done and it seems like we're getting this information earlier and a little more detailed every year and this lot of the backup came so we could look at it before i appreciate that i know this past year more than any of the as i remember there's been a tremendous effort towards looking at fees and taxes other than property taxes we get the meals tax or the hotel tax we've got a report of how to increase all the town fees from the building department of health department to the library goes on and on and on which is fine if they're justified and i'm sure they are you know it's illegal to put fees that aren't appropriated into it just to cover the cost but at the same time how are we looking at being more efficient in than cost more so we get to raise the fees verse can we do a better job either with technology or something so as most of these fees go onto these are the small businesses or the large businesses or eventually come back to the residence so when i banged on the tax bill somewhere along the line as to the six hundred thousand dollars here plus you know the other million and in other taxes i'm sorry fees and taxes that are coming back towards us at the end but it doesn't show on the numbers that work you know happy about today let me throw a few at you and randi you can jump in with some more because i know i won't get them all i do have a comprehensive list in the office i go get but the vast majority of the savings that we created in last year's budget that rolled into this year's budget that ultimately created the surplus was not new revenue it was actual reductions in the budget now the biggest one alone is the half million in health insurance that we just described that's the set piece but there are a lot of other things as well just off the top of my head we did the natural gas and electricity contracts last we eliminated a clerical position in the d p w when we noticed that we had a lot of clerical fold put it that we had a retirement were we do some consolidating and some retraining and eliminated position this year we're going to limited another one this budget has another position eliminated and i did not was not my layoff that was a retirement and what we're doing is retraining the existing clerical staff taking advantage of some electronics building program kind of average turnover it was and we took that out of the budget have you built attrition n g o s on the town side no we've funded well right now there are no vacant positions but we have fully funded all positions with no assumption for attrition historically you must have a figure in mind as to what you end up saving through attrition well we don't it's not so much a savings where you typically get the turnover in this building when we lose somebody we typically replace them fairly quickly in police and fire when we have vacancies and we have them almost every year what ends up happening is the vacant position creates so many shift outages we end up having an overtime incident because of that so we take the straight my budget is cut into fifty sixty seventy eighty lines so attrition in one line i can't move somewhere else so i don't have to predict where it's going to occur it is legit for that occurrence and it's essentially impossible the advisory committee i think is the first time in anyone's memory that the advisory committee has been on t v what i wanted to do really quickly before we have southeastern regional give the presentation is just to explain to the viewers what the advisory committee is going to the why we exist is really to take input from department heads from selectman from committees and compile it all and basically we then deliberate on the budget and bring it to town meeting now over the next series of  towns that it and compass is then you can get into the the numbers have a blended guidance department to make sure that the right students are going to the right to schools to optimize public schools services for the students that there's sometimes a better fit for and i see our student could go back to fox excellence that comes in that way either enhanced as a student experience or find students that might be really good at what they're doing to go into their field of expertise when they get out into the marketplace or is it inappropriate and i'm not sure what the protocol is  stuff anyway it's seven thirty and again those who are viewing the outcome meeting just to let you know we've been rejoined by the board select one and i just want to let everyone know th meeting earlier on on this topic and we're here to really get together to try to find a direction and get input from what i want to also to do is remind the viewers of what the advisory committees role is and what he said we're taking input from department heads from any other committees from interested citizens and we're going to shepherd this whole process all the way to town meeting with the advisory committee actually presents an advisory committee budget and those deliberations really just begun and we're going to be deliberating not only on on the budget but also on how many want to have a little too many want out of those probably all the way up to about a week before town meeting so that's our responsibility and that's our role in the process show if you want to be recognized just get my attention and i'll recognize you the way we can keep the conversation tight ok randy on that topic and i did raise the concept of zero based budgeting or taking each department and rationalizing the activities and saying you know what let's build a town from zero and see that all the pieces fit that's one  say you know apart from schools which is a single number there's this almost not a tremendous amount that you can affect but i think the five process ought to take place where we go through every department in every activity and try to rationalize specifications and then take those savings and put them into the fund that in addition to the money from the real tax well that's a sense a strong message to the employees that says the savings that you're signing up to the partnership you're reading available for the operating budget roads and that's really been explained that for three years ago but it's beginning to happen john one thing that i think is outstanding we've talked about it earlier on in our sessions back in the fall time w that the high school renovation there's a lot of money supposedly outstanding on this high school out of it that you know has been not talked about not really nailed down it would really be nice for the selectmen to get their hands on that what that number is bring that back you know to the to the town and not spend it and reduce outstanding debt and take our you know interest obligation you know debt payments down on top of the refinancing which is the discussions want to finish what's going on up there and get them to commit to it so we can we pull on the library and whatever else we want to be on we can bomb blasts it's going you know there's no reason to put put that on the table and get that n we don't look at alternatives where we have the chief of police in here that he supposedly willing to work on overtime of us who are new to work with to reduce over time to get a couple people so if we can get another police officer to police officers for the cost of one by funding it out of production of overtime why not you know maybe increase a little bit of the spend it to police officers get him to screw down his overtime a little bit and start getting these guys accountable for their overtime budget some you know we've got both the fire chief in the police chief in here over time said they were going to commit stuff to us they haven't got back to us on any of the overtime money and you know we're willing to support in the budget but we think that the police need to staffing in the police can't get their analysis done you know i would think if our chief of weary i find some way to get my analysis done to get the funding for that position and you know which leads to my second discussion point which we had last week and you know in the in the kind of budget adjustments from last meeting it was a financial analyst in in in the proposed additions to headcount which i think we talked about a couple weeks prior to that which i think is fantastic and this is exactly the type of rule for job that that person could be doing so you know what we're talking about ads to staff and people you know it's one of the sacred cows of w staff not supposed to do this with us was true that sometimes you have to add some staff to get behind the numbers figure out where we're spending our money and then cut it out so you might spend fifty one hundred grand for a body but if they can you know get to fifty year on the run rate i mean that in then do that every single year get some sort of incremental it makes sense i think the meeting we had a few weeks ago i said we should have you guys should have two interns somebody do some of the stuff so some of some of these investments you need to make but as one of the advisory committee member said an e mail to all of us today you know don't these guys have metrics don't they have reports don't they have analysis and like no i've been doing been on this committee for you know it was on two thousand and one i'm here again ten years later we're still looking at the same analysis we looked at ten years ago in we really need some brains to support this guy and you to drive some of the analysis if you have the numbers and like if you cut them if you've got expenses cut them you can raise revenue raise it but i actually you know affect the budget shows up in the war would it would it be at all possible for us to get some kind of early draft i mean again with the understanding this is preliminary it's going to change sort of like  you know about a week or two ago when you know when randy was here and he gave us a list of you know the updates to the budget you know we all knew that when we came back this week you know the you know some of the items were going to be there again some of them were going to be there be slightly different whatever you know we all understand it's a work in progress but you know if we could get some kind of you know ballpark you know i had a time you know i think any anything that we could get would would help  liabilities that we're expecting people to pay off in thirty years from now right so there is there's that too right so so there's this kind of two sides to the coin there but if you did go along with what you were saying you know what what's the best value that today's taxpayer can get out of this four hundred thousand dollars i mean we have we've talked about opec we've talked about are putting more money you know have talked about paying off or borrowing l liability right but the people thirty years ago for paid pay less for the liability we incurred right movement of yes john for just to come to what kevin said in the way a look at it the tax dollars fungible it doesn't matter where comes from to use that argument or somebody like political whatever you know next year it's going to be for something else and some other group in this year if you next year it could be some other group so i  don't buy the thirty dollars of savings breaking anybody for this hundred eighty thousand dollars we talked about raising to the level limit i can understand the argument if it was between the enterprise fund in the town those are two different tax the the other the other point i wanted to make too with respect to the debt and we're you know those listen to randy talk about you know handle the debt i could imagine you could schedule those because the way the debt is you have different charities by year so you could actually front end you maturities take that money that you're planning on getting back from the high school this excess let it flow through free cash next year's debt service payment would come from funding a free cash it's not that hard capture that savings and this is how to capture it everybody knows it the numbers are it better flow through free cash because guess what if it doesn't go to fund the next year you know through taxation so you know i just i just for those of the only two points and kevin in the homeowners tax rates going to go to commercials in tough times and then if revenues are better then they go from three hundred percent of the residential rate from commercial down to two hundred and they just play with that ratio all the time that's how they manage their expenses provided other expenses don't grow that you need to you know pay in the future but you know i'm not a big fan of putting on fixed costs when you know when you don't have a designated revenue stream in this isn't it isn't like you know d for whatever we could this sum of money being necessary for whatever legal funds this town may need now or in the future and be unforeseen expenses we didn't know that might come our way but i don't care what they are i know what they are you know legitimate expenses could is this is just an appropriate question for this meeting now so these people here could could lot that's why i started this conversation by saying what's the philosophy on budgets jim you know my philosophy we've kicked the can down the road way too many times and you know government absorbs every dollar that you throw at it and what i'm going to propose is that get  look at it and rationalize the activities of town government and i don't know what your approach is laurie you know you're a financial fellow you do this all the time but it's you know rather than just saying you know it's three percent after the budget would done let's get all of next year  column is actually going to spend some time saying you know simple things like a dog catcher we need a dog catcher but you know which is ask the question you know the things that could be privatized let's go through and scrub it rather than just saying it's a it's a town you know school in with us they are like one line budget in you're talking about analyzing two hundred lines of the local government well there's actually not too many lines we can analyze a lot of it i don't know but my in this this is a real killer to me because i was looking at the increases of the school budgets over the last four or five years for getting anything to do with the per pupil or what have you and they're up by that i have five seven is of those ideas but to really make a meaningful impact on this budget we have to do much bigger stroke so either then we just come back and say cut five percent out what the creative ideas are going to have to do that but you know it just seems like it's just the two percent let's go for  you know these are these are the things that you know there's the next eight things on the list that could potentially save us some money and i think again this is this well goes back to that philosophy question of these the things that we want to do and is that detracting from the services that we provide assistance think collectively were when we start of the budgeting process one of the questions i asked randi is you know we need a spreadsheet of the last five years and look into the future and we want to put it up on the screen and do what if scenario because you can't do thank you a lot of yeah i just want to point out we've been talking about this two million dollars number that you know the budget is increasing a good piece of that is citizens voted to increase that number how much of th million roughly how how much would right and you know and so the rest you can think of as kind of normal operating budget increases and that's probably not outside the range of inflation right i mean it's i mean it's not i don't want to leave people the impression that jesus has to be over two million dollars a year this budget is increasing it's out of control it's it's not true i mean we're we're very conservative in this town so so you know just want to leave it at that and it's something georgette said about you know the schools being a single line and there's nothing to prevent us from and i've said this over and over again to just looking inside that budget now if we find things inside the budget that makes us think that they could lower that single line it doesn't mean that they will apply it to those line items in their budget but you know if we think there's things in their budget that that can be cut we can certainly cut  that it just ends up impacting the single line and then they could decide you know to change their budget it in a different way but at the end you know it's it's it's easy in the abstract to talk about things like the school budget which is twenty eight million dollars you know gee they've got to be able to cut that but when you look at it as a service you know most of that money if you're going to make a meaningful cut you're going to change class sizes and i think in this town people have decided that we are happy with the class size the way it is and that costs a certain amount of money and when you look over the last ten years how that budget has increased that hasn't changed much over the rate of inflation either so you know there's been some numbers that were  i mean well i've got i'm right here i mean you know in some years we changed like last year one point five percent of the time six point two five percent but if you look over ten years and then look at the compound rate of inflation over ten years you know i went back and i looked at you know you go to library to get out the town the towns reports you know you know like that would be great if we had all this electronically but we don't you know when you look at what they're what their budget was ten years ago what it is now apply combine rate of inflation which over ten years i think about twenty four twenty five percent  it's it's right it's tracking right with that so you know where you know we're where we're i think that you know we're we're doing things very conservatively now we're not we're not spending money  know profit way in in any way you know but but if you want to cut i mean you've got to talk in terms of services not in terms of dollars what is the service that people willing to do without jimmy h figures out of dollars spent thirteen point six million which is for a fixed cause twelve point eight million which is political budget twenty eight two for the folks for the public schools that adds up to fifty four mil yet if i look at your detailed schedule that i printed off the computer the other day he said we're up to fifty nearing the five million dollars difference in those t meet fairly quickly and begin to discuss the direction that you want to go we welcome that input as we begin to deliberate but time is running short we've got two weeks left in april children this thing on our children that sort of thing for the sake of comparison and context what are some examples of towns nearby or are in the area with similar demographics that are also considering or in recent years have actually executed tax increases less than the than the two and a half  will because i you know i think i i think of what winds up being the case is that the number really is other towns then we're in a pretty special and pretty extraordinary set of circumstances notwithstanding the fact that no towns budget is perfect our susan you know pretty good shape but the the the point that i that i want to make was in regard to something that stephen said about the potential legal budget and it it seemed it seemed the most people in response to steve's question were more or less in agreement that if the if the large legal expenditure were to be  triggered that that regardless of the outcome of that set of circumstances a reimbursement would be forthcoming by law rather than by assent of other parties or you know agreements or or what have you  if one was to refer to the relevant law that section fifteen subsection eleven the applicant has to pay a certain amount fifty thousand of that feat used to be set aside to reimburse the hose and surrounding municipalities so on and so forth you know i'm i'm referring to the legal expenses that were referenced hate by the applicant george word applicant is defined as a person who has applied for a license to engage in activity regular regulated under this chapter a license is what the state commission hands out in other words somebody who has come to the town at least as i read the statute and maybe i'm reading it wrong and i'm glad to be corrected if i am but it appears from the language of the statute that somebody who comes to a town and says here's a bunch of stuff we'd like to do however specific or however vague it happens to be it's not an applicable unless until it goes through the town and then goes up to the state saying the town has signed off now we're going to the state  but yeah the budget but but my question is is it possible that in order if in order to spend this money any money that we incurred as part of this process would you potentially have to go to town i mean philosophically i think you guys have some work to do we're already have been gone and you know where we talked about so we're really going to go through a rationalization of the budget and that'll be our approach