subcommittee chairs have the list of all of the missing minutes from the past i thought i say yes everyone ok so what i would ask of of each of you what i realize that you  know or fran you're you know taking over and various people are taking over for various things i would ask that you would take a look at you know the minutes for your relevant subcommittee and take responsibility for that subcommittee and have those minutes approved now we will not meet again this calendar year and so if we were to get that done between now and the end of the year then you would need to meet separately our first meeting of two thousand and sixteen would be  thirteenth of january i'm i said i don't know what the clerk would say but i suspect that if we were to get everything completely done on the thirteenth that may be ok i don't know if you have any clue david probably don't wri outstanding notes that you receive i'm sure she'd be ok i think it's probably as soon as possible is probably heard her direction so i guess i would ask everybody to please be in a position on the thirteenth if at all possible to clear the decks of old minutes so take a look at what you've got if you can't have it if you can't find the email obvious and it's you let me know but take a look at the previous minutes i realize that may need consultation with some other folks and let's try to get over it i mean i've got of the control i was jamming last year i going back when i was in germany and it's my intention to go over and see al and get to those meetings and find out what was supposed to be discussed and see the judge in my memory and i'll draw some months so i  just wondering do you have any idea further for this year january or i will create a draft calendar for the entire winter into spring and i will distribute it as many of you have noticed i have not tried to actually meet ok so the second night in agenda is a discussion of fiscal seventeen available revenue and the initial budget allocations which we always do this time of year david has distributed material to everyone in the record another copy of that in case you didn't have a chance to side of the budget in the handout that i gave you have the last page is the chart that i'll refer to and so for fiscal seventeen we're scheduled to increase simply the board of assessors indicates that they feel will be generated as part of the process for the fiscal seventeen budget in addition to that as you recall last year in the model that developed of the board of assess project from third d and there are components of the belmont light substation and so they came up with an estimate for just build seventeen for new property taxes generated by the uplands project at down i didn't know it's basically i didn't give you the exact number because of it still being calculated there is headed in the numbers so there's a carryover excess luvvie capacity of approximately seventy five two hundred thousand dollars that won't going to from memory of fiscal fifteen the number was over six hundred thousand dollars and in prior years had to have been more than what was initially projected they were using five hundred thousand dollars but i think the  that was given to the board assesses indicated that a lot of the new development with regard to the mcclane property basically had been built in and it's run its course and so that basically that predictability of new growth wasn't going to  they predicted seventy five which you can buy between five fifty five seventy five so basically i think the share the board of assessors was here last year displaying their methodology explain what why they want to make sure that they give a number that can actually be used and actually raised because if they if they estimate on the other side basically you would be in a position would you have to fight revenues elsewhere to balance the difference that you didn't have as an estimate or make reductions and expenditure so it's not a precise science and basically you're trying to come up with an estimate now eighteen months in advance so basically it doesn't lend itself to hav where it basically is a use for seventy five last year and it's going to be about one hundred thousand dollars give or take more than what they projected and again there's a lot of variability is that going to define in the new growth and basically as i said if they provide an estimate that is not she then basically to balance the budget me that he defied other revenues for make up the difference or find were doctrines to balance the budget so again i think the chair talked about and it may provide a different but i'd like to keep going only because i think that you know we do talk about new growth every year this is really the purview of the board of assessors to come up with this number it is fair to say that as a percentage actually reasonable difference between software seventy five and five seventy five fifty because people probably can do the mental math and you go from one hundred two hundred four it doesn't feel like two point six percent the reason why it's the actual revenue that we had for fiscal sixteen was actually one hundred in one nine are actually about one hundred  million and we banked some of that money if you recall into the stabilization fund that was money that we levy that we raised but we didn't actually spend so no money we actually spent in the budget in sixty in fiscal sixteen it was one hundred one hundred million point is going to raise the levy as part of the sixty process but as mike just said use approximately two point eight million to balance his sixteen budget so it's being collected and raised in sixteen but it's not hard to operate but it's been one into a separate fund of bailable for future appropriations in fiscal seventeen you're still raising the four point five that you raised in sixteen but instead of appropriating it to the stabilization fund you're basically appropriated to cover operations that make sense now and others from questions ok so so basically you haven't lost  debt service other retirement assessment roads override and the minuteman assessment and so for fiscal seventeen well just fixed cost or estimated at sixteen million seven hundred nineteen thousand which is an increase of about nine hundred thousand dollars or five point seven percent some of those fixed cost numbers will get adjusted as we move through the budget process and we  actual or close to the actual minuteman assessment the us gov cements his budget and basically we get what we believe will be his estimate for state charges the overlay maybe a little bit process debt service is pretty much debt service the retirements assessment is basically the number that's been provided to us by parrott based upon the actuarial report that we've got one one fourteen so basically those are those are fairly solid numbers on the override for the roads basically it's a two and a half percent increase on the one point five four nine that was appropriate sixteen so just just a clear clarification on the debt service that the build up there is is being driven by the borrowing for the villains under pressure and if you give me one second to get to it but but basically as you recall in the financial task force model we have allocated approximately two hundred forty thousand dollars for debt service to basically fundamentally dollars worth of projects which actually got done last time meeting to cover the cost of the public safety radio system ok ok all right so basically what that allows you to have the money for operations are basically gross revenue less fixed cost is eighty seven million eight seventy five to five town and school services based upon the task force model that is a breakout of fifty two million to eighty six of the schools and signed thirty five million five hundred nine which bounces to the eighty seven eight seventy five clearly as we build our budgets and as you heard last time on the first quarter results clearly there are some cost drivers with regard to special ed wish and over and above used in the financial taskforce model due to some additional residential placements clearly we're going to work through the process but that may require us either through a combination of changes in some of our expenditure estimates or some additional revenues that we might receive as a process goes forward to basically try to deal with approximately four hundred thousand dollars of additional over and above what we anticipated especially torsion cost based upon an unforeseen force in placements in addition to the town has contracted services that basically we're getting estimates for that maybe over and above what was contained in the model and then on the capital budget again i think that we're going through a process now and again i think the superintendent will be having more detail conversations but clearly as we mentioned last year as part of that when you're past fourth process in the budget process because of our expanding elementary and secondary and middle school enrollment people running out of physical player space for classrooms and that basically we're in a position where we probably need to be in the market for modular classrooms to help ou a process is basically reached its conclusion and there are no more vacant spaces in our schools so we're going to have to look at modular classrooms which are going to has a cost to it and i think the number in the location is something that the superintendent will be talking about more technology so in the scope of all this this is what we're going to have to bake into the expenditure side as we move through the budget process on which are primarily capital way solve those are just things that we will keep expenditure and then and then when you take a look at the financial task force model it's the you know the number is you know within one thousand dollars but the but the town and the end distributed number again in this in this some he numbers that are in the financial pass for us models and then that would answer a question of is that six hundred thousand thousand dollars available either for a stabilization fund of some time that's sped or or or was basically done before the budget was adopted so we have an adopted sixteen budget and then we have basically zero in the seventeen budget that is balanced to available revenues and as you recall that after the budget was submitted we had about a four hundred thousand dollars increase in state aid that was allocated to capital in basically there was another hundred thousand dollars of what i would call on turn back some capital projects that basically expanded the capital budget by a bottom of one hundred thousand dollars so basically that's about five hundred thousand give or take of additional revenues that came onboard after the budget was emitted and basically after the task force report was issued in january  so to answer your questions basically that it is just a pure break up between a school in town which includes capital and basically we've carried those forward and what our plan is basically is to  only update the seven mock budget year in the model to do eighteen nineteen twenty so basically we've balanced twenty seventeen we just want to make sure we carry forward our assumptions eighteen nineteen twenty consistent with the assumptions that were in the model from last year basically or provide got to go to the board of selectmen and to the board committee so basically the model is changed based upon sixteen being different than what we measure calculated and then basically seventeen based upon what we're projecting has now been balanced between revenues and expenditures and basically the assertions going forward will be modified based upon sixteen and seventeen for eighteen nineteen and twenty ok out and and inject a couple of just general and specific things to them for one is i guess i was hoping that we would be able to make the override last longer than the two years sixteen and seventeen and by doing that we have to you know look at the numbers and make sure that we're not just following the model but trying to beat the model in terms of you know our expenditures as well as looking at our revenues a couple of things that jumped out at me and on the revenue model one is the free cash number has gone down from that we contribute to the budget is going out for like two point two million when i first started on the many years ago to now one point five zero point six million and i didn't know if this is a town because it's seven hundred thousand or whatever it is that it's six or seven hundred thousand i didn't know if this is a strategy of the selectmen and the  administrator to reduce the amount of free cash that's available for the budget because it comes out of what we can spend on operations will be giving elsewhere i understand the need to replenish country but we don't seem to be having a problem doing that our budgets are very conservative in fact the local receipts here are our actual local receipts for fiscal year fifteen point five million and we're projecting seven point zero million for seventeen so the actual verses and i know that goes into free cash so i understand that aspect but it feels very conservative to me and i'm not looking at budget and looking at actual power and that only you know the government on how much we that would come out of free cash and i didn't see that as coming out of the calculation of free cash that kind of went through all the things that come out of it and i also because that because debt service is above the line it seems like that does affect the operating budget as opposed to being allocated truly for free cash as it was i think done in a town meeting because that was the way it was represented so it may not be a big number i don't remember what it is for the one point three million or whatever  to free cash that we're contributing to the budget is even lower than what i what i you know that it's now one point three or something instead of two point two as it was a few years ago i just didn't know if there was a policy or our direction it seems that seems very very conservative to me what i would like to see some of that money if we've budgeted differently you know maybe allocate not using all of the override so that we can make it last longer and try to bring some for cashman the million seven fifty that was budget it did include the portion that was for belmont center so basically it's in the base of all in this in this projection all we've got is basically said the increase in the non property tax revenues of about one hundred ninety one thousand dollars basically is money that we're increasing to balance the budget but basically also means that basically those dollars are not to be available to replenish with cash because they basically it's an os it's a basically has you budget each year or not proper tax revenues the ability to generate excesses in those accounts replenish we catch gets the message so basically so the general strategy here is and again as if this is the beginning of the process is that basically as we increase our knob property tax revenues based upon experience basically reduce the free cash because again in a continuum the memo basically we've been beneficiaries of having strong revenues but also we've been beneficiaries of replenishing our free cash by the  thousand dollars so we have some one time big large building permits with cushing village hopefully coming online that will generate a another large building permit which will help us replenish the million seven fifty that we're using in sixteen budget to balance so basically and again we can have a conversation about you know what is the right number but i think you have to operate within what you do know so i just want to go back and with ask you to look at local receipts again because again what we're projecting is a million five less than what we actually reported into what you gave us last meeting for local receipts and it seems like you could still you know be a little more aggressive on local receipts and still be able to replenish or free cash or free cash is going to it sounds like it's going to be well in excess of our going to five percent goal so no need to be just pro for saying i want to go but i think that in my opinion the  revenue is what alaska's it's going to come in and then you're going to have it later to use if you if you were to increase let's say the forecast by a million dollars you would either choose to put that money aside into a savings account like we did last year or someone or you we should spend it right now isn't any guarantee that those funds and and then up one point to put it in that going into other means without really extending or or well that really i will say that i'm not spending the now spending the money now you have the option to do this is conservatism service essentially two objectives one is you don't want to be overly aggressive and we can debate about how conservative we should we should be all right but at least in terms of a one year forecast what's going to happen next year being conservative actually i think keeps us from actually having to scramble of the end of what if we're wrong number one and number two it actually has a breaking effect on the growth of expenditure right so that actually is arguably a desirable thing right now if you're doing a longer term forecast for your however there were seven building permits that generated approximately eight hundred thirty seven thousand dollars of revenue those were the uplands of four fifty eight mclean a to seventy five the substation at sixty and some other ones i guess the it were budgeting so yes there was an excess last year in revenues but again they were revenues that basically i don't think after we get through cushing village there's a lot of four hundred fifty thousand dollars permits that we know about right now we thought i don't by doug's we can talk about them but i don't think they're out there and i don't think there's a lot of two hundred twenty five thousand dollars clean permits out there now there may be but i guess there's nothing there that we can put our finger on say yet it's going to be down the pike for sure or we think it's going to be a possibility so if you if you basically take the assumption that we've increased our building permit revenue to eight hundred thousand dollars for fiscal sixteen and we brought in a million six last year and eight hundred  in my sense of all goes well we should be higher by at least the value of the cushing village permit and we know about that but again that goes to basically replenishing the million seven fifty that we use to bounce the budget and i guess maybe i'll start to presentation so i hear what you're saying i guess i guess that the problem is is one of the larger revenues that has the most variability also on the plus side also has the most variability on the downside and so basically what trying we're to do is come up with a balancing act where basically we can have a fairly large revenue that basically is reasonably predictable if in fact we get into a downturn year because the worst thing we want to do is budget a million fall for a building permit fees and realize that we only collected nine hundred thousand because at some point you can't you do you know are is not going to let us use a number that we didn't actually collect right and just ask you to look at it because i the being correct is generally good news because you're going to have more money than you thought that breaks down if the conservative budgeting means you don't spend some money you want to spend because otherwise you're getting a long term getting into a long term problem or you make revenue raising decisions that that are justified so at some point you know within certain parameters it's fine we almost friends are not saying that's where we are but it becomes harmful but one of the things just completely different to point out david mentioned that you know sort of as we as we find more out about sixteen and more what seventeen may be we kind of updating what the model can tell us i don't think we can discuss this fully tonight because it gets into free cash stabilization funds revenue legitimate conversation to have here with b o s i mean certainly about ok where we're at that money to sit on and related to that if it's not to be spent you could be used to stretch out the impact of the override which allocate to the stabilization we didn't do that we had to get it to capital and not really so just to be really clear we we had in this last year we had a revenue in excess of the forecast and we had expenditures we're going to go from starting the year or starting any new year last year at three point three we'll start a fight another three point seven on top of that so roughly seventy million dollars or free cash we will have so that money is in free cash and i think as bob pointed out that part of the discussion that we will have as a community over the course of the coming months is what what is the right answer of that so that money didn't get lost it is actually in free cash and so the question is should it go in a general stabilization fund to be used for capital i think that is a very legitimate and great question for this need to have but it's not gone and then i also wanted to just reiterate the point there just made about cash i do recall that had allocated about two million for free cash to the budget and you know and it we're now allocating it that way so i just i'd like the question about what is is that a policy decision or is that just something that i mean that has to be the rationale behind it doesn't that be and what i mean my or my reaction to that is that one point five number is essentially the number that had been previously established during the financial taskforce approach the numbers that we have in this document represents effectively level services budgets that are consistent with what the financial taskforce had forecast so from my understanding is that the school the department the school committee and the town side  management basically look at these numbers and say this all these numbers will allow us to do what we need to do right now if we were in a position where we had saved a bunch of money and yet at the same time we were starving and you know the municipal side of the school side for money  think you have an interesting question about maybe we should be putting more money in free cash in this point the fact that we're using one point five and we typically use it say in the one point five to two million dollars range yes it's on the lower end of the average and yes we'll actually bring punished probably three million dollars if it's on average all to the last six years but for this year that's not a problem the issue is what does it look like as you pointed out over time and as you pointed out and how do you actually extend that over that over right money in the best possible way so i think that is a legitimate discussion  the months but in terms of this year's budget i think that we're actually in a good plex is what i would say and let me add i agree i mean personally if we don't need to use free cash to balance the budget i think it's better that we don't ok but you know free cash is one time funds and to get used to allocating more and more in an operating budget isn't a good habit i can say it's not a policy that the board deliberated on and said hey every year we're going to spend less and less free cash i can't say that i think we as mike has said you know i think that how to administrative or on the superintendent have gotten together and this is a budget within which they can satisfy their means so it's all it's a good thing and i think and i agree with you want to bob i mean it would be in a nice position at the end of the year to sit down and say hey we have all this unexpected you know the revenues or declined less expenditures than we expected what should we do with that money put in stabilisation or or how can we use it to stretch out the override i think that's a great discussion and i'd love to be in a position to have of the seven million of free cash so it's hard for our target is that we established last year was three to five percent which is three to five million because one hundred million was the budget last year so we're basically two million over  that three to five that's three to five guy and i know we're talking about spending one point five of it so that's one point five down when you have the stabilization money which will be let's say another four hundred thousand dollars roughly so that puts us right around the five so part of the discussion would be do we want to be at the high end of the range or where do we want to be in the range of that to be part of the discussion about cost per se but we get to the point of discussion i would think that if we're putting more money into this into stabilization funds with the rich special education capital or the or the operating one i would be in favor of that and if you putting more money into that at least go toward the lower end of the free cash because there are reserves so that you know go try to make it five percent free cash and you're feeding civilization funds that are substantial in terms of covering yourself you know there's less need in some sense in your casualness if there is no that there is no term x or excess profits in that scenario because you've already of walk through that but for them sure you've got a spreadsheet that i'm going i would be great to see it because it's that you know six hundred thousand dollars difference and also sort of hearing that that the school the school group has has some needs that old call home basically we only collected six twenty seven against the seven hundred thousand dollars we projected in fiscal fifteen to balance the budget so obviously we were down about seventy thousand seventeen i think we're going to have a full year of operating for the poor and hopefully the normal pool house reading that we have to expect when the pool over who is better shape will legation to make sure the revenues don't run too far ahead of the cost of providing those services but as you recall last year the the financial taskforce model had about two forty five debt service costs that generated a million dollars worth of follow so at last count meeting basically we approved the radios system which was five forty nine that was approved in the sixteenth budget and that increases its cost by thirty nine minute man basically fax a five percent to forty two thousand dollars chris again minuteman is developing   sense to actually wait if we're talking about that kind of timeframe to have the update happen after we know that information it sounds like it's going to be late or early january at the latest you think say what you think really generate the latest  that i just want to highlight for everybody is that as we talked about in the past the estimate of revenue for us next year and the coming this will sort of allocation that we're talking about here which is the fifty two point three million dollars for the school side and thirty five point six million for the town side budgets this is an initial so i'll occasionally in this case it's actually based on the finance task force model plus some some tweaks that are small and as opposed to well that this that these are these numbers have been reviewed by both school side leadership and town side leadership and and both sides and they feel comfortable this is this is a budget that we can work with probably with a subset of folks those who are passionate about those kinds of numbers will be digging for other into that for your forecast i think the creation of a four year forecast which we done at least and first time in my experience i believe with the finance task force is a great idea  d it's something that we should make it an annual practice for the combination of the war committee and the leadership and so i think you know it was done last year we'll do it again this year and i think from my perspective i think it's a practice we should in the hands of both the school school school committee board of selectmen and we're just hearing what they're thinking right well what we're going we're saying now is barring some strong feelings on the part of this group which i did not sure i'm hearing that the the  side will start with fifty two point three million dollars in the town and the towns i will start with thirty five point six million dollars roughly as their starting point for generating budgets and the subcommittees will work on the budgets that fifty two point three million number and the other subcommittees work on the how that of that money breaks out and that's actually how the bunny's the budgets will roll up and there may very well be changes as we've seen in previous years because this is the starting point but that's the starting point that will go with does feel free to raise your hand if you're interested in diving in on that but i will tap few individuals who i know are passionate about that to dig in further and will i think will get a stronger sense of what that for your good looks like moving on the next item on the agenda oversight on one part and then by the time i realized that was a good idea we were not close enough into the override that was actually not possible for us as a group to do that in a formal way and so from a legal perspective and so i ended up having to communicate that update as you recall here individually as opposed to doing it as a group what i'm going to supreme doing is drafting that to a two page maybe three page but short updates for town meeting members and distributing that in mid january will meet again as i said  i think is a very good idea because typically i think tell me the members in the past have come to town meeting with you know three days or something to absorb the details of the budget and really there's no time to think about broad brush planning and thinking and i think drawing town the members into that more is an excellent idea and i'm in it year report is a way to do that way to give town meeting members a chance to think about things in a broader brush it's going again this will not be a first belmont center tree lighting and holiday celebration is on thursday december third that's tomorrow ok the tree lighting will be at approximately six twenty and santa and mrs claus will be coming a sleigh as well they'll be train rides petting zoo free photos with santa always a lot of fun second belmont center merchants will be hosting midnight madness on tuesday december eighth stores will be open until twelve midnight and they will have sales in the range of ten to thirty percent that is belmont center's black sunday so on the thursday excuse me tuesday december eight i also want to report that belmont savings bank is offering a retail promotion from november twenty seventh to december thirty first if you bring in receipts to belmont savings bank from the local belmont center retailers will get back ten percent up to fifty dollars they are calling this promotion it pays to shop local so of course we want you to patronize belmont cushing square is hosting a holiday stroll event on thursday december tenth they'll be offering discounts free giveaways be h s magical singers prefer will form at six thirty again fun event also pushing square is hosting its gifts of hope day on saturday december twelfth if you shop  at cushing cushing square i may have said belmont center at cushing square stores merchants will donate a percentage of the proceeds to the belmont food pantry also santa will be at westcott mercantile from two thirty from twelve thirty  to two thirty so i just wanted to you know publicly announce these you know holiday events and encourage everyone to shop local thanks oh plus i'm